The LSD Library Goes To Harvard

by Stephen J. Gertz

FABRICE, Delphi. L'Opium A Paris.
Paris: La Renaissance Du Livre, 1907.

The Ludlow-Santo Domingo (LSD) Library of rare books, the world's first, largest, and most distinguished collection of the literature of psychotropic drugs, has been placed at Harvard's Houghton Library on long-term loan after extended and highly sensitive negotiations with the family of the late Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Jr (1958-2009), the eldest son and scion to the fortune of Columbian business magnate Julio Mario Santo Domingo (1923-2011) and omnivorous collector of books associated with the 60s Counterculture in the U.S. and Europe.

Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll was not an area of book collecting that the family, particularly his  wife, Vera, from whom he was estranged, found edifying; it was, apparently, a source of embarrassment, and since Mr. Santo Domingo's death the family had worked hard to disburse his collection with discretion through intermediaries who insisted upon the highest degree of secrecy from potential buyers - institutions, dealers, and auction houses - and negotiations with all were, reportedly, difficult.

WILLIAMS, Fred V. The Hop-Heads of San Francisco.
San Francisco: Walter N. Brunt, 1920.

It was, then, something of a shock when Harvard formally and by name announced acquisition of the major part of the Julio Santo Domingo collection - over 25,000 books, manuscripts, works of art, audio recordings, and films - on September 28th of this year. When I inquired close to a year ago while chasing a rumor Harvard refused comment.

As did The Roll N' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum & Library and Archives which coyly responded, "no comment at this time," a non-confirming confirmation that they had acquired a chunk of the collection. And as did every auction house suspected of being involved in negotiations. (A slice of Santo Domingo's magnificent collection of fine erotica and Baudelaire was recently offered by Christie's-Paris without provenance; highly familiar with the collection, I recognized a few singular items). And last year a selection of books on '60s Counterculture from the collection was discreetly acquired by Maggs in London; journalist Susan Halas recently interviewed Carl Williams of Maggs about  Santo Domingo's Counterculture library for Americana Exchange.

FOLEY, Charles. Kowa, La Mystérieuse.
Paris: Editions Pierre Lafitte, 1920.

The cornerstone of the LSD Library - however large just one part of Santo Domingo's huge book collection - was the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library of the literature of psychotropic drugs, which Julio (we knew each other) acquired in early 2002 from its founders and curators, rare book dealers Michael Horowitz and William Dailey, along with Robert Barker and Michael Aldrich  Ph.D, who established the collection in the early 1970s in response to the dearth of historical resources and research materials on a controversial subject at the forefront of public consciousness and discussion. It was, and will now remain, the pre-eminent book collection on the matter.

VAUDÈRE. Jane de la. Folie D'Opium.
Paris: Albert Méricant, n.d. [c. 1910].
Unrecorded; the only known copy.

But before Julio bought the Ludlow, William Dailey (with my assistance as his cataloger/manager) was sending low- to high five figure shipments of drug-related books to Julio's offices in Geneva every other month or so. Julio bought just about anything you offered  related to his area of interest. I recall that, early on, Dailey sent Julio a very long list. He returned it with only a few items checked off. Bill and I were stunned - this was great, gotta-have stuff. It turned out that Julio had merely indicated the books he didn't want - only because he already had copies.

(I think that shipment was worth $88,000; if not, it was another air freight-load to him for that sum - I died a thousand deaths in the course of arranging its pick-up and shipment. After 9/11, moving large quantities of rare books on illegal drugs out of the country actually became easier. By then, the office guys at Swiss Air freight and those on the dock had become old friends of Dailey Rare Books and we were granted "known carrier" status after an airline official took a quick look-see through the shop. Our shipments no longer required time-consuming piece-by-piece inspection and too much paperwork; now, two quick phone calls and a fax).

Julio would visit L.A. once or twice a year and take Bill and me out to lunch. What did we talk about? Uh, books; Julio couldn't get enough of the subject. He was a hip bazzionaire and always appeared in crisp white shirt, pressed faded jeans, sharp blue blazer, and black tassled loafers, a casual ensemble of uncasual quality and cost to the average citizen. He was a rock n' roll jet-setter; he had personal relationships with rock n' roll's royalty and routinely vacationed with them.

Nick Carter Weekly No. 136: Une Fumerie d'Opium. An Anarchist Plot.
New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905. French edition.

Once, while at Dailey Rare Books, I picked up the phone. It was Julio, calling from Geneva, Paris, Berlin, somewhere in Europe. We chatted for a moment then I passed the call over to William.

"Hi, Bill," Julio said, "say hello to Yoko."  Yup, that Yoko. Mick Jagger was also a friend on a long list of luminaries that were his genuine pals.

