Dust Jacket Designer Philip Grushkin From Comps To Final

by Stephen J. Gertz

Philip Grushkin working in his Englewood, NJ home studio, c.1950s.

A major archive of renowned dust jacket designer, Philip Grushkin, "whose work made him the standard-bearer throughout the publishing industry," (NY Times obit) is coming to market courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller. Booktryst got a sneak preview of its catalog, yet another key reference and collectible work as we've come to expect from the NYC-based super dealer.

Philip Grushkin was born in Brooklyn, NYC, in 1921, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He became interested in book dust jacket design as a teen and began collecting them, those of George Salter (1897-1967), the preeminent American dust jacket designer 1935-1965, his primary interest. He attended Cooper Union college as an art student, studying calligraphy and lettering with Salter, who became his mentor. He graduated in 1941.

After the war, he began to free-lance as a jacket designer, working for virtually all of the major New York publishers of the time: Alfred A. Knopf; Random House; Harper and Brothers; Harcourt, Brace and Company; Macmillan; and Doubleday; as well as smaller houses such as Farrar Strauss, John Day, and Crown. He became one of the go-to designers at Knopf because the great book and typeface designer W.A. Dwiggins declined to do dust jackets. Grushkin became part of a select group of dust jacket designers that included Salter, Charles Skaggs, and, on occasion, E. McKnight Kauffer, Herbert Bayer, Paul Rand, and Alvin Lustig.

In 1947 he joined the the fledgling Book Jacket Designers Guild established by Sol Immermann (1907–1983), who, with H. Lawrence Hoffman, produced the jackets for the first one hundred titles published by The Popular Library. The BJDG established a code for dust jacket design, rejecting the poster style in vogue for pulp novels in favor of a descriptive, non-blaring style. Its manifesto, embraced by Grushkin, rejected:

• "The stunt jacket that screams for your attention, and then dares you to guess what the book is about."

• "The jacket that is born of the assumption that if the book has a heroine, or if the author is a woman, or the author's mother a female, the jacket must say SEX."

• "Burlap backgrounds, the airbrush doilies and similar clichés as well as the all too many good illustrations that were stretched, squeezed, tortured and mutilated to fit a jacket format with just enough room left for an unrelated title."

1953.

Grushkin's hallmark, like Salter's, was his creative use of calligraphy and lettering in concert with a lightly drawn illustration. His early work tends to mimic Salter's but in the late 194os his own personal style began to emerge, with an emphasis on lettering and calligraphy often to the exclusion of illustration altogether. Perhaps his most recognizable and typical dust jacket from that period is that for Simone De Bouvier's The Second Sex (1953).

If you are unfamiliar with Grushkin his deceptively simple yet visually aggressive pictorial style is distinctive; once you see a Grushkin book jacket you will begin to see them all over the place on books published during the late 1940s - early 1960s.

"Grushkin forged his own brand of modernism, one that owed nothing to the work of Lustig, Rand, or Herbert Bayer, inventing a unique mixture of bold typographic hand lettering, dynamic background patterns, vibrant colors, and abstract symbolism. By the end of the 1950s, Grushkin’s style was distilled to the point where it resembled Paul Bacon’s 'Big Book Look,' with hand lettering - instead of calligraphy - taking center stage, augmented only by a tonally variegated background" (Paul Shaw, Philip Grushkin: a Designer's Archive, catalog to the collection).

Below, a few examples of Grushkin's work in development, from first comp to final jacket.

The Other Side of the Record (1947):

First comp.

Second comp.

Third comp.

Fourth comp.

Fifth comp.

Final.

The Train From Pittsburgh (1948):

First comp.

Second comp.

Third comp.

Fourth comp.

Fourth comp, side notes.

The fourth comp of Train..., unusually, has notations, not just by Grushkin, but also by "J" at Knopf (likely production manager Sidney Jacobs). Grushkin’s notes refer to the colors he plans to use - blue, red, and yellow - with a reminder that the jacket will be offset printed. The notation by “J” approves the design but suggests substituting the calligraphic lettering of Julian Farren's name to a clean, serif'ed typeface.

Fifth and final.

Mechanical - Shards of Glass.

Mechanical - Lettering.

Helix (1947):

Partial comp.

In what was, apparently, the first (and partial) comp for David Loughlin's novel, Helix (1947), Grushkin employs a blue background, a single swirling spiral, and title lettering running upward on a diagonal from left to right.

First complete comp.

