The Roadshow More Traveled, Pt. III: Stamped Out In Its Prime

The other reason for bringing The King In Yellow to the event was not as direct as simply gaining information on the book's value. You see, I really had no choice.


I had initially wished to bring a far different item to the Antiques Roadshow, an item which I had also obtained in the exact same manner as the Chambers' book: through my granny and my various trips to Wisconsin as a youth. It was my late, great uncle Sam’s postage stamp collection. It doesn't sound all that exciting, does it? But wait...

I received this book as a child when I was flush with my own burgeoning interest in stamp collecting. I had received a starter set as a present at some juncture, and for a short while, truly became vested in the hobby. I somehow obtained a then recent set of Scott's Catalogues at some point, got a few first issue envelopes, and collected what my youthful mindset believed were stamps of truly ancient vintage: stamps from 10, 20, 30 years ago. Friends gave stamps to me by the dozens, neighbors were happy to give me their opened envelopes, and I had endless stacks of what were actually completely worthless stamps of the current times. But I didn't care. And I didn't know it...

Then I went to Wisconsin. My granny was so taken with my usual overabundance of joy in the subject that she eventually bestowed upon me, on a subsequent trip, Uncle Sam's amazing stamp book. Here's the kicker: the stamp book was published in 1945, stands about four inches thick, and any stamps in it after 1945 are purely a coincidence. They are scattered about on open sections of pages where there is room, but the chief concentration of the book is the fact it is an international postage stamp book. It's not just for American stamps, but for the whole world. And a quick peek through its pages reveals stamps for dozens of countries, and the vast majority of them before 1945.

While the percentage of American stamps is high (mind you, this is only from a spot check, and I have no actual statistics), the bulk of stamps in the volume appear to be of foreign extract. Given that my family stems from Wisconsin, it should come of no surprise that a great many of the stamps are of Scandinavian origin. There are any number of stamps from Sweden, Norway and Denmark. But Britain also gets a good turn, as does Germany (there are a handful of stamps emblazoned with Hitler's sourpuss visage) and France. Most surprisingly, there is a vast reservoir of Russian stamps contained in its pages. Not Soviet stamps, though: these are all from the 19th century, and some of them date as far back as the 1850s. It became apparent to me even as a child that perhaps my great uncle Sam had been brought into the hobby in the same way as I: a spurt of interest, and then emboldened by the passing down of stamps from older relatives and friends.

I don't know this for a fact -- I don't know much about Sam at all, really -- just that I have a postage stamp book and several boxes of books that sat in his tiny home for a multitude of years, including The King in Yellow. Myself, I never truly got into the stamp world. Despite the boost from Granny, my attention was soon divided (and very swiftly) by baseball cards. Once I hit twelve, I was lost to the National Pastime, at least in the collecting sense. Sam's stamp sat undisturbed for numerous years, except for occasions where I would take it out of the box in which I stored it, and fleetingly glanced through its pages. Each time, I would tell myself that I really should get back into the hobby, and make a survey of Sam's collection. And I would even -- every couple of years or so, even recently -- take some time and work on my own collection, in the assumption that this time I was actually going to make some headway. Another secret is that I have always collected every stray stamp that has come my way, for over thirty years now, and I have squirreled them away for a future where I would actually have some time to relax and enjoy the hobby. But it has never been so.

And so, when I first heard we had tickets to the Antiques Roadshow, my first thought was "Why not bring Sam's stamp collection?" Instead of hiring an appraiser, I figured an expert's cursory glance at such a show (in a safe environment) would be enough to ascertain whether or not I had something of a certain worth that required a little bit more care than I was currently (and for three decades) giving the collection.

But it was not to be. Because, on a list of a scant few items that cannot be brought to the Antiques Roadshow, "stamps" is the very first thing on the list...

[To be concluded next Saturday...]

The Roadshow More Traveled, Pt. II: The King In Yellow

Before I continue with our visit to the Antiques Roadshow, I offer to the reader a rather largish nugget of background:

I first met The King in Yellow in the early 1980s in Alpha, Wisconsin, though it was only an acquaintance. The end of a pleasant vacation at Huntley’s Few Acres, my grandparents’ wonderful home (of which I am crazily nostalgic even though I was only ever there on a handful of occasions), found me leaving the environs with a brace of boxes in my possession. My granny had thrust into my hands numerous volumes of antique books that had passed down through various members of her family. Since I was nuts about books in general, she decided to send me back to Alaska with a couple of boxes full of them.

