by David Mason
There was an English actor named Marty Feldman who suffered, I believe, an eye defect which caused him to have bulbous eyes. And with this as comic equipment he sustained an acting career. The first time I saw him in a film I thought, “It’s Honsberger’s son,” because that’s exactly how Honsberger looked.
I wanted to ask him if his biplane was parked in the backyard, or if maybe he was dressed for a trip to some alien world in another universe, but my natural book greed kept my smart-alec instincts reined in.
We descended to a basement so full of books it was difficult to move, where Gord and I rummaged for a couple of hours, piling up huge stacks of books. At one point I thought I would test Gord’s admonition about Honsberger, for despite his outfit and his disconcertingly magnified eyes, he seemed so gentle that I couldn’t imagine that what Gord had told me could be true. I spied a hardcover edition of The Third Eye—in fact it was the first edition, the only one I’ve seen before or since—by the Tibetan Lama Lobsang Rampa, who had started life as a pipe fitter in St. Catharines or Manchester or some such place. “That’s a good book,” I essayed to Honsberger, holding it up under his nose, which one had to do, for even with the magnifying goggles it was obvious he was near blind.
His whole demeanor changed. He drew himself up and focused his bulbous eyes on me, glaring.
“That is a very important book. I would need to get $100.00 for that book,” he said, his manner now both menacing and confrontational, his magnified eyes unblinking.
“Oh,” I quickly replied, “I know it is. I’ve read it twice. I only wish I could afford it. Are you sure it’s only $100.00? That seems a very cheap price.”
Mr. Honsberger was mollified and reverted back to the gentle dreamer. Sure enough, when he totaled up our purchases everything was 25¢ or 50¢.
We left Mr. Honsberger content with the real treasures.
Chapter 5
My Second Mentor:
Jerry Sherlock and Joseph Patrick Books
By now I was becoming known to the Toronto trade through Marty and Gord Norman, and I started getting job offers, although I couldn’t understand why. I was certainly no catch, as I knew practically nothing and had no experience. Much later I figured it out. The pool of available people around the bookworld then in Toronto was made up of eccentrics, misfits and losers, so that when someone came along who seemed halfway sane and presentable everyone tried to hire them. One day I was in Old Favorites and Lou Morris, who hadn’t hired me in my first attempt to enter the trade years earlier—because I couldn’t type—offered me a job.
“I still can’t type, Lou,” I said.
“I’ll get you doing other things,” he said.
I didn’t know if I should. I had begun to see that, great as it was for browsing or scouting, I wasn’t going to learn a lot in Old Favorites. Already influenced by Gord Norman, I wanted to specialize in Modern Firsts, but it was obvious I’d be on my own if I accepted; nobody at Old Favorites knew or cared about first editions. Still, I figured, I should accept just to get access to all those books. I would have been able to scout for books as I worked, a decided advantage.
Lou and Kay Morris were going on holidays for two weeks so we agreed I would give my answer when they returned.
In the meantime I’d been amassing a small pile of Canadiana. When I had met Jerry Sherlock he had told me I should offer him Canadian books. Like all good dealers he was known to pay well, making good offers—sometimes very high ones. We ignorant scouts lived in anticipation that Jerry would shock us going through our pile by offering $150.00 for what we had considered a $5.00 book. And he often did so. I had a couple of shopping bags full of Canadiana saved up, all bought because they were either very cheap or seemed interesting. But the neophyte lacks the necessary experience to know the one essential for rare books—rarity. The rules of condition can be learned quickly, as can relative importance to some degree, but scarcity, that other essential component of the three prime requisites of rare books, needs years of experience to learn.
I visited Jerry’s shop at Wellington and Yonge; I had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful. The premises had previously been some sort of outlet for fine China and had built-in wooden display counters on the walls, which worked wonderfully to display antiquarian books. As I later learned it was also very cheap, being owned by one of the big banks, which intended to build a new head office across the road. They were just keeping it rented until they needed it.
It looked like a rare bookshop should look; all dark old wood and old leather.
Jerry bought about half my books and then offered me a job. I didn’t know what to say. I was stricken with indecision and guilt. Lou had asked me first. Could I be one of those superficial greedy opportunists who would eschew proper behaviour and decency for his own personal benefit?
I went to Marty for advice.
“It’s a no-brainer, Dave. If you want to be a bookseller, take Jerry’s offer. You’ll learn a hundred times more there. And a hundred times faster.”
I phoned Jerry and accepted, but still felt constrained to go to Lou after his return and apologize for my crass opportunism. Lou took it well, with the same gentle acceptance with which he seemed to accept all human foibles. I actually think he even agreed with me.
I worked for Jerry for two years, way too short a time to learn much about books, but in retrospect I see that what was really important to learn, I did learn: how to approach things if one wants to be a real bookseller, a professional.