In the above, the first complete comp for the Helix DJ, Grushkin loses the blue background and substitutes red, has the title lettering on a downward diagonal from left to right, acutely triangulates the author and title, features a series of smudgy, overlapping spirals, and adds a tiny ship moving along a black plane.

Second complete comp.

Grushkin's second complete comp for Helix refined his design in the first comp, downplaying the swirling spirals,  deleting the ship's black path, and adding black "gears," elements that made it to the final published dust jacket.

Final.

Grushkin's final design for Helix cleans up, clarifies, and polishes the second comp.

Limbo mechanical.

Final.

The lettering mechanical for an early comp of Grushkin's DJ for Bernard Wolfe's classic science-fiction novel, Limbo (1952) bears a different subtitle than the final. "A Voyage of Discovery and Adventure in the Fantastic World of 1990" must have seemed a tantalizing teaser in 1952. The teaser to the final certainly hammers it home: "A diabolic tale - mad, merry and monstrous - of men and women caught in the vortex of history yet to happen! Check out that mad, merry, and monstrous year, 1990, more frightening that Wolfe could ever have imagined:

• Manuel Noriega surrendered to U.S. forces after acting as dictator of Panama for five years.

• Notorious Gambino crime family leader John "the Dapper Don" Gotti was arrested and charged with racketeering, murder, and various and sundry illegal activities.

• Marion Barry, the flamboyant mayor of Washington D.C., was arrested for possession of crack cocaine in an F.B.I. sting set up in a D.C. hotel room.

• British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned. 

• The first McDonald's restaurant opened in Moscow, becoming for many a symbol of the nation's new progressive free market ideology.

• The World Wide Web was created, along with the first ever web page and web browser.

• Time Inc and Warner Communications, two of the largest media companies in the world merged to create giant Time Warner.

That's some vortex. We're lucky to have made it through 1990 alive.

The Grushkin archive consists of his book jackets (with related comps, roughs and mechanicals); binders of his cover designs for Mercury Publications; letterhead and logo designs; related ephemera; and a collection of book jackets by George Salter: over 2,000 total items in all, 150 of which are highlighted in the catalog, with the largest and most important portion being the dust jackets by Grushkin.

"'His life was literally books,' said his son, Paul, noting that some 10,000 volumes lined the walls of the Grushkins' home.

"Yet, he was an invisible presence, his work evident only to a book's author, the publisher's editorial and design staff, the printer and the bindery" (Times obit).

"My Dad was also a book designer. He handled in his lifetime close to 1500 books, for many publishers, but most for Harry N. Abrams, the worldwide leader in artbooks. He told me a book design is successful when it's invisible, meaning the reader never has to labor to overcome the designer. In a good book design, the grid and typographic elements illuminate the author's concept along with the book's contents. Nothing jars that reader from experiencing the book - nothing in the design is so boastful that it's the designer who's calling out, before anything else, 'look at MY cleverness'" (Paul Grushkin). 

Book lovers, special collections librarians, and aficionados and collectors of dust jackets will be fortunate to score a copy of the Grushkin Archive catalog, luckier still to acquire the archive itself. While it's not unusual to track a writer's progress through their archive, it isn't often that we have an opportunity to see a dust jacket designer in the midst of their process from conception to completion.

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All images reproduced with the express permission of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, with our thanks.
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Gershwin Ain't Got Rhythm At Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

They're selling lots of books, but not for me 

A lucky star's above but not for me 

With fame to lead the way 

I found more clouds of gray 

Than any auction play could guarantee...to flee.

Pantheon lyricist Ira Gershwin got rhythm, he got music, he got his gal, and when an important archive of his letters was offered at PBA Galleries on November 15, 2012 who could ask for anything more?

He could. Estimated at $80,000-$120,000 the archive did not sell. Who could ask for anything less? Collectors, who apparently, were just bidin' their time and not biddin' their dime. What should have been S'Wonderful and S'Marvelous sighed a collective Let's call the whole thing off.

That the archive did not sell is not a reflection of the quality of the material or its significance. "They can't take that away from me," as Ira wrote for Fred Astaire in Shall We Dance? (1937).

The archive comprises a rare assemblage of unpublished correspondence by Gershwin (1896-1983) and is crucial to understanding the music and entertainment industry om the U.S. during the 1920s-1950s from one of its giants, a song lyricist with a gift equaled only by his contemporaries Oscar Hammerstein II and Cole Porter.

It's an extraordinary archive of letters, offering rare insights into the mind and method of his brother and collaborator, composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), and the production of George’s masterpiece Porgy and Bess.

