Books: The Haunted Bookshop
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Christopher Morley >> The Haunted Bookshop
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'The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores----'
Then a new conception of the matter struck me. It is intolerable
for a human being to go on doing any task as a penance, under duress.
No matter what the work is, one must spiritualize it in some way,
shatter the old idea of it into bits and rebuild it nearer to the
heart's desire. How was I to do this with dish-washing?
"I broke a good many plates while I was pondering over the matter.
Then it occurred to me that here was just the relaxation I needed.
I had been worrying over the mental strain of being surrounded all day
long by vociferous books, crying out at me their conflicting views
as to the glories and agonies of life. Why not make dish-washing my balm
and poultice?
"When one views a stubborn fact from a new angle, it is amazing
how all its contours and edges change shape! Immediately my dishpan
began to glow with a kind of philosophic halo! The warm, soapy water
became a sovereign medicine to retract hot blood from the head;
the homely act of washing and drying cups and saucers became a symbol
of the order and cleanliness that man imposes on the unruly world
about him. I tore down my book rack and reading lamp from over
the sink.
"Mr. Gilbert," he went on, "do not laugh at me when I tell you that I
have evolved a whole kitchen philosophy of my own. I find the kitchen
the shrine of our civilization, the focus of all that is comely in life.
The ruddy shine of the stove is as beautiful as any sunset.
A well-polished jug or spoon is as fair, as complete and beautiful,
as any sonnet. The dish mop, properly rinsed and wrung and hung
outside the back door to dry, is a whole sermon in itself.
The stars never look so bright as they do from the kitchen door
after the ice-box pan is emptied and the whole place is 'redd up,'
as the Scotch say."
"A very delightful philosophy indeed," said Gilbert. "And now that we
have finished our meal, I insist upon your letting me give you a hand
with the washing up. I am eager to test this dish-pantheism of yours!"
"My dear fellow," said Mifflin, laying a restraining hand on his
impetuous guest, "it is a poor philosophy that will not abide denial
now and then. No, no--I did not ask you to spend the evening
with me to wash dishes." And he led the way back to his sitting room.
"When I saw you come in," said Mifflin, "I was afraid you might be
a newspaper man, looking for an interview. A young journalist came
to see us once, with very unhappy results. He wheedled himself into
Mrs. Mifflin's good graces, and ended by putting us both into a book,
called Parnassus on Wheels, which has been rather a trial to me.
In that book he attributes to me a number of shallow and sugary
observations upon bookselling that have been an annoyance to the trade.
I am happy to say, though, that his book had only a trifling sale."
"I have never heard of it," said Gilbert.
"If you are really interested in bookselling you should come
here some evening to a meeting of the Corn Cob Club. Once a month
a number of booksellers gather here and we discuss matters of bookish
concern over corn-cobs and cider. We have all sorts and conditions
of booksellers: one is a fanatic on the subject of libraries.
He thinks that every public library should be dynamited.
Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade.
What rot! Surely everything that arouses people's minds,
that makes them alert and questioning, increases their appetite
for books."
"The life of a bookseller is very demoralizing to the intellect,"
he went on after a pause. "He is surrounded by innumerable books;
he cannot possibly read them all; he dips into one and picks
up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with
miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, with a thousand
half-knowledges. Almost unconsciously he begins to rate literature
according to what people ask for. He begins to wonder whether
Ralph Waldo Trine isn't really greater than Ralph Waldo Emerson,
whether J. M. Chapple isn't as big a man as J. M. Barrie.
That way lies intellectual suicide.
"One thing, however, you must grant the good bookseller. He is tolerant.
He is patient of all ideas and theories. Surrounded, engulfed by
the torrent of men's words, he is willing to listen to them all.
Even to the publisher's salesman he turns an indulgent ear.
He is willing to be humbugged for the weal of humanity. He hopes
unceasingly for good books to be born.
"My business, you see, is different from most. I only deal in
second-hand books; I only buy books that I consider have some honest
reason for existence. In so far as human judgment can discern,
I try to keep trash out of my shelves. A doctor doesn't traffic
in quack remedies. I don't traffic in bogus books.
"A comical thing happened the other day. There is a certain
wealthy man, a Mr. Chapman, who has long frequented this shop----"
"I wonder if that could be Mr. Chapman of the Chapman Daintybits Company?"
said Gilbert, feeling his feet touch familiar soil.
"The same, I believe," said Mifflin. "Do you know him?"
