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The Ink Blog Rick Schnake Click here to email us with your comments or questions.
Stepping into history. July 15, 2010 I was surfing the web while on vacation in Florida a few days ago when I came across the website for the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami—and there, in all its glory, was Harry S. Truman’s railroad car, a Pullman car named the Ferdinand Magellan.
I was elated to learn that the car still existed. There was far too much history in it for a Truman buff like me to miss it. It was around the Ferdinand Magellan’s dining table, for example, that Truman and his staff played poker with former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on their way to Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech on March 6, 1946. Churchill bragged so much about his poker prowess that Truman was concerned about American honor. After Churchill continually lost for over an hour, though, Truman told his staff during a break that they should let up on him. Truman’s military aide and court jester Harry Vaughan protested. “But Boss,” he argued, “this guy’s a pigeon. If you want us to play our best poker for the nation’s honor, we’ll have this guy’s pants before the evening is over.” The Ferdinand Magellan was the site of much greater political lore two years later as Truman scored the biggest upset in American political history. He logged several thousand miles onboard as he barnstormed the country, giving ’em hell, as some said, in speeches from the car’s rear platform during the fabled Whistle Stop presidential campaign of 1948. It was an election that really no one, except Truman himself, thought he would win. Late in the campaign, Newsweek reported that the nation’s top 50 political pundits unanimously predicted that Republican Thomas Dewey would win. After one campaign stop, Truman aide Clark Clifford tried to sneak aboard the train without Truman noticing that he had a copy of the magazine. Truman saw him and told him to disregard the poll. “I know every one of those fifty fellows,” he said, “and not one of them has enough sense to pound sand into a rathole.” The Ferdinand Magellan was also the site of the most memorable photograph of Truman. On November 4, 1948, two days after his reelection, Truman stopped at Union Station in St. Louis on his way back to Washington from his home in Independence, Missouri. Someone handed him a copy of the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that he detested. A beaming Truman displayed the Tribune with its banner headline screaming “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Experiencing this railroad car was like stepping into history. In the dining room, my fingertips felt the smooth mahogany table at which Truman and Churchill sat. I stood in the rear observation lounge where Truman calmly reassured Clifford. On the rear platform, emblazoned with the presidential seal in brass, I could almost hear Truman pouring it on the Do-Nothing 80th Congress and see him gleefully gig the Tribune. I have the museum staff to thank for the opportunity. The car is no longer open for the public to wander through it. Guided tours are available, but the volunteers who usually lead them were gone the day my family and I were there. The museum’s executive director happened to be there, though, and kindly gave us the tour, even though he, too, was on vacation. The Ferdinand Magellan shows its age. The original carpet and the original furniture and curtain fabrics are dingy and worn. Even so, the Ferdinand Magellan is still majestic—railroad car U.S. No. 1, the only car ever built especially for the President of the United States. It is a magnificent relic from yesteryear and a priceless piece of presidential history. Having found it, I would not have missed it.