On May 26th, 1961, in perhaps the most significant letter in the collection, Ira writes about Porgy and Bess and George Gershwin’s perception of the production: “As for ‘opera’ or even ‘grand opera; - of course. ‘Folk opera’ was a compromise arrived at so as to not scare the general public – or, rather – the average theatre-goer, away. I’m sure that somewhere I’ve written or told that the Met was eager to produce the work and that Otto Kahn offered George a bonus of $5,000 if the Met could have it. (George was flattered but realizing that at best the work could get a guarantee of 4, possibly 6, performances he turned it down for Broadway)…”

The letters, a huge trove of 1-4 pages each, were written to Edward Jablonski, who later became an important  historiographer of musicians, publishing numerous works including a major biography of George Gershwin, begin in 1941 when Jablonski was still in high school and an adoring fan. In 1952, Jablonksi founded Walden Records, releasing many rare compositions by Gershwin and other musicians of the day.

The correspondence not only provides a remarkable record of Ira and George Gershwin but also gives a vivid picture of the world of music and show business in the 1940s and 1950s, the period when nearly 90% of the letters were written. Gershwin writes much on his brother and his legacy (a good deal of his time was spent in managing the estate), his own ongoing projects in Hollywood and New York, his opinions of actors, actresses and singers, criticism of composers and lyricists, reviews of movies and dramatic productions, and his thoughts on new records being released, through Jablonski’s Walden as well as Columbia and other major record labels.

Other highlights:

• June 18, 1941: “…Now as to those questions. ‘Short Story’ was a piece that might have been included in the ‘Preludes’. George wrote this at a very early age. Samuel Duskin heard it and asked if he couldn’t arrange it for the violin. George agreed to it… There is an actual 4th prelude, however – unpublished. Since it is in 32 bar song form I’m going to put a lyric to it some day…”

• September 22, 1941, on the lookout for copyright infringement: “Never heard of the Haynes-Griffin Co. and their album of excepts from ‘P. & B’ and ‘American in Paris’ etc. I imagine what they are offering are records of broadcasts like the one at the Hollywood Bowl of which I sent you a program. If it’s something else, I’d appreciate your letting me know. And thanks for the tip on records issued by the Commodore Music Shop. I’ll write them…” 

• April 6, 1942: “…Regarding ‘135th Street’ I feel that George wouldn’t have cared particularly about recording it because it was written in such a hurry and because ‘Porgy and Bess’ said in a much more mature way anything ‘135th Street’ had to say.”

• Sept. 1, 1943, about the upcoming film biography of his brother: “I went over to the Warner lot the other day and saw a couple of sequences from ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. I though they weren’t bad at all and that the unknown playing my brother captures a good deal of the spirit. It is of course too early to know how it’s all going to turn out but it is obvious that both Mr. Lasky the producer and Mr. Rapper, the director, were trying hard to make a worthy film…” 

• Oct. 30, 1943, “Sorry you missed ‘Girl Crazy’… I haven’t seen it either… I hear the story isn’t too original but that all the numbers are well done and it’s really a tribute to the vitality of George’s music that no interpolations have been made in the score and as for the lyrics I had to change only a couple of lines…”

George and Ira Gershwin

• July 5, 1945: “…I was a groom once but never had been a best man. Vincente Minnelli asked me to be his b.m. when he married Judy Garland so it was I who handed over the ring and now nobody can say I’ve never been a best man. Saw ‘Junior Miss’ and ‘The Lost Week-End’ in projection rooms. Both excellent movies – Don’t miss them when they get around…” 

• September 17th 1945, protective of his brother’s musical legacy: “I didn’t see that article in ‘Metronome’ but I did see a digest of it in ‘Newsweek’ a couple of weeks ago. I found what I read a malicious outpouring rather than an analytical criticism and therefore too special to be much concerned about. Generally, any unfavorable notice of my brother’s music doesn’t bother me too much. So someone doesn’t like ‘Rhapsody’ or ‘American in Paris’ or whatever it is. So someone is entitled to his opinion. So all right. What does bother me is when I see phrases like ‘naïve orchestration’ or ‘structural ignorance’ as though my brother were just a terribly talented fellow (which they grant) who somehow stumbled into the concert hall, was impudent enough to take advantage of it, put on a high pressure sales talk – and got away with it. With these critics there is an utter disregard of the facts that George from the age of 13 or 14 never let up in his studies of so-called classical foundations …” 

