Roger had spent a quiet evening in the bookshop. Sitting
at his
desk under a fog of tobacco, he had honestly intended
to do some
writing on the twelfth chapter of his great work on bookselling.
This chapter was to be an (alas, entirely conjectural)
"Address Delivered by a Bookseller on Being Conferred
the Honorary
Degree of Doctor of Letters by a Leading University,"
and it presented
so many alluring possibilities that Roger's mind always
wandered
from the paper into entranced visions of his imagined
scene.
He loved to build up in fancy the flattering details of
that fine
ceremony when bookselling would at last be properly recognized
as
one of the learned professions. He could see the great
auditorium,
filled with cultivated people: men with Emersonian profiles,
ladies whispering behind their fluttering programmes.
He could see the academic beadle, proctor, dean (or whatever
he is,
Roger was a little doubtful) pronouncing the august words
of presentation--
A man who, in season and out of season, forgetting private
gain
for public weal, has laboured with Promethean and sacrificial
ardour
to instil the love of reasonable letters into countless
thousands;
to whom, and to whose colleagues, amid the perishable
caducity
of human affairs, is largely due the pullulation of literary
taste;
in honouring whom we seek to honour the noble and self-effacing
profession of which he is so representative a member----
Then he could see the modest bookseller, somewhat clammy
in his extremities and lost within his academic robe and hood, nervously
fidgeting his mortar-board, haled forward by ushers, and tottering rubescent
before the chancellor, provost, president (or whoever it might be) who
hands out the diploma. Then (in Roger's vision) he could
see the garlanded bibliopole turning to the expectant
audience,
giving his trailing gown a deft rearward kick as the
ladies do on
the stage, and uttering, without hesitation or embarrassment,
with due
interpolation of graceful pleasantry, that learned and
unlaboured
discourse on the delights of bookishness that he had
often dreamed of.
Then he could see the ensuing reception: the distinguished
savants
crowding round; the plates of macaroons, the cups of
untasted tea;
the ladies twittering, "Now there's something I want
to ask you--
why are there so many statues to generals, admirals,
parsons,
doctors, statesmen, scientists, artists, and authors,
but no statues
to booksellers?"
Contemplation of this glittering scene always lured Roger
into
fantastic dreams. Ever since he had travelled country
roads,
some years before, selling books from a van drawn by
a fat white horse,
he had nourished a secret hope of some day founding a
Parnassus
on Wheels Corporation which would own a fleet of these
vans and send
them out into the rural byways where bookstores are unknown.
He loved to imagine a great map of New York State, with
the daily
location of each travelling Parnassus marked by a coloured
pin.
He dreamed of himself, sitting in some vast central warehouse
of second-hand books, poring over his map like a military
chief
of staff and forwarding cases of literary ammunition
to various bases
where his vans would re-stock. His idea was that his
travelling
salesmen could be recruited largely from college professors,
parsons, and newspaper men, who were weary of their thankless
tasks,
and would welcome an opportunity to get out on the road.
One of his
hopes was that he might interest Mr. Chapman in this
superb scheme,
and he had a vision of the day when the shares of the
Parnassus on
Wheels Corporation would pay a handsome dividend and
be much sought
after by serious investors.
These thoughts turned his mind toward his brother-in-law
Andrew McGill,
the author of several engaging books on the joys of country
living,
who dwells at the Sabine Farm in the green elbow of a
Connecticut valley.
The original Parnassus, a quaint old blue wagon in which
Roger
had lived and journeyed and sold books over several thousand
miles
of country roads in the days before his marriage, was
now housed
in Andrew's barn. Peg, his fat white horse, had lodging
there also.
It occurred to Roger that he owed Andrew a letter, and
putting
aside his notes for the bookseller's collegiate oration,
he began
to write:
THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
163 Gissing Street, Brooklyn,
November 30, 1918.
MY DEAR ANDREW:
It is scandalous not to have thanked you sooner for the
annual cask
of cider, which has given us even more than the customary
pleasure.
