Bewick and the American Connection: 1942 and After
by Graham Carlisle
Around mid-day on Tuesday 24 March 1942 at Sotheby's New Bond Street rooms - the hammer fell on lot 403. At that moment Ben Abramson, a Chicago bookseller, became the owner of:
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'The Property of Miss Irene Ward, M.P.1 BEWICK (THOMAS), 1753 - 1828. The Ward Collection of over 1,300 of his original wood blocks, for illustrations to his works republished in the Memorial Edition, 1885 - [1887], namely, British Birds, General History of Quadrupeds, Aesop's Fables, and Memoir, in four wooden chests fitted with trays; with a set of separate pulls from the blocks, 9 vol., 4to...' 2 |
3,000 miles away at The Argus Bookshop, Wabash Avenue Chicago, Ben Abramson received the telegram that confirmed his success. No better flavour of the man and those anxious times can be given than to quote the words of Deborah Benson Covington, daughter of Abramson, as they waited for the blocks to arrive:
'The war was on. Ben avidly read newspapers for reports of ships being sunk. He worried, he paced the floors, he became irritable. What if they [the blocks] should be blown up by German U boats? The thought was a nightmare. Finally they arrived in New York harbor. His agent called that they were safely unloaded and on their way to Chicago. They were in the original cases Bewick had built to house them. When they arrived at the shop, all other business was caste aside while he unpacked them. He had just made a cash sale and before he could put the money in the register, he had thrown it in a heap on a table. He ran downstairs to help the men unload the truck. No, he could not touch the cases, he was not a teamster. He stood over them fretting at every move. Traffic on Michigan Avenue was snarled because the truck was parked at a peculiar angle. Never mind, the Bewick blocks were here'. 3
Unpacking the Bewick wood blocks at The Argus Bookshop in 1942.
Ben Abramson knew well about Bewick blocks; he had purchased a small group of sixteen earlier in his colourful bookselling career - he now owned the best. As to the price paid: Book Auction Records for the 1941/42 season shows the final bid to be £300 (or $1,200 at the prevailing exchange rate); comfortably within the Argus Bookshop's upper limit of £400. This compares interestingly to the figure mentioned by Abramson in his List 136; issued from Chicago some time between 1953 and 1955:
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'A few years ago, Isabella [sic] Ward, M.P. put the blocks up for auction at Sotheby's in London. When I sent my bid it was with little hope that I would be the successful bidder, since all I had and could raise at the time was $10,000'. |
Abramson concluded List 136 with offers of a variety of Birds, Quadrupeds and Vignettes blocks for prices in the range $10 to $40 each.