Oh, for a genuine signature! May 27, 2010 People who do not know the difference routinely offer us material that is not genuinely signed. Presidential land grants dated after Andrew Jackson’s first term and more modern items bearing preprinted, secretarial, or Autopen signatures are typical. Occasionally, though, we are offered a piece that makes me really bemoan the fact that it is not genuine. It happened again the other day, this time with a secretarially signed form letter that Franklin D. Roosevelt sent out just before the 1928 election to promote the candidacy of the Democratic nominee, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, against Republican Herbert Hoover. We had another copy of that letter in our files, but seeing this letter again brought back that same sense of regret—form letter or not. Roosevelt, who served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, and who in 1928 was himself running for Governor of New York, solicited a potential Democratic supporter in the strongest terms: I have not heard what decision you have made as between the two Presidential candidates, but remembering your firm belief in the policies and ideals of Woodrow Wilson, I am encouraged to hope that you have decided as I have decided—that under Governor Smith our country stands far more chance of returning to the path blazed out for us by our greatest President, than under the materialistic and self-seeking advisers who surround the other candidate; men whose influence has already made it manifest that high ideals and a forward-looking policy—not only for this country, but for the world—would stand as little chance under Mr. Hoover as they have stood under President Harding, President Coolidge and Mr. Mellon. To me, the contemptuous casting aside of all of President Wilson’s wonderful dreams of a better world, and the substitution of crass materialism and a dollar-and-cents viewpoint of everything has been a world tragedy. I know Governor Smith and I know that in his own way his interest in humanity, his intolerance of the oppression of the weak and his desire to help those handicapped by circumstances has led him to the same belief as to what our country’s attitude should be, and as to how its course should be guided, as animated President Wilson. I would deeply appreciate it if you would write me confidentially what you have decided, addressing the letter to my house, 49 East 65th Street, New York City. What would that letter be worth if FDR had signed it himself? He wrote thousands of letters, and routine examples abound. But letters with content of this quality rarely appear. The owner was certainly disappointed to learn that the signature was the work of a secretary—and, for obvious reasons, so was I.
Articulate thoughts. May 4, 2010 Sometimes, I think, as 21st Century people we tend to think of the distant 19th Century as a time when people were less civilized, less educated, and less articulate. As autograph collectors know, that is far from the truth. We recently acquired an fascinating collection of autograph letters that proves the point. It consists of five scrapbooks full of letters from people of prominence, some much more than others, in the 1890s. The collection was assembled by a professor in the Department of Accounting and Penmanship at the Kansas Normal School, now Emporia State University. He had his students write to ask for handwritten items—sentiments, words of advice, or reminiscences—to be included in these albums. Amazingly, although it was certainly a different time, people complied. The albums contain letters and notes from presidents, senators, representatives, Supreme Court justices, Civil War generals, authors, activists and reformers, educators, and others. Many comment on the value of education. But many others relate to the interests and careers of the writers themselves. Among the items are a letter by Susan B. Anthony demanding that the men of Kansas “repent” and grant women the right to vote; one from the United States consular official in Sierra Leone, who recalled watching the exhumation of the body of Napoleon on St. Helena; a seven-page autobiographical letter by the first United States Senator from Iowa, George Wallace Jones; and a letter describing how Indians chased the author’s stage coach across the western plains. One of my favorite reminiscences is by former Confederate Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, who recalled nearly riding his horse over a wounded Federal soldier lying in a field of tall grass one night after the Seven Days’ Battles around Richmond, Virginia, in 1862. The soldier, he said, “faintly cried out, ‘don’t ride over a dying man.’” Lee dismounted, raised the soldier’s head on his arm, gave him a drink of whisky, and called an ambulance to take him to a Confederate field hospital. “Thank you,” the soldier said. “I have a father and mother in Maine who will bless you and thank you for this kindness after I am dead.” He indeed later died. “God grant!” Lee wrote, “that no one of your eighteen hundred students will ever behold the horrors of a bloody battle field—that our grand reunited country has seen its last Civil War.” One cannot read these letters without appreciating how very articulate those people were. That, in turn, makes collecting their letters all the more enjoyable.
