orientales_. It is a great pity that Macaulay, for example, has not left
on record a few of the very remarkable incidents which came under his
observation during these pilgrimages. The late Mr. W. J. Thoms
contributed a few of his to the _Nineteenth Century_ thirteen years ago.
One of Mr. Thoms' most striking 'East End' book-hunting anecdotes
relates to a Defoe tract. When a collected edition of Defoe's works was
contemplated some forty years ago, it was determined that the various
pieces inserted in it should be reprinted from the editions of them
superintended by Defoe himself. 'There was one tract which the editor
had failed to find at the British Museum or any other public library,
and which he had sought in vain for in "The Row" or any bookseller's
within reach of ordinary West End mortals. Somebody suggested that he
should make a pilgrimage to Old Street, St. Luke's, and perhaps Brown
might have a copy. Old Brown, as he was familiarly called, had a great
knowledge of books and book-rarities, although perhaps he was more
widely known for the extensive stock of manuscript sermons which he kept
indexed according to texts, and which he was ready to lend or sell as
his customers desired. . . . The editor inquired of Brown whether he had
a copy of Defoe's tract. "No," said Brown; "I have not, and I don't know
where you are likely to find one. But if you do meet with one, you will
have to pay pretty handsomely for it." "I am prepared to pay a fair
price for it," said the would-be customer, and left the shop. Now, Old
Brown had a "sixpenny box" outside the door, and he had such a keen eye
to business that I believe, if there was a box in London which would
bear out Leigh Hunt's statement [that no one had ever found anything
worth having in the sixpenny box at a bookstall], it was that box in Old
Street. But as the customer left the shop his eye fell on the box, he
turned over the rubbish in it, and at last selected a volume. "I'll pay
you for this out of the box." "Thank you, sir," said Brown, taking the
proffered sixpence. "But, by-the-by, what is it?" "It is _a_ tract by
Defoe," was the answer, to Old Brown's chagrin. For it was the very work
of which the purchaser was in search.'
In the way of antiquity doubtless the New Cut--as what was once Lambeth
Marsh is now termed--comes next to the two East End localities above
mentioned as a bookstall locality. The place has certainly been a
book-emporium for at least half a century. Mr. G. A. Sala declares that
he has purchased for an old song many of his rarest books in this
congested and unsavoury locality where Robert Buchanan and his ill-fated
friend, David Gray, shared a bankrupt garret on their first coming up to
London from Scotland. The present writer has picked up some rare and
curious books in that locality during the past ten years, and others
have doubtless done the same. Not so very long ago a volume with the
autograph of Drayton was secured for one penny, certainly not an
extravagant price.
[Illustration: _A Book-barrow in Farringdon Road._]
For some years Farringdon Road has enjoyed the distinction of being the
best locality in London for bookstalling. Its stalls are far more
numerous, and the quality of the books here exposed for sale is of a
much higher class, than those which are to be met with in other places.
There are between thirty and forty bookstalls or barrows here, and the
place has what we may describe as a bibliopolic history, which goes back
for a period of twenty years. The first person to start in the
bookselling line was a coster of the name of Roberts, who died somewhat
suddenly either in December of 1894 or early in January of the present
year. Roberts appears to have been a fairly successful man at the trade,
and had a fairly good knowledge of cheap books. The _doyen_ of the
Farringdon Road bibliopoles is named Dabbs--a very intelligent man, who
started first in the hot-chestnut line. Mr. Dabbs has generally a fairly
good stock of books, which varies between one and two thousand volumes,
a selection of which are daily displayed on four or five barrows, and
varying from two a penny ('You must take two') up to higher-priced
volumes. Curiously enough, he finds that theological books pay the best,
and it is of this class that his stock chiefly consists. Just as
book-hunters have many 'finds' to gloat over, so perhaps booksellers
have to bewail the many rarities which they have let slip through their
fingers. It would be more than could be expected of human nature, as it
is at present constituted, to expect booksellers to make a clean or even
qualified confession in this respect. Our friend Dabbs, however, is not
of this hypersensitive type, and he relates, with a certain amount of
grim humour, that his greatest lost opportunity was the selling of a
book for 1s. 6d. which a few days afterwards was sold in Paris for £50.
