May 10th. I meet Thomas John, estate agent. He shows me a place but advises against it. ‘Position is everything for your business,’ he says; and I’m sure he’s right. Then he tells me that a baby-linen shop in a better position might be closing down. He goes to find out, while I walk along the cliffs in the sun. On my return he tells me it is indeed closing ‘but the owner won’t be hustled.’ I leave Brixham, catching a bus an hour later than I had intended.
The bus takes me to Kingswear and I stand on the ferry slip looking across the river to my first view of Dartmouth sparkling in the sunshine on the other side. A dead town? From here it could hardly look more inviting. I cross on the car ferry, walk along a narrow street – and there on the corner facing me is the very place I have come to see. What a position! I call on Victor Newton, estate agent, and he tells me that the owner waited until 11 o’clock but has now gone out and won’t be back until 7.30. We go to inspect. It is called Fairfax Sports and is as crammed with goods as a stall on market day, so that what you don’t trip over on the floor you bump your head against hanging from the ceiling; all of which makes it seem smaller and darker than it probably really is. We arrange to meet again at 7.30 and I go exploring. There are one or two stationers that sell a few books but, as we had guessed, W. H. Smith is the only genuine bookshop: so that’s all right. I wander through the narrow streets and then down to the sea and feel very happy. I like it all: town, river, sea, hills, woods, position of shop and its price. Strolling along a narrow lane I notice a blackbird’s nest and then a hedge sparrow’s: a good omen?
Supper, booked for 7 o’clock, doesn’t arrive until 7.15. I bolt it but even so am ten minutes late for my appointment; and in those ten minutes another prospective buyer has slipped in before me. So Newton and I have to stand outside in the road, I in an agony of suspense and cursing myself that this is the second appointment I have made and missed. At last the door opens and a man comes out. We hurry in. What is the position? He likes it, we are told, and he is prepared to buy freehold, goodwill and stock for £5000 . . . but. . . . And it is this ‘but’ that makes my firm offer of £3500 for freehold alone acceptable. No time to consult my solicitor. No time to arrange a survey. No time even to bring Lesley down to see it. I must decide now – or risk losing it. Help! So I ring her up. ‘I’ve got to give an answer straight away.’ And two hundred miles away a faint voice answers: ‘I leave it to you. If you like it, we’d better have it.’ Half an hour later Montague has summoned his solicitor and the three of us are in the kitchen signing documents while Mrs Montague is at the sink and younger Montagues come and go with a great shouting and banging of doors. . . . What a way to buy a bookshop! I go to bed with my head in a whirl.
May 18th. A hectic day, beginning at 9.45 with my BBC talk, ‘My Ascent of Mont Blanc’6 and followed at 12 o’clock by our journey to Dartmouth. This time we both go. The train takes us to Kingswear and then we cross the river by boat to Dartmouth station on the other side. It is not quite Lesley’s first visit. She came once in her father’s boat on a sailing holiday many years ago. All the same I am nervous she might not approve of the shop. Luckily she does. We call on the Montagues, look round and ask a hundred questions. At the back of the shop is a dark and curious room which we can use as an office. Next-door, and belonging to us, is a separate lock-up shop, rented to an electrician. On the first floor and reached by a very narrow staircase are two rooms. On the right a diningroom/kitchen, a pleasant room with a glimpse of the river at the end of the road from one window, and from another a view up a hill towards distant woods. This is really their living-room. Next-door to it, on the left, is what I suppose would be called their front parlour, respectably furnished with a three piece suite but clearly never used – not even for the signing of contracts! Upstairs are two bedrooms and a bathroom; and, at a bend on the stairs, no bigger than a cupboard, and obviously put in as an afterthought, is the lavatory. Decoration is dreadful: dark green paint, dados and jazzy wallpaper. Altogether there’s masses to be done and we decide to get builders to tackle the outside. I’ll do the inside. Shop first, of course: the awful wallpaper and paint upstairs will have to wait their turn. I call on Michelmores, the builder I had been recommended, and arrange for them to send us an estimate.
May 24th. Visit Longhurst’s bookshop in High Holborn and ask them if they would like an unpaid assistant for a few days. They wouldn’t, and suggested I try the great Mr Wilson of Bumpus. So I call there a little nervously, but he is nice and allows me to look around and take notes – provided I don’t tell anybody who I am or what I’m doing.