Remembering the Holocaust. February 26, 2010 This week I talked with a local man who, as a German child in southern Poland, lived much of the Holocaust experience that I discussed in my last article. He choked with emotion as he recounted Nazi horrors that he had experienced. His parents were not Jewish, but both opposed the Nazi regime. His mother was executed in Plötzensee Prison, and his father died at the Mauthausen concentration camp. He recalled that he was 4 years old when an SS detachment came to arrest his mother. The soldiers picked her up in a convertible Mercedes-Benz. One of them leaned down to him and said that she would return in two hours. She never came back. He has a letter from Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi Reichsführer-SS, refusing permission to see his mother. He also has a postcard that his mother wrote to his aunt, who was caring for him and his sister, saying that she would no longer be alive by the time that the children and their aunt read the card. Finally, he has a card from the prison authorities simply informing the family that his mother was no longer there. His home in Poland was next to the railroad track. He told me of sitting on a high wall as a 7-year-old child and watching SS soldiers herd Poles, Czechs, and Jews like cattle into boxcars on trains bound for the gas chambers at Auschwitz. When a car was full, he said, the soldiers slammed the doors shut. A child separated from the parents was unceremoniously herded into the next car. The Nazi atrocities were indeed beyond words. Some may wonder, then, why I handle Nazi autograph material. One reason is that the historical impact of the Third Reich is undeniable, for the immense world war that Adolf Hitler spawned set the stage for the Cold War that shaped the military and economic history of the second half of the 20th Century. One does not have to agree with Nazism to recognize the significance of its historical role. But there is another reason, one that I believe is more compelling: We must never forget what happened, because we never allow it to happen again. President Harry S. Truman rightly insisted on holding the war crimes trials in order to document Nazi atrocities systematically and publicly so that no one could ever convincingly claim that they did not happen, were minor, or occurred without the authority of the German government. The evidence from the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials overwhelmingly debunks the claims of modern revisionists who deny the Holocaust. While I respect the sentiments of dealers who decline to handle Nazi autograph material, as a matter of conscience I would view my own refusal to do so as aiding those who want to sweep the Third Reich under the rug. I could not do that before—and, after talking with this man earlier this week, I certainly could never do it now.
Unknowns. January 8, 2010 I often say that given the option of spending a few thousand dollars on a signature of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or spending the same amount of money on a good-content letter, I would take the letter every time. With few exceptions, as seasoned collectors know and new ones quickly learn, it is the message that gives real historical value to the signature. Even many seasoned collectors, though, ignore those whose names themselves mean nothing. Yet there are many unknown people whose letters are every bit as fascinating and as much a part of history as those of leaders of the time. For example, letters of Civil War soldiers on both sides, describing the battles in which they participated and conditions under which they lived, provide historical insight that a study of those in power cannot. This comes to mind as I am preparing to list a group of Holocaust and related letters that come to us from a noted author. Most are family letters from no one of historical significance. Yet the history that the letters reflect makes owning them worthwhile. They include letters from prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau—people who could say little, and whose mail the Nazis heavily censored, yet who managed to convey the difficulty of their existence in the few words they were allowed to write on officially-issued paper. Consider, for example, the Sachsenhausen prisoner who asked his wife, with obvious pain, “Please let me know how you meant it in your letter before the last with the greatest humiliation of a woman through a man. I do not understand that well.” He added, “In reading your letter I walked with you through our entire place. I thought of each little place which reminded me of any happy, content, and beautiful experience. I do not think about the discontented ones.” Then there is the Auschwitz prisoner, who—perhaps knowing, but perhaps not, that the Nazis likely blocked communication from his family—wrote to his wife, “I am really glad to have received a letter from you but am curious why you haven’t written for such a long time. . . . Please write to me often, and please answer every one of my letters.” As I held and read these letters, images flashed through my mind of Jewish men lined up to be shot at the edge of a mass grave and of women, with looks of knowing fear, clutching and comforting their children in line for the gas chambers. The Nazi atrocities were beyond words. The people who wrote these letters lived experiences such as those and likely died as a result. Their names mean nothing autographically, but their letters bring history alive. As such they are well worth collecting.
