New-York tribune., 1918-03-17
The Unending Lure of Old
BOOkshops
This Is Sympathetic Pilgrimage Chronicled by Mr.
Charles S. Brooks, in ''The Yale Review" and Here
Reprinted, Though in Somewhat Abridged Form

Wy SOME slim chance, reader, you
- may be the kind of person wh0' on
visit to a strange city, makes for
bookshop Of course, your slight tenn
poral business may detain you in the ear
lier hours of the day. You may sit with
committees and stroke your profound
chin, or you may spend your talent in
the market, or run to and fro and wag
your tongue in persuasion. Or, if you be
on holiday, you may strain yourself on
the sights Of the city against being
caught in an omission. The bolder feat
ures of a cathedral must be grasped to
satisfy a quizzing neighbor lest he shame
you on your hearth; building must be
stuffed inside your memory, or your pill
grim feet must wear the pavement of an
ancient shrine. However, these duties be-
ing done and the afternoon having not
yet declined, do you not seek bookshop
to regale yourself?
TN NO proper sense am buyer Of old
Il books. admit bookish quirk, may
be, love of the shelf, weakness for
morocco, especially if it be stained with
age. I will, indeed, shirk wedding for a
bookshop. I'll 60 in ''just to look about
bit, to see what the fellow has," and on
occasion I may pick up volume. But l
am innocent of first editions. 1t is q stiff
curtesy, as becomes democrat, that be-
stow on this form of primogeniture. or
course, have nosed my way with pleas
ure along aristocratic shelves and Tipped
out volumes here and there to ask their
price, but for the greater part it is the
palmer shops that engage me. If rack
of books be offered cheap before the door,
with a fixed price upon card, come at
a trot. And if brown dust lies on them,
i, / bow and sniff upon the rack, as though
| the past like an ancient fop in peruke and
buckle were giving me the courtesy of its
snuffbox. If I take the dust in my nos
trils and chance to sneeze, it is the fit and
intended observance toward the manners
Of former century.
: have in mind such bookshop in Bath,
England. 1t presents to the street no
more than a decent front, but opens up
behind like swollen bottle. There are
twenty rooms at least, piled together with
such confusion of black passages ana
winding steps that one might think that
the owner himself must hold a thread
when he visits the remoter rooms Indeed,
such are the obscurities and dim turnings
of the place were the legend Of the
Minotaur but English you might fancy
that the creature still lived in this laby-
rinth, to nip you between his toothless
gums-for the beast grows old--at some
darker corner There is story of the
place that once a raw clerk having been
sent to rummage in the basement, his can
die tipped off the shelf. He was left in so
complete darkness that his fears overcame
his judgment, and for two hours he
roamed and babbled among the barrels
Nor was his absence discovered until the
end of the day, when, as was the custom,
the clerks counted noses at the door.
When they found him he bolted up the
steps, nor did he cease his whimper until
he had reached the comforting twilight
of the outer world. He served thereafter
in the shop a full two years and had a
beard coming-so the story runs-before
he would again venture beyond the third
turning of the passage, to the stunting
of his scholarship, for the deeper books
lay in the further windings
Or it may appear credible that in ages
past jealous builder contrived the
place. Having no learning himself and
being at odds with those of better oppor-
tunity, he twisted the pattern of the
house. Such was his evil temper that he
set the steps at a dangerous hazard in the
dark in order that scholars-whose eyes
are bleared at best-might risk their legs
to the end of time. Those of strict or
thodoXy have even suspected the builder
to have been an atheist, for they have OBJ
served what double joints and steps and
turnings confuse the passage to the de-
vouter books-the Early Fathers in par
tlcular being up winding stair, where
even the soberest reader might break his
neck. Be these things as they may, leather
bindings in sets of "grenadier uniformity''
ornament the upper and lighter rooms.
Biography struggles down hallway, with
a candle needed at the further end. A
room of dingy plays-Wycherley Con-
greve and their crew-looks out through
an area grating. 1t was through even so
foul an eye that, when alive, they looked
upon the world. AS for theology, except
Tor the before-mentioned Fathers, it sits
IN general and dusty convention on the
landing to the basement, it's snuffy SER
mons, by sad isplacement-or is there