"Ah," cried the young man with reverence. "There is a man who can
tell you the virtues of advertising. If he is interested in books,
it is advertising that made it possible. We handle all his copy--
I've written a lot of it myself. We have made the Chapman prunes
a staple of civilization and culture. I myself devised that slogan 'We
preen ourselves on our prunes' which you see in every big magazine.
Chapman prunes are known the world over. The Mikado eats them
once a week. The Pope eats them. Why, we have just heard
that thirteen cases of them are to be put on board the George
Washington for the President's voyage to the peace Conference.
The Czecho-Slovak armies were fed largely on prunes. It is our conviction
in the office that our campaign for the Chapman prunes did much to win
the war."
"I read in an ad the other day--perhaps you wrote that, too?"
said the bookseller, "that the Elgin watch had won the war.
However, Mr. Chapman has long been one of my best customers.
He heard about the Corn Cob Club, and though of course he is not
a bookseller he begged to come to our meetings. We were glad
to have him do so, and he has entered into our discussions
with great zeal. Often he has offered many a shrewd comment.
He has grown so enthusiastic about the bookseller's way of life that
the other day he wrote to me about his daughter (he is a widower).
She has been attending a fashionable girls' school where, he says,
they have filled her head with absurd, wasteful, snobbish notions.
He says she has no more idea of the usefulness and beauty of life than
a Pomeranian dog. Instead of sending her to college, he has asked me
if Mrs. Mifflin and I will take her in here to learn to sell books.
He wants her to think she is earning her keep, and is going to pay
me privately for the privilege of having her live here. He thinks
that being surrounded by books will put some sense in her head. I am
rather nervous about the experiment, but it is a compliment to the shop,
isn't it?"
"Ye gods," cried Gilbert, "what advertising copy that would make!"
At this point the bell in the shop rang, and Mifflin jumped up.
"This part of the evening is often rather busy," he said.
"I'm afraid I'll have to go down on the floor. Some of my habitues
rather expect me to be on hand to gossip about books."
"I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed myself," said Gilbert.
"I'm going to come again and study your shelves."
"Well, keep it dark about the young lady," said the bookseller.
"I don't want all you young blades dropping in here to unsettle her mind.
If she falls in love with anybody in this shop, it'll have to be Joseph
Conrad or John Keats!"
As he passed out, Gilbert saw Roger Mifflin engaged in argument
with a bearded man who looked like a college professor.
"Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell?" he was saying. "Yes, indeed!
Right over here! Hullo, that's odd! It WAS here."
Chapter II
The Corn Cob Club[1]
[1] The latter half of this chapter may be omitted by all readers
who are not booksellers.
The Haunted Bookshop was a delightful place, especially of an evening,
when its drowsy alcoves were kindled with the brightness of lamps
shining on the rows of volumes. Many a passer-by would stumble down
the steps from the street in sheer curiosity; others, familiar visitors,
dropped in with the same comfortable emotion that a man feels on
entering his club. Roger's custom was to sit at his desk in the rear,
puffing his pipe and reading; though if any customer started
a conversation, the little man was quick and eager to carry it on.
The lion of talk lay only sleeping in him; it was not hard to goad
it up.
It may be remarked that all bookshops that are open in the evening
are busy in the after-supper hours. Is it that the true book-lovers
are nocturnal gentry, only venturing forth when darkness and silence
and the gleam of hooded lights irresistibly suggest reading?
Certainly night-time has a mystic affinity for literature,
and it is strange that the Esquimaux have created no great books.
Surely, for most of us, an arctic night would be insupportable
without O. Henry and Stevenson. Or, as Roger Mifflin remarked during
a passing enthusiasm for Ambrose Bierce, the true noctes ambrosianae
are the noctes ambrose bierceianae.
But Roger was prompt in closing Parnassus at ten o'clock. At that hour
he and Bock (the mustard-coloured terrier, named for Boccaccio)
would make the round of the shop, see that everything was shipshape,
empty the ash trays provided for customers, lock the front door,
and turn off the lights. Then they would retire to the den,
where Mrs. Mifflin was generally knitting or reading. She would
brew a pot of cocoa and they would read or talk for half an hour
or so before bed. Sometimes Roger would take a stroll along Gissing
Street before turning in. All day spent with books has a rather
exhausting effect on the mind, and he used to enjoy the fresh air
sweeping up the dark Brooklyn streets, meditating some thought
that had sprung from his reading, while Bock sniffed and padded
along in the manner of an elderly dog at night.