• On March 11, 1948, Ira runs afoul of the red-baiters: “As for being investigated by the Thomas Committee should you go to an institution Thomas doesn’t approve of – you ought to feel you don’t belong if you aren’t subpoenaed. As you may or may not know I was recently summoned by the Tenney Committee (our local Un-American seekers) because a meeting of the Committee for the First Amendment was held at my home. It turned out to be nothing, but it’s pretty bad that these committees have the power to drag you to them just because someone’s uncle said he thought you were wearing what seemed to him a red tie at a football game last fall…”

•  September 28, 1951, after congratulating Jablonski on his marriage: “Glad you agree that Columbia did a remarkable job with ‘Porgy and Bess.’ Those who questioned he recitatives will now, if they’re at all musical, understand and appreciate that it wasn’t composer’s indulgence but powerful and authentic musical setting in the plot lines…” 

• May 18, 1954: “Saw rough cut of ‘Star is Born’ last night. Fine acting and singing beautiful production. Has to be cut considerably though as it ran three hours and eleven minutes and a musical specialty of five to seven popular songs has yet to be added (‘Melancholy Baby’ ‘Peanut Vendor’ ‘I’ll Get By’ ‘Swanee’ and one or two others) which will take, I imagine, twelve to fifteen minutes. This is the spot that’s to close the first half of the picture and it was decided that any one new number wouldn’t be socky enough…”

1959.

Why didn't this significant archive sell? It sure ain't plenty of nothin'. It's difficult to say with certainty beyond the obvious: too rich for collectors' blood. How many collectors of American Music History, specifically that of the Gershwin Brothers incalculable contribution to popular music, are there with deep pockets? Perhaps it ought to have been offered to Ira Gershwin's torch- and standaard-bearer, singer, pianist, and historian of the Great American Songbook, Michael Feinstein, who worked for him as assistant and archivist

I suspect that the next step in the quest to find it a  home will be institutional offers. This is an ideal archive for any library with an American music Special Collection.  It's   a perfect fit for The Ransom Center's Ira Gershwin Collection.

Great song lyrics stand alone from the music that carries them. Ira Gershwin continued to flourish after his brother's premature death. In 1953, for the movie A Star Is Born, he wrote (with music by Harold Arlen) the greatest song yet written to capture the heavy yearning, emptiness, sorrow, regret, mourning, wan hope and melancholy of the heart in throbbing agony when deep love is lost forever. It's the torch-song to end all torch-songs, and though written for a woman is not  an experience exclusive to females; gut-wrench gone love does not discriminate.

The night is bitter,
The stars have lost their glitter,
The winds grow colder
And suddenly you're older,
And all because of the man that got away.

No more his eager call,
The writing's on the wall,
The dreams you dreamed have all
Gone astray.

The man that won you
Has gone off and undone you.
That great beginning
Has seen the final inning.
Don't know what happened.

It's all a crazy game!
No more that all-time thrill,
For you've been through the mill,
And never a new love will
Be the same.

Good riddance, good-bye!
Ev'ry trick of his you're on to.
But, fools will be fools,
And where's he gone to?

The road gets rougher,
It's lonelier and tougher.
With hope you burn up,
Tomorrow he may turn up.
There's just no letup the live-long night and day!

Ever since this world began
There is nothing sadder than
A one-man woman looking for
The man that got away,

You don't need Judy Garland opening her veins to hear the ache pouring out of those lines.
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Images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
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Scotland's Theatre In The Spotlight At Glasgow Library

By Nancy Mattoon

Program and pages of script from
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head
Chopped Off by Liz Lochhead.
(All Images Courtesy of Scottish Theatre Archive.)

An online display from the University of Glasgow Library has been created to highlight the holdings of its fascinating Scottish Theatre Archive. Scotland has a checkered history when it comes to the theatre. All the way back in the year 1214, pious King Alexander I banned all theatrical performances in the land the Romans called Caledonia. The Catholic Church periodically enforced such bans, but the literary flowering of the Renaissance period still came to Scotland in the form of Sir David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, a masterpiece of satirical comedy-drama first performed for King James V in 1540. But by 1640 the Protestant Reformation once again brought about the banning of all theatrical "diversions" throughout the British Isles.

Undated Publicity Photo of Harry Lauder,
One Of Scotland's Most Famous
"Music Hall Artistes."

Located between two nations with peerless literary stage traditions, England and Ireland, Scottish dramatists have been constantly overshadowed by the great playwrights of London and Dublin. But the theatrical culture of Scotland kept rising from the ashes, with the 18th century producing important works by Alan Ramsay and John Home. Scotland long specialized in translating and staging the world's finest plays for local performances, including everything from Greek tragedies to Molière, Racine and Rostand. The first-ever Chekhov production in the English-speaking world took place when the new Glasgow Repertory Theatre staged The Seagull in 1909.

