‘Non omnisfert omnia Tellus “, which translates to: “not every piece of land yields every kind of fruit”. So begins the story of the voyages of John Baptista Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne, written in 1670 and published between 1678 and 1680. A pristine copy of this book can sell for as much as $12 000 (R88 000). The volume I held in my own two hands, at Collectors Treasury in Johannesburg, was marked (in pencil, on the front page) at a relatively reasonable R42 500.
You can read the text for free on Google Books — but it’s not quite the same thing, really.
Although there are those who would suggest otherwise —
In July online retailer Amazon announced that its e-book sales had grown more than 200% year on year — Kindle books now outsell hardcover books by almost 50%. Last week the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary announced that the multivolume reference’s third edition (due for publication only some time around 2025) may not have a print version at all and could be made available solely in digital format.
I’ve never subscribed to the belief that the internet killed magazines and newspapers — I think we did that all by ourselves, publishing syndicated rubbish in smaller and smaller increments, with too many ads and too much Paris Hilton — but there’s no doubt print is living in interesting times.
In a world where paperless offices are promoted as the ideal (which is a good thing), the concept of purely paperless books suggests a possible future where whole libraries exist only in people’s minds (not such a good thing), a parallel-universe version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Or, perhaps, a planet where paper books are like the adzes and axes of our Stone Age ancestors — simultaneously priceless and redundant.
It’s in this twilight zone that places such as Collectors Treasury exist. Perched on the edge of a shiny pocket of inner-city regeneration (it’s a few blocks from Arts on Main), the Treasury is a fraying temple to the greatest follies and achievements of man, a sanctuary for Luddites and the enlightened. There are as many as two million books stacked, shelved, piled across its eight floors (including in the elevator), ranging from R10 paperback novels to rare first editions such as Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, which sells for R100 000 in good condition, with a perfect dust jacket.
It’s the second-greatest novel ever written, owners Geoff and Jonathan Klass tell me as we walk around. The greatest, one of them continues, is Ulysses. At least, that’s what I think they said. I’ve never read Joyce and I am distracted by the smell of old books.
This, the Naked Scientists helpfully explain, can range from the “sweetly fragrant vanillin” emitted by paper “made from ground wood” to the oily camphorous scent deriving from a compound “used to make paper more impermeable to inks” and even mushroom odours produced by alcohols.
It’s a heady mix for a girl who learned how to read before she knew how to ride a bicycle.
There are vague concessions to order — a shelf devoted to books on Persian carpets, the South African War, cookery, early mining in Johannesburg, drama, more war, artists’ books and lithographs, children’s books. The rare Africana and antiquities are kept in glass-fronted shelves or with the owners.
But it’s entirely possible, preferable, even, to get lost. There’s evidence of this in occasional piles of books gathered by long-gone browsers and then abandoned as a lot: Moby Dick and Ronnie Kasrils make a literary Babel. “Call him Ishmael,” Jonathan Klass says.
Although there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of regular secondhand titles, the bulk of the books on sale at Collectors Treasury are “out-of-print collectibles” and rare and antiquarian stock (there are also more than half-a-million vinyl records and rooms full of nick-nacks).
In addition to beautifully illustrated travelogues and botanical guides there are books on early Johannesburg and the Rand — including an 1892 Johannesburg directory, which is now extremely valuable (in the region of R100 000) owing to its scarcity.
“I t ‘s of ten about how many were printed and how many were retained,” the owners say, explaining how even commonplace texts such as telephone directories and bus timetables can become collectors’ items in the right environment, particularly when the everyday nature of the publications meant only a handful of copies survived intact.
It is, of course, a shifting market (the big interest in Jo’burg titles right now is driven by a younger audience), and it still happens that one of the Klasses finds a collectible title in their own R50 section. The internet makes it a lot easier for book buyers and dealers to keep track of things and Collectors Treasury trades about 50 000 of its titles online.
The Treasury also boasts a room of imposing leather-bound, gilt-embossed volumes — heirloom Bibles that weigh more than a six-month- old baby, pressings of Milton and Shakespeare, Dickens and Hitler.
The store occasionally receives requests for what the owners refer to as “books by the yard”, decorators calling and asking for “three metres of green books, please”.
On the building’s upper floors are still more books, catalogued but often unpriced — the spoils of auctions and deceased estates. It’s here that I discover thin hardcovers of Afrikaans poetry — Opperman and Jonker and Louis Leipoldt — which accompany my other finds: an early edition Frank Herbert, a cheap-as chips James Joyce, a copy of Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs (this last, a nostalgic family favourite).
Left alone among the shelves, humming to myself because I am happiest when I am with books, I think that it is rather wonderful to exist in a world where Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series has no place. Yet.
Collectors Treasury is at
244 Commissioner Street,
Johannesburg. Tel: 011 334 6556.
With thanks to Gus Silber for the Latin translation