While Mrs. Mifflin was away, however, Roger's routine was
somewhat different. After closing the shop he would return
to his desk and with a furtive, shamefaced air take out from
a bottom drawer an untidy folder of notes and manuscript.
This was the skeleton in his closet, his secret sin.
It was the scaffolding of his book, which he had been compiling
for at least ten years, and to which he had tentatively assigned such
different titles as "Notes on Literature," "The Muse on Crutches,"
"Books and I," and "What a Young Bookseller Ought to Know."
It had begun long ago, in the days of his odyssey as a rural
book huckster, under the title of "Literature Among the Farmers,"
but it had branched out until it began to appear that (in bulk
at least) Ridpath would have to look to his linoleum laurels.
The manuscript in its present state had neither beginning nor end,
but it was growing strenuously in the middle, and hundreds
of pages were covered with Roger's minute script. The chapter on
"Ars Bibliopolae," or the art of bookselling, would be, he hoped,
a classic among generations of book vendors still unborn.
Seated at his disorderly desk, caressed by a counterpane of drifting
tobacco haze, he would pore over the manuscript, crossing out,
interpolating, re-arguing, and then referring to volumes on his shelves.
Bock would snore under the chair, and soon Roger's brain would
begin to waver. In the end he would fall asleep over his papers,
wake with a cramp about two o'clock, and creak irritably to a
lonely bed.
All this we mention only to explain how it was that Roger was dozing at his
desk about midnight, the evening after the call paid by Aubrey Gilbert.
He was awakened by a draught of chill air passing like a mountain
brook over his bald pate. Stiffly he sat up and looked about.
The shop was in darkness save for the bright electric over his head.
Bock, of more regular habit than his master, had gone back to his
couch in the kitchen, made of a packing case that had once coffined
a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
"That's funny," said Roger to himself. "Surely I locked the door?"
He walked to the front of the shop, switching on the cluster of lights
that hung from the ceiling. The door was ajar, but everything
else seemed as usual. Bock, hearing his footsteps, came trotting
out from the kitchen, his claws rattling on the bare wooden floor.
He looked up with the patient inquiry of a dog accustomed to the
eccentricities of his patron.
"I guess I'm getting absent-minded," said Roger.
"I must have left the door open." He closed and locked it.
Then he noticed that the terrier was sniffing in the History alcove,
which was at the front of the shop on the left-hand side.
"What is it, old man?" said Roger. "Want something to read in bed?"
He turned on the light in that alcove. Everything appeared normal.
Then he noticed a book that projected an inch or so beyond the even
line of bindings. It was a fad of Roger's to keep all his books
in a flat row on the shelves, and almost every evening at closing
time he used to run his palm along the backs of the volumes to level
any irregularities left by careless browsers. He put out a hand
to push the book into place. Then he stopped.
"Queer again," he thought. "Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell!
I looked for that book last night and couldn't find it. When that
professor fellow was here. Maybe I'm tired and can't see straight.
I'll go to bed."
The next day was a date of some moment. Not only was it
Thanksgiving Day, with the November meeting of the Corn Cob Club
scheduled for that evening, but Mrs. Mifflin had promised to get home
from Boston in time to bake a chocolate cake for the booksellers.
It was said that some of the members of the club were faithful
in attendance more by reason of Mrs. Mifflin's chocolate cake,
and the cask of cider that her brother Andrew McGill sent down from
the Sabine Farm every autumn, than on account of the bookish conversation.
Roger spent the morning in doing a little housecleaning, in preparation
for his wife's return. He was a trifle abashed to find how many mingled
crumbs and tobacco cinders had accumulated on the dining-room rug.
He cooked himself a modest lunch of lamb chops and baked potatoes,
and was pleased by an epigram concerning food that came into his mind.
"It's not the food you dream about that matters," he said to himself;
"it's the vittles that walk right in and become a member of the family."
He felt that this needed a little polishing and rephrasing, but that there
was a germ of wit in it. He had a habit of encountering ideas at his
solitary meals.
After this, he was busy at the sink scrubbing the dishes,
when he was surprised by feeling two very competent arms
surround him, and a pink gingham apron was thrown over his head.
"Mifflin," said his wife, "how many times have I told you to put
on an apron when you wash up!"