Actor, Director, Producer Alan Cumming
Adorns A 2007 Poster For
The National Theatre Of Scotland.

So it should come as no surprise that what arose in the Scottish capital from the rubble of World War II, and became the largest cultural event on earth, bar none, was the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival. Established in 1947 to "provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit," over 40 years on, the festival, and its more outrageous twin, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, have become the finest theatrical showcases on the planet. The icing on this dramatic cake is the founding of the new National Theatre of Scotland in 2006. Scotland's National Theatre does not have a single central location, but is committed to commissioning plays and bringing theatre to the people throughout Scotland, in both the major theatres of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in community playhouses both large and small.

A 1955 Program From
The King's Theatre, Edinburgh.

Scotland's libraries have a vital role to play in this theatrical heritage, and recognizing that, The Scottish Theatre Archive was founded in 1981 as part of the Special Collections within the University of Glasgow Library. Its mission is "to help preserve Scotland's theatrical heritage by providing a safe and accessible home for archival material relating to Scottish theatre." It also serves as a clearinghouse for information on Scottish theatre and drama requested by "scholars, students, theatrical practitioners, historians and members of the public from all parts of the world."

Sketch Of A Costume by Colin MacNeil
for Aladdin And His Wonderful Lamp, 1987.

According to the Archives' website, its "coverage of Scottish theatre is very broad, and includes traditional and contemporary aspects, as well as serious and popular works. Among the largest collections are the archives of the Citizens Theatre, Scottish Ballet, including material from its beginnings as the Western Theatre Ballet, the BBC Radio Scotland script collection and the Jimmy Logan collection of music-hall material. Other collections include material relating to many Scottish theatres and companies, such as the Scottish National Players, Wilson Barrett Company, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe."

1982 Poster For
The 7:84 Theatre Company
of Edinburgh.

The contents of the Archive include, "programmes, scripts, production notes, photographs, posters, and press-cuttings. Some of the collections also include business papers and correspondence. The Archive has extensive holdings of playscripts, totalling over 7,300 titles." A small sampling of the Archives' fascinating materials has been made available online, along with a dedicated computer catalog for all materials currently accessible. All of which underlines the fact that there is a lot more to theatre in Scotland than the superstition that surrounds that unlucky Shakespearean tragedy dubbed "The Scottish Play," because to even utter its true title, Macbeth, in a theatre is to invite disaster.

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Irish Eyes Are Smiling At NYU Library

By Nancy Mattoon

Nothing Says "Ireland,"
Like This 1912 Sheet Music Cover.
(All Images Courtesy of Archives of Irish America.)

For over 400 years, the United States has been a second home for thousands of immigrants from Ireland. As early as the 1600's, nearly 100,000 citizens had left the Emerald Isle for America, and by the early 19th century that number had increased at least tenfold. The Irish, like all immigrants, brought with them the culture of their native land. Irish immigrants had an especially strong influence on American popular music.

Nostalgia Reigns Supreme In This 1912 Tune.

Themes of Irish interest played a major role in the development of the sheet music industry in the United States, with hundreds of tunes aimed at the immigrant market written in New York City's Tin Pan Alley. New York University's Tamiment Library, home to The Archives of Irish America, has recently digitized part of its collection of thirteen hundred pieces of sheet music published between the Civil War and World War I, focusing on songs about Ireland and the Irish.

This Undated "Songster" Was A
Lyric Sheet Published Without Music.

The sheet music is part of the The Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Collection, which is the largest known and most comprehensive collection of Irish Americana in the world. This immense archive includes forty-three boxes of sheet music, which document the Irish image in American popular culture, including both positive and negative stereotypes. The songs cover a wide range of genres, from the sentimental to the patriotic to the comic.

Shamrocks, Harps, And Miss Mary Donohue,
Could This 1909 Tune Be Irish?

Sheet music was a hugely lucrative industry, particularly from the 1860's to the 1930's, and composers, lyricists, and publishers used every major political, sporting, and cultural event as fodder for new tunes. As a result, song sheet covers, richly illustrated with colorful art to stimulate sales, became a virtual history of the struggles and achievements of the Irish in the New World.

One Of The Emerald Isle's Exquisite
Colleen's Inspired This 1891 Waltz.

