The Brightfount Diaries

Found self quite looking forward to seeing Cousin Derek and wife. Odd of me really, because relations are never very exciting.

Got over to Graves St Giles earlier than usual. Derek and Myra were out in the car with Uncle Leo; apparently they are looking out for a house hereabouts, and Derek wants to motor to London every day.

Asked what Myra’s sister was like.

‘I thought you’d ask that!’ says Aunt Anne coyly. ‘Sheila is a very charming girl, and about your age. She left here on Friday to stay with some friends in Kent, but she may be back here next Sunday when you come.’

Inquired, not that I wanted to change the subject, after Uncle Leo.

‘He seems to have been a little steadier since Derek arrived. But I fear he is undergoing a very odd phase just at present, very odd. You know my dear, I’m forced to say it, your uncle’s not at all an easy person to live with.’

She looked rather tearful, so I hurriedly asked what effect Lawrence had had on him.

‘Lawrence met your uncle when he was still at a very impressionable age. I’m sure he had a very profound effect on your uncle’s ego. Now I am very far from being anything in the nature of a psychoanalyst, and heaven knows I could hardly be said to be even connected with the world of literature – not as much, even, as you are, Peter. The only thing I have ever had published – and this detail may amuse you (even if you have heard it before) – was a knitting pattern. There used in my young days to be a monthly magazine called Lady and Domicile, defunct now, and they had this competition one Christmas … However, that was not what I was going to tell you.’

Aunt Anne has great strength of mind. She looks searchingly over the rose garden, as if to collect the lost thread of her narrative, and says, ‘Lawrence had certain definite ideas about the human character, some of which were – and I say it without wishing to appear a prude – very unorthodox. He believed that every man should be an individual, and this deeply impressed your uncle. He is now trying to be an individual in the only way he knows: by being an eccentric.’

Had curious sensation of revelation listening to this. Aunt is quiet little woman, rather like one of Smollett’s women, efficient, lively enough and without much depth. Now, sitting on the rustic seat listening to her, suddenly realized that all these years she had been watching Uncle Leo with acumen. Began, in fact, to feel nervous for Uncle, particularly if she had diagnosed wrongly.

At this point the car came up the drive. Uncle introduced me to Derek and Myra. Myra was very elegant and pleasant; Derek seemed a bit hearty. I can just remember him as very small boy running round pretending he had swallowed a balloon, to the consternation of Aunt Anne.

They drove me back here after tea.

MONDAY

Continued clearing out the Slaughterhouse. Miss Ellis and Gudgeon looked after the shop, but trade pretty slack; according to Gudgeon, only customer before eleven o’clock was a woman whose little girl required the nearest lavatory.

Main object of attack in the Slaughterh. to-day was Mr B.’s so-called ‘reserve’ desk – so-called because its drawers are so crammed with rubbish it is no longer usable; he abandoned it long ago for the one upstairs. He had to supervise the turning out; we filled a sack with waste. Every drawer bung-full with old correspondence and catalogues. No system, of course. One drawer contained nothing but empty envelopes, addressed to ‘Gaspin’s’ or ‘Gaspin and Brightfount’, which dates them a bit!

Other contents included loose chocolates, sealing-wax, a bottle of Vapex, early copies of Criterion, Blast and London Opinion, a mêlée of pencil stubs, two crushed cigars, an old pair of spectacles, some lino patterns, a photo of the shop, endless prospectusses and a box of pre-war cheese.

‘We really ought to present this lot to the museum,’ Mr B. said. ‘Ah well, fling it out.’

The only things he did keep were some old rubber stamps and a faded photograph of Mrs Brightfount in a large, floppy hat.

Was laughing about the collection later to Mrs Callow. Gudgeon overheard and said, ‘What’s funny about it? A collection of miscellaneous articles is man’s only defence against time.’

He makes some odd remarks occasionally.

TUESDAY

After last week’s intensive campaign, interplanetary books are still selling well. The Green and Red Planet doing particularly nicely. Mrs Callow, leaning nonchalantly against the counter, informed me that she’d seen an announcement of the first book by a Martian pilot, entitled One of Our Saucers is Missing. Almost swallowed it.

Supposing these beings from another world arrived. Imagine them as dry, detached intellects in a sponge-like body; they casually present man with the secret of anti-gravity. In the succeeding outburst of space travel and planetary exploration, what an orgy of – not adventure, as the rocket-writers predict – but learning would follow! The barriers of every science would be broken down: geology, physiology, astronomy, chemistry, biochemistry, agriculture … What oddities of planetary architecture, to take geology, Mercury might yield, its airless plains eroded by lead streams and undermined by lava seas.