This has been an autumn when I have been hard put to
it to keep
up with my own thoughts, and I've written no letters
at all.
Like everyone else I am thinking constantly of this new
peace that has
marvellously come upon us. I trust we may have statesmen
who will
be able to turn it to the benefit of humanity. I wish
there could
be an international peace conference of booksellers,
for (you will
smile at this) my own conviction is that the future happiness
of
the world depends in no small measure on them and on
the librarians.
I wonder what a German bookseller is like?
I've been reading The Education of Henry Adams and wish
he might
have lived long enough to give us his thoughts on the
War. I fear
it would have bowled him over. He thought that this is
not a world
"that sensitive and timid natures can regard without
a shudder."
What would he have said of the four-year shambles we have
watched
with sickened hearts?
You remember my favourite poem--old George Herbert's Church
Porch--
where he says--
By all means use sometimes to be alone;
Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear;
Dare to look in thy chest, for 'tis thine own,
And tumble up and down what thou find'st there--
Well, I've been tumbling my thoughts up and down a good
deal.
Melancholy, I suppose, is the curse of the thinking classes;
but I confess my soul wears a great uneasiness these
days!
The sudden and amazing turnover in human affairs, dramatic
beyond
anything in history, already seems to be taken as a matter
of course.
My great fear is that humanity will forget the atrocious
sufferings
of the war, which have never been told. I am hoping and
praying
that men like Philip Gibbs may tell us what they really
saw.
You will not agree with me on what I am about to say,
for I know you
as a stubborn Republican; but I thank fortune that Wilson
is going to
the Peace Conference. I've been mulling over one of my
favourite books--
it lies beside me as I write--Cromwell's Letters and
Speeches,
edited by Carlyle, with what Carlyle amusingly calls
"Elucidations."
(Carlyle is not very good at "elucidating" anything!)
I have heard
somewhere or other that this is one of Wilson's favourite
books,
and indeed, there is much of the Cromwell in him. With
what a grim,
covenanting zeal he took up the sword when at last it
was forced
into his hand! And I have been thinking that what he
will say
to the Peace Conference will smack strongly of what old
Oliver used
to say to Parliament in 1657 and 1658--"If we will have
Peace without
a worm in it, lay we foundations of Justice and Righteousness."
What makes Wilson so irritating to the unthoughtful is
that he operates
exclusively upon reason, not upon passion. He contradicts
Kipling's
famous lines, which apply to most men--
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
In this instance, I think, Reason is going to win. I feel
the whole
current of the world setting in that direction.
It's quaint to think of old Woodrow, a kind of Cromwell-Wordsworth,
going over to do his bit among the diplomatic shell-craters.
What
I'm waiting for is the day when he'll get back into private
life
and write a book about it. There's a job, if you like,
for a man
who might reasonably be supposed to be pretty tired in
body and soul!
When that book comes out I'll spend the rest of my life
in selling it.
I ask nothing better! Speaking of Wordsworth, I've often
wondered whether Woodrow hasn't got some poems concealed somewhere among
his papers!
I've always imagined that he may have written poems on
the sly.
And by the way, you needn't make fun of me for being
so devoted
to George Herbert. Do you realize that two of the most
familiar
quotations in our language come from his pen, viz.:
Wouldst thou both eat thy cake, and have it?
and
Dare to be true: nothing can need a ly;
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.
Forgive this tedious sermon! My mind has been so tumbled
up and down this autumn that I am in a queer state of mingled melancholy
and exaltation.
You know how much I live in and for books. Well, I have
a curious
feeling, a kind of premonition that there are great books
coming
out of this welter of human hopes and anguishes, perhaps
A book
in which the tempest-shaken soul of the race will speak
out as it
never has before. The Bible, you know, is rather a disappointment:
it has never done for humanity what it should have done.
I wonder why?
Walt Whitman is going to do a great deal, but he is not
quite
what I mean. There is something coming--I don't know
just what!