He consoles himself with the reflection that at all events _he_ made a
fair profit out of this book. If we could all be as philosophical as
this intelligent book-barrow-keeper, doubtless the slings and arrows of
outrageous Fortune would impress fewer wrinkles on our brows, and help
us to think kindly of the friends who put us 'up' to good things in the
way of gold-mines and generously left us to pay the piper.
[Illustration: _A few Types in Farringdon Road._]
However picturesque may be the calling of the bookstall-keeper to the
person who experiences a fiendish delight in getting a 6d. book out of
him for 5-1/2d., the calling is on the whole a very hard one. Exposed
to all weathers, these men have a veritable struggle for existence.
Their actual profits rarely exceed 30s. or £2 weekly. They vary greatly,
of course, according to weather, and a wet Saturday makes a very
material difference to their takings. Many weeks throughout the year
these takings do not average more than 8s. or 10s. We have made
inquiries among most of the bookstall-keepers in the Metropolis, and the
above facts can be depended upon. When these men happen upon a rare
book, they nearly invariably sell it to one of the better-class
booksellers. By this means they make an immediate profit and effect a
ready sale. There is beyond this a numerous class of what may be
described as 'book-ghouls,' or men who make it a business to haunt the
cheap bookstalls and bag the better-class or more saleable books and
hawk them around to the shops, and so make a few shillings on which to
support a precarious existence, in which beer and tobacco are the sole
delights. We once met a man who did a roaring trade of this description,
chiefly with the British Museum. He took notes of every book that struck
him as being curious or out of the way, and those which he discovered to
be absent from the Museum he would at once purchase. He was great in the
matter of editions, such as Pope, Junius, Coleridge, and so forth. The
Museum is naturally lacking in hundreds of editions of English authors;
but as these editions, almost without exception, possess no literary
value, their presence (or absence) was not a matter of importance. For
some months the 'collector' referred to inundated the Museum with these
unimportant editions. Our friend discovered that the Museum authorities,
ignoring the prices which he placed on his wares, would only have them
at their own figures--which showed a curious similarity to those at
which the vendor had obtained them--and this, coupled with the fact that
they refused to purchase many of the items offered at any price, led him
to the conclusion that he was serving his country at too cheap a rate.
It is scarcely necessary to add that he is now following a vocation
which, if less agreeable, is certainly more profitable to himself.
Occasionally one of these professional bookstallers blossoms into a
shopkeeper in some court or alley off Holborn; but more generally they
are too far gone in drink and dilapidation to get out of the rut.
One of the most curious characters who ever owned a bookstall was Henry
Lemoine, the son of a French Huguenot. He was born in 1756, and for many
years kept a stall in Bishopsgate Churchyard. He wrote many books, and
did much hack-work for various publishers, chiefly in the way of
translations from the French. He gave up shopkeeping in 1795, and became
a pedestrian bookseller or colporteur of pamphlets. In 1807 he again set
up a small stand of books in Parliament Street, and died in April, 1812.
He might have achieved success, and become a respectable member of
society, but his great failing was an all-consuming thirst.
[Illustration: _Henry Lemoine, Author and Bookseller._]
Writing over forty years ago in 'London Labour and the London Poor,'
1851, Henry Mayhew remarked: 'There has been a change, and in some
respects a considerable change, in the character or class of books sold
at the street stalls, within the last forty or fifty years, as I have
ascertained from the most experienced men in the trade. Now sermons, or
rather the works of the old divines, are rarely seen at these stalls, or
if seen, rarely purchased. Black-letter editions are very unfrequent at
street bookstalls, and it is twenty times more difficult, I am assured,
for street-sellers to pick up anything really rare and curious, than it
was in the early part of the century. One reason assigned for this
change by an intelligent street-seller was, that black-letter or any
ancient works were almost all purchased by the second-hand booksellers,
who have shops and issue catalogues, as they have a prompt sale for them
whenever they pick them up at book-auctions or elsewhere.' As we have
already pointed out, the same rule which obtained forty years ago
applies with equal force to-day, and in the chief instances in which we
have met with books well known to be rare, on bookstalls, their
condition has been so bad as to render them valueless, except, perhaps,
for the purpose of helping to complete imperfect copies.
