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Chapter IX Again the Narrative is Retarded 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. 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 — 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 — 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
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. 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. To-night 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. |