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THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
BY
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
TO THE BOOKSELLERS
Be pleased to know, most worthy, that this little book is dedicated toyou in affection and respect.
The faults of the composition are plain to you all. I begin merely inthe hope of saying something further of the adventures of ROGERMIFFLIN, whose exploits in "Parnassus on Wheels" some of you have beenkind enough to applaud. But then came Miss Titania Chapman, and myyoung advertising man fell in love with her, and the two of them ratherran away with the tale.
I think I should explain that the passage in Chapter VIII, dealing withthe delightful talent of Mr. Sidney Drew, was written before thelamented death of that charming artist. But as it was a sinceretribute, sincerely meant, I have seen no reason for removing it.
Chapters I, II, III, and VI appeared originally in The Bookman, and tothe editor of that admirable magazine I owe thanks for his permissionto reprint.
Now that Roger is to have ten Parnassuses on the road, I am emboldenedto think that some of you may encounter them on their travels. And ifyou do, I hope you will find that these new errants of the Parnassus onWheels Corporation are living up to the ancient and honourabletraditions of our noble profession.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY.
Philadelphia, April 28, 1919
The Haunted Bookshop
Chapter I
The Haunted Bookshop
If you are ever in Brooklyn, that borough of superb sunsets andmagnificent vistas of husband-propelled baby-carriages, it is to behoped you may chance upon a quiet by-street where there is a veryremarkable bookshop.
This bookshop, which does business under the unusual name "Parnassus atHome," is housed in one of the comfortable old brown-stone dwellingswhich have been the joy of several generations of plumbers andcockroaches. The owner of the business has been at pains to remodelthe house to make it a more suitable shrine for his trade, which dealsentirely in second-hand volumes. There is no second-hand bookshop inthe world more worthy of respect.
It was about six o'clock of a cold November evening, with gusts of rainsplattering upon the pavement, when a young man proceeded uncertainlyalong Gissing Street, stopping now and then to look at shop windows asthough doubtful of his way. At the warm and shining face of a Frenchrotisserie he halted to compare the number enamelled on the transomwith a memorandum in his hand. Then he pushed on for a few minutes, atlast reaching the address he sought. Over the entrance his eye wascaught by the sign:
PARNASSUS AT HOME R. AND H. MIFFLIN BOOKLOVERS WELCOME! THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED
He stumbled down the three steps that led into the dwelling of themuses, lowered his overcoat collar, and looked about.
It was very different from such bookstores as he had been accustomed topatronize. Two stories of the old house had been thrown into one: thelower space was divided into little alcoves; above, a gallery ran roundthe wall, which carried books to the ceiling. The air was heavy withthe delightful fragrance of mellowed paper and leather surcharged witha strong bouquet of tobacco. In front of him he found a large placardin a frame:
THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED by the ghosts Of all great literature, in hosts;
We sell no fakes or trashes. Lovers of books are welcome here, No clerks will babble in your ear,
Please smoke--but don't drop ashes! ---- Browse as long as you like. Prices of all books plainly marked. If you want to ask questions, you'll find the proprietor where the tobacco smoke is thickest. We pay cash for books. We have what you want, though you may not know you want it.
Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.
Let us prescribe for you.
By R. & H. MIFFLIN, Proprs.
The shop had a warm and comfortable obscurity, a kind of drowsy dusk,stabbed here and there by bright cones of yellow light fromgreen-shaded electrics. There was an all-pervasive drift of tobaccosmoke, which eddied and fumed under the glass lamp shades. Passingdown a narrow aisle between the alcoves the visitor noticed that someof the compartments were wholly in darkness; in others where lamps wereglowing he could see a table and chairs. In one corner, under a signlettered ESSAYS, an elderly gentleman was reading, with a face offanatical ecstasy illumined by the sharp glare of electricity; butthere was no wreath of smoke about him so the newcomer concluded he wasnot the proprietor.
As the young man approached the back of the shop the general effectbecame more and more fantastic. On some skylight far overhead he couldhear the rain drumming; but otherwise the place was completely silent,peopled only (so it seemed) by the gurgitating whorls of smoke and thebright profile of the essay reader. It seemed like a secret fane, someshrine of curious rites, and the young man's throat was tightened by astricture which was half agitation and half tobacco. Towering abovehim into the gloom were shelves and shelves of books, darkling towardthe roof. He saw a table with a cylinder of brown paper and twine,evidently where purchases might be wrapped; but there was no sign of anattendant.
"This place may indeed be haunted," he thought, "perhaps by thedelighted soul of Sir Walter Raleigh, patron of the weed, but seeminglynot by the proprietors."
His eyes, searching the blue and vaporous vistas of the shop, werecaught by a circle of brightness that shone with a curious egg-likelustre. It was round and white, gleaming in the sheen of a hanginglight, a bright island in a surf of tobacco smoke. He came more close,and found it was a bald head.