At one time the bookstall-keepers had fairly good opportunities of
making a haul of a few rare books--that was when they were called in to
clear out offices and old houses. As the world has grown wiser in
respect to books as well as other things, executors, legatees, and so
forth, have acquired unreasonable views as to the value of old books,
and everything in the shape of a volume is sent to the regular
book-auctioneers. When it is remembered that practically all the books
which now occur on the various bookstalls of the Metropolis are
purchased under the hammer at Hodgson's, the chances of obtaining
anything rare are reduced to a minimum. These books are the refuse of
the various bookshops, after, perhaps, having passed from one shop to
another for several years without finding a purchaser outside the trade.
At Hodgson's, of course, these books find their level, after repeated
appearances; they are here sold, not quite by the cartload, but
certainly in lots sufficiently large to fill a moderate sized
wheelbarrow. The tastes of the bookbuying public are so infinite that
there would seem to be a sale, at some time or another, for every
species of printed matter; but the habitual haunter of the bookstalls
meets with the same water-soaked dog-eared volumes month after month,
and year after year, so that he is forced to the conclusion that the
right purchaser has not yet come along. These volumes appeal to the
bookbuyer with a piteousness which is scarcely less than positively
human. In the words of George Peele, written over three centuries ago,
these books seem to say,
'Buy, read and judge,
The price do not grudge;
It will give thee more pleasure
Than twice as much treasure;'
but no one seems to take the hint. Samuel Foote, in 'The Author,' makes
Vamp say: 'Books are like women, Master Cape; to strike they must be
well dressed; fine feathers make fine birds: a good paper, an elegant
type, a handsome motto, and a catching title, has drove many a dull
treatise through three editions.' These adventitious aids may still
possess a potent influence in selling a new book even to-day, but they
have little effect on the sale of the books which gravitate towards the
book-barrow.
The bookstall-keeper, it is true, has no rent to pay, except for the
hire of his barrow, which amounts to one shilling per week each. Even
this small charge is a considerable item where a man hires two or three
barrows and does scarcely any trade. Then he has to pay someone to look
after his goods during his absence. Further than this, the barrow-man
has to pay cash down before he removes his purchase from the sale-room.
On the other hand he gives no credit. The bookseller who enjoys the
luxury of a shop, gets credit from the auctioneer, and gives credit to
his customers. He has to put as large a margin of profit as possible on
his books, and an average of sixpence each has to be added to the
original cost of every item catalogued. The bookstall-man is, naturally,
handicapped in many ways, and if he finds the sweepings of his more
aristocratic _confrères'_ shops a long time on his hands, he, at all
events, makes as large a profit with much fewer liabilities.
We have referred to Hodgson's as the centre from which nearly all the
bookstalls are supplied. Occasionally, however, the barrow-man buys at
Sotheby's, and frequently so at Puttick and Simpson's. Sometimes the
more adventurous spirits attend auctions in private houses in the
suburbs, and occasionally those held a few miles out of town. These
expeditions are more often than not 'arranged,' and usually resolve
themselves into 'knock-outs.' It is a by no means unknown contingency
for two or three men to purchase, against all comers, the entire lot of
books at figures which invariably put the auctioneer into an exceedingly
good humour; neither is it an unknown event for these men to decamp
without the books, and also without leaving their addresses or deposit!
Such tricks, however, are not the work of the tradesmen who have a
_locus standi_, but of the better class of book-jackals, who, failing to
get the books for next to nothing, outbid everyone else, and leave the
auctioneer to get out of the dilemma as he best can.
[Illustration: _The late Edmund Hodgson, Book-auctioneer._]
For many years the weekly cattle-market at Islington has been a happy
hunting-ground of the bookstall-keeper. Books are among the hundred and
one articles which are brought from every conceivable source, and many
very good things have doubtless been picked up here. But it is always
the early prowler who gets the rarities--the man who gets there at eight
or nine o'clock in the morning. There is very little but absolute
rubbish left for the post-prandial visitor. A few inveterate
book-hunters have journeyed thither at various times and in a spasmodic
manner, but the hope of anything worth having has usually turned out to
be a vain one: they have always been anticipated.