When I sold my small yet precious collection of drug literature to William Dailey in 1999 it wound up in Julio's collection. When Julio invited me to Geneva to catalog the enormous number of drug paperbacks in his collection (alas, not realized) I looked forward to seeing those old friends.

Feral House, 2008.

When I was preparing my book, Dope Menace (2008), Julio generously opened his collection to me, and had his staff in Geneva - Beatrice Rodriguez, Natasha Antonini, and Flavia Aulieri -  send requested book images for inclusion into DM, which was the first and last volume to cite the Ludow-Santo-Domingo Library as a reference source. Julio was supportive and proud of the project and looked forward to its publication. He was, sadly, extremely ill at the time of the book's release and while I sent him a copy I'm not sure that he saw it before he died.

Dr. [Julius] Cantala.
The Idol: Opium, Heroin, Morphine, and Their Kingdoms.
[N.p.]: Botwen Printing, 1924.

That the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library is now at Harvard is a relief to those who spent decades assembling its core and those associated with it. We were afraid that the collection would be broken-up and cast to the winds. There is only one other significant collection of this material in the world, in private hands, yet it's a handsome dwarf compared to the LSD. Now, scholars will have access to the finest, broadest, and deepest collection of books, art, and ephemera related to psychotropic drugs on Earth.

I think I speak for all with their hearts in the collection when I thank the family of Julio Santo Domingo, particularly his widow, Vera, for keeping the LSD Library whole and placing it at Harvard, where the collection, once the bastard step-child of the book collecting world - years ago, William Dailey was denied membership in The Grolier Club because of his involvement with the Ludlow - is now recognized for its significance and takes a deserved place of  honor alongside Harvard's other distinguished special collections.

Work and Win No. 275: Fred Fearnot's Trip to Frisco, or
Trapping the Chinese Opium Smuggler.
New York: Frank Tousey, March 11, 1904.

Julio Santo Domingo, Jr.  is surely smiling, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Brian Jones, Jerry Garcia, Marc Bolan, Nico, Harry Nilsson, Jim Morrison, Elvis, etc. at his side because Julio has no doubt become best friends with all of them. And they're likely talking about this, what the Harvard Gazette called, A Collection Unlike Others.

"We got the sex and drugs," said Leslie Morris, curator of Modern Books & Manuscripts at Houghton Library, of the Santo Domingo Library.

And now, a stately procession of ignoble books of the sort that Julio loved and owned, copies of many now,  presumably, on deposit at Harvard, the most respected institution of higher learning in the world. 

__________

All images from Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks 1900-1975, each, save the cover image, courtesy of the Ludlow-Santo-Domingo Library.

__________

__________

Beresford Egan's Illustrated Fleurs du Mal in (Yet Another) Binding to Behold

by Stephen J. Gertz

Binding by Robert Porter, 1990.

"He is a lad after your own heart...an elegant, elongated young man, with a penchant for gold-tipped cigarettes and gaudy neckwear. He changes his raiment four times a day and never sits down more than he can help for fear of de-creasing his trousers. He wears two rings on his right hand and carries a Malacca cane. When he walks he reminds me of Rasputin (my borzoi, not the Mad Monk), and when he talks, which is often and at great length, he puts one in mind of Oscar Wilde."

Color Frontispiece

In the description above, proffered by a character in his semi-autobiographical novel, Pollen (1933), Egan is describing himself c. 1925. He was, as he admitted, "overdressed, ambitious, and dissatisfied." He was oppressed by the local obsession with money-making, and had an eye and ear for satire, i.e. he illustrated The Sink of Solitude (Hermes Press, 1928), a parody of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness).

 

“Born in England [in 1906?], Egan was educated in South Africa. After working as a bank clerk, he became sports cartoonist on the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. By the time he returned to England in 1926, his satirical bent was well established. In London, he first became known as a draughtsman and also made his name as a writer" (Alan Horne, The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators, pp. 175-176).

"1928 was Beresford Egan's first fruitful year in London...In that year he illustrated in black and white Les Fleurs du Mal, [Loüys'] Aphrodite, Cyprian Masques, and an edition of De Sade [each released in 1929]" (Allen, Paul. Beresford Egan: An Introduction to His Work, p. 14).

He had a constitutional aversion to censorship. "Mr. Egan's pictures have noticeably a literary quality. Tte drawings...might be described as satiric essays in Love and Virtue. They are vigorous and necessary indictments of the pruderies of the formative years of this century, and as searchingly moral as the writings of Mr. Havelock Ellis wee concerning the pruderies of the latter years of the nineteenth century" (poet and novelist Seton Peacy, The Preface, May, 1932).

Egan was quick to point out that his drawings were not meant to stimulate revolting attitudes but, rather, to engender a revulsion against them. "You think some of my drawings inspire lust? No, no, no. They show people the sort of things they get up to without seeing themselves from a place of detachment. I want to show them the ugliness of what they are doing and so cruch their foolish idealising. I show the real visual and moral ugliness of the prostitute and the hypocrite...

