The Passing of a Bookseller

He was still looking for that last volume. If anyone could have found it, he could. That’s how good he was at his trade. As I stood at the graveside on a bright spring day, on that exposed ridge above the Evenlode valley, I supposed that now I would never possess a copy – that the one book for which I had been searching so long had eluded me. Then I felt guilty that I was thinking of myself and not of him. It was, after all, his day.

We had not imagined it would come so soon. The last time I had seen John Stephens, sprawled out on his bed in the Radcliffe Infirmary, he had seemed positively cheerful. As the snow flurried outside, and night very literally fell, his chief concern had been for his wife, Ann. He himself seemed demob happy. The word ‘champagne’, I remembered now, had featured large in the conversation. He would have been greatly cheered by the turnout for his funeral – college friends like myself, acquaintances from the trade, a large part of the village. He collected friends as well as books and had notched up to see him off several professors, a Scottish judge, a well-known actor, a Times columnist and, suitably enough, an ‘Obituaries’ editor. A good part of the congregation he had actually employed in his shop in Oxford at one time or another. That even included the clergyman who was conducting the service and who now mostly officiated in the Welsh valleys amongst what, he reminded us, were ‘God’s own people’. Of these, by birth, John himself was one. If John had seemed to live for the day, it now became clear he had shown considerable foresight in choosing a village with a church to die for. Like the countryside around, it had matured with the centuries, most of which had left some mark upon it. Inside, the limewash had been removed to reveal traces of the paintings which had once graced the walls. At the back was a fragment of dragon’s wing – perhaps a vision to threaten those who were inattentive to divine service – and over the chancel arch a palimpsest in which the medieval work showed through the superimposed Royal Arms, themselves now faded almost beyond recognition. In the surround to one window on a dark ochre ground and holding her kettle was St Sitha, the patron saint of housewives. Who, I wondered, was the patron saint of booksellers? John appeared also to have chosen much of the service: Henry Vaughan’s ‘I saw Eternity the other night’ and the Welsh hymn ‘Y Byd i Grist’. To be honest, I had always considered John’s Welshness an amiable if slightly exasperating affectation, just as I had the, now I came to think of it, Welsh metaphysics for which he had a taste. This had combined with his love of books to blossom forth in his bibliographies of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley. It was, accordingly, a revelation to discover from the Address that he could actually read Welsh. The uncomfortable realization now dawned that he almost certainly understood the philosophy he would expound by the hour and by the pint, and which I found so unfathomable. It is always daunting to discover there are depths one cannot plumb and worlds one cannot see. Not that John would have been portentous about it. He wore his seriousness lightly. Perhaps that was why he had arranged for a friend to play from The Goldberg Variations towards the end of the service. He had foreseen the need for something to lift our spirits. And, of course, the Welsh are known to be a musical people. It was not the least of his singularities that his small cottage boasted a grand piano. Now, the music rippled through the church, as crystal clear as the Evenlode nearby on its passage to the River Thames. So it was that we buried our bookseller. And as we did so, one of the village dogs, excited by all the activity, raced joyously about the churchyard and itself very nearly fell into the grave. The incongruity of this would have delighted John. He loved the commingling of the sacred and the profane. One of his favourite anecdotes, of which he never tired, was of the eulogy of a chapel preacher in a Welsh rural newspaper which, due to the misplacing of two lines of type, amidst a sea of pious platitudes and before inevitably declaring that ‘he will be greatly missed’, suddenly announced, ‘For Sale, Gas Cooker in good order. Any reasonable offer accepted!’ The Professor of English from Durham, who had read the Henry Vaughan poem, once he had finished laughing at the dog, leaned over and observed to me: ‘That was a surprising tune John selected for his departure from the church. I’ve never heard Johann Strauss at a funeral before. I thought the pall-bearers were going to break into a jog. Fancy choosing a march.’ ‘Yes, it was a touch theatrical,’ I agreed. ‘John obviously wanted to keep things jaunty.’ If the village church had meant a good deal to him, so also had the pub. Indeed, John was more often to be found in the pub than in his shop. A scrum of villagers had gathered there to do him honour. In fact, there seemed to be even more of them there than in the church. In these congenial surroundings I found myself talking to a Professor of Mining, a subject I would never have guessed possessed a university chair. ‘I was drilling yesterday near Marlborough.’ ‘Not for oil, surely?’ ‘No, for aggregate. It’s used by industry.’ Clearly, there was more beneath the surface hereabouts than might have been expected. It turned out that this was not a chance encounter. He had been shown considerable foresight in choosing a village with a church to die for. Like the countryside around, it had matured with the centuries, most of which had left some mark upon it. Inside, the limewash had been removed to reveal traces of the paintings which had once graced the walls. At the back was a fragment of dragon’s wing – perhaps a vision to threaten those who were inattentive to divine service – and over the chancel arch a palimpsest in which the medieval work showed through the superimposed Royal Arms, themselves now faded almost beyond recognition. In the surround to one window on a dark ochre ground and holding her kettle was St Sitha, the patron saint of housewives. Who, I wondered, was the patron saint of booksellers? John appeared also to have chosen much of the service: Henry Vaughan’s ‘I saw Eternity the other night’ and the Welsh hymn ‘Y Byd i Grist’. To be honest, I had always considered John’s Welshness an amiable if slightly exasperating affectation, just as I had the, now I came to think of it, Welsh metaphysics for which he had a taste. This had combined with his love of books to blossom forth in his bibliographies of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley. It was, accordingly, a revelation to discover from the Address that he could actually read Welsh. The uncomfortable realization now dawned that he almost certainly understood the philosophy he would expound by the hour and by the pint, and which I found so unfathomable. It is always daunting to discover there are depths one cannot plumb and worlds one cannot see. Not that John would have been portentous about it. He wore his seriousness lightly. Perhaps that was why he had arranged for a friend to play from The Goldberg Variations towards the end of the service. He had foreseen the need for something to lift our spirits. And, of course, the Welsh are known to be a musical people. It was not the least of his singularities that his small cottage boasted a grand piano. Now, the music rippled through the church, as crystal clear as the Evenlode nearby on its passage to the River Thames. So it was that we buried our bookseller. And as we did so, one of the village dogs, excited by all the activity, raced joyously about the churchyard and itself very nearly fell into the grave. The incongruity of this would have delighted John. He loved the commingling of the sacred and the profane. One of his favourite anecdotes, of which he never tired, was of the eulogy of a chapel preacher in a Welsh rural newspaper which, due to the misplacing of two lines of type, amidst a sea of pious platitudes and before inevitably declaring that ‘he will be greatly missed’, suddenly announced, ‘For Sale, Gas Cooker in good order. Any reasonable offer accepted!’ The Professor of English from Durham, who had read the Henry Vaughan poem, once he had finished laughing at the dog, leaned over and observed to me: ‘That was a surprising tune John selected for his departure from the church. I’ve never heard Johann Strauss at a funeral before. I thought the pall-bearers were going to break into a jog. Fancy choosing a march.’ ‘Yes, it was a touch theatrical,’ I agreed. ‘John obviously wanted to keep things jaunty.’ If the village church had meant a good deal to him, so also had the pub. Indeed, John was more often to be found in the pub than in his shop. A scrum of villagers had gathered there to do him honour. In fact, there seemed to be even more of them there than in the church. In these congenial surroundings I found myself talking to a Professor of Mining, a subject I would never have guessed possessed a university chair. ‘I was drilling yesterday near Marlborough.’ ‘Not for oil, surely?’ ‘No, for aggregate. It’s used by industry.’ Clearly, there was more beneath the surface hereabouts than might have been expected. It turned out that this was not a chance encounter. He had been looking out for me. Ann had asked him if he would give me a lift to the station. ‘Your train isn’t for another hour. Why don’t you come back to the house and I’ll show you some of the books I bought from John. I collect the history of geology.’ The house was a number of cottages which had been knocked together. In the garden outside were drifts of hellebores, their yellow and burgundy flowers cheering the austerity of Lent. He had a fine collection of books, and as I looked at them I thought of all the books that I had acquired from John over the years, from such curiosities of late seventeenth-century history as Ravillac Redivivus: being a narrative of the Tryal of Mr James Mitchel, a Conventicle Preacher, 1682, to the battered but eminently serviceable first edition of Greville’s Diary. Its boards might be scuffed and slightly askew but as John, who was no snob about books, had remarked at the time, ‘It’s a good working copy’. Now there would be no more. We were just about to go out to the car when the Professor paused. ‘I almost forgot. Ann asked if I would give you this. It was something John found for you. When he was taken ill, it somehow got overlooked. It’s some German work or other.’ I tore impatiently at the paper wrapping, knowing what it must be and yet scarcely daring to hope. But it was – the volume which would complete my set of the works of Joseph Roth, the rarest edition of his most famous novel. I had begun to give up hope of ever owning it. Now here it was, a gift from beyond the grave. I should not have doubted John. He never gave up searching. In the end he always found what he was looking for. And there was a message inside, a blank invoice. This was a prize beyond price. The search had clearly given him even more pleasure than I felt at its success. I could imagine him chuckling with delight. And he had not been able to resist one last joke at my expense. I should have known what was coming from the music he had chosen for his final journey on this earth. After all, we had all remarked on the rousing strain to which he had left the church. It was ‘The Radetzky March’.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 13 © C. J. Wright 2007