Songwriters were especially drawn to a few popular themes, using words and images that were instantly identifiable as Irish. Place names such as Killarney, Tipperary, and Kilkenny already had a musical sound, so they were naturals for conveying a magical land of lush green hills and crystal clear rivers, which of course never actually existed. Many songs contain the Irish words Mavourneen, Macushla, and Machree, meaning "My Dearest", "My Love" and "My Heart." And the beautiful Irish Colleen provided instant inspiration, becoming "Peg O’My Heart," "Pretty Kitty Kelly," and "My Wild Irish Rose."

This 1914 Song Longs For An
Ireland that Never Was.

Appropriately, the donor and namesake of the sheet music collection is a famed musician, as well as a scholar. Mick Moloney is a tenor banjoist and vocalist who holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Global Distinguished Visiting Professor in NYU's Faculty of Arts & Sciences, teaching in the Department of Music and for the Glucksman Ireland House, whose publications include Far from the Shamrock Shore: The Irish-American Experience in Song (2002). For the past twenty years he has pioneered the collection of Irish-American memorabilia, and in 1999 he was awarded the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Long Lost U.S. Senate Records Discovered by Rare Book Dealer

by Stephen J. Gertz

If you, concerned citizen, like I, wonder how the government was spending our money during the years 1879 - 1909 but have thus far been stymied in your efforts to get to the bottom of things, wonder no more. Fascination awaits.

The hand-written  ledgers, bound into five volumes, of the United States Senate Appropriations Committee covering those years and AWOL for who knows how long, have been found by a Northern California rare book dealer.

The ledgers, written almost exclusively in pen - both black and red ink – with some entries and notations in pencil, enumerate the annual appropriations for:

 I. Agriculture, Army, Fortifications, Pensions, Post-Office, 1870-1909.
II. Diplomatic, District of Columbia Appropriations.
III. Legislative Appropriations, 1870-1901.
IV. Military Academy, Naval Appropriations, 1870-1909.
V. Sundry Civil Appropriations, 1870-1901.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, arguably the most powerful committee in Congress, formally came into being during 1867,  its purpose to help divide the labors of the Finance Committee into the separate tasks of tax collection & disbursements.  The challenge then, as now, was keeping track of the funds when issued. In other words, who got what, where's the beef, where's the pork?

The entries are listed in exquisite detail, each volume collating to 546 - 896 pages divided into numbered double-page spreads. A note within the Diplomatic ledger indicates that there was a sixth volume, alas, missing, concerned with Indians and Deficiencies.

Some interesting entries:

• The President was paid $25,000 annually between 1870 and 1873. In 1874 that figure jumped to $50,000. The Vice-President was paid $8,000, the same as the Secretaries of State, Treasury, War, Navy and the Interior.

• $85,000 was allocated for wrapping-twine in 1886, an increase of $30,000 over the previous eight years. The wrapping-twine industry lobbyists were, apparently, busy that year. Or, the Senate was unusually active wrapping Christmas gifts during the holidays.

• Between 1894 and 1901, $25,000 was allocated for payment of rewards for the detection, arrest, and conviction of post office burglars and robbers - the good ol' days when "going postal" referred to miscreants, not employees.

• $10,000 was allocated for the “purchase of certain books and records of the late, so called, Confederate Government.”

•  $30,000 was allocated to investigate “alleged outrages in the Southern States” - presumably lynchings but the notes are unclear - and $50,000 to investigate senatorial elections in Kansas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

• Pension allocations for veterans of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, bronze medals for the veterans of the Spanish-American War, the erection of cemeteries and monuments for these wars. Curiously, none are noted for the Civil War, perhaps too close in time and painful memory.

• In 1882-83 $5,000 was allocated for an experiment lighting naval vessels with electricity, and allocations were made in 1898-99 for the purchase of modern electric machinery and appliances at West Point.

•  Between 1886 and 1893, $15,000 was allocated to turn cast-iron ordnance into steel-lined, breech loading, torpedo howitzers for throwing high explosives. $250,000 was allocated in 1897 for “testing methods of throwing high explosives from guns on ships.”

• In 1906  $20,000 was budgeted to mark the graves of soldiers and sailors buried on the isle St. Michel, known as ‘Crab Island’, Lake Champlain, who died at the Battle of Plattsburgh, September 11, 1814.

• $385,000 was allocated for building the naval station at Guantanamo, Cuba in 1904-05; $735,000 for the naval station at Cavite, Philippine Islands; and $862,395 for the station at Olongapo, Philippine Islands.

• But only $23,500 was allocated for government costs associated with annexing Hawaii on July 7, 1898.