They greeted each other with the hearty, affectionate simplicity
of those congenially wedded in middle age. Helen Mifflin was
a buxom, healthy creature, rich in good sense and good humour,
well nourished both in mind and body. She kissed Roger's bald head,
tied the apron around his shrimpish person, and sat down on a kitchen
chair to watch him finish wiping the china. Her cheeks were cool
and ruddy from the keen air, her face lit with the tranquil satisfaction
of those who have sojourned in the comfortable city of Boston.
"Well, my dear," said Roger, "this makes it a real Thanksgiving.
You look as plump and full of matter as The Home Book of Verse."
"I've had a stunning time," she said, patting Bock who stood at her knee,
imbibing the familiar and mysterious fragrance by which dogs identify
their human friends. "I haven't even heard of a book for three weeks.
I did stop in at the Old Angle Book Shop yesterday, just to say
hullo to Joe Jillings. He says all booksellers are crazy,
but that you are the craziest of the lot. He wants to know if you're
bankrupt yet."
Roger's slate-blue eyes twinkled. He hung up a cup in the china
closet and lit his pipe before replying.
"What did you say?"
"I said that our shop was haunted, and mustn't be supposed to come
under the usual conditions of the trade."
"Bully for you! And what did Joe say to that?"
"'Haunted by the nuts!'"
"Well," said Roger, "when literature goes bankrupt I'm willing to go
with it. Not till then. But by the way, we're going to be haunted
by a beauteous damsel pretty soon. You remember my telling you
that Mr. Chapman wants to send his daughter to work in the shop?
Well, here's a letter I had from him this morning."
He rummaged in his pocket, and produced the following,
which Mrs. Mifflin read:
DEAR MR. MIFFLIN,
I am so delighted that you and Mrs. Mifflin are willing to try
the experiment of taking my daughter as an apprentice.
Titania is really a very charming girl, and if only we can get
some of the "finishing school" nonsense out of her head she
will make a fine woman. She has had (it was my fault, not hers)
the disadvantage of being brought up, or rather brought down,
by having every possible want and whim gratified. Out of kindness
for herself and her future husband, if she should have one, I want
her to learn a little about earning a living. She is nearly nineteen,
and I told her if she would try the bookshop job for a while I would
take her to Europe for a year afterward.
As I explained to you, I want her to think she is really earning
her way. Of course I don't want the routine to be too hard for her,
but I do want her to get some idea of what it means to face life
on one's own. If you will pay her ten dollars a week as a beginner,
and deduct her board from that, I will pay you twenty dollars
a week, privately, for your responsibility in caring for her
and keeping your and Mrs. Mifflin's friendly eyes on her.
I'm coming round to the Corn Cob meeting to-morrow night, and we can
make the final arrangements.
Luckily, she is very fond of books, and I really think she
is looking forward to the adventure with much anticipation.
I overheard her saying to one of her friends yesterday that she
was going to do some "literary work" this winter. That's the kind
of nonsense I want her to outgrow. When I hear her say that she's
got a job in a bookstore, I'll know she's cured.
Cordially yours,
GEORGE CHAPMAN.
"Well?" said Roger, as Mrs. Mifflin made no comment. "Don't you
think it will be rather interesting to get a naive young girl's
reactions toward the problems of our tranquil existence?"
"Roger, you blessed innocent!" cried his wife. "Life will no
longer be tranquil with a girl of nineteen round the place.
You may fool yourself, but you can't fool me. A girl of nineteen
doesn't REACT toward things. She explodes. Things don't 'react'
anywhere but in Boston and in chemical laboratories. I suppose you
know you're taking a human bombshell into the arsenal?"
Roger looked dubious. "I remember something in Weir of
Hermiston about a girl being 'an explosive engine,'" he said.
"But I don't see that she can do any very great harm round here.
We're both pretty well proof against shell shock. The worst
that could happen would be if she got hold of my private copy
of Fireside Conversation in the Age of Queen Elizabeth.
Remind me to lock it up somewhere, will you?"
This secret masterpiece by Mark Twain was one of the bookseller's
treasures. Not even Helen had ever been permitted to read it;
and she had shrewdly judged that it was not in her line, for though
she knew perfectly well where he kept it (together with his life
insurance policy, some Liberty Bonds, an autograph letter from Charles
Spencer Chaplin, and a snapshot of herself taken on their honeymoon)
she had never made any attempt to examine it.
"Well," said Helen; "Titania or no Titania, if the Corn Cobs want
their chocolate cake to-night, I must get busy. Take my suitcase
upstairs like a good fellow."