Between the more ambitious shop and the nondescript bookstall, there is
a class or species of bookseller who deserves a niche in this place. We
refer to men like Purcell, in Red Lion Passage, Red Lion Square,
Holborn, who are almost as much printsellers as booksellers. They make
one book by destroying many others. Grangerizing is the proper name of
this practice; but as the Rev. Mr. Granger has been productive of more
curses than a dozen John Bagfords--an evil genius of the same type--the
process is now termed extra-illustrating. However much one may denounce
the whole system, it is impossible, whatever a particular book-hunter's
idiosyncrasy may be, not to feel interested in some of the collections
which these enterprising and ruthless biblioclasts manage to get
together. Mr. Purcell is an adept at this game, of which, doubtless, Mr.
F. Harvey, of St. James's Street, is one of the most clever, as he is
certainly the most eminent of professors. Mr. Purcell's collection of
prints, engravings, press-cuttings, and so forth, cover an
extraordinarily wide field. In fifty cases out of a hundred, booksellers
who make grangerizing a speciality find it pays far better to break up
an illustrated book than to sell it intact. When they purchase a book,
it is obviously their own property, to preserve or destroy, as they find
most agreeable. Personally, we regard the system as in many ways a
pernicious one, but it is one upon which a vast amount of cant has been
wasted.
But bookshops and stalls are obviously not the only places at which
bargains in books are likely to be secured, as the following anecdote
would seem to prove: 'A writer and reader well versed in the works of
the minor English writers recently entered a newspaper-shop at the East
End and purchased a pennyworth of snuff. When he got home he found that
the titillating substance was wrapped in a leaf of Sir Thomas Elyot's
black-letter book, "The Castell of Helth." The next day the purchaser
went in hot haste to the shop and made a bid for the remainder of the
volume. "You are too late, sir," spoke the shopkeeper. "After you had
gone last night, a liter_airy_ gent as lives round the corner gave me
two bob for the book. There was only one leaf torn out, which you got.
The book was picked up at a stall for a penny by my son." The purchaser
of the pennyworth at once produced the leaf, with instructions for it to
be handed to his forestaller in the purchase of the volume, together
with his name and address; and next day he received a courteous note of
thanks from the "liter_airy_ gent" aforesaid.' Nothing is so uncertain
as one's luck in book-hunting, but, without entirely discrediting the
foregoing story, we can only say that it is an old friend with a new
face. We have heard the same thing before. Not so very long ago, a
certain bookseller thought he had at last got a prize; it was one of the
rarest Shakespeare quartos, and worth close on £100. He had purchased it
among a lot of other dirty pamphlets. He looked the matter up, and
everything seemed to point to the fact that his copy was genuine in
every respect--a most uncommon stroke of luck indeed. The precious
quarto was in due course sent to Puttick's, and the modest reserve of
£70 was placed upon it. The quarto was genuine in every respect, but it
was a _facsimile_!
It may be taken for granted that genuine Shakespeare quartos do not
occur on bookstalls, and even a rare Americana tract only occurs in the
wildest dreams of the book-hunter. Nevertheless, 'finds' of more or less
interest continue to be made by keen book-hunters. Dr. Garnett tells how
a tradesman at Oswestry had in his possession books to which he attached
no importance, but which, a lady informed him, must be very rare. They
were submitted to the authorities of the British Museum, who gave a
high price for them. One was Sir Anthony Sherley's 'Wits New Dyall,'
published in 1604, of which only one other copy is known to be in
existence. As a rule, offers of rare books come from booksellers, who do
not always say how they become possessed of them. Among the private
people who offer books to the Museum for sale are a large proportion who
think that a book must necessarily be rare because it is a hundred years
old or more. Before the great catalogue was made, finds were
occasionally made in the Museum itself, and even now a volume will
occasionally be found which has special interest and value on account of
its binding. In other cases a book will be found to be in a binding made
up of leaves of some rare work far more valuable than the book itself.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SOME BOOK-HUNTING LOCALITIES.
LITTLE BRITAIN AND MOORFIELDS.