• There is a curious allocation [Ledger III, O307] of $2,000 for the Committee on Alcohol in the Arts. Not quite funding for NPR but nice to know that Congress was paying attention to cultural affairs - though probably via artful showgirls and free-flowing champagne. It was undoubtedly  a popular and coveted committee assignment.

• Entry O197 in Ledger III notes an indefinite sum to be allocated for the “Suffering Poor of India," which, bizarrely, was a part of Naval appropriations. I smell a buried earmark to thwart the Anti-Suffering Poor of India bloc.

• Ledger IV, Diplomatic Appropriations, notes $1,929,819 allocated to pay British subjects as  guaranteed by the treaty of May 8, 1871 between the U.S. and Great Britain.

•  Ledger IV also enumerates expenses and allocations for running the District of Columbia, including $240 allocated for the annual salary of a florist at the reform school, pollen, apparently, a necessary adjunct to the rehabilitation of incarcerated juvenile delinquents; and $5,000 allocated to the Women’s Christian Association. Other religious charities, Catholic, Christian, etc. were also funded. The wall separating church and state was porous in those days.

It would be impossible to list every interesting or odd entry.  Suffice it to say that the ledgers contain a remarkable degree of detail and an exquisite amount of information. Here are the minutiae that we taxpayers have paid for over the years – from the $326 allocated to repair cooking utensils at the Military Academy in 1890-91 to $111,820 allocated to publish the laws of the 3rd Session, 42nd Congress, 1876 and an additional $100,000 to fold those printed laws.

In short, there's enough red meat in the ledgers to keep the the modern Right and the Left chattering for years to come about Small v. Big government, waste, pork-barrel earmarks, and all manner of spending by the U.S. government during the period the ledgers cover.

The volumes were accidentally found by Vic Zoschak, proprietor of Tavistock Books in Alameda, CA.

Says Zoschak, "It has been said of eBay that almost anything can be found there at one time or another.  After my purchase of these 5 ledgers last January, 2010, I can't help but give that statement some credibility.  The seller listing them really didn't recognize them for what they were, but to be honest, nor, at the time, did I.  They just sounded 'neat', and like something on which I thought I could make a profit."

Vic Zoschak, Jr., of Tavistock Books.

His cataloger, after close examination and research, realized what a treasure the ledgers represented and suggested that Zoschak contact the National Archives. The National Archives, however, had no clue that the ledgers were missing, or indeed, that they existed in the first place.

Zoschak, a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), is in the process of donating the trove to the Library of the Senate, exactly where it should be placed, for the benefit of scholars and posterity.

In the end, perhaps the most telling ledger entry of all confirms our worst fears and reminds us that what's going on in Washington today is no different than what went on 1870 - 1909 and that climate change stops at the borders of the District of Columbia:

• $2,000 allocated for “Writs of Lunacy” in Washington, D.C.

It was surely nowhere near enough. But if a writ of lunacy were issued for every member of Congress it'd be standing room only in the asylum and nothing but room at the Capitol.
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The Great Lafayette and The Empire Theatre Fire Remembered At Edinburgh Library

By Nancy Mattoon

Cover of A New Book Being
Launched By Edinburgh City Library:
Robertson, Ian and Gordon Rutter.
The Death and Life of the Great Lafayette.
Edinburgh: New Lands Press, 2011.
(All Images Courtesy of Edinburgh City Library.)

May 9, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most spectacular fires ever recorded in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. Capital Collections: The Image Library of Edinburgh Libraries and Museums and Galleries has created a new online exhibition to commemorate the tragic event, The Great Lafayette and the Empire Theatre Fire. The Library is also conducting a book launch for a new title exploring the fire, The Death and Life of the Great Lafayette by Ian Robertson and Gordon Rutter.

The blaze took the life of master magician and "Man Of Mystery," The Great Lafayette, and began in the midst of a performance of his greatest illusion, "The Lion's Bride," before a sold-out house of 3,000. Ten other performers and backstage crew members also perished that night, along with a lion and a black stallion featured in the act. Miraculously, quick thinking on the part of a stage hand and an orchestra conductor allowed every audience member to escape the flames and survive.

An Undated Publicity Photo
Of The Great Lafayette
and His Beloved "Beauty."

According to the exhibition, "Little is known of the origins of Sigmund Neuburger, the Great Lafayette, who died, aged 40 on 9th May 1911 in a fire at the Empire Palace Theatre in Nicolson Street." Neuburger was a German Jew born in Munich on 27th February 1871. He was the son of a silk merchant, with a serious case of wanderlust. He left Europe to be part of the 1891 gold rush in Cripple Creek, Colorado near Pike's Peak. Apparently, he did not strike it rich, but instead began a career in show business, opening a dance hall. He eventually formed a traveling theater company, and hit the vaudeville circuit as the centerpiece of an act involving feats of derring-do with a bow and arrow.