Fairness and Trust. December 7, 2009 A few evenings ago, I had a nice visit with a client. The topic turned to fairness in autograph prices. There is a fairly well established range of value for most material. Prices vary based on a number of factors, which famed autograph dealer Mary A. Benjamin cogently explained in her book Autographs: A Key to Collecting. Generally speaking, those variations establish a range of values for a given item. Prices that fall within the established range are reasonable, while prices that greatly exceed it, absent a reasonable explanation for doing so, are not. I recalled a gallery that I saw while on vacation a few years ago. In the window was a beautifully framed Abraham Lincoln piece. It was an autograph endorsement, signed A. Lincoln as President, on the back of a letter. Lincoln wrote lots of those, referring letters to cabinet officers or directing that a petitioner be discharged upon taking a loyalty oath, and consequently they are among the most common Lincoln autograph pieces. Because of Lincoln’s status as one of the great Presidents, though, and because of his role in maintaining the Union, his autograph material is uniformly expensive. Most dealers offer endorsements such as that in the range of $6,500 to $7,500. Only endorsements with independent historical significance or an excellent association command higher prices. The framed endorsement that I saw in that window, though, was priced at $19,900. The exquisite framing added value, to be sure. But it struck me that I was looking at some $13,000 worth of framing—and that the price was aimed at buyers who might want a piece of history for display but who would have no concept of the true value of the autograph piece itself. Some would say that such a price is fair if a buyer is willing to pay it. I have a different view. Since my clients look to me for knowledge, advice, and effort, I have a responsibility to treat them in a way that creates and reinforces trust. Lasting relationships, and indeed friendships, rest on candor and fairness. The collector whom I might be tempted to overcharge today will assuredly never be a client who asks my help to build a collection tomorrow. Hence I cannot be a mere purveyor of paper—and professionalism, with all that the term implies, cannot be a mere shibboleth.
Hidden Treasures. November 6, 2009 After more than 20 years of working with historical autographs, I am still amazed at where people find some of the most wonderful pieces. I spent some time tonight with an auction catalog. One of the items listed was an 1858 Abraham Lincoln letter that someone found a few years ago inside a book at a flea market. That reminded me of a piece in my own collection. About 10 years ago I bought a World War I soldier’s pay book issued to a sergeant in Battery D, 129th Field Artillery Regiment, 35th Division, a National Guard unit composed of soldiers from Missouri and Kansas. It is dated November 1, 1918, just ten days before the armistice that ended the Great War. The captain of that artillery battery, which came under fire in the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was my fellow Missourian, Harry S. Truman, whose autograph material forms the centerpiece of my private collection. Truman had signed the pay book in blue fountain pen as the commanding officer and added his rank below his signature. The piece is in extra fine condition—as though it were issued yesterday. At the time, it was the earliest Truman piece that I had ever seen on the market. The seller was from Independence, Missouri, where Truman lived most of his life. He told me that his mother had bought a used book at—you guessed it—a local flea market and had later discovered the sergeant’s pay book underneath the fly leaf, which had been glued down around it. Apparently whoever owned the book had put the pay book beneath the fly leaf for safekeeping. There is no telling how long it had been there. So things like that really do happen. Be sure to check twice before you sell something at a garage sale or throw it away.
Simple Math. October 29, 2009 Sometimes all it takes to determine that an autograph could not possibly be genuine is a little math. Over the past few months we have been offered a couple of autographs that themselves proved that they could not possibly have been genuinely signed. One was a signature of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the other was a signed engraving of famed British Africa explorer David Livingstone. The Hoover signature was on the back of a post card from a Miami, Florida, hotel. The card bore a 1975 copyright date. But that was the problem—Hoover died in 1972. Since the card was printed at least three years after his death, Hoover could not possibly have signed it. The card itself disproved the autograph. The Livingstone engraving was on book weight paper with water stains at the bottom. The owner speculated that it had been removed from the front of a book that was discarded after it became wet and speculated that Livingstone had signed the book. Our first thought was that the signature was probably preprinted. Books by and about notable people, with printed facsimile signatures below their photographs, were common in Livingstone’s time. Yet the scan we received did not suggest a printed facsimile signature. There appeared to be depth of ink where the strokes crossed, all in the right places. At the bottom, though, the engraving bore a small printed legend stating that it was published in London in 1880. Since Livingstone died in Africa in 1873, this piece likewise disproved itself. So there was no need to examine the signature further. Even if it was hand signed, assuredly David Livingstone did not hold the pen. Sometimes autograph authentication is difficult. Sometimes, though, all it takes is a little math. |