This head (he then saw) surmounted a small, sharp-eyed man who sattilted back in a swivel chair, in a corner which seemed the nervecentre of the establishment. The large pigeon-holed desk in front ofhim was piled high with volumes of all sorts, with tins of tobacco andnewspaper clippings and letters. An antiquated typewriter, lookingsomething like a harpsichord, was half-buried in sheets of manuscript.The little bald-headed man was smoking a corn-cob pipe and reading acook-book.
"I beg your pardon," said the caller, pleasantly; "is this theproprietor?"
Mr. Roger Mifflin, the proprietor of "Parnassus at Home," looked up,and the visitor saw that he had keen blue eyes, a short red beard, anda convincing air of competent originality.
"It is," said Mr. Mifflin. "Anything I can do for you?"
"My name is Aubrey Gilbert," said the young man. "I am representingthe Grey-Matter Advertising Agency. I want to discuss with you theadvisability of your letting us handle your advertising account,prepare snappy copy for you, and place it in large circulation mediums.Now the war's over, you ought to prepare some constructive campaign forbigger business."
The bookseller's face beamed. He put down his cook-book, blew anexpanding gust of smoke, and looked up brightly.
"My dear chap," he said, "I don't do any advertising."
"Impossible!" cried the other, aghast as at some gratuitous indecency.
"Not in the sense you mean. Such advertising as benefits me most isdone for me by the snappiest copywriters in the business."
"I suppose you refer to Whitewash and Gilt?" said Mr. Gilbert wistfully.
"Not at all. The people who are doing my advertising are Stevenson,Browning, Conrad and Company."
"Dear me," said the Grey-Matter solicitor. "I don't know that agencyat all. Still, I doubt if their copy has more pep than ours."
"I don't think you get me. I mean that my advertising is done by thebooks I sell. If I sell a man a book by Stevenson or Conrad, a bookthat delights or terrifies him, that man and that book become my livingadvert
isements."
"But that word-of-mouth advertising is exploded," said Gilbert. "Youcan't get Distribution that way. You've got to keep your trademarkbefore the public."
"By the bones of Tauchnitz!" cried Mifflin. "Look here, you wouldn'tgo to a doctor, a medical specialist, and tell him he ought toadvertise in papers and magazines? A doctor is advertised by thebodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate.And let me tell you that the book business is different from othertrades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by lookingat you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfullyunaware of it! People don't go to a bookseller until some seriousmental accident or disease makes them aware of their danger. Then theycome here. For me to advertise would be about as useful as tellingpeople who feel perfectly well that they ought to go to the doctor. Doyou know why people are reading more books now than ever before?Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize thattheir minds are ill. The world was suffering from all sorts of mentalfevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mentalpangs are only too manifest. We are all reading, hungrily, hastily,trying to find out--after the trouble is over--what was the matter withour minds."
The little bookseller was standing up now, and his visitor watched himwith mingled amusement and alarm.
"You know," said Mifflin, "I am interested that you should have thoughtit worth while to come in here. It reinforces my conviction of theamazing future ahead of the book business. But I tell you that futurelies not merely in systematizing it as a trade. It lies in dignifyingit as a profession. It is small use to jeer at the public for cravingshoddy books, quack books, untrue books. Physician, cure thyself! Letthe bookseller learn to know and revere good books, he will teach thecustomer. The hunger for good books is more general and more insistentthan you would dream. But it is still in a way subconscious. Peopleneed books, but they don't know they need them. Generally they are notaware that the books they need are in existence."
"Why wouldn't advertising be the way to let them know?" asked the youngman, rather acutely.
"My dear chap, I understand the value of advertising. But in my owncase it would be futile. I am not a dealer in merchandise but aspecialist in adjusting the book to the human need. Between ourselves,there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good'only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. Abook that is good for me would very likely be punk for you. Mypleasure is to prescribe books for such patients as drop in here andare willing to tell me their symptoms. Some people have let theirreading faculties decay so that all I can do is hold a post mortem onthem. But most are still open to treatment. There is no one sograteful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soulneeded and he never knew it. No advertisement on earth is as potent asa grateful customer.
"I will tell you another reason why I don't advertise," he continued."In these days when everyone keeps his trademark before the public, asyou call it, not to advertise is the most original and startling thingone can do to attract attention. It was the fact that I do NOTadvertise that drew you here. And everyone who comes here thinks hehas discovered the place himself. He goes and tells his friends aboutthe book asylum run by a crank and a lunatic, and they come here inturn to see what it is like."
"I should like to come here again myself and browse about," said theadvertising agent. "I should like to have you prescribe for me."
"The first thing needed is to acquire a sense of pity. The world hasbeen printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a widercirculation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: itwill win. Yes, I have a few of the good books here. There are onlyabout 30,000 really important books in the world. I suppose about5,000 of them were written in the English language, and 5,000 more havebeen translated."
