(_For the Mirror_.)
Country society has but little relief; and in proportion to intellectual
refinement, this monotony appears to increase. We have always been
favourable to Book Clubs in country towns, and about ten years since,
established one in the anti-social town of ----. The plan worked well; its
economy was admired, and extensively adopted all over England, but we
heard little of its contributing to the social enjoyments of the people.
Twenty families reading the same books, and these passed from house to
house, among the respectability of the town, might have brought about
a kind of consanguinity of opinion, and led to frequent interchange of
civilities, meetings of the members at each others' houses, or at least
a sort of how-d'ye-do acquaintance. The case was otherwise. The attorney
and the doctor joined our society that their families of ten or twelve
sons and daughters might keep under the sixpences and shillings of the
circulating library; but they soon became jealous of _new books_, although
they often returned them uncut and unread; and so far from knitting the
bonds of acquaintance, we at last thought our plan served to estrange the
members, by affording the little aristocracy frequent opportunities for
venting their splenetic pride; the books were like _disjunctive
conjunctions_, and when we left the place, the "society" did not promise
to live another year.
We could entertain ourselves, at least, with sketches of a few of the
members of this disjointed body; but we must be content with one, and that
shall be the _bookseller_ of the town.
Imagine a man of middle height, rather inclined to obesity, and just
turned of fifty-eight. He had a broad, low forehead, sunken eyes, an
aquiline nose, a heavy, hanging lip, and a chin which buried its
projections in ample and unclassical folds of neckerchief. He was bald,
except a tuft on the _occiput_, or hinder part of his head, and on dress
occasions he wore powder. He was a widower, his wife having been dead
about ten years, leaving him two daughters, the amiability of whose
dispositions was a painful contrast to the uneven temper of their father.
He kept a good table, and had the best cellar of grape wine in the town,
but entertained little company. His guests were usually the valets or
butlers of the gentry in the neighbourhood; but the housekeepers were
never invited by his daughters, a point of propriety in male and female
acquaintanceship which amused us not a little. His business was of a most
multifarious description, and besides the trades of bookseller, stationer,
and druggist, he had a printing-office, and was, moreover, a self-taught
printer, He was post-master and stamp sub-distributor, receiver of bail,
and agent for insurances--little official appointments which would have
made him mayor in a corporate town. Of late years, he seldom meddled with
these matters of business; but tired of their common track, he struck out
a course of life, which was neither public nor private, but made him a
sort of oracle in the town, whose opinions were freely printed and
gratuitously circulated, whilst the author was seldom seen except at
vestry-meetings. In this way he acted as secretary to a benevolent society
established by the gentry, and such was his enthusiasm that he gave his
services and £200. worth of printing during the first year; and the
Committee in return presented him with a handsome piece of plate with a
complimentary inscription, which he had the modesty to keep locked up, and
never to display even to his visiters. This proved him to be a benevolent
man, and he would have been ten times more useful had not his charitable
disposition been over tinged with oddity and caprice. His contact with
the poor of the parish soon made him overseer, although his religious
observances would not qualify him for churchwarden; for he only went
to church at funerals, to which he was frequently invited, his staid
appearance, and a certain air of gentility of which he was master, being
in such cases no mean recommendation. Overseer and select vestryman, he
printed the parish accounts, for the most part gratuitously, although the
poor and even the better portion of the towns-people never gave him full
credit for this generosity, conceiving that he was repaid by some secret
services or funds. The oddity of his pursuits was only exceeded by their
variety. In politics he was a disciple of Cobbett, and year after year,
foretold a revolution, an alarm which he communicated to every one of his
household. He took extreme interest in all new mechanical projects, but
seldom indulged in the practical part of them. In wine-making he was once
a very experimentalist, and studied every line of Macculloch and unripe
fruit; next, he turned over every inch of his garden, analyzed the soil
_à la_ Davy, and _salted_ all his growing crops. His cogitative habits led
him to take long walks in the country, and he soon flew from horticultural
chemistry to real farming; and about the same time took to road making and
macadamization, and became a surveyor of the highways. But the trustees
wanting to macadamize the miserably pitched street of the town, he
bethought him of dust in summer and mud in winter, and drew up a long
memorial to the lords of the soil, remonstrating with them on their
impolitic conduct; but all in vain. It is curious, however, to reflect
that what the people of a country town about ten years ago thought a curse
to their roads should now be adopted in many of the principal London
Streets. The last we heard of our bookseller's hobbies, was that he had
bought the lease of a house for the sake of the large garden attached to
it, and here, like Evelyn in his _Elysium Britannicum_, he passes his days
in the primitive occupation of gardening.
Our bookseller is a self-educated man, and in some pamphlets on the
charitable institution to which we have alluded, are many of the errors
of style peculiar to self-educated writers. Among his acquaintance we
remember an attorney who practised in London, but had a small house in
the town. He had been editor and proprietor of four or five morning and
evening newspapers, and furnished our bookseller with all the news off
'Change and about town. This friend and the journals were his oracles, and
their influence he digested in morsels of political economy, so introduced
into his pamphlets as not to offend the landed gentry of the neighbourhood.
To them, it should be mentioned, he was a most useful personage, and his
aid and auspices, were almost necessary to the success of any project for
the interest of the town. The trades-people looked up to him; they would
agree if Mr. ---- did, or they would wait his opinion.
We have heard that he has been a gallant in his time; and more than once
he has told little stories of dances and harvest homes, and merry meetings
at the wealthy farmers' in the neighbourhood, of the moonlight walk home,
and of his companions counting their won guineas on their return from an
evening party--all of which throw into shade the social amusements of our
artificial times. We have said that he kept a good table; for presents of
game poured in from the gentlemen's bailiffs in the neighbourhood, fish
from town to be repaid by summer visits, and if the fishmonger of the
place was overstocked, the first person he sent to was our bookseller.
Again, he would take a post-chaise, or the White Hart barouche, for a
party of pleasure, when his neighbours would have been happy with a gig.
He did not join, or allow his daughters to mix with them at the tradesman's
ball, but they staid moping at home, because there was none between the
gentry and trade. Yet the professional and little-fortune people
cried ---- trade, and thus our bookseller belonged to neither class. The
people of the place know not whether he is rich; he has been "making money"
all his life-time say they, but he has "lived away." It is, however, to be
regretted that they cannot settle the point, since they determine to a
pound the income of every gentleman and lady in the neighbourhood, and,
doff their hats according to the total.
To sum up his character, he is just and sometimes generous; hospitable but
not unostentatious; dictatorial and circumlocutory to excess in his
conversation, and of an inquisitive turn of mind, and considering his
resources, he is well informed and even clever in matters of the world; in
short, he is a perfect pattern of the gentleman tradesmen of the present
day.