One of these books was a copy of Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, much fabled by my mother as a book (along with the poetry of James Whitcomb Riley), that would get read to the family. It was also one of the few books in the batch – outside of some Twain, Zane Grey and the Hardy Boys – which I recognized. Amongst the unrecognizable in the lot was a book by Robert W. Chambers, a gorgeously adorned, small but plump volume from 1895 called The King in Yellow.

It sat undisturbed on my bookshelves for about a decade, without my really knowing what wonders there were to behold inside its slightly moldered pages. The key to its treasures lie somewhere else, in another book altogether, Lovecraft, a splendid and meticulous biography of H.P. Lovecraft by L. Sprague de Camp, which I happened to stumble upon at a garage sale which I had accidentally stopped by just because I happened to be in the neighborhood on another matter. Destiny? Fate? Who knows? But it all seems slightly ominous given the books and their subjects of which we are speaking. Whether it be unseen force, divine providence or sheer coincidence behind this ladder of discoveries, causing me to climb ever higher into a musky, beshadowed attic of weird literary connection, it hardly matters. All I know is that the book mentions Robert W. Chambers as an influence on Lovecraft, a writer of whom I had been most enamored since a teen. (I was more than just slightly less enamored of ol' H.P. once I discovered what a reprehensibly racist shithead he was, but I still enjoy his writing.) Supposedly, after Lovecraft read Chambers’ more macabre stories, especially The Yellow Sign, one of the tales in The King In Yellow, he was intrigued enough to begin reflexively incorporating (some would say stealing) some of the names in Chambers' work into his own, as well as experimenting with some of Chambers' narrative concepts.

Even at this point, having only fleetingly glanced at the cover years earlier and then having stored away the book, I had to think a while about Robert W. Chambers. "Where had I seen that name before? It is so very familiar to me," I mused for numerous weeks. (Mind you, this is long before the internet made such research an instant task.) A search at the local library revealed nothing at all to me, as there were no books on the shelves (or in the card cabinet) bearing Chambers’ name. Since I worked for a bookstore chain, I consulted our Books in Print volumes within one of our satellite locations, and managed to discover that Mr. Chambers was the author of The King in Yellow, though the book itself was not currently in print then. But at last I knew! I had read his name in my very own reserves! It was in that monstrous pile of old books from Wisconsin!

Following a quick and successful scan of my own bookshelves, I found myself suddenly immersed in the then nearly 90-year old volume, carefully turning the pages as timidly as one could possibly turn the pages of a book while one was filled with longing to race unfettered by concerns over the decrepit state of said pages. A mysterious, all-knowing agent with missing ears and fingers who gets attacked constantly by his feral pet cat, a possible future (in the 1920s) where suicide is not only legal but endorsed through the construction of public gas chambers, and the aforementioned malignant text, which is only hinted at through the course and connected tissue of the opening quartet of stories – these wonders and more await the reader of The King In Yellow. Also awaiting those that enter this realm are stories later in the book which are more draggingly romantic than the darker tales which begin it, so its discovery is not thoroughly engaging. But at its best, it’s enough to make one wish, once one reads further into Chambers’ oeuvre, that he had stuck with his short fantastical career. That he was influenced by Poe, Bierce and Wilde, just as he further jolted Lovecraft, is readily apparent, and I was glad to move my one overlooked copy over to a shelf crammed with my favorite titles. Truthfully, The King In Yellow has remained by my bedside since I moved to California, though to reduce wear on the ancient text, I have replaced it with a more recently published collection for reading purposes.

A swift peek at the internet revealed to me a handful of copies of this same printing and vintage available for purchase at various out-of-print book sites, and the price range often fell into the $1000-1250 range for a very good copy. Despite my library, I was really not adept in the details of book collecting, so I couldn’t really say where my copy resided on the ever so very testy chart of condition. This question became the second part of my reason in taking the copy to the Antiques Roadshow on Saturday.

[To be continued on Sunday…]