MR. BEMERTON CONFERS UPON ME
THE FREEDOM OF HIS TREASURY
I took an early opportunity of visiting Mr. Bemerton and introducing
myself: not a difficult task with the Chinese treasure as a lever,
while the way had been, of course, further paved by Mrs. Duckie, who,
like most London matrons of her class, could pave the way to anything.
Mr. Bemerton is a kind-looking man of about sixty, a bachelor. He is
very short, clean-shaven, with silver-rimmed spectacles and white
hair. An alert and contented man. He has been in the second-hand
book business, he tells me, all his life, having begun as an errand
boy at Sotheby's. He set up for himself thirty years ago, and has
done well enough, never rising quite to a first folio nor descending
much to remainders, but maintaining a steady mean between these two
extremes. He has probably never read through a whole volume in his
life; but he knows something about most. He has a knack of dipping
which had he been born an author instead of a bookseller might have
made his fortune as a popular scholar and even now would qualify him
for a librarianship almost anywhere. Libraries, however, he does not
much esteem. People should own their books, he holds; but that, of
course, is a counsel of perfection, or would be were it not for the
multitude of reprints that are now to be had at the price of a cigar.
Mr. Bemerton's only sign of impatience or intolerance is displayed
when he is reminded by customers of the cheapness of the modern
reprint; but I must do him the justice to explain that it is not for
an instant the result of any commercial self-protection on his part,
for his soul is without clay, but the genuine distaste of the born
explorer for a well-mapped country. What can become of book-hunting,
he asks, if everything is reprinted in uniform binding for a shilling
or sixpence? He does not often make an epigram--his mind is too
candid--but he came near it when he said the other day that the test
of a good book was that it was not reprintable in any series. "Let
us pray," he said, "that the best things continue to drop through
this net."
How a man who can afford a few shillings can read in a modern
mechanical reprint an old book still accessible in its stout original
honest paper and clear print, with the good smell of years about it,
he fails to understand. "Do you know," he says, "that most of the
books published to-day--and all the cheap ones--will have perished in
less than a hundred years? The paper will fall to pieces."
I should say that not the least interesting part of his shop is the
case in which he keeps those books which are too good to be reprinted
for a shilling. What are they? Not for anything would I divulge
their titles; but we know, he and I. The time has come for
book-lovers to keep secrets.
Mr. Bemerton has had his triumphs; but he does not want them. He
wants to progress smoothly in the middle way. Yet he has discovered
two or three valuable MSS. which brought him some hundreds of pounds
from English collectors and would, had he been willing to sell them
to America, have produced ten times as much: and among his regular
customers was Mr. Gladstone, who, when he was at No. 10 Downing
Street during his last term of office as Premier, often looked in and
always found something. It was almost impossible for a book to carry
no association for that swooping, pouncing brain. He either knew it,
or knew of it, or had always wanted to know it.
It was Mr. Gladstone who made the suggestion to Mr. Bemerton that
booksellers should open at night. "The time for second-hand
book-shops," he said, "is after one's work, not during one's work. I
should like to stroll round this way after the House rose, even in
the small hours of the morning, and spend a quarter of an hour by
your shelves. So would most of the Members of both Houses. It would
pay you."
"If you will announce it, sir, in a speech, I will do so," said Mr.
Bemerton, and the great man laughed.
The last book that Mr. Gladstone bought was Hartley Coleridge's
_Northern Worthies_. "A good book," said he, "but it might have been
better. Hartley would have written better had he been his father's
grandson instead of son. He was too near."
Mr. Bemerton ventured to suggest that perhaps he was too near
Wordsworth also. "Oh no," said Mr. Gladstone. "He parodied him, and
once he stole a leg of mutton from his larder, for a joke. That
shows that Wordsworth could do him no harm."
Mr. Gladstone is Mr. Bemerton's trump card, but he tells me that
Carlyle came in once, but once only. He bought Evelyn's _Life of
Mrs. Godolphin_ in Pickering's edition--to give, he said, to a
foolish young woman; and he arranged with Mr. Bemerton to have it
bound with the editor's introduction omitted. Mr. Bemerton says that
after leaving the shop Carlyle returned to make certain that his
instructions were understood. "Be sure to cut out the pipe-lights!"
were his exact words. Rather hard on Samuel of Oxford.
Another customer was Mr. Locker-Lampson, who liked books to be
slender and pocketable, but whose taste was a little too fastidious
for Mr. Bemerton's shelves. Mr. Bemerton treasures an autograph copy
of _Patchwork_ which its author sent him.