And biochemistry … in the great, gravity-less stations wheeling round the earth, white-coated men peer at their captive rats, rats conceived and born free of weight – rats the size of spaniels with brains accordingly enlarged.

There would be work for the publishers then, and of making many books less end than ever. Some Unclassified Ganymedan Trypanosomes, Plutonian Oceanography, Alien Helminthology: with special reference to the parasites of Venusian Vertebrates, would be unpacked at Brightfount’s by some later-day Mr Parsons. A metal Mr Parsons perhaps.

A dream of learning – shattered maybe by the wail of sirens as telescreens announce, ‘Attention earth, attention earth! Four space stations have been seized by the giant mutant rats, who even now prepare to drop H-bombs down on their creators!’

WEDNESDAY

Half-day. Spent the afternoon lazing in the sun, got cleaned up and met Avril at five. After (expensive) tea we watched dull cricket match on Poll’s Meadow till stumps were drawn, when her brother Charles, who was playing, conscripted me for a match in a fortnight’s time. Could not get out of it! Then Avril and I were making for a spot of peace and quiet when we ran into Piggy Dexter, who insisted on taking us into ‘The Boar’s Head’ (dangerous pub name for Dr Spooner!).

Always expect to hear brilliant talk in pubs, perhaps with memories of Boswell at Child’s. Generally disappointed – people have indisputably lost their fluency since Johnson’s day, trained into passivity by radio and cinema. But one fragment charmed by its ambiguity: two men discussing a third as they left the bar, and one said, ‘But the way he laughed! Do you think he was a bit high?’

‘Oh no,’ replied the other. ‘I think he was genuinely amused.’

July nearly over! Ah me, in summer you forget it is not always summer and are consequently apt to forget to appreciate it to the full.

THURSDAY

Dave is having good weather for his holiday. Don’t know where he is going – he didn’t himself when he left on Sat. night. Said he was having a bookseller’s holiday, i.e. could not afford to go away. Seems quiet in the shop without him; he’s a bit rough, but good-hearted and good company. Think Peggy misses him. Mr B. is going to be away to-morrow, has to go into the country to look at a small library.

More remainders arrived to-day.

‘Remainders are to the book trade what the Grand National is to bookies,’ Mr Brightfount sometimes says; he loves a sweeping assertion as much as a gamble. His way of dealing with remainders is to ‘spot a winner’ and buy it all up, letting it sell slowly over the years.

Our cellar is encumbered with these lucky buys, so-called. There is Ages at Bagger’s Dune, which being of local interests sells slowly: we are now down to the last two hundred copies. There is a study of Saxon cooking and table manners which seldom sells, called Sir Gawaine at the Kitchen Door. And there are stacks of copies of two memoirs by a doctor who worked for years in Poland which – most embitteringly when you think of the success of Doctor in the House and Doctor at Sea – never sell at all; these are Fistulas on the Vistula and its sequel, Hand over Fistula.

One of the most endearing features of book trade is its galaxy of titles, all gallimaufried together. Notice how many facets of human existence lie cheek by jowl in the booksellers’ lists:

Carr, T. H., Power Station Practice

Carriage of Goods by Sea Act

Carroll, L., Alice in Wonderland

Cary, M., A History of Rome

Casanova, J., Memoirs

FRIDAY

Pay-day.

Likewise market-day. We were busy most of the morning with Dave and Mr B. away. Yesterday Arch Rexine put thirty duds from the Slaughterhouse on to our outside shelves; twelve of them sold before I went to lunch. A lot of Ruskins have gone. I’ve noticed before how old and rural-looking men buy Ruskin. These are folk unswayed by fashion. That’s a thought which often worries me: aren’t booksellers as much ruled by fashion as milliners? Inside or outside the head, the way of the world is the only way.

Queue of charabancs in Cross Street after lunch; trippers come specially to view the Castle. Mrs Callow said that once when she was on holiday at Eastbourne with her husband they went on a Mystery Tour and before they knew it were back here looking at the Castle!

‘Hope you bought a guide?’ Miss Ellis said.

‘Not us. We slipped home to get a cup of tea and see if the cat was all right.’

SATURDAY

Dave is pretty illiterate, even for a bookseller’s assistant. Had a card from him saying he was in London staying with a friend ‘who is a bit of a rough daemon’. Conjures up an intriguing, mephistophelean figure. Surprisingly, Dave appeared while we were having tea break. He had had enough of London after looking round Foyle’s and Charing X Road, and cycled home this morning. He cycles everywhere: next week he plans to do Reading, Oxford, Cheltenham, Birmingham. He visits all the bookshops. That’s funny really, because you’d hardly call Dave a keen type.