Before I met Jerry Sherlock I already disliked him; and I was sure that when I did meet him I was going to despise him. This was because for the few months, between my beginning to scout for books and meeting Jerry, other scouts and booksellers would often ask if I’d met him yet, always adding, when I said that I hadn’t, that when I did, I would like him. He’s a great guy, they would say. And so many people said that so often, that I got sick of hearing about this Mr. Nice Guy. I was sure he would turn out to be one of those professional
phonies, who pretend congeniality, but when one gets past their hypocritical façade are revealed as self-centered egoists. But, as so often is the case when one prejudges, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Another problem which I figured would ensure my dislike of him was the constant references I heard beforehand describing Jerry as a devout Catholic. I was an atheist, had been since my eleventh or twelfth year, so I expected, again, the pompous superiority one gets from the true believer with all the answers. But Jerry was none of the things I had expected.
When we met he was friendly, completely unpretentious and exhibiting none of the pompous superiority that I had expected from someone so often described as the most important bookseller in Toronto (it was only later, when I had some experience, that I realized that he was the best bookseller in Canada and, along with Bernard Amtmann, one of the two most important this country has had so far.)
It’s hard for me to try and describe Jerry Sherlock because knowing him has been so important to me on so many levels. He has affected me as strongly as anyone I have ever known. His character affected me professionally and personally—he was my true mentor and my most important teacher, but also after being my mentor he became and remains a close friend.
Insofar as Jerry had faults they were pretty minor, except for one which caused constant irritation, but sometimes also great amusement to his friends. I expect it wasn’t so amusing to his family. This was his memory. Jerry was the perfect example of the absent-minded professor; he would forget anything and everything, incessantly. Everything except books.
After I’d been working for him for a few months I applied to become an associate member of the ABAC, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada, something that was then straightforward. An associate member of the ABAC had no voting privileges. It was really just a way to attend meetings and have the association’s initials on your business card, a small conv
enience when dealing with bankers or crossing borders, or sometimes when buying books privately. All you needed to become an associate was to be a full-time employee of a full member and for $25.00 a year you were eligible. The problem was that your employer had to apply for you, but Jerry kept forgetting. It became very vexing. Before every ABAC meeting I would press Jerry to put me up, resorting to notes after a few times. I had never joined anything since Boy Scouts (which I abandoned quickly after I discovered the pool hall) and the Bookbinder’s Union.
But I knew by now that I was born to be a bookseller and I badly wanted some tangible mark of my admittance to that noble society of peddlers of culture.
But Jerry always forgot to apply on my behalf. He would return from an ABAC meeting and start to give me the latest trade gossip, when I only wanted to hear if I was a member.
When I could no longer contain my eagerness and asked, he would become embarrassed and admit that he’d forgotten. I finally had to ask a friend, already a member, to remind Jerry openly, right in the meeting, before I was finally allowed in.
You couldn’t stay mad at Jerry for those lapses—they were obviously beyond his control, and when another incident occurred he was always sheepishly embarrassed. It must have been truly difficult for his family.
His daughter Anne, who herself became a bookseller and once rented part of Jerry’s store for her stock and that of her business partner, once issued a catalogue with a rather strong note, one I’ve never seen before or since in a bookseller’s catalogue. It went something like this:
When ordering from this catalogue under no circumstances leave a message with any person answering the phone other than the proprietor. Certain people here never pass on messages.
Jerry would extend very generous discounts to other booksellers, especially beginners, and then forget he had done so. Once, two newish booksellers came into the shop and Jerry gave them over 50% off and told them to pay later.
They never paid at all and when they appeared again a year later he was doing the same when I whispered to him, “Jerry, these sons-of-bitches haven’t paid you for the last time yet.”
“Oh,” he shrugged, “didn’t they? Well I’m sure they will when they can.”
I made sure they did.
Some of Jerry’s memory lapses became the stuff of legend amongst his friends. A couple of them I told for years, often right in front of Jerry. He would give the same sheepish laugh, happy to see his friends amused, resigned to his reputation for forgetfulness.
The best one he told me himself. It seems that one day, a few years after he and Bernice had moved into their new home in High Park, he was riding the streetcar and met an old neighbour from the previous neighbourhood. During the pleasantries the woman inquired of Jerry how many children he and Bernice now had. “Five,” replied Jerry. The neighbour congratulated him. Then by great coincidence the same old neighbour met Bernice a week or so later on the same streetcar and greeted Bernice by congratulating her on her five children.
Bernice was forced to inform her old neighbour that they actually had six children. Jerry tried claiming that this had only occurred because when he had met the neighbour he had been engrossed in reading a bookseller’s catalogue and was justly distracted by the bargains it contained. This made his friends laugh even louder.
Sometimes, in the store, the phone would ring and it would be one of Jerry’s kids calling for something. After a bit Jerry would have to say, “What’s your name?” or “Which one are you?”
