CHAPTER VI

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.