Rare book dealer William C. Smith was surprisingly colorful for a man who always dressed in tweed and a bowtie.
Kevin Grace, former head of the University of Cincinnati’s Archives and Rare Books, recently posted about the “local bookseller and wit” in his Facebook group, Guide to Literary Cincinnati. That got me scurrying to find out more about him.
Smith’s specialty was books on Americana and early American history. But he was also an aficionado of dime novels and Westerns, and he was a “keen observer of his times,” the Cincinnati Post wrote when he died in 1968 at age 96.
His friend, using the pen name Flaxius, wrote: “Smith has all of what have long been recognized as the Cincinnati virtues – competence in business and a love of good food, drink, conversation, and books.”
Memories of Cincinnati in the 1880s
Smith is best remembered for writing “Queen City Yesterdays: Sketches of Cincinnati in the Eighties.” That’s the 1880s. Smith’s slim book, published in 1959, shares his memories and observations of the Cincinnati of his childhood.
He was born in West End in 1872. His father, a photographer, trunk store operator and Civil War veteran, died before Smith was born, so the family moved in with his grandfather at Seventh Street and Central Avenue.
A saloon was attached to the home. As a boy, his chores were shoveling snow and carrying buckets of beer hanging off a broomstick. He was grateful school taught him to read, but Smith didn’t finish high school. He was a voracious reader on his own and found school libraries to be “miserable.”
His descriptions of Cincinnati saloons – floors covered in sawdust, tobacco spit and foam blown off beers – have the ring of first-hand knowledge, though he was only 10 at the time.
It may not be surprising Smith also wrote a collection of poems in response to Prohibition called “Blue Law Ballads: A Purge for Puritans,” credited to The Sinners Club in 1922.
Smith was a lifeline to a bygone era, breathing the past back to life with his terrific details and barbed wit. And he’s a joy to read. Check out “Queen City Yesterdays” online or at the library.
Adventures of a rare book dealer
Smith ran his own bookshop on East Fourth Street from 1898 to 1917, then in 1918 established the Smith Book Co., dealing in rare Americana books to customers all over the world from an office in the Union Central Building.
“I had to get out of the rare book business in 1955. Rare books were becoming too scarce,” he told the Post in 1960. “People with collections nowadays leave them to libraries. That’s the end of a rare book. It never changes hands again.”
Smith created an extremely rare book of his own. About 1901, he and a partner hand-printed 120 copies of an obscure Mark Twain short story called “1601,” or “Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors,” a satirical, ribald tale set in Queen Elizabeth I’s court that would have been considered obscene at the time.
They gave away copies to customers at his bookshop. It became quite a collectible. Some were sold back to the store for $10 or $15, and he gave them away again.
Smith did end up in hot water in 1936 over a matter of stolen books.
A book thief known as Stanley Wemyss (actually Omer Hittle) was caught red-handed. He then accused Smith of working as a fence for stolen books.
Smith was arrested and charged with receiving stolen goods when 23 volumes pilfered from the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C., were found in his office. He told investigators there was no way of knowing a book was stolen if no library identifying marks were found.
During his trial, another well-respected book dealer, the president of the Public Library Board, the librarian of the Cincinnati Law Library and a former judge all testified on Smith’s behalf. Judge Alfred Mack found Smith not guilty, rejecting the testimony of an admitted thief.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Adventures of a rare book dealer, who wrote of Cincinnati’s bygone era
Reporting by Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