I thank God I am a bookseller, trafficking in the dreams
and beauties
and curiosities of humanity rather than some mere huckster
of merchandise.
But how helpless we all are when we try to tell what goes
on within us!
I found this in one of Lafcadio Hearn's letters the other
day--I marked
the passage for you--
Baudelaire has a touching poem about an albatross, which
you
would like--describing the poet's soul superb in its
own free azure--
but helpless, insulted, ugly, clumsy when striving to
walk on common earth -- or rather, on a deck, where sailors torment it
with tobacco pipes, etc.
You can imagine what evenings I have here among my shelves,
now the long dark nights are come! Of course until ten
o'clock,
when I shut up shop, I am constantly interrupted--as
I have been
during this letter, once to sell a copy of Helen's Babies
and once
to sell The Ballad of Reading Gaol, so you can see how
varied
are my clients' tastes! But later on, after we have had
our
evening cocoa and Helen has gone to bed, I prowl about
the place,
dipping into this and that, fuddling myself with speculation.
How clear and bright the stream of the mind flows in
those late hours,
after all the sediment and floating trash of the day
has drained off!
Sometimes I seem to coast the very shore of Beauty or
Truth, and hear
the surf breaking on those shining sands. Then some offshore
wind
of weariness or prejudice bears me away again. Have you
ever come
across Andreyev's Confessions of a Little Man During
Great Days?
One of the honest books of the War. The Little Man ends
his
confession thus--
My anger has left me, my sadness returned, and once more
the tears flow.
Whom can I curse, whom can I judge, when we are all alike
unfortunate?
Suffering is universal; hands are outstretched to each
other,
and when they touch . . . the great solution will come.
My heart
is aglow, and I stretch out my hand and cry, "Come, let
us join hands!
I love you, I love you!"
And of course, as soon as one puts one's self in that
frame of mind
someone comes along and picks your pocket. . . . I suppose
we must
teach ourselves to be too proud to mind having our pockets
picked!
Did it ever occur to you that the world is really governed
by BOOKS?
The course of this country in the War, for instance,
has been largely
determined by the books Wilson has read since he first
began to think!
If we could have a list of the principal books he has
read since the
War began, how interesting it would be.
Here's something I'm just copying out to put up on my
bulletin board
for my customers to ponder. It was written by Charles
Sorley,
a young Englishman who was killed in France in 1915.
He was only
twenty years old--
TO GERMANY
You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, And
no man claimed
the conquest of your land. But gropers both through fields
of thought
confined We stumble and we do not understand. You only
saw your
future bigly planned, And we, the tapering paths of our
own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand, And hiss and
hate.
And the blind fight the blind. When it is peace, then
we may view
again With new-won eyes each other's truer form And wonder.
Grown more loving-kind and warm We'll grasp firm hands
and laugh at
the old pain, When it is peace. But until peace, the
storm The darkness
and the thunder and the rain.
Isn't that noble? You see what I am dumbly groping for--some
way
of thinking about the War that will make it seem (to
future ages)
a purification for humanity rather than a mere blackness
of stinking
cinders and tortured flesh and men shot to ribbons in
marshes
of blood and sewage. Out of such unspeakable desolation
men
MUST rise to some new conception of national neighbourhood.
I hear so much apprehension that Germany won't be punished
sufficiently for her crime. But how can any punishment
be devised
or imposed for such a huge panorama of sorrow? I think
she has
already punished herself horribly, and will continue
to do so.
My prayer is that what we have gone through will startle
the world
into some new realization of the sanctity of life--all
life,
animal as well as human. Don't you find that a visit
to a zoo can
humble and astound you with all that amazing and grotesque
variety of
living energy?
What is it that we find in every form of life? Desire
of some sort--
some unexplained motive power that impels even the smallest
insect
on its queer travels. You must have watched some infinitesimal
red
spider on a fence rail, bustling along--why and whither?
Who knows?
And when you come to man, what a chaos of hungers and
impulses keep
thrusting him through his cycle of quaint tasks! And
in every human
heart you find some sorrow, some frustration, some lurking
pang.
