A Horrible Bookseller

People often complain that booksellers know too little about the goods they sell. If only, the argument is, books were sold by men of taste, familiar with their contents, the public would buy more good literature: as things are, the blind bookseller leads the blind customer. There is something in this. An educated bookseller can actually educate other people. Many intelligent young persons reach the age of twenty-one without having met a single person with the habit of good reading, and do not “get on to” literature because it has never been suggested to them that they will like it. Booksellers may act as teachers. There are booksellers, though not many, who make a practice of “nursing” promising young customers, gradually cultivating their taste until they become confirmed book-lovers and book-buyers. One such complained to me not long ago that he had had scores of likely colts taken away from him by Lord Kitchener, and did not know how many of them would come back. That is an ideal sort of man for the trade in modern literature. One might say, in fact, that in a perfect world (from the book-buyer’s point of view) the dealers in new books would know everything about books, and the dealers in old books would know nothing whatever about them. The point of this last subsection is obvious, but the other day I had an experience that greatly fortified my view. I had often met the second-hand bookseller whose learning prevented one from buying anything cheap from him; I have now encountered one whose interest in his subject prevented one from buying anything at all.

He was not so much a really learned man as a man with what is called “an inexhaustible fund of information.” It is quite possible that if he had had a real rarity in his shop he would have known nothing about it. But about the promiscuity of his reading there was no doubt. When I entered the shop he was seated at a table absorbing something that looked as if it might be the Travels of Livingstone or Speke. His spectacles were on his forehead, his elbows on the table, his hands in his hair; and his beard almost touched his book. “Do you mind if I go through?” I said. “Sairtainly,” he said, betraying his origin. “And what may you be interested in?” “Oh ... books,” I replied vaguely. “That is a verra conseederable category,” he observed. Was it poetry I liked? he went on. I murmured “Yes,” and he led me to the place where he kept it. But before I had got my fingers on a book he made it evident that it was he and not I that was going to have the “look round.” Here, for example, was a volume of Kirke White. Had I ever read him? How wonderful was that hymn (quoted at length) of his! What a career! He was a butcher’s son and a lawyer’s clerk. He had a gift for mathematics, and they gave him a sizarship at Cambridge. He would have been one of the greatest figures in English literature had he lived. Was I interested in Italian books? Well, then, perhaps I would like a good copy of (!!!) I Promessi Sposi. It was extraordinary the number of copies of that book which must have been printed. But there was no supply without a demand.

I tried in vain to check the torrent with some sort of remark which, though polite, might, nevertheless, have an air of finality. It was no good. My fingers never got beyond touching the back of a book before he had taken down another, pulled me round, and fixed me with a glittering eye for which the Ancient Mariner himself would have been tempted to offer a large sum. Godwin, now. Did I like Caleb Williams? Yes, of course! But had I read his History of England? It was by way of being a reply to Clarendon. Clarendon was a great writer. But he was not impartial. And the worst of it was that he seemed to be impartial when he was most unfair. When he was sacrificing everything for his King he little thought how his loyalty would be rewarded. He was too moral for Charles II; but, what was worse, he kept the purse-strings too tight. He would not give him money for one of his mistresses. Was it Barbara Palmer? No, it was not Barbara Palmer, and it was not Nelly Gwyn. At any rate, it was one of them. And when, in the end, the grant was made to her, she died before she got the money!

This appeared to amuse the old man. When he had laughed himself out, it was to resume with some work, dated 1784, which contained a recipe for making a Prime Minister: the chief ingredients being hypocrisy, mendacity, corruption, and cant. This opened up a large field of speculation. Who was Premier in 1784? Why, of course, it was young Billy Pitt! (“Yes,” I said.) No, it was Rockingham. (“Yes,” I said.) No, it wasn’t; it was Bute. So it proceeded. I spent, in all, two hours in that shop; in the course of which time I had stolen glances at about six worthless books. For all I know it was as full of gems of purest ray serene as are the dark unfathomed caves of ocean. I left without making a single purchase, and the proprietor seemed quite hurt at this unfriendly response to his attentions. How that old man earns his living I don’t know. I think he must have private means. But in future I shall have a warmer feeling than ever for the sort of red-nosed second-hand bookseller, now, unfortunately, not very common, who knows only the outsides of books, and who sits smoking on a heap of rubbish in the corner of his shop with the air of a tramp resting on a roadside pile of stones.