THERE are few more attractive phases in the history of book-hunting in
London than that of localities. Up to nearly the end of the last
century, these localities were for the most part, and for close on 350
years, confined to within a narrow area. With the rapid expansion of
London north, east, south, and west, the 'trade' has not only expanded,
but its representatives have sprung up in every district, whilst many of
the older ones have forsaken the limits of the City, and pitched their
tents in Greater London. For centuries bookselling and publishing
flourished side by side in St. Paul's Churchyard, Fleet Street, and
their immediate neighbourhoods.
[Illustration: _St. Paul's Churchyard, 1606. From the Crace
Collection._]
Of all the old bookselling localities close to the heart of London, none
were more famous than Little Britain and Moorfields. Three years before
the Great Fire of London--in 1663--Sorbière, in his 'Journey to
England,' made the following observation: 'I am not to forget the vast
number of booksellers' shops I have observed in London: for besides
those who are set up here and there in the City, they have their
particular quarters, such as St. Paul's Churchyard and Little Britain,
where there is twice as many as in the Rue Saint Jacque in Paris, and
who have each of them two or three warehouses.' The bookselling zenith
of Little Britain was attained in the seventeenth century; it may almost
be said to have commenced with the reign of Charles I., and to have
begun a sort of retrogression with the Hanoverian succession. But there
were printers and booksellers here at the latter part of the sixteenth
century. From a newspaper published in this district in 1664, we learn
that no less than 464 pamphlets were published here during four years.
It was a sort of seventeenth-century combination of the Paternoster Row
and Fleet Street of the present day. It is the place where, according to
a widely circulated statement, first made in Richardson's 'Remarks on
Paradise Lost,' 1734, an Earl of Dorset accidentally discovered, when on
a book-hunt in 1667, a work hitherto unknown to him, entitled 'Paradise
Lost.' He is said to have bought a copy, and the bookseller begged him
to recommend it to his friends, as the copies lay on his hand like so
much wastepaper. The noble Earl showed his copy to Dryden, who is
reported to have exclaimed: 'This man cuts us all out, and the ancients
too.' Though this anecdote may be apocryphal, certain it is the poem is
in a way connected with the neighbourhood, inasmuch as Simmons' shop was
in Aldersgate Street. In addition to this fact, Richardson also tells us
that Milton lodged for some time in Little Britain with Millington, the
famous book-auctioneer, who had then quitted the rostrum and followed
the more peaceful vocation of a dealer in old books.
Roger North, in his 'Life of the Right Hon. Francis North,' has an
oft-quoted reference to Little Britain. From this interesting account we
learn that during the latter part of the seventeenth century it was a
plentiful and perpetual emporium of learned authors, and that men went
thither as to a market. The trade of the place was, in consequence, an
important one, the shops being large, and much resorted to by literary
personages, wits, men-about-town, and fashionable notabilities
generally. The booksellers then were men of intellect. But referring, by
way of contrast, to the place during the earlier half of the eighteenth
century, he laments that 'this emporium is vanished, and the trade
contracted into the hands of two or three persons, who, to make good
their monopoly, ransack, not only their neighbours of the trade that are
scattered about the town, but all over England, ay, and beyond sea, too,
and send abroad their circulators, and in this manner get into their
hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take
their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish
one side of the shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather
than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure
what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his
book-factor, and, when wanting anything, writes to his bookseller and
pays his bill. And it is wretched to consider what pickpocket work, with
the help of the press, these demi-booksellers make. They crack their
brains to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at
hard meat, to write and correct by the groat; and so puff up an octavo
to a sufficient thickness; and there is six shillings current for an
hour and half's reading, and perhaps never to be read or looked upon
after. One that would go higher, must take his fortune at blank walls,
and corners of streets, or repair to the sign of Bateman, King, and one
or two more, where are best choice, and better pennyworths. I might
touch other abuses, as bad paper, incorrect printing, and false
advertising; and all of which and worse are to be expected, if a careful
author is not at the heels of them.'
We get an interesting glimpse of a meeting of two book-lovers in this
locality from Izaak Walton. In his 'Life of Bishop Sanderson,' Walton
writes that about the time Sanderson was printing this excellent preface
('before his last twenty Sermons,' 1655), 'I met him accidentally in
London, in sad-coloured clothes, and, God knows, far from costly. The
place of our meeting was near to Little Britain, where he had been to
buy a book, which he then had in his hand.'