I only stopped telling stories about Jerry’s memory lapses when I began experiencing the same problems myself. Now my memory is almost as faulty as his was then, and I find myself doing the same sheepish laugh and attempting the same pathetic excuses about too much useless arcana in my head.
But even though Jerry couldn’t be counted on to remember why he had gone from the back of the store to the front, he could supply you endless details about any Canadian book ever published, its scarcity, its importance, and its value.
On my first day at Jerry’s shop I got my first lesson in how previous experience in a different context can be important later. Just as scouting golf balls prepared me for scouting books (and caddying, incidentally, prepared me for dealing with the wealthy as well. Caddies, like the most menial of servants, are largely unnoticed—invisible, in fact—and therefore they see their wealthy employers, not only without the outward signs of wealth, their expensive suits, but also, golf being what it is, they often witness character defects without the façade of self-control. There is nothing like golf to bring out the worst in people), other jobs taken out of necessity prepared me with experiences that became invaluable in entirely different contexts years later.
One such stint found me, as I mentioned earlier, as a shipper for a couple of years for Dr. Scholl’s, the foot comfort man. I would ship out the corn plasters, and I became very good at constructing neat, compact parcels. So when, on that first day, Jerry explained that the first thing one learned in an antiquarian bookstore was how to properly pack books, I told him I already knew how to pack, thanks to Dr. Scholl. He was surprised, but skeptical. He watched me closely as I made a package, carefully slicing and folding in the ends until a perfect brick-like package resulted. Jerry couldn’t believe his luck. An apprentice who not only wasn’t a simpleton (except about Canadiana) but one who could pack! In fact, he admonished me, “Dave, you packed that too well. We don’t slice the ends, we force the excess corrugated cardboard into the ends. Your package is beautiful, but that much care is not necessary.”
The packing of books is not only the first thing an apprentice is taught, it is one of the most important. Real booksellers believe that they have a moral responsibility to ensure that a client receives a book in exactly the state it was in when it was on his shelf. A very good indication of how professional any bookseller is can be ascertained by how they ship their books. If the books are carelessly packed it is safe to assume that such people are probably prone to cutting other corners as well. And you should assume as much. I do.
We get compliments regularly, from all over the world, on our packing. The best ones come as veiled complaints when someone, pretending to be irritated, informs us it took fifteen minutes to open the package.
Working at Joseph Patrick Books, it turns out, taught me plenty, even if it wasn’t what I thought I was learning at the time.
I wasn’t really interested in Canadiana, probably a residue from my intense boredom as my ninth- and tenth-grade teachers had attempted to teach me that dates and names constituted history. It was only much later, when I read Pierre Berton’s marvellous popularizations, that I came to see that our history contains as many fascinating characters as any country, anywhere. Ever since, I have been reading Canadian historians. I give them, just as I give novels, fifty pages (or three chapters.) If they haven’t got my attention by then, too bad—that’s it. Life’s too short, there’s too many books—too many worthy books.
What has to be learned in a rare bookstore is overwhelming in the beginning. My lack of interest in Canadiana caused me to believe I was ignorant. People would come into Jerry’s shop, ask a question, and my standard response would be, “I’m sorry I’ve only been here a short time. I don’t really know anything.”
Finally Jerry called me aside. “Dave,” he said, “it’s all very well to be honest, but what you should realize is that, little as you think you know, you already know more than most of them. I don’t want you to lie, but why don’t you just not say anything?”
This was pretty good advice. From where I sit now, I see that I had actually learned a fair bit, even if I hadn’t yet caught on that it was these customers who were already teaching me as much as Jerry was. People who collect books start with an interest which, coupled with that weird acquisitive instinct common to all collectors, becomes transformed into a passion—often a compulsion—which can and does result in the expenditur
e of lots of money. Significant money, even for single acquisitions. It also confers a commensurate level of knowledge, a fact seldom understood by outsiders. A person who spends $500.00 or $1,000.00 or more for an historical artifact changes their perspective of what is really important. Many collectors pursue books to the exclusion of almost everything else.
The greatest privately owned collection of Canadiana I ever saw was formed by a postman, and this in the days before their incessant blackmail of the rest of us rendered postmen well-to-do. This man lived in a tiny rundown house which hadn’t seen paint in many years. Certainly his collection was probably worth three times as much as the house.
At Jerry’s I started to meet serious collectors, some very successful businessmen and some as eccentric as a lot of the scouts I knew from the Crips and Sally Ann.
In about my second week I started to plumb the depths of this eccentricity. One day that week Jerry said to me, “Well Dave, I have an appointment, I’ll see you later. Just take messages, write everything down, you’ll be fine.”
I was terrified. I was in charge. I was sure something would happen that I wouldn’t know how to deal with, and Jerry would lose money or something. About an hour in the phone rang.
“Do you buy books?” asked a woman.
“Depends what they are,” I replied. (I had learned that at least, the first answer, always, to that common question.)
“They’re Canadian books, all of them. There’s around 10,000 of them, my husband’s collection,” she said.