Of Questionable Provenance

Photo by Andrew C.

The autumns I come to New York for the antiquarian book fair, it is my habit before breakfasting to walk from my hotel up Fifth Avenue to Seventy-second Street and then back through the park, where the people who acknowledge my "Good morning" are invariably men or women of a certain age. My own age, much to my surprise, now groups me with them, and my preoccupations with self, such as they were, have ebbed to the point where I am more interested in other people's lives than in my own.

The rare-books business—I'm a partner in a small London firm—has provided me both an excellent living and an interesting circle of acquaintances in a half-dozen cosmopolitan cities around the world. As a consequence, I had always assumed I would work well into my seventies, following my father's example. But as my cab came off the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan three weeks ago—it was a Friday evening, the second Friday in November—and drove past hulking box stores selling discount office stationery and children's toys, I pictured with regret the narrow little shops they had replaced—one had sold just wigs, one just brightly colored plastic tableware, one only fine letter paper—and the idea presented itself that I might make this buying trip to New York my last.

At the Pierre, the night desk clerk greeted me by name and handed me a note written on the hotel's stationery. I was surprised to recognize Sarah's handwriting. A mutual acquaintance must have mentioned that I was expected.

Are you free Tuesday morning? Call me, was all it said.

Upstairs, I asked the bellboy not to draw the curtains. When he left the room, I turned off the lights and stood looking out with gratitude over the unchanging view of the park—the ornate street lamps, selected by Frederick Law Olmsted over a century before, still arching over the walkway that ringed the Pond.

I had been coming to the book fair in New York for fifteen years and hearing gossip from colleagues about a woman named Sarah Chase for at least three before I finally met her in 1985. It was the first full day of a parallel conference being held on archival processes, and I had taken an aisle seat at the back of the auditorium so that I could slip out if the plenary proved boring.

So that's Sarah Chase, I thought, glancing down at the program. She was often elevated to a position of visibility out of proportion with her credentials, if you could believe what people said. And here she was—was she even thirty?—with no permanent connection to any museum or university, introducing the Morgan Library's head of collections.

She was tall with long limbs, graceful but in no way delicate. She wore a close-fitting, long-sleeved grey wool dress that fell to midcalf, and her dark blond hair glinted under the spotlights. There was nothing overtly showy about her, yet she owned the stage. Even at that distance I could see why her name came up so often at dinner parties. The women must envy her casual self-possession. And the men? Probably nursing hurt pride from having their advances rebuffed. Yet I had heard her referred to as frankly promiscuous as well.

I sensed a mute, collective sigh of disappointment when the speaker whose bona fides she had detailed strode out from the wings and Sarah descended the stairs to take an inconspicuous seat in the front row.

That evening I was at a cocktail party given by one of the Morgan curators, standing with three other men, when I heard a loud male voice rise above the hum of conversation a few knots of people away. I glanced in the direction of the sound and saw a man menacing the woman who stood in front of him. He had gone beyond the jokey, sexual innuendo some middle-aged American men...