Undated Photo of The Great Lafayette and Beauty Off Stage.

Witnessing the brilliant magic act of Chinese master illusionist Ching Ling Fu convinced Neuburger that mastering the art of sleight of hand was the fast track to becoming a vaudeville headliner. Neuburger was apparently a quick study, by 1900 he earned top billing on the London stage as "The Great Lafayette," a moniker he soon adopted as his legal name. His closest colleague, and lifelong friend, was fellow Jewish magician, Harry Houdini. It was Houdini who unknowingly provided Lafayette with what became both his constant companion, and his longtime onstage assistant, a terrier mix he named "Beauty."

Detail Of The Cover "Slightly Singed"
Program From The Empire Palace Theatre.

Lafayette insisted that Beauty was "a magician in her own right," and the dog accompanied him everywhere, onstage and off. Beauty was given her own hotel room while she toured with the magician, and as they traveled the British Isles by train, she luxuriated in a separate compartment with a small sofa, and a bed with velvet cushions. Lafayette routinely tacked a sign on the door of his suite of rooms which read, "You may drink my wine; you may eat my food; but you must respect my dog." He spoiled the dog completely, giving her a series of diamond-studded collars, and feeding her steak dinners ordered from the room service menu. This last may have proved her undoing. On April 30th, 1911, just before the opening of a two-week engagement at Edinburgh's Empire Palace Theatre, Beauty died of an apoplexy brought on by what some speculate was overfeeding.

Beauty's Tomb In
Edinburgh's Piershill Cemetery.

Lafayette was distraught at the death of his best friend and fellow magician. He insisted that Beauty be buried in Edinburgh's Piershill Cemetery, previously a final resting place reserved for humans. The burial was only permitted when Lafayette purchased the plot for himself at a premium price, and signed a contract agreeing that upon his death he would be interred alongside the canine. It was said that Lafayette remarked that now that Beauty was dead, "I fear I shan't live much longer." If true, it proved to be an uncannily accurate premonition. Less than two weeks later the magician was dead.

The Elaborate Stage Set For "The Lion's Bride."

On the evening of May 9, 1911, the Great Lafayette was on stage performing his grand finale "The Lion's Bride," an extraordinarily elaborate illusion including a real lion, a horse, a "midget," a dancing girl, and several actors in supporting roles. In the midst of the finale, a faulty stage light set the scenery ablaze. The fire spread rapidly across the stage, but the audience members remained seated, believing it was all part of the act. Only when a stage hand lowered the fire safety curtain did the audience grasp that the fire was indeed real, and potentially deadly. The orchestra conductor, in a moment of brilliance, launched his musicians into an impromptu rendition of God Save the King. This immediately caused the audience members to stand, and file quickly from the theatre to safety.

The Stage Of The Empire Palace Theatre After the Fire.

The performers were less fortunate, as the back stage doors were locked. Some said this was theatre policy, others maintained Lafayette insisted the exits be locked so no one could steal the secrets of his illusions. In either case, the locked exits meant all onstage perished in the flames. The theatre's stage area was completely gutted. The Great Lafayette, however had one more trick up his sleeve.

Early the next morning, a charred body was discovered next to the corpses of a lion and a horse. Based on rings remaining on the fingers, it was identified as that of The Great Lafayette, and held for cremation. But two days later fire officials discovered another body wearing the same elaborate rings. The first corpse was discovered to be that of the body double for The Great Lafayette used in the act, the second body was Lafayette himself. Houdini said of Lafayette’s death: "He fooled them in life and he fooled them in death, I envy him."

The Great Lafayette and Beauty,
Side By Side For Eternity.

The Great Lafayette was laid to rest after a lavish funeral beside his beloved Beauty. The Edinburgh City Library exhibition "includes images from the collections of the Museum of Fire taken at the scene of the blaze, Lafayette's death certificate, a programme from the day before Lafayette's last performance (slightly singed!) and some wonderful pictorial programme covers spanning the theatre's history from the collections of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries."

On May 9, 2011 the Edinburgh Secret Society is conducting a 100th anniversary séance at the City's Festival Theatre, (located on the site of former the Empire Palace Theatre) in an attempt to contact the spirit of The Great Lafayette. The event is sold out, but the proceedings will be broadcast live on the society’s website.
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