May 25th. List-making at Bumpus’s.
May 31st. In reply to our letters several publishers have now sent us catalogues; one or two have written; Blackie have refused to open an account with us; Customs and Excise have given helpful advice about Purchase Tax. A letter from Richard Bell says: ‘I think it is very brave of you at the present time . . .’ and I suppose that by ‘brave’ he really means ‘rash’ or possibly even ‘foolish’. The other day I called on Alan White of Methuen. He was pleasant and friendly, of course, but he too talked about ‘these difficult times’. On the whole, however, people are enthusiastic, almost envious. And certainly the idea of a little shop by the sea does sound very attractive. It will be hard work – but who cares?
We have now examined many bookshops both for their stock and for the way they display it. I have made what I think is a good list of basic stock; and I have designed some display stands and have ideas about shelving. Today I made a model of our window fitting, which was useful as it showed up one or two faults.
June 15th. We have continued our listing. Going round bookshops and trying not to look too suspicious we have completed our subject lists. These we have now rearranged, under publishers, giving us a fair idea of what we will be wanting to buy from each. I have also planned our shelves, calculated total length and thus reached an approximate figure for the total value of books we can stock. Including window display it comes to £725. Lesley and I then independently divided this up into the money to be allocated to each subject – and reached almost exactly the same answers. The actual shelves are a problem. I went to a timber-merchant in the Euston Road and learned that for most wood you need to have a permit. Would I be able to get one in Dartmouth? I decided not to take the risk and bought 230 feet of off-permit French poplar. This cost me £10 and will be travelling down to Devon with us. Add it to the existing shelving I’m buying off Montague for £5 and we’ll have enough.
It seems to be generally agreed that one can’t survive on books alone. So we have decided to sell a few ‘fancy goods’ (awful expression) as well – some of which I hope to make myself. Book ends, for instance. Today I made a cigarette box. It took about six hours, but should eventually take much less – say four. Materials cost three shillings. I’d like to sell it for £1. But can I charge less than five shillings an hour for labour?
Lesley stops work today – I mean resigns from her job – and we celebrate with a bottle of wine.
July 15th. We have now finished our tour of publishers. From some we just collected catalogues; at others we talked to Sales Managers. All were kind and helpful. One or two gave advice, urging us not just to sit in our shop waiting for customers to-come to us, but to go out and find them. Terms vary. Most publishers only give you 331/3% discount if you order two copies of a book; a few, like Collins, allow 331/3% on single copies; while a few want you to order three or even six copies. Some asked for references, others didn’t bother. Some had showrooms, others not. Top marks so far go to Collins.
After two rather exhausting weeks of this, we visited the Paxtons again for a few days, learning a bit more about all the paperwork we are going to have to grapple with; learning also something about secondhand books, which we might decide to sell. Then we went to France for a quick holiday: probably our last for many years.
July 30th. Lesley has departed for Dartmouth and I am alone with our packing. Our stock orders have no
w all been sent off. Mysteriously we left out Churchill’s The Hinge of Fate and – of all books – one published by Batsford called Dartmouth. However, this has now been put right. Michelmores for all their friendliness never sent us our estimate, so we have written to another builder called Watts. We have at last been officially ‘recognized’ by the book trade. (Without recognition we couldn’t have got trade terms.) We have met the Secretary of the Booksellers Association, who happened to be a friend of our neighbour Felix Barker. And with Wilson7 and Christina Foyle agreeing to be our sponsors, we found ourselves members of the Booksellers Association by return of post.
August 15th. We have now been here two weeks – though it doesn’t seem like it. The move was successful though exhausting. Lesley left two days ahead of me and found poor Mrs Montague waist deep in chaos. The chaos at Chancery Lane was only ankle deep; and I threw away a lot of it to the accompaniment of comments from Mrs Roberts, our caretaker. The removal men were very good. The foreman’s brother-in-law kept tropical fish and this established an immediate bond between us. At 3.30 I and our own fish caught the Paddington train.
