Washington City’s Old Curiosity Shop
By: John Muller
The following is our first article written by a guest author. John Muller is a former reporter for the Washington Times and current contributor to Capital Community News, Greater Greater Washington and other D.C. area media. He is the author of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia (History Press, 2012), a finalist for the DC Public Library’s 2013 DC Reads, and leads tours of Old Anacostia. This article is excerpted from his forthcoming Mark Twain in Washington, D.C.: Adventures of a Capital Correspondent, set for publication later this fall.
If you’ve ever
spent time at Capitol Hill Books, on C Street SE across from
Eastern Market, and spoken with owner Jim Toole you have experienced the
tradition of an eclectic Washington bookstore and its cantankerous proprietor
that dates back to the 19th and early 20th century.
.jpg) |
| Inside the Old Curiosity Shop. Source: Around The Capital with Uncle Hank 1902. |
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| The stairwell in Jim Toole's Capitol Hill Books. Photo by the author. |
During his
lifetime Guild, who arrived in Washington City in the 1850s from Philadelphia,
wore many hats; president of the first Stonecutter’s Union after working on the
first section of the Washington Monument and new wings of the Capitol, army
officer in the first company to be raised in the District in 1862, and
proprietor for nearly four decades of a transcendent used bookstore that became
the haunt of generals, diplomats, senators, congressmen, journalists, everyday
bibliophiles and famous authors including Mark Twain.
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| Advertisement for Guild's furniture store from Boyd's Directory, 1867. |
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| Notice of Guild's move to Pennsylvania Avenue in 1867 (National Republican). |
Around the same
time, in late November 1867, Mark
Twain came to Washington City to serve as secretary for Nevada Senator William Stewart
(Nevada was admitted to the Union in 1864)
and to try his hand as a capital correspondent for a handful of newspapers.
In the shadow
of the United States Capitol, Guild rose every morning, seven days a week, to
stack a “melee of books, magazines and pictures” from “the dark mysterious
interior” of his shop on the curbside. “This is the daily exhibition which never
fails to attract the public,” the Washington
Post reported in 1898.
On his way to
and from the press gallery in the winter of 1867 - 1868, it is within reason to
speculate that Mark Twain, then in his early 30s and “green,” would have first made contact with
Guild, who was as easily greeted by the Speaker of the House as by one of his
brother-in-arms.
Government
being the business of Washington, Guild, once he looked up from whatever tome
he was reading at the time and began talking, pulled no punches in extolling
the benefits of his independence. “You see, they all know I’ve got no ax to
grind, ain’t hunting office and wouldn’t take a government job if they
presented it. They know they can come here and I don’t take advantage of
knowing them. Just like my friend who kept stoves in Lincoln’s days. The
President would drop in there and sit for hours at a time to keep away from the
crowd.”
However
inconspicuous Guild perceived himself or his shop to be, he was widely known
throughout the region and the country as a top-rate auctioneer and for his
unique book shop.
In Thomas
Fleming's 1902 book, Around
the Capital with Uncle Hank, the store is immortalized in both
picture and prose.
“Leaving the
Capitol grounds, the first thing to catch the eye is a quaint old second-hand
book store on the right hand side of the street, the proprietor of which stands
in his cave of volumes like a hibernating bear,” Fleming described. “Here you
will often see statesmen stop on their way to the Capitol to examine some rare
book which has accidently caught the eye, and then to bargain with the dealer
for its possession. But if the volume in question should be found to posses any
merit, rest assured it will not be secured without a payment fully equal to its
value, for, however unassuming the old bookdealer may seem, he is quite an adept
in price-listing his wares.”
That same year
a Post reporter described the store’s
physical characteristics, “This, the real curiosity shop of Washington, is
located in an old-fashioned three-story brick building on lower Pennsylvania
avenue, a structure built many years before the war, with gable roof, attic,
and curious little windows that peer out through the roof like so many
molehills. Entering this quaint old house, one finds, it literally packed and
jammed with books, magazines, state and government papers, oil paintings,
watercolors, steel engravings, objects of art, and pieces of old fashioned
china and silverware.” (Guild was often called on to auction off items as
various as Revolutionary-era munitions as well as Turkish, Persian and “elegant
and varied collection[s] of Oriental wares.”)
