Natalie Bauman

She bulldozed through everything. How could Natalie Bauman die? She could do anything. Even cheat death, I would have believed.

I understood it logically, of course, the news of Natalie’s death. But my body rejected it. Others of the Bauman diaspora texted me; I couldn't bring myself to answer. We had been estranged for years, Natalie and I. But that doesn't change the feeling of loss. 

It was thanks to David and Natalie Bauman that I was introduced to this career that, in my more romantic moments, I might describe as my calling. David was fulfilling his longstanding vision to open a rare book gallery in Las Vegas when I was hired in 2007 to be among the cohort that opened it the following year. In those early days I worked closely with David, not Natalie. I interacted with her more frequently after I became manager of the gallery, but it wasn't until they relocated me to work alongside her in Philadelphia that I truly developed a relationship with her. 

Among the first traits most people describe when talking about Natalie is her memory. Before I even knew her, David told extravagant tales of her feats of memory, his face relaxed into the pleasure that comes with pride. He admired her, and he loved the feeling of admiring her. It was an honor to witness that. And the tales: they were true, or as true as tales can be. Natalie never forgot something you said to her. If she had handled a book before, she could tell you its bibliographic points forever after. She would often add details of the particular copies she had handled decades before: this one had a marginal repair to the last leaf, what a shame; that one came from the great library of X, and went to the collection of Y. She matched that memory with an equally keen hunger for knowledge. She was one of the great bookmen of her generation. 

She was relentless. During the period when I worked beside her in Philadelphia, we spent long hours closed in her office, arguing. She and I had much in common. We were both stubborn. We both had an endless well of stamina for arguing when we felt it called for. We also differed, philosophically, on a number of major matters, primarily management. It was our similarities that made these differences appalling to both of us. How can this person so similar to me be so opposed to me in this?

Natalie worked harder than just about anyone around her. But she was also capable of play. She didn't just know books as the material of our trade; she read omnivorously and passionately. I remember us learning this about each other, being struck by this during our first dinner together. We talked about Asimov's The Gods Themselves. She would bring up that conversation to me often, this touchstone for our similarity. Our own little mythology. 

She valued warm company, good food, new countries, old friends. She loved wit, and to be challenged and surprised. We didn't always have the same taste, but she had a taste that was particularly her own, and I loved her for that. She was someone who knew how to enjoy herself. She figured out what many workaholics don't: how to make space for joy. 

I remember how she moved through space. During my time in Philadelphia, she was functionally blind, and this added a touch of eccentricity to her already sharp and charismatic manner. She could be hawklike, drilling in with vicious precision. It was a beautiful thing to behold — if you can allow the grace to appreciate a predator. But she also remained flexible enough that she was always ready to laugh. She employed a languid charm that was, I think, learned, but eventually became instinctive. All who knew her have heard some imperious pronouncement directed at them with her characteristic use of that pet name, "dear": "No, don't do it like that, dear." 

She would not want me talking like this: about her eye impairment, her weaknesses. She did not want pity. But she also didn't want congratulations for the determination she showed in continuing to work at the highest levels of our profession largely without the ability to see the books. She just wanted to work, and to be the best at that work. She hated showing vulnerabilities. She covered them as best she could with her strengths. And her strengths were formidable.

The worst days I witnessed were when she came back after David's stroke. We, her highly-trained and experienced employees, had been running the company on our own during the months after. But Bauman Rare Books was hers, no matter the competency of her employees. So she would be Atlas, with the world on her shoulders. I remember understanding this in theory, while also wishing she could allow herself to trust us, the ones she had taught to do the work. I still believe she should have. But as a business owner now myself, I also understand the emotional truth of the weight she felt. She was responsible. She would hold it together. She would hold everything together. 

I saw its toll. She tried to hide it with bravado. But one of the things we all knew about her, and what she didn't know herself, was that bravado was her tell. 

I learned so much from her. One of the best policies Bauman maintained as a company was the rigor with which they trained their staff. Sometimes I tell stories of our training just to enjoy the incredulity it evokes. Quizzes on the various 19th-century editions of Leaves of Grass, on the bibliographic points of any book in any showcase on the gallery floor, on summarizing the economic philosophies of David Ricardo vs. Thomas Malthus in only a few sentences. That was company-wide policy. But what I learned from Natalie was deeper. It was a way of being. I have been walking around my own shop these past few days feeling strangely possessed, as if I can feel her footsteps within my own. 

After I received the call informing me of her death, I stopped for some minutes and cried. Then I got back to work; we are on deadline for a print catalogue. She would have approved of this. Type Punch Matrix, the beloved company I built with my partner, would not exist without her. This is not the legacy she wanted from me. But it is, I believe, a legacy that does her far more credit. On this we disagreed. Still, I am grateful. And I will never forget.

Natalie was a hard woman, and a brilliant one. She deserves a complicated narrative. She deserves a recognition of her talents, her accomplishments, and her uniqueness, even while the facts remain: I left her company, and when she died, we hadn't spoken in years. I was only a small part of her life. She was a formative part of mine. 

I have been thinking about one of the last things Natalie said to me. It was on a call, the final call after I decided I couldn't maintain our fraught relationship anymore. She knew, perhaps, that I wouldn't continue to call, and she knew that she wouldn't call me anymore either. She said, "Don't be so hard on yourself. You have a tendency to do that." She said it the way you talk about others when you're really talking about yourself. She could be a difficult person, especially to work for, in part because she expected so much. If someone failed to meet the standard, she did not hide her impatience. She could write off someone once and keep that grudge for years. But she never expected more of others than she did of herself. She drove herself as if compelled by some unseen force, some core of fusion within her, like a caged star. 

I hope she wasn't so hard on herself in those last years of her illness. But I am sure, just as she was so sure of me, that she was.