The furniture arrived the following day and virtually none of it could get up our staircase. So after some discussion it was decided to remove the dining-room window, park the van beneath it, haul the stuff up on to the roof of the van, and then pass it through the window. This, the foreman explained to me, would be very heavy work, and it would have been much easier if they had gone to get a block and tackle. But this would have cost me a lot extra. I got the message.
The shop has vast windows, and, working inside, one feels terribly naked and exposed. So my first task was to whitewash them over. ‘What are they doing that for?’ a small child asks its mother; and two boys pressed their faces to the glass while I painted smaller and smaller circles round their noses. Privacy at last! My second task was to get rid of all Montague’s drawing pins and crepe paper. Never was a shop so full of both, so that in a little while what had seemed emptiness was knee deep in the stuff and the soles of our shoes were studded all over. After that, soap and water. Then grey distemper. The grey goes quite nicely with the existing not-too-bad yellow ceiling. Then shelves and stands. Lesley and I slave away inside. Watts has sent an estimate for the outside but has not yet started work.
August 24th. Today Lesley removes our protective whitewash and, though still closed, we are visible to the outside world in all our glory. Faces peer in. Mostly children and old ladies. Two boys ask: ‘Is this going to be a library?’ ‘No,’ says Lesley. ‘A bookshop.’ And she almost adds, ‘I’m afraid.’ ‘We can buy books?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oo – oo – oo!’ and they hug each other and dance a jig. An old man enquires of the world ‘Is this a free lending library?’ and gets no reply. We put on our window lights after dark and go out to inspect ourselves. What a nice looking shop! Pity it is still nameless, however. Watts has managed to finish our painting in time but has not yet produced our fascia board.
The other day came a letter from Enid Blyton saying she had heard we were opening a bookshop and enclosing her catalogue. It lists over 200 of her books, coming from twenty different publishers. What a woman!
I wrote back to remind her that very many years ago she had presented me with a copy of The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies, which in the end I almost knew by heart; and I asked if she would care to send a photograph of herself to go in our window. In reply I received three photographs, the latest version of her Book of Bunnies, two letters and a postcard.
Over the street is a newsagent, stationer and – yes – bookseller! with a small stock of children’s books and paperbacks to prove it. Inside it is dark and gloomy and, behind a counter, scarcely visible in the twilight, stand two elderly, gloomy men. They never smile at me. They never even speak. Just hand me my News Chronicle and take my money. Oh, dear! Are they bitter about our arrival here? Are we going to be enemies? Will there be war between us? Thus were we imagining it; and then yesterday one of them came up to me and said: ‘I want to wish you the best of luck.’ And he really meant it. How easy it is to misjudge people.
How easy too to misjudge buildings. Ours, because it looked so smooth and square, I imagined to have been built between the wars, built of brick and plastered over. Inside, Montague’s decorations somehow reinforced this impression. How wrong I was I discovered when attempting to peel off some of his wallpaper. Underneath was more wallpaper, and underneath yet more, layer under layer going back through the decades. I peeled away expecting eventually to reach solid brick – and instead came to the outside world. Help! I hurriedly replaced it all and resolved never again to probe too deeply. We are in fact a very old building. Our front wall is ‘half-timbered’, wooden frame with lath and plaster on either side. Where the plaster is soft and crumbling you can put a knife right through.
Percy Russell brought us a letter today. He is the author of Dartmouth, the Batsford book we so nearly didn’t buy. He wrote to wish us luck, implying that we would need it, for Dartmouth, he said, was not an easy town to make money in. This letter coupled with a long article in our local paper about the town’s declining population and prosperity left us momentarily depressed. But soon we cheered up, for now we can imagine ourselves as Dartmouth’s saviours. The worse things are, the greater is the challenge, the greater the scope for improvement. Can the Milnes bring new life to a decaying town? No harm in dreaming so.