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| List of Washington booksellers from Boyd's Directory, 1905. |
Although Guild,
now nearing his eightieth year and going blind, had worked auctions with his
sons, and a grandchild was known to pass time at the store, he was “the sole
inmate of this wilderness of literature and art.”
Despite owning
a property in the 900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Guild slept most nights
in a room in the rear of the book shop where he could cook and eat his meals.
In the twilight of life, Guild showed no signs of slowing down, respected as
the patriarch of the city’s book merchants who, by 1905, were more than twenty
strong.
It was the
Curiosity Shop where “the literati of Washington resorted in search of rare
volumes, and the great men of the nation stopped on their way to and from the
Capitol.”
Mark Twain, the
most famous American man of letters and former “Row Boy,” (a moniker for journalists who had
spent time on Newspaper
Row) during his decades of visits to the city to lobby for a new
copyright law frequently stopped by the shop, where Guild did not particularly
take a liking to him, refusing to treat him like a literary celebrity.
“Was Mark Twain
ever here?” a reporter once inquired.
“You mean that
Clements [sic] man? I don’t think much of either him or his books. First time
he came here he walked in, ‘I’m Mr. Clements [sic],’ says he. ‘Well, an’ the
devil,’ says I. ‘You must have heard of my books,’ says he. ‘I write under the
name of Mark Twain.’ ‘No,’ says I, and went on with my reading. He tries to be
funny, that man does. I tell you the fun in his books is forced out.”
As ambassadors,
school children, writers and politicians continued to patronize the shop, Guild
rarely budged from the groove in his worn chair, often paying his customers no
mind until they were ready to pay. “I seldom bother to ask their names; in
fact, I never bother,” Guild admitted, although he was always cooperative with
police who had collared a book thief leaving his store.
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| Photo of James Guild from The Washington Times, June 7, 1910. |
“They’re his
books,” Alexander Guild said. “He’s been with ‘em going on forty year[s] now,
and it’s not for me to open the shop to customers just to sell books. I’d not
let one be touched with him lying there sick. No, the shop won’t open any more,
unless he can open it.”
To their
consternation, after fielding constant inquiries and well wishes, Alexander, a member of the Association of Oldest Inhabitants, told the
senators and congressmen his father’s shop was unlikely to reopen. By the end of 1910, the senior Guild decided to close
for good and liquidate what remained of his collection.
Proceeds from
the once-in-a-lifetime sale injected new capital into Alexander’s souvenir and
novelty shop at 111 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, where his father spent the last
years of his life. With James Guild’s death on January 19, 1916, and quiet
interment in Arlington National Cemetery, the history of a transformative era
in Washington City that was indexed with the names of Garfield,
Blaine and Reed -- all Guild confidants -- was bookended.
SOURCES:
“REMOVAL. - JAMES GUILD.” National
Republican. Oct. 25, 1867, p. 1
*NOTE:This same note appeared dozens of times over the course
of the fall of 1867 in the Evening Star
and National Republican.*
Boyd’s 1867 Directory of Washington, p. 294 _ advertisement for
Guild’s furniture store
“AUCTION SALES” Washington
Post. Feb. 19, 1878, p. 3
*NOTE: Throughout the 1870s and 1880s auction notices regularly
appeared in Washington and Baltimore papers with James Guild and his sons
serving as the auctioneers. These were for individual estates as well as
private businesses.*
“REAL CURIOSITY SHOP: Monument Book Store Quaintest Spot in the
City.” Washington Post. Dec. 4, 1898,
p. 13
“NOT AFRAID OF DUST: Owner of Old Curiosity Shop Not Easily
Terrified.” Washington Post. Sep. 7,
1902, p. 11
Fleming, Thomas, Around The Capital with Uncle Hank Nutshell Publishing
Co., New York, 1902 http://bit.ly/1051IBk
“OLD AVENUE BOOK SELLER ABSENT FROM SHOP DOOR.”
The Washington Times. June 5, 1910, p. 5
<http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1910-06-05/ed-1/seq-5/>
“VOLUMES GROW DUSTY AS SELLER NEARS END.” The Washington Times. June 7, 1910. p. 16 http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1910-06-07/ed-1/seq-16/
“JAMES GUILD DIES AT 95; Worked as Mason on Capitol and Washington Monument. Soldier in Civil War and for Many Years in Book Business in This City.” Washington Post; Jan.
30, 1916; p. 20
“ALEXANDER J. GUILD.” The Washington Times. March 31, 1919, p.
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