I often think of Lafcadio Hearn's story of his Japanese
cook.
Hearn was talking of the Japanese habit of not showing
their emotions
on their faces. His cook was a smiling, healthy, agreeable-looking
young
fellow whose face was always cheerful. Then one day,
by chance,
Hearn happened to look through a hole in the wall and
saw his
cook alone. His face was not the same face. It was thin
and drawn
and showed strange lines worn by old hardships or sufferings.
Hearn thought to himself, "He will look just like that
when he is dead."
He went into the kitchen to see him, and instantly the
cook
was all changed, young and happy again. Never again did
Hearn
see that face of trouble; but he knew the man wore it
when he
was alone.
Don't you think there is a kind of parable there for the
race as a whole?
Have you ever met a man without wondering what shining
sorrows he hides from the world, what contrast between vision and accomplishment
torments him? Behind every smiling mask is there not
some cryptic grimace of pain? Henry Adams puts it tersely. He says the
human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable
void.
It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep.
Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment,
of disease,
of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions;
it doubts
its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and
averages.
After sixty years or so of growing astonishment the mind
wakes to find
itself looking blankly into the void of death. And, as
Adams says,
that it should profess itself pleased by this performance
is all
that the highest rules of good breeding can ask. That
the mind
should actually be satisfied would prove that it exists
only
as idiocy!
I hope that you will write to tell me along what curves
your mind
is moving. For my own part I feel that we are on the
verge
of amazing things. Long ago I fell back on books as the
only
permanent consolers. They are the one stainless and unimpeachable
achievement of the human race. It saddens me to think
that I shall
have to die with thousands of books unread that would
have given
me noble and unblemished happiness. I will tell you a
secret.
I have never read King Lear, and have purposely refrained
from doing so.
If I were ever very ill I would only need to say to myself
"You
can't die yet, you haven't read Lear." That would bring
me round,
I know it would.
You see, books are the answer to all our perplexities!
Henry Adams
grinds his teeth at his inability to understand the universe.
The best he can do is to suggest a "law of acceleration,"
which seems
to mean that Nature is hustling man along at an ever-increasing
rate
so that he will either solve all her problems or else
die of fever
in the effort. But Adams' candid portrait of a mind grappling
helplessly with its riddles is so triumphantly delightful
that one
forgets the futility of the struggle in the accuracy
of the picture.
Man is unconquerable because he can make even his helplessness
so entertaining. His motto seems to be "Even though He
slay me,
yet will I make fun of Him!"
Yes, books are man's supreme triumph, for they gather
up and transmit all
other triumphs. As Walter de la Mare writes, "How uncomprehendingly
must an angel from heaven smile on a poor human sitting engrossed in a
romance: angled upon his hams, motionless in his chair, spectacles on nose,
his two feet as close together as the flukes of a merman's tail,
only his strange eyes stirring in his time-worn face."
Well, I've been scribbling away all this time and haven't
given
you any news whatever. Helen came back the other day
from a visit
to Boston where she enjoyed herself greatly. Tonight
she has gone
out to the movies with a young protegee of ours, Miss
Titania Chapman,
an engaging damsel whom we have taken in as an apprentice
bookseller.
It's a quaint idea, done at the request of her father,
Mr. Chapman, the proprietor of Chapman's Daintybits which
you
see advertised everywhere. He is a great booklover, and
is very
eager to have the zeal transmitted to his daughter. So
you can
imagine my glee to have a neophyte of my own to preach
books at!
Also it will enable me to get away from the shop a little
more.
I had a telephone call from Philadelphia this afternoon
asking
me to go over there on Monday evening to make an estimate
of the value of a private collection that is to be sold.
I was rather flattered because I can't imagine how they
got hold of
my name.
Forgive this long, incoherent scrawl. How did you like
Erewhon?
It's pretty near closing time and I must say grace over
the
day's accounts.
Yours ever,
ROGER MIFFLIN.
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