Mr. Bemerton is assisted by his niece, Miss Ruth Wagstaff, and,
according to Mrs. Duckie, it is well that he is, for as he gets older
and less anxious the bookseller grows more soft-hearted and (Miss
Wagstaff's phrase) soft-headed. "Plenty of soft-heartedness and
soft-headedness about her, I don't think," says Mrs. Duckie in the
London sarcastic idiom. But this is not doing that young lady
justice. Her heart and head are both good, but she feels a
responsibility thrust upon her by reason of some of her uncle's
unworldly tendencies, and this lays a consequent over-emphasis on her
natural practical business aptitude.
I have always had a respect amounting almost to reverence for the
name of Ruth, although none of that more intimate feeling which would
lead me to wish it to belong to any of my own people; I have also
always felt that among names which exert any influence upon their
bearers, Ruth stood high. Ruths should be quiet, wise, sincere, and
if not positively beautiful, at least comely and pleasant to look
upon. Miss Wagstaff has shattered this poor little fabric of
sentiment. Sincerity and candour she certainly has in some
abundance, but she is not wise except with the destructive wisdom
that London imparts to her children, and she is neither beautiful nor
comely.
She sits at a little table surrounded by the best literature and
reads penny novelettes, but her eyes and ears are never off duty. If
a poor woman comes in to sell a book, Ruth is watchful to prevent Mr.
Bemerton from giving too much. If a poor scholar comes in to buy
one, she is equally alert to prevent Mr. Bemerton taking too little.
At intervals she walks to the door to cast a glance at certain
unprotected shelves or curtail the studies of the free readers.
These are her despair: "They think it's a Carnegie library," she says
with a toss. Some day I shall draw her attention to a little poem by
Mary Lamb on this subject; but not yet. Courage may come.
The other member of the staff is Mr. Joshua Glendinning, who sits in
a room in the basement for a week every month preparing Mr.
Bemerton's catalogue. Mr. Glendinning is a British Museum
Reading-Room hack who gets all kinds of odd jobs to keep him going,
from copying sermons (on Fridays and Saturdays) to collating quoted
passages in proofs and now and then correcting the Greek and Latin of
a more fortunate but less scholarly literary man. He once, I learn,
was not only a schoolmaster but had a flourishing school of his own;
but the devil of intemperance, whose wiles for the overthrow of
Christian reputations are permitted to conquer so easily, was too
much for him, and he gradually and steadily lost all. The gentlest,
simplest creature at heart, he now lives on a few pence a day in a
Rowton House, wishes no man ill, save perhaps himself, carries a
_Times_ dated somewhen in 1893 protruding negligently from his pocket
as if it were to-day's and he was a gentleman on his way to his
stockbroker's (the harmless melancholy deception!) and sits every
evening in the same corner of the same saloon bar tearfully imbibing
gin and water and laying plans for the new career which will begin on
the morrow.
"Then you don't want to sell me the Chinese book again?" said Mr.
Bemerton, after we had exchanged a few generalities.
"No," I said, "certainly not;" and from Miss Wagstaff's table I heard
what sounded like a sarcastic sniff deprecative of her uncle's
insanity in suggesting such a transaction.
"Mrs. Duckie," said Mr. Bemerton, "tells me that you sleep badly. If
there are any books here that you would like to keep by your bed, you
are welcome to them. The only thing is, we should like to have them
back in the morning." (So Naomi was among the prophetesses after
all!)
I accepted the offer cheerfully and promised that the daily
restoration should be my first thought.
"For night reading," said Mr. Bemerton, "it was Mr. Lecky's
theory--Mr. Lecky often came in--that books should be very nearly
dull. But it's not very easy to find exactly the right thing."
"What would you call a nearly dull book?" I asked.
He looked round for awhile. "This," he said at last, and he brought
me a volume of Nichols' _Literary Anecdotes_. "It's good and sound,
and now and then it's amusing, but it's often very small beer. There
isn't a better bed book--or wouldn't be if only it was a little
lighter to hold. The curious thing about it is that it is the one
case known to me of an original book the best of which is all in the
footnotes. You take a volume and try."
The world is very small; the mistake is, of course, ever to have
thought it large. While Mr. Bemerton was talking to another
customer, and I was at his shelves making my hands very grubby (as
only old books can) and my eyes very glad (as old books can almost
more surely than anything else), I noticed the address on a parcel
which Ern had just finished packing--Miss Gold, The Cedars, Esher.
"Is Miss Gold one of your customers?" I asked.
"Miss Gold," said Mr. Bemerton, "is my best customer. She buys
something from every catalogue, which is sent to her one post earlier
than any one else. Do you know her?"
Do I know her? Miss Gold and I were once very nearly...
How long ago that was, and how different my life might have been!
And now? I must certainly at once go to Esher to see her again.