"You are open in the evenings?"
"Until ten o'clock. A great many of my best customers are those whoare at work all day and can only visit bookshops at night. The realbook-lovers, you know, are generally among the humbler classes. A manwho is impassioned with books has little time or patience to grow richby concocting schemes for cozening his fellows."
The little bookseller's bald pate shone in the light of the bulbhanging over the wrapping table. His eyes were bright and earnest, hisshort red beard bristled like wire. He wore a ragged brown Norfolkjacket from which two buttons were missing.
A bit of a fanatic himself, thought the customer, but a veryentertaining one. "Well, sir," he said, "I am ever so grateful to you.I'll come again. Good-night." And he started down the aisle for thedoor.
As he neared the front of the shop, Mr. Mifflin switched on a clusterof lights that hung high up, and the young man found himself beside alarge bulletin board covered with clippings, announcements, circulars,and little notices written on cards in a small neat script. Thefollowing caught his eye:
RX
If your mind needs phosphorus, try "Trivia," by Logan Pearsall Smith.
If your mind needs a whiff of strong air, blue and cleansing, fromhilltops and primrose valleys, try "The Story of My Heart," by RichardJefferies.
If your mind needs a tonic of iron and wine, and a thoroughrough-and-tumbling, try Samuel Butler's "Notebooks" or "The Man Who WasThursday," by Chesterton.
If you need "all manner of Irish," and a relapse into irresponsiblefreakishness, try "The Demi-Gods," by James Stephens. It is a betterbook than one deserves or expects.
It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like anhour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
One who loves the English tongue can have a lot of fun with a Latindictionary.
ROGER MIFFLIN.
Human beings pay very little attention to what is told them unless theyknow something about it already. The young man had heard of none ofthese books prescribed by the practitioner of bibliotherapy. He wasabout to open the door when Mifflin appeared at his side.
"Look here," he said, with a quaint touch of embarrassment. "I wasvery much interested by our talk. I'm all alone this evening--my wifeis away on a holiday. Won't you stay and have supper with me? I wasjust looking up some new recipes when you came in."
The other was equally surprised and pleased by this unusual invitation.
"Why--that's very good of you," he said. "Are you sure I won't beintruding?"
"Not at all!" cried the bookseller. "I detest eating alone: I washoping someone would drop in. I always try to have a guest for supperwhen my wife is away. I have to stay at home, you see, to keep an eyeon the shop. We have no servant, and I do the cooking myself. It'sgreat fun. Now you light your pipe and make yourself comfortable for afew minutes while I get things ready. Suppose you come back to my den."
On a table of books at the front of the shop Mifflin laid a large cardlettered:
PROPRIETOR AT SUPPER IF YOU WANT ANYTHING RING THIS BELL
Beside the card he placed a large old-fashioned dinner bell, and thenled the way to the rear of the shop.
Behind the little office in which this unusual merchant had beenstudying his cook-book a narrow stairway rose on each side, running upto the gallery. Behind these stairs a short flight of steps led to thedomestic recesses. The visitor found himself ushered into a small roomon the left, where a grate of coals glowed under a dingy mantelpiece ofyellowish marble. On the mantel stood a row of blackened corn-cobpipes and a canister of tobacco. Above was a startling canvas inemphatic oils, representing a large blue wagon drawn by a stout whiteanimal--evidently a horse. A background of lush scenery enhanced theforceful technique of the limner. The walls were stuffed with books.Two shabby, comfortable chairs were drawn up to the iron fender, and amustard-coloured terrier was lying so close to the glow that a smell ofsinged hair was sensible.
"There," said the host; "this is my cabinet, my chapel of ease. Takeoff your coat and sit down."
>
"Really," began Gilbert, "I'm afraid this is----"
"Nonsense! Now you sit down and commend your soul to Providence andthe kitchen stove. I'll bustle round and get supper." Gilbert pulledout his pipe, and with a sense of elation prepared to enjoy an unusualevening. He was a young man of agreeable parts, amiable and sensitive.He knew his disadvantages in literary conversation, for he had gone toan excellent college where glee clubs and theatricals had left himlittle time for reading. But still he was a lover of good books,though he knew them chiefly by hearsay. He was twenty-five years old,employed as a copywriter by the Grey-Matter Advertising Agency.
The little room in which he found himself was plainly the bookseller'ssanctum, and contained his own private library. Gilbert browsed alongthe shelves curiously. The volumes were mostly shabby and bruised;they had evidently been picked up one by one in the humble mangers ofthe second-hand vendor. They all showed marks of use and meditation.
Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which hasblighted the lives of so many young men--a passion which, however, iscommendable in those who feel themselves handicapped by a collegecareer and a jewelled fraternity emblem. It suddenly struck him thatit would be valuable to make a list of some of the titles in Mifflin'scollection, as a suggestion for his own reading. He took out amemorandum book and began jotting down the books that intrigued him: