The Unpublished Letters of Adolphe F. Bandelier: Concerning
the Writing and Publication of The Delight Makers.
With an introduction by Paul Radin. Illustrations by-
Tom Lea. Facsimile.

El Paso: Carl Hertzog, 1942. Pp. xvi, 33. $2.50.

Anything by or about Adolphe F. Bandelier, the initial out-
standing scientist of the Southwest, is bound to command a
fairly wide and respectful audience, for Bandelier's monument
is firmly imbedded in archaeology and rises through the respec-
tive spheres of anthropology, history, and literature. Somehow
this small book of letters to his friend, "Tomasito" Janvier, puts
upon Bandelier's shaft a beacon which throws briefly here and
there a ray of light upon the complex and challenging figure
at work in his beloved Southwest.

Bandelier knew the language, heart, and soul of the sedentary
Indians of the Southwest. He knew them at home, at work, at
play, and in their mysteries which took them into the kivas
where the medicine men communed with the inner guiding
spirits of the earth. The sensitive, shy, prodigious Bandelier
came to know so well the Indian psychology--with its majestic
sweep of sorrow and solitude--that he became Indian in spirit.
Did he possibly also come to possess "great medicine?"

I ask the last question not to elicit an answer but to tell a
story--a story which has to do with "Adolphe's ghost," the
book, and Carl Hertzog the bookmaker and printer. For va-
rious reasons, I tell this story with a great deal of hesitation.
It has no place in an orthodox book review; but the book under
consideration is hardly traditional, so I join in a common hazard
of telling stories about people without their permission.

A kind fortune took me to La Ciudad El Paso del Norte for
the summer of 1941. Having once been a highly unsuccessful
printer and holding in a kind of awe any skilled artisan in the
craft, it was quite natural that I should soon seek out my friend
Carl Hertzog and thereafter be considerably "under feet" about
his shop for the rest of the summer. Hertzog himself, like
Bandelier, is not always in perfect harmony with the rest of
the world, for he is a Texas Gutenberg dreamer—torn between
crass commercial demands and bankruptcy in his art. In other
words, he finds himself frequently in a struggle between his
dreams and frijoles, where only his admirable sense of humor
provides the leavening.

Hertzog's first remark was, "I have something here that will
make your eyes pop," and he placed in my hands the Bandelier
letters which he had received a short time before from Charles
P. Everitt of New York. The letters told of the archaeologist's
experiences in the writing of his novel, The Delight Makers—
how the work was first composed in German and then trans-
lated into English, and of the writer's great ambition to present
the real flesh and blood Indian rather than a J. Fenimore Cooper
romanticized version. Further the letters tell of the way Eastern
publishers originally looked with cold and jaundiced eye upon
a piece of writing that has since become a Southwestern classic.
(There was need of a regional press in 1888, as now.) Some
of the letters were holographic; others had been done on the
typewriter. Hertzog had already read everything on Bandelier
in the El Paso libraries and was interested in publishing the
letters in book form although he was assured from the begin-
ning that the enterprise would have no hope of paying for itself.
Soon the query was put to me, "What do you think of Dr.
Radin's introduction that Everitt also sent along?" "Well," I
said, "it doesn't read like a panegyric anyway." Hertzog seemed
to think from what he had learned of Bandelier that he ought
to have a better one--or, at least, "one longer and with more
detail."

Within a few days Tom Lea was called in to do a sketch of
Bandelier for the frontispiece and a "Koshare" for the title
page. The drawings were excellent and were sent to the en-
gravers. But there the ghost of Bandelier put in his first ap-
pearance. The cuts came back wrong; the portrait of Bandelier
was only half-size and the Koshare was twice too large. Next
the text was sent to a commercial linotyper to be done in Caslon
Old Style. Casually the galley proofs looked good, but a critical
examination showed several bad letter combinations which called
for a resetting with special logotypes the lines involving "Fa,"
"Fr," "Ve," etc. Next a bold face stray comma was discovered
to have crept into the mats, and once discovered, about every
fifth or sixth line looked as if its comma had been hit with a
sledge hammer. Tom Lea said, "Bandelier's ghost is plaguing
the whole affair because Radin called him a 'befuddled romantic'
in the introduction." "But," Hertzog pleaded, "I didn't, and
I'm only trying to do him a perfect book."