August 25th. At 9 o’clock, without ceremony though with trousers newly pressed, the Harbour Bookshop opens its doors. We had sent letters to several of Dartmouth’s leading citizens (though not necessarily their most enthusiastic book-buyers); we had put an advertisement in the local paper (and their reporter had come round for an interview); and that was about it. At 9:15 we have our first customer, who buys a couple of ‘Thrift’ books. Then nothing until around 10.30 when there is a sudden influx of shoppers, mostly locals, and business is brisk. ‘How nice to see a really good bookshop,’ they say. ‘What a wonderful collection of books.’ And the children say ‘Oo Mummy, aren’t they lovely!’ Two little girls spend hours looking at everything, occasionally glancing at us and then telling each other ‘not to spoil the nice books’ – to show how well behaved they are being. Several people introduce themselves. Will we remember their names when next we see them? They are all complimentary and kind and make us feel welcome to their town. Our sales include three copies of The River Dart, two Mazo de la Roches, several Zodiac Books and lots of Swiss flower cards. At 5.30 tired but happy we close our doors and count our takings. Twelve guineas. Not bad for a start?
6. Not Just Books
SECOND-HAND BOOKS
In the early 1950s you could walk round almost any small town and, if you kept your eyes above shop window level, you would have no difficulty in finding a bookseller. Lower your eyes and you would most probably discover that he was selling not books but stationery or toys or tobacco or fancy goods. No doubt he had started off with books on his shelves and good intentions in his heart; but over the years the ‘other goods’ had crept in, proved more popular, proved more profitable, and gradually elbowed their way along, until in the end all that remained of the bookshop was a revolving stand of paperback thrillers and romances or (at Christmas-time) a pile of children’s annuals: that – and a fascia board which for one reason or another ignored the changing scene within.
We knew that we too would have to sell ‘other goods’, but we were determined that – when eventually Mr Watts produced it – our fascia board would announce not only what we were but what we would always be: booksellers. So if this chapter is about all the other things that from time to time we sold or did, it is just to get them out of the way, so that bookselling can then have an uninterrupted chapter all to itself.
The obvious accompaniments to new books were of course second-hand books. Indeed many people, hearing that we were to become booksellers, assumed that by this we meant second-hand booksellers. Also it gave our parents a chance to help us on our way with various un
wanted volumes from their own shelves. These gleanings – our opening stock – travelled down with us in the furniture van. However, it was not until the end of September that we made our first and most important purchase and felt justified in adding the words ‘and Second-hand Booksellers’ to our visiting card. At a local auction and for an outlay of two-and-six we acquired three sackloads of books, bore them home, tipped them out onto the dining-room floor and crouched down to inspect them.
They were all old. To our inexperienced eye most of them seemed to have little but their age to recommend them, and so we gave them prices ranging from 2d to 5/–. Among them were some Bibles, very large and heavy, and these were our first problem; for it seemed as wrong to price them at 6d each – which we thought was all we were likely to get for them – as it was to put them out with the salvage; and so in the end we offered them to the vicar. Then there were half a dozen rather more attractive-looking volumes published between 1750 and 1850, and for these we chose prices between 5/– and £1; and finally there was an atlas of the world published in 1815 and a book of Victorian fashion plates. It was Lesley who recognized this last as our winner. And here we met our second problem: how could we discover its value? Was it worth £5 or £20? We sought in vain for advice. In the end we just made a guess, advertised it in the appropriate trade paper, and from the number of booksellers who wrote to us (one of them even sending a cable from America) realized that we had guessed too low.
Nevertheless our half-crown investment had shown us a very good profit and with such beginner’s luck we were encouraged to continue. So we went to auctions and we were invited to private houses, and it was exciting, because you never knew what you might find. But always there remained this problem that with the better books we had no means of knowing how much we ought to offer or how much hope to get. Another difficulty was that as we had no car we had to rely on bus and muscle to get our purchases home. So that a complete set of Waverley Novels from a house at the top of the town or a miscellaneous collection of rather battered and smelly children’s books from an isolated cottage on the other side of the river really did earn the modest price we sold them for when the effort of transport had been taken into account. However, in those days we were young and strong and the buses ran more frequently than they do today. And in fact it was the people who brought books to us that were the greater trial: the frail old ladies who had struggled across the ferry bearing treasures that were surely worth a fortune, for they had been in the family so long and the esses were like effs. Could I bring myself to say that they were worth practically nothing? Did they really have to cart them all the way home again – with the day’s shopping too, and in the rain? So in the end I usually paid a price which, though very much less than had been hoped for, was also very much more than I reckoned they were worth.
The Path Through the Trees Page 15