A gathering of booksellers is a pleasant sanhedrim to attend.
The members of this ancient craft bear mannerisms and earmarks
just as definitely recognizable as those of the cloak and suit
business or any other trade. They are likely to be a little--
shall we say--worn at the bindings, as becomes men who have forsaken
worldly profit to pursue a noble calling ill rewarded in cash.
They are possibly a trifle embittered, which is an excellent demeanour
for mankind in the face of inscrutable heaven. Long experience
with publishers' salesmen makes them suspicious of books praised
between the courses of a heavy meal.
When a publisher's salesman takes you out to dinner, it is not
surprising if the conversation turns toward literature about the
time the last of the peas are being harried about the plate. But,
as Jerry Gladfist says (he runs a shop up on Thirty-Eighth Street)
the publishers' salesmen supply a long-felt want, for they do now
and then buy one a dinner the like of which no bookseller would
otherwise be likely to commit.
"Well, gentlemen," said Roger as his guests assembled in his
little cabinet, "it's a cold evening. Pull up toward the fire.
Make free with the cider. The cake's on the table. My wife came back
from Boston specially to make it."
"Here's Mrs. Mifflin's health!" said Mr. Chapman, a quiet
little man who had a habit of listening to what he heard.
"I hope she doesn't mind keeping the shop while we celebrate?"
"Not a bit," said Roger. "She enjoys it."
"I see Tarzan of the Apes is running at the Gissing Street movie palace,"
said Gladfist. "Great stuff. Have you seen it?"
"Not while I can still read The Jungle Book," said Roger.
"You make me tired with that talk about literature," cried Jerry.
"A book's a book, even if Harold Bell Wright wrote it."
"A book's a book if you enjoy reading it," amended Meredith, from a big
Fifth Avenue bookstore. "Lots of people enjoy Harold Bell Wright
just as lots of people enjoy tripe. Either of them would kill me.
But let's be tolerant."
"Your argument is a whole succession of non sequiturs," said Jerry,
stimulated by the cider to unusual brilliance.
"That's a long putt," chuckled Benson, the dealer in rare books
and first editions.
"What I mean is this," said Jerry. "We aren't literary critics.
It's none of our business to say what's good and what isn't. Our
job is simply to supply the public with the books it wants when it
wants them. How it comes to want the books it does is no concern
of ours."
"You're the guy that calls bookselling the worst business in the world,"
said Roger warmly, "and you're the kind of guy that makes it so.
I suppose you would say that it is no concern of the bookseller to try
to increase the public appetite for books?"
"Appetite is too strong a word," said Jerry. "As far as books
are concerned the public is barely able to sit up and take a little
liquid nourishment. Solid foods don't interest it. If you try
to cram roast beef down the gullet of an invalid you'll kill him.
Let the public alone, and thank God when it comes round to amputate
any of its hard-earned cash."
"Well, take it on the lowest basis," said Roger. "I haven't
any facts to go upon----"
"You never have," interjected Jerry.
"But I'd like to bet that the Trade has made more money out of
Bryce's American Commonwealth than it ever did out of all Parson
Wright's books put together."
"What of it? Why shouldn't they make both?"
This preliminary tilt was interrupted by the arrival of two
more visitors, and Roger handed round mugs of cider, pointed to
the cake and the basket of pretzels, and lit his corn-cob pipe.
The new arrivals were Quincy and Fruehling; the former a clerk
in the book department of a vast drygoods store, the latter
the owner of a bookshop in the Hebrew quarter of Grand Street--
one of the best-stocked shops in the city, though little known
to uptown book-lovers.
"Well," said Fruehling, his bright dark eyes sparkling above richly
tinted cheek-bones and bushy beard, "what's the argument?"
"The usual one," said Gladfist, grinning, "Mifflin confusing
merchandise with metaphysics."
MIFFLIN--Not at all. I am simply saying that it is good business
to sell only the best.
GLADFIST--Wrong again. You must select your stock according
to your customers. Ask Quincy here. Would there be any sense
in his loading up his shelves with Maeterlinck and Shaw when the
department-store trade wants Eleanor Porter and the Tarzan stuff?
Does a country grocer carry the same cigars that are listed
on the wine card of a Fifth Avenue hotel? Of course not.
He gets in the cigars that his trade enjoys and is accustomed to.
Bookselling must obey the ordinary rules of commerce.
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