"...Can you really believe that I am the sort of man to draw prostitutes for the pleasure of it?...If all the amusements of Soho depended upon me they would have to close down. I can easily create something beautiful for you to hang in your room, but my satirical drawings are meant to be grotesque. It is right that you should be horrified. That is the correct attitude to my art...What I do is in revulsion - to shock by the power of my satire!" He was chronically irritated by the sins of society.

Egan "used many media including oil, watercolour, chalk, scraperboard, gouache and pencil, but mostly used a brush or pen. As his skill increased, he used solid blacks instead of cross-hatching—he wrote in Epitaph (1943) that he used ‘Black and white with no linear half-tones to confuse the issue, no photographic realism to frustrate the design.’ Egan’s work has often been compared to that of Aubrey Beardsley, but in Egan’s case, the feeling of decadence is a reflection of his disgust—he wrote that ‘What I do is in revulsion—to shock by the power of satire!’” (Horne, op cit.).

He did not appreciate the comparison to Beardsley.

"In drawing, his mastery of the single line was compared to that of Beardsley, but Egan... always wanted to repudiate that particular influence.The quality of a line is determined by the instrument employed and, while Beardsley used a pen, Egan's work was for many years executed with a No. 3 sable hair brush. 'The trained eye should see this,' he wrote indignantly in [another of his semi-autobiographical novels] Epitaph [1943], but trained eyes are rare and critics unnumerable.'" (Allen, p. 12).

"Beardsley's predominant object is one of decorative and exquisitely detailed pattern in general effect. To this his interest in anatomy and facial expression is subordinated; whereas these latter constitute the main interest of Mr. Egan's drawings, which, almost devoid of alien decoration, arrest entirely by their means" (C. Bower Alcock, Egan's collaborator on Fleurs du Mal, writing in Arts & Crafts, 1928).

"The fellow has a line. Intellectually, his weakness is that he does try so hard to shock us; and it is then, and then only, that he makes us cry: the Beardsley touch! For Egan is original enough in all conscience" (G.K.'s Weekly, October 27, 1928).

A Beardsley - Egan comparison that discusses only technique and style neglects the obvious fact that these two artists swam deeply with the Decadents, producing some of the most dramatic examples of decadent imagery yet to be created and, in their deceptively simple drama and self-conscious delight, unlikely to be surpassed.

Regarding the custom binding for this copy of Fleurs du Mal,  master binder Robert Porter writes, in a signed autograph note dated February 1990 that accompanied it: 

“Les Fleurs du Mal. The binding is dark green morocco with onlays of red, yellow, blue, mauve, purple, orange, green, grey & black, gold & blind tooling. The onlaid petals have two shapes, which are reversible, & two sizes, to make both flowers & leaves. The theme is simple: the bright colours on the upper cover symbolize the delights & pleasures; the lower cover with its sombre effects symbolizes the ‘du mal’ element. The flowers themselves are, of course, symbolic, not real. The colours are deliberately gaudy although, one hopes , attractive, & similar to the colours of the frontispiece. The image I have in mind is of medieval enamel. Gold emphasises their brightness. The lower cover shows the same shapes & patterns dead & withered. The colours are black & grey with missing shapes outlined in blind. The spine shows the constituent parts & acts as a form of transition between the two parts.” Signed on the verso: “The book. R.L. Porter. Bookbinder.”

__________

[EGAN, Beresford, illustrator]. BAUDELAIRE, [Charles]. Fleurs du Mal in Pattern and Prose by Beresford Egan and C. Bower Alcock. London: The Sophistocles Press and T. Werner Laurie Ltd., [1929].

Limited to 500 numbered copies (this copy being No. 83), signed by the illustrator, Beresford Egan. Large quarto (11 1/2 x 9 3/16 inches; 292 x 233 mm.). At foot of title: “For private circulation and sold only to subscribers.” 142, [1, printer’s imprint], [1, blank] pp. Inserted color frontispiece (“Imaginary Portrait of Baudelaire”), with captioned tissue guard, title vignette and vignette on p. [135] in black and green, and fifteen full-page line drawings in black and white by Beresford Egan. Decorative woodcut initials and tail-pieces.

Bound by Robert Porter in full dark green morocco. Front cover with a stylized floral and leaf design in onlaid red, purple, maroon, turquoise, tan, yellow, orange, blue, and green morocco gilt. Back cover tooled in blind in the same design with black and gray morocco onlays. Smooth spine lettered in blind and decoratively tooled with gilt dots and with maroon, tan, red, brown, yellow, gray, and black morocco floral onlays. Top edge trimmed, others uncut. Marbled endpapers.

Allen B.3(a).

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, from a copy I handled five years ago, with my thanks.
__________
__________