Page 128 - The Secret Museum

fallen off.

His cat Bob, who was immortalized in the letter opener, was named after Bob

Cratchit, Scrooge’s assistant in A Christmas Carol. It’s fitting then that Bob’s paw
shares a cabinet with the library’s prompt copy of the tale the writer used for years at
his wildly popular readings.

Several of these readings took place in America. He made two tours there: the
first, in 1842, turned a bit ugly when he criticized American publishers for pirating
his works, and when he travelled in the South, saw slavery at first hand for the first
time and wrote angry articles against it. When he came back in 1867, all was
forgiven. This time, he performed twice in New York, in the cavernous Steinway

piano display hall on East 14th Street, and at the largest church in Brooklyn. People
lined up in the snow for tickets – some even slept outside to be sure of a spot in the
crowd: the queue, by opening time, was a mile long. The lucky people inside heard
Dickens read from the book that is now in the library.

Reading it doesn’t give you the perfect idea of what his audiences heard each
night – no two performances were the same. Sometimes Dickens would make things
up on the spur of the moment, or slam the book shut with a flourish and perform from
memory. He knew his stories by heart and could act them perfectly.

So how did the letter opener and prompt copies end up in New York? Well, when
Dickens died, he bequeathed his estate to his sister-in-law, the lady who had given

him the macabre letter opener. She wrote letters of authenticity for everything.

She sold some things, and passed others on to Dickens’s son. The letter opener
and other Dickensian treasures were bought by a publisher in New York called E. P.
Dutton; they had a sale, and two brothers – physicians of Jewish Hungarian descent
called Albert and Henry Berg – turned up and bought the lot, to add to their glittering
collection of American and British literature.

In 1940, the surviving brother, Albert, gave everything to the New York Public
Library, and built an Austrian oak-panelled room for researchers. The Berg reading
room was the result.

The street that leads to the New York Public Library is lined with quotations. I
read them on my way to visit the library, then I walked up the steps to the entrance,
which are guarded by two lions, cats a lot bigger than Bob.

When you walk into the Berg reading room, you see, on the right-hand side, a
portrait of Henry Berg, beside the works of his favourite writer, Thackeray; and on
the left-hand side is Albert’s portrait and all the writings of Albert’s favourite author,
Charles Dickens. Only the researchers, most of whom come by appointment to read
items in the collection, see the prompt copies, while waiting for a book to be brought
for them from the vaults.

Albert Berg left a handsome sum to pay for future curators, and to make sure their
collection of the works of 104 authors continued to grow. The first curator, John