All the corrections came back and, again, the proofs looked
good, but when the type was locked up in the press it would
not print. The thing looked incredible--nearly supernatural--
at first, but finally it was discovered that the knife had slipped
and trimmed the first slugs on the right end one-thousandth of
an inch too much and then the corrected slugs were trimmed
that amount too much on the left. The "Medicine Men" were
working. In ordinary printing the flaws might have been cor-
rected after a fashion. In fact one of the pressmen, in Hertzog's
absence, made such adjustments and printed about half the
pages; but Hertzog is a perfectionist in his labors of love, and
upon his return threw all the sheets away, discarded the type,
and started all over again.

One of the unwritten laws of a print shop is to follow copy
"if it goes out the window." Hertzog, however, was much dis-
turbed over the appearance of some of Bandelier's letters: some
sentences were started with lower case letters and "You" was
invariably capitalized. For the sake of appearances Hertzog
wanted to correct these things in the printed text, but long
print shop training made him loathe to change the copy with-
out confirmation from Dr. Radin. But he could get no answer
from Dr. Radin, and Tom Lea was certain that Bandelier's
ghost had laid Dr. Radin low. Sure enough after two months
came a letter from Everitt saying, "Radin has been confined
to his bed almost since the writing of the introduction," and
Tom was emphatic, "I knew there was a hoodoo on this job--
I knew it." Hertzog's reply was, "I'll stay with this thing until
I get Adolphe's ghost on my side. I'll work and be humble to
win him over; I'll make him proud of his book."

But still the ghost tried Hertzog's soul. The copy was sent to
San Francisco to be set in monotype Centaur, and when the
proofs came in it developed that Centaur did not have any small
caps. Hertzog would not compromise, and started over with
Garamond, but eventually switched to yet another Caslon face.
When the type finally came in, Hertzog went to work for many
long hours to eliminate the bad spacers. Special cast letters
were inserted by hand, and with jeweler-like precision shoulders
were ground off characters that were then reinserted.

Meanwhile it was decided to present in facsimile the first
holographic Bandelier letter. A special paper, Kenilworth,
dating back to 1888, the time of the original writing, was se-
cured. This was ruled in the original blue and printed in an
oxidized brown, for the original ink had oxidized. When fin-
ished, however, the paper looked too white for the aged appear-
ance of the writing. Then I remembered a story told me by
an archivist in Santa Fe some years ago about a lot of forged
New Mexico documents wherein the paper had been aged with
tobacco juice. I warned that it was all hearsay with me, but
the idea appealed to Hertzog. So we met at the shop early
Sunday morning, Hertzog bringing along a shallow pan. One
of my cigars was sacrificed to the solution and we began dip-
ping. The first few looked good and the bath was administered
to the lot. Every sheet had to be laid out separately so that
the entire floor of the shop had to be covered with clean paper.
In the cold light of Monday morning the blue ink had run and
the pages had streaked. The Indian pressman said tersely,
"Whole job jinxed--ought to have used Tinsley's." Thus all the
facsimiles had to be made over.

Then came troubles with the binding and the jacket. But finally
Hertzog won -- placated the ghost -- and the job was finished.
And an admirable job of bookmaking in Texas it is. In fact,
I would not dare to tell the story of the book's trials and tribu-
lations had it not already been commended by persons who
know best--like Mitchell Kennerly, Fannie Ratchford, J. Chris-
tian Bay, R. W. G. Vail, Jerry Bywaters, Marjorie Trumbull,
and Clarence S. Brigham -- all bookish people who know and
appreciate superior printing and good taste in bookmaking.

Only one hundred and forty-five copies were ever available
for sale, and the bulk of the edition is already sold. It somehow
seemed to me that the collectors were entitled to this collector's
story to go along with the book, and that the story ought to
be told this once.

The collectors have their story, but I still have to face Hertzog,
and I can see him trying to be grave saying, "Well, if you can't
keep professional secrets, you'd better turn in your shop pass."

The University of Texas.

H. Bailey Carroll.

How to cite:
"Unpublished Letters of Adolphe F. Bandelier", Volume 46, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v046/n2/review_DIVL2631.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 9:23:26 CST 2009]