The Haunted Bookshop · Chapter 1 (2/2)

Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men⁠—a passion which, however, is commendable in those who feel themselves handicapped by a college career and a jewelled fraternity emblem. It suddenly struck him that it would be valuable to make a list of some of the titles in Mifflin’s collection, as a suggestion for his own reading. He took out a memorandum book and began jotting down the books that intrigued him:

• The Works of Francis Thompson (3 vols.)
• Social History of Smoking: Apperson
• The Path to Rome: Hilaire Belloc
• The Book of Tea: Kakuzo
• Happy Thoughts: F. C. Burnand
• Dr. Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations
• Margaret Ogilvy: J. M. Barrie
• Confessions of a Thug: Taylor
• General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press
• The Morning’s War: C. E. Montague
• The Spirit of Man: edited by Robert Bridges
• The Romany Rye: Borrow
• Poems: Emily Dickinson
• Poems: George Herbert
• The House of Cobwebs: George Gissing

So far had he got, and was beginning to say to himself that in the interests of advertising (who is a jealous mistress) he had best call a halt, when his host entered the room, his small face eager, his eyes blue points of light.

“Come, Mr. Aubrey Gilbert!” he cried. “The meal is set. You want to wash your hands? Make haste then, this way: the eggs are hot and waiting.”

The dining room into which the guest was conducted betrayed a feminine touch not visible in the smoke-dimmed quarters of shop and cabinet. At the windows were curtains of laughing chintz and pots of pink geranium. The table, under a drop-light in a flame-coloured silk screen, was brightly set with silver and blue china. In a cut-glass decanter sparkled a ruddy brown wine. The edged tool of advertising felt his spirits undergo an unmistakable upward pressure.

“Sit down, sir,” said Mifflin, lifting the roof of a platter. “These are eggs Samuel Butler, an invention of my own, the apotheosis of hen fruit.”

Gilbert greeted the invention with applause. An Egg Samuel Butler, for the notebook of housewives, may be summarized as a pyramid, based upon toast, whereof the chief masonries are a flake of bacon, an egg poached to firmness, a wreath of mushrooms, a cap-sheaf of red peppers; the whole dribbled with a warm pink sauce of which the inventor retains the secret. To this the bookseller chef added fried potatoes from another dish, and poured for his guest a glass of wine.

“This is California Catawba,” said Mifflin, “in which the grape and the sunshine very pleasantly (and cheaply) fulfil their allotted destiny. I pledge you prosperity to the black art of advertising!”

The psychology of the art and mystery of advertising rests upon tact, an instinctive perception of the tone and accent which will be en rapport with the mood of the hearer. Mr. Gilbert was aware of this, and felt that quite possibly his host was prouder of his whimsical avocation as gourmet than of his sacred profession as a bookman.

“Is it possible, sir,” he began, in lucid Johnsonian, “that you can concoct so delicious an entrée in so few minutes? You are not hoaxing me? There is no secret passage between Gissing Street and the laboratories of the Ritz?”

“Ah, you should taste Mrs. Mifflin’s cooking!” said the bookseller. “I am only an amateur, who dabbles in the craft during her absence. She is on a visit to her cousin in Boston. She becomes, quite justifiably, weary of the tobacco of this establishment, and once or twice a year it does her good to breathe the pure serene of Beacon Hill. During her absence it is my privilege to inquire into the ritual of housekeeping. I find it very sedative after the incessant excitement and speculation of the shop.”

“I should have thought,” said Gilbert, “that life in a bookshop would be delightfully tranquil.”

“Far from it. Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world⁠—the brains of men. I can spend a rainy afternoon reading, and my mind works itself up to such a passion and anxiety over mortal problems as almost unmans me. It is terribly nerve-racking. Surround a man with Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau, Chesterton, Shaw, Nietzsche, and George Ade⁠—would you wonder at his getting excited? What would happen to a cat if she had to live in a room tapestried with catnip? She would go crazy!”

“Truly, I had never thought of that phase of bookselling,” said the young man. “How is it, though, that libraries are shrines of such austere calm? If books are as provocative as you suggest, one would expect every librarian to utter the shrill screams of a hierophant, to clash ecstatic castanets in his silent alcoves!”

“Ah, my boy, you forget the card index! Librarians invented that soothing device for the febrifuge of their souls, just as I fall back upon the rites of the kitchen. Librarians would all go mad, those capable of concentrated thought, if they did not have the cool and healing card index as medicament! Some more of the eggs?”

“Thank you,” said Gilbert. “Who was the butler whose name was associated with the dish?”

“What?” cried Mifflin, in agitation, “you have not heard of Samuel Butler, the author of The Way of All Flesh? My dear young man, whoever permits himself to die before he has read that book, and also Erewhon, has deliberately forfeited his chances of paradise. For paradise in the world to come is uncertain, but there is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book. Pour yourself another glass of wine, and permit me⁠—”

(Here followed an enthusiastic development of the perverse philosophy of Samuel Butler, which, in deference to my readers, I omit. Mr. Gilbert took notes of the conversation in his pocketbook, and I am pleased to say that his heart was moved to a realization of his iniquity, for he was observed at the Public Library a few days later asking for a copy of The Way of All Flesh. After inquiring at four libraries, and finding all copies of the book in circulation, he was compelled to buy one. He never regretted doing so.)

“But I am forgetting my duties as host,” said Mifflin. “Our dessert consists of apple sauce, gingerbread, and coffee.” He rapidly cleared the empty dishes from the table and brought on the second course.

“I have been noticing the warning over the sideboard,” said Gilbert. “I hope you will let me help you this evening?” He pointed to a card hanging near the kitchen door. It read:

Always wash dishes

immediately after meals

It saves trouble

“I’m afraid I don’t always obey that precept,” said the bookseller as he poured the coffee. “Mrs. Mifflin hangs it there whenever she goes away, to remind me. But, as our friend Samuel Butler says, he that is stupid in little will also be stupid in much. I have a different theory about dish-washing, and I please myself by indulging it.

“I used to regard dish-washing merely as an ignoble chore, a kind of hateful discipline which had to be undergone with knitted brow and brazen fortitude. When my wife went away the first time, I erected a reading stand and an electric light over the sink, and used to read while my hands went automatically through base gestures of purification. I made the great spirits of literature partners of my sorrow, and learned by heart a good deal of Paradise Lost and of Walt Mason, while I soused and wallowed among pots and pans. I used to comfort myself with two lines of Keats:

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 icebox 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 corncobs 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 secondhand 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 Czechoslovak 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 habitués 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.”