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| New Currie Pet, "Muffin" listening to his new favourite music, "Monkey Bars," by Coney Hatch. Rob Currie photo |
SOME JAPANESE BOGIE BOOKS - AS REVIEWED IN THE VICTORIAN ERA BY ANDREW LANG, IN HIS TEXT, "BOOKS AND BOOKMEN," 1892
GHOSTS AND EVIL SPIRITS PORTRAYED IN ART, PUBLISHED IN BOOKS
BREAKING NEWS: RUMPLESTILTSKIN "MUFFIN," THE DOG, COMES TO ITS NEW HOME(S). Son Robert and I brought our new canine friend home from the Muskoka Animal Shelter, of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in Bracebridge, on Wednesday afternoon, (see pic above - Muffin is not one of the Bogies imaged as well) and as stage one of the "getting used to our digs" program, which is complicated, and actually involves residing in the studio of the boys' music shop, during the daytime, and at Birch Hollow during the evenings. We have long wanted a dog that would be comfortable amongst the users of our studio, and be a sort of shop dog, where it can stay with us, and not be couped-up with the cats at home. It's the evening digs we're most concerned about, because we have five cats, and while our former dog Bosko, didn't put up with any territorial crap from them, Muffin is, at the furthest stretch of front and back paws, only small-cat sized, and not likely to push too hard against residents already established at Birch Hollow, and this may include Seymour and his mate, Beatrice, the mom and pop of our property's squirrel family. At the time of writing, we hadn't introduced Muffin to the cats yet, so we have a real challenge ahead of us. Five on one; my bet is the cats will make their opinions known pretty early in the planned integration, and God forbid Muffin crosses any of their emotional, positional boundaries. Wee "Angus" is a beautiful, strongly built tom-cat, that likes its freedom of movement around the house, so we hope Muffin doesn't want to play tag with a feline minus a sense of humor. I expect, soon after introductions, and a brief situation of polar opposites, to occur at opposite ends of the house, the gang will wind-up sleeping together in a furry pile, like used to happen when Bosko was around. Bosko didn't like cat intrusions early in the relationship at Birch Hollow, but got used to cats cuddling-up around the hearth eventually, and only growled when one of them got near his food dish, even if it was empty. I often wondered, in this bunch-up of critters, what, if they were messaging each other, they were saying in hushed chatter, about us Curries as pet owners. I've always thought it would be neat to know whether they thought of us as generous and kindly folks, or particularly stingy with the food and treats. Maybe it's better not to know.
We want to thank the Muskoka Animal Shelter for putting Robert and our family together with our little Muffin, and we have a great deal of faith, all will go smoothly at the store, where it has already met some of our wild and crazy musician gad-abouts; and with the Birch Hollow cats...well, that's yet to come. We are pleased to be able to house this friendly little beast, and we know it's what our old dog Bosko would have wanted, in his place, as he was also a surrender dog, adopted from the Muskoka Animal Shelter. This make the fourth dog the Currie family has adopted from the shelter, shortly after it opened in the late 1980's, when I was a director of the Humane Society for a short period. So if you have a little room at your homestead, and a love of animals, please contact the Muskoka Animal Shelter to see what you can do to help them out; and check what pets they have up for adoption. If you would like to make a donation, which is always welcome, feel free to run it by them; maybe a donation of food or supplies. Help them help our region's homeless pets. We hope Muffin will come to like us, but we understand her being a little pensive, as he has had a hard time indentifying home as "home" for the past couple of weeks, after her surrender.
Right now, she has rested on the couch during two guitar lessons Robert conducted this afternoon, without anything more aggressive than a very light, barely audible snore, of what we hope is a contented dog. We sure hope so.
Japanese and Chinese Bogies - Part 2
If you missed yesterday's blog, under the heading, "Some Japanese Bogies," as reviewed in an 1892 text, written by Andrew Lang, entitled "Books and Bookmen," you can archive back to catch up with today's second part. It is an interesting overview of these cultural beliefs, of the Japanese, based on the artwork published in a variety of books published in Japan and China. It possesses a Victorian era curiosity, although I'm not at all sure why the chapter was included in the book, in the first place, because the chapter doesn't have much to do with books at all. The illustrations re-published above today's blog, are from Lang's book, and show some of the characterizations of the paranormal intruders, which include ghosts, said to be a part of normal day to day life in Japan. Keep in mind, Lang was probably not a cultural or historical expert in this area, but decided to opine about it as a matter of Victorian interest; peaked by the paranormal qualities and quantities. Mr. Lang writes the following about the common, garden variety ghost, known as 'simulacrum vulgure.'
"The first to attract our attention represents, as I understand, the common ghost, or simulacrum vulgure of psychial science. To this complexion must we all come, according to the best Japanese opinion. Each of us contains within him (her) 'somewhat of a shadowy being,' like the spectre described by Dr. Johnson; something like the Egyptian 'Ka,' for which the curious may council the works of Miss Amelia B. Edwards, and other learned Orientalists. The most recent French student of these matters, the author of 'L'Homme Posthume,' is of opinion that we do not all possess this double, with its power of surviving our bodily death. He thinks, too, that our ghost, when it does survive, has but rarely the energy and enterprise to make itself visible, to our senses of the audible by 'shadow-casting men.' In some extreme cases the ghost (according to our French authority, that of a disciple of Comte) feeds fearsomely on the bodies of the living. In no event does be believe that a ghost lasts much longer than a hundred years. After that it mizzles into a spectre, and is resolved into its elements, whatever they may be. A somewhat similar and (to my own mind) probably sound theory of ghosts, prevails among savage tribes, and among such people as the ancient Greeks, the modern Hindoos, and other ancestor worshippers.
"When feeling, as they all do, or used to do, the ghosts of the ancestral dead, they gave special attention to the claims of the dead of the last three generations, leaving ghosts older than the century to look after their own supplies of meat and drink. The negligence testifies to a notion that very old ghosts are of little account, for good or evil. On the other hand, as regards the longevity of spectres, we must not shut our eyes to the example of the bogie in ancient armour, which appears in Glamis Castle, or to the Jesuit of Queen Elizabeth's date, that haunts the library (and a very nice place to haunt; I ask no better, as a ghost in the Pavilion at Lord's might cause a scandal) of an English nobleman. With these 'instantice contradictorice,' as Bacon calls them, present to our minds, we must not (in the present condition of psychial research) dogmatise too hastily about the span of life allotted to the simularcrum vulgare. Very probably his chances of a prolonged existence are in inverse ration, to the square of the distance of time, which severs him from our modern days. No one has ever pretended to see the ghost of an ancient Roman buried in these islands, still less of a Pict, or Scot, or a Palaeolithic man, welcome as such an apparition would be to many of us. Thus the evidence does certainly look as if there were a kind of statute of limitations among ghosts, which, from many points of view, is not an arrangement at which we should repine."
Author, Andrew Lang, continues, by suggesting, "The Japanese artist expresses his own sense of the casual and fluctuating nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines, as if the model had given the artist horrors. This simulacrum rises out of the earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into shape above the spade with which all that is corporeal of its late owner has been interred. Please remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the simulacrum. We must remember that the ghost or 'Ka,' is not the 'soul,' which has other destinies, in the future world, good or evil, but is only a shadowy resemblance, condemned, as in the Egyptian creed, to dwell in the tomb and hover near it. The Chinese and Japanese have their own definite theory of the next world, and we must by no means confuse the eternal fortunes of the permanent, conscious, and responsible self, already inhabiting other worlds than ours, with the eccentric vagaries of the semi-material tomb-hunting larva, which so often develops a noisy and bear fighting disposition quite unlike the character of its proprietor in life.
The next bogie, so limp and washed-out as he seems, with his white, drooping, dripping arms and hands, reminds us of that horrid French species of apparition, 'la lavandiere de la nuit,' who washes dead men's linens in the moonlit pools and rivers. Whether this simulacrum be meant for spirit of the well (for everything has its spirit in Japan), or whether it be the ghost of some mortal drowned in the well, I cannot say with absolute certainty; but the opinion of the learned tends to the former conclusion. Naturally a Japanese child, when sent in the dusk to draw water, will do so with fear and trembling, for this limp, floppy apparition might scare the boldest. Another bogie, a terrible creation of fancy, I take to be a vampire, about which the curious can read in Dom Calmet, who will tell them how whole villages in Hungary have been depopulated by vampires; or he may study Fauriel's 'Chansons de la Grece Moderne,' the vampires of modern Hellas. Another plan, and perhaps even more satisfactory to a timid or superstitious mind, is to read in a lonely house at midnight, a story named 'Carmilla,' printed by Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu's, 'In a Glass Darkly.' That work will give you the peculiar sentiment of vampirism, will produce a gelid perspiration, and reduce the patient to a condition in which he will be afraid to look round the room. If, while in his mood, some one tells him Mr. Augustus Hare's story of Crooglin Grange, his education in the practice and theory of vampires will be complete, and he will be very proper, and well qualified inmate of Earlswood Asylum. The most awful Japanese vampire, caught red-handed in the act, a hideous bestial incarnation of ghoulishness, we have carefully refrained from reproducing."
"Scarcely more agreeable is the bogie, or witch, blowing from her mouth a malevolent and maleficent sorcery. The vapour which flies and curls from the mouth constitutes 'a sending,' in the technical language of Icelandic wizards, and is capable (in Iceland at all events) of assuming the form of some detestable supernatural animal to destroy the life of a hate rival. In the case of our last example, it is very hard indeed to make head or tail of the spectre represented. Clinks and crannies are his domain; through these he drops upon you. He is a merry but not an attractive or genial ghost. Where there are such 'visions about' it may be admitted the children, apt to believe in all such fancies, have a youth of variegated and intense misery, recurring with special vigour at bed time. But we look again at our first picture, and hope and trust that Japanese boys and girls, are as happy as these jolly little creatures appear."
It must be recalled for clarification, that this book, circa 1892, was not written to be a cultural examination of Japanese or Chinese Bogies, or anything remotely related to analysis of the paranormal, but does contain within, some clear fascination with ghosts and goblins, in art and literature, somewhat in keeping with the Victorian interests in death and mourning, and what, via ghost sightings and legend, gave them reason to suspect what mediums had been claiming for years; validating life after death, but without the burdens of the fettering obligations of strict religious thought. The chapter on Japanese Bogies is out of place, in terms of the referencing of antiquarian and rare books, but welcome none the less, as the writer's prerogative.
THE LITERARY ALLURE OF BOOK SHOPS ……A HAVEN FOR BUYERS AND READERS…..A PORTAL FOR CREATORS
MEETING PLACES FOR THE PASSIONATE - A RESPITE FOR THE UNINSPIRED TO REJUVENATE
I MET ONE OF ONTARIO'S WELL KNOWN OUTDOOR EDUCATORS, AND BOOK COLLECTORS, IN OUR FORMER ANTIQUE SHOP IN BRACEBRIDGE. ACTUALLY, OUR FIRST MEETING, WAS IN THE SHOP PARKING LOT, AND ALL I SAW, AT FIRST GLACE, WERE HIS LEGS AND RATHER LARGE BEHIND, PROTRUDING FROM THE OPEN TRUNK OF OUR CAR. SUZANNE HAD GIVEN MR. BROWN PERMISSION, TO LOOK INTO THE BOXES I HAD JUST DELIVERED TO OUR MANITOBA STREET SHOP. BIBLIOMANIACS AREN'T REALLY WORRIED ABOUT OUTWARD APPEARANCES, AND I SUPPOSE ON THAT DAY, IT WAS JUST FATE AND KARMA ROLLING TOGETHER, TO FORM A DOUGHY, CRAZY KIND OF FRIENDSHIP THAT LASTED FOR QUITE A FEW YEARS…..AND DOZENS UPON DOZENS OF PROFESSIONAL DISAGREEMENTS. IT WAS THE MOMENT WHEN DAVE WOULD DECIDE THE CURRIES WERE THE KIND OF PEOPLE A COLLECTOR SHOULD GET TO KNOW…..ASSOCIATE BOOK LOVERS…..AND I HAD ALREADY ANTICIPATED THAT THIS GUY, BULGING WITH RIPPED SHORTS, FROM THE TRUNK, WASN'T THE KIND OF CHARACTER YOU'D WANT TO DISMISS CASUALLY. SO WHAT ELSE WAS I GOING TO DO BUT BECOME HIS BIOGRAPHER; ALL FOR GOSH SAKES, BECAUSE OF HIS FRIENDLY INTRUSION THAT SUMMER DAY, THE DIRECT RESULT OF OUR MUTUAL INTERESTS IN OLD BOOKS. NON-FICTION OF COURSE. DAVE WOULD GO ON QUITE A TIRADE IF THE DISCUSSION ROLLED AROUND TO LITERATURE. HE ALSO HATED WITH A PASSION, ANY RELIGIOUS BOOKS, AND WARNED ME AGAINST BUYING THEM FOR THEIR ANTIQUARIAN VALUE. THEY APPARENTLY OVER-PRINTED MOST OF THEM, SO RARITY NEVER BECOMES AN ISSUE. HE BELIEVED THE "NOVEL," AND "NOVELISTS" IN GENERAL, WERE ALL THAT WAS WRONG WITH THE WORLD. YET YOU WOULDN'T HAVE DARED TO QUESTION THE WORK OF CHILDRENS' AUTHOR, THORNTON BURGESS, BECAUSE THESE WERE THE KIND OF BOOKS THAT GOT DAVE THROUGH THE DRUDGERY OF CHILDHOOD. DAVE HAD ONE WISH AS A CHILD…….AND IT WAS TO BE AN ADULT.
THROUGH DAVE BROWN, I BECAME FAMILIAR WITH MANY BIBLIOPHILES, BOOK DEALERS, ANTIQUE COLLECTORS, AND HISTORIANS, LIKE ARCHIVIST AND WRITER, ED PHELPS, AND HUGH MACMILLAN, ONE OF THIS COUNTRY'S REVERED FREE LANCE (FREE RANGE) ARCHIVISTS, WHO HAD SO MANY INCREDIBLE STORIES,…..THAT WELL, HE SIMPLY HAD TO WRITE A BOOK TO CATALOGUE AND VARIFY THEY WERE ALL TRUE ACCOUNTS OF HERITAGE ACQUISITIONS. IT'S ENTITLED "ADVENTURES OF A PAPER SLEUTH," AND MY AUTOGRAPHED COPY SITS ABOVE MY DESK, WHERE HIS PORTRAIT LOOKS DOWN UPON ME EACH AND EVERY BLOG SESSION. OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE HAD AN INFLUENCE ON ME, AS BOTH A WRITER, HISTORIAN, AND BOOK SELLER, IT IS CURIOUS THAT EACH, WITHOUT MY KNOWING IT, KNEW AND RESPECTED EACH OTHER. DAVE BROWN KNEW WAYLAND "BUSTER" DREW AND ADMIRED HIS WORK ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF "SUPERIOR; THE HAUNTED SHORE," AND HUGH MACMILLAN WAS GOOD FRIENDS WITH BOTH GENTS, GOING WAY BACK I BELIEVE, TO THE HERITAGE OF BIRCH BARK CANOES; COMPANIONING WITH CANOE AUTHORITY, KIRK WIPPER, AND HIS FORMER CAMP CANDALORE, NEAR DORSET. THESE WERE JUST SOME OF THE MANY CONNECTIONS MADE THROUGH OUR LITTLE ANTIQUE SHOP AND BOOK STORE, FORMERLY ON UPPER MANITOBA STREET, IN BRACEBRIDGE. BY THE WAY, THE NEXT BOOK I WANT TO HIGHLIGHT, WILL BE HUGH'S OUTSTANDING BIOGRAPHY, WHICH WILL GIVE YOU AN ENHANCED OVERVIEW OF "HISTORIC PAPER," IN CANADA…..AND WHY YOU SHOULD HANG ONTO THOSE WAR-TIME LETTERS FROM YOUR RELATIVES.
AS I HAVE STRESSED, IN THIS SERIES OF BLOGS ABOUT THE ANTIQUE AND COLLECTIBLE BUSINESS, FROM MANY YEARS OF IMMERSION, I BEGAN THE BUSINESS, ORIGINALLY WITH MY FAMILY, AS A MEANS OF PUTTING MY DEGREE IN CANADIAN HISTORY TO WORK. I HAD NO EXPECTATIONS OF MAKING LOTS OF MONEY, AND IN FACT, I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE A STRUGGLE TO MAKE A YEAR ROUND BUSINESS WORK IN A SEASONAL ECONOMY. MANY SIMILAR VENTURES HAD, AND CONTINUE TO FAIL, BECAUSE THEY DON'T PREPARE PROPERLY FOR THE DOWNTURN OF BUSINESS, AFTER THE BUSY SUMMER SEASON HERE IN THE ONTARIO HINTERLAND. WHAT I DID KNOW, EARLY ON, WAS THAT I LIKED THE ASSOCIATION WITH OLD THINGS……AND THE OLD THINGS OF CHOICE, WERE ANTIQUES, COLLECTIBLES, AND OF COURSE, OLD AND OUT OF PRINT BOOKS. I LIKED THE LIFESTYLE. I ENJOYED THE SENTIMENTALITY, NOSTALGIA, AND HISTORY OF EACH OUTING, TO VISIT ESTATES AND ANTIQUE SHOPS, AND EVEN AFTER JUST A FEW YEARS HUNTING AND GATHERING, I HAD MET MANY FASCINATING FOLKS CONNECTED TO THE PROFESSION. IN REALITY, IT WAS THE PEOPLE-CONNECTION MOST OF ALL, THAT WAS THE ALLURE OF SPENDING ONE'S LIFE SELLING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAD CAST-OFF AS SURPLUS. EVEN TODAY, THE SAME HOLDS, AND IF I WAS DOING THIS ANTIQUE THING, JUST FOR THE MONEY, THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY POINT OPENING LATER THIS MORNING, OR TOMORROW, OR ALL THE DAYS AFTER THAT…..BECAUSE TRUTH IS, VERY FEW ANTIQUE DEALERS BECOME WEALTHY, UNTIL THEY CLOSE UP SHOP, AND HAVE TO INSURE THE LEFTOVERS. THEN ON PAPER, AT LEAST, THEY BECOME WORTH A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF MONEY.
EVEN NOW, ALTHOUGH I DON'T ADVERTISE THIS AS THE REASON YOU SHOULD VISIT OUR FAMILY SHOP, IT'S THE COLLECTION OF FOLKS, OUR EVER-GROWING CUSTOMER BASE, THAT MAKES OUR DAYS, WEEKS AND MONTHS ENJOYABLE AND INTERESTING. WHILE IT'S CERTAINLY IMPERATIVE TO MAKE RENT, AND A LITTLE PROFIT IN ORDER TO CONTINUE THE SHOP AS A GOING-CONCERN, AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, SO IS IT THE SAME TODAY. EVEN IN THE FIRST YEAR IN THIS NEW LOCATION, IN THE FORMER MUSKOKA THEATRE BUILDING, ON THE MAIN STREET OF GRAVENHURST, WE HAVE BEEN MAKING GREAT PERSONAL CONTACTS, AND ALREADY WE HAVE RECONNECTED TO MANY OF OUR FORMER CUSTOMERS, WHO MADE BIRCH HOLLOW A SORT OF HANG-OUT, SOMEWHAT IN THE SPIRIT OF ADRIENNE MONNIER'S PARIS BOOKSHOP, THAT WE DISCUSSED IN YESTERDAY'S COLUMN. WHILE IT IS NOT THE CASE, THAT WE HAVE WORLD RENOWNED ARTISTS AND AUTHORS DROPPING IN DAILY, TO SIP TEA, AND CONVERSE, WE DO HAVE SOME VERY FASCINATING FOLKS WALKING THROUGH THAT FRONT DOOR, AND OFFERING SUZANNE AND I SOME VERY INTERESTING BIOGRAPHIES AND HISTORIES……BUT THEN THAT'S WHAT OUR BUSINESS IS FAMOUS FOR……AND IT IS ALL HAPPENING HERE IN THIS PLEASANT BURG IN SOUTH MUSKOKA. BUT IT'S NOT SOMETHING YOU ADVERTISE……AS A PLACE TO COME AND SHARE YOUR STORIES……BECAUSE IT ISN'T NECESSARY. IT'S IMPLIED BY THE FACT WE ALSO SELL OLD BOOKS. THERE'S THE STARTER FOR MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE. SO LET'S GO BACK TO WHERE WE LEFT OFF, IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR YEARS, OF PARIS, FRANCE, AND THE BOOKSELLERS AND AUTHORS WHO DEFIED THE TERROR OF CONFLICT, TO INSPIRE THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LITERATURE……AND THE ONGOING INSPIRATION OF THE AUTHORS WHO HALF-RESIDED THERE, WITH THEIR PROPRIETOR FRIENDS.
THE VERY RICH HOURS OF ADRIENNE MONNIER IN PARIS
Adrienne Monnier the owner of the bookshop, "La Maison des Amis des Livres, and Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the legendary book store, "Shakespeare and Company," across the road from one another in Paris, France, were champions of literature, in their own country, and abroad. They were considered kindred spirits to well accomplished authors, and their shops were havens to escape the burdens of two wars and the Great Depression. They housed, encouraged, supported, financed, and promoted the writers they came to know, and they provided sustenance, to those who were rich in accomplishment but low on funds, and shared the meagre provisions they had, with those who would help them build their respective businesses; by offering their newly published books for the collection. There is an overview that was written by Adrienne Monnier, about the nature and intent of her business enterprise, and it is so eloquently and effectively written, that it summarizes what most of us, who sell old and new books every day, feel about the shop atmosphere, and the importance of offering books to "the eager and the passionate amongst us." Now in her words:
"We founded La Maison des Amis des Livres with faith; each one of its details seems to us to correspond to a feeling, to a thought. Business, for us, has a moving and profound meaning," Monnier writes. The description of the business, translated from French, is included in the text produced by Richard McDougall, entitled "The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier," published by Charles Scribner's Sons, of New York, in 1976.
"A shop seems to us to be a true magic chamber; at that instant when the passer-by crosses the threshold of the door that everyone can open, when he penetrates into that apparently impersonal place, nothing disguises the look of his face, the tone of his words; he accomplishes with a feeling of complete freedom an act that he believes to be without unforeseen consequences; there is a perfect correspondence between his external attitude and his profound self, and if we know how to observe him at that instant when he is only a stranger, we are able not and forever, to know him in his truth; he reveals all the good will with which he is endowed, that is to say, the degree to which he is accessible to the world, what he can give and receive, the exact rapport that exists between himself and other men." Mennier notes that, "This immediate and intuitive understanding, this private fixing of the soul, how easy they are in a shop, a place of transition between street and house! And what discoveries are possible in a bookshop, through which inevitably pass, amid the innumerable passers-by, the Pleiades, those among us who already seem a bit to be 'great blue persons,' and who, with a smile, give the justification for what we call our best hopes. Selling books, that seems to some people as banal as selling any sort of object or commodity, and based upon the same routine tradition that demands of the seller and the buyer only the gesture of exchanging money against the merchandise, a gesture that is accompanied generally, by a few phrases of politeness.
"We think, first of all, that the faith we put into selling books can be put into all daily acts, one can carry on no matter what business, no matter what profession, with a satisfaction that at certain moments has a real lyricism. The human being who is perfectly adapted to his function, and who works in harmony with others, experiences a fullness of feeling that easily becomes exaltation when his is in rapport with people situated upon the same level of life as himself; once he can communicate and cause what he experiences to be felt, he is multiplied, he rises above himself and strives to be as much of a poet as he can; that elevation, that tenderness, is it not the state of grace in which everything is illuminated by an eternal meaning? But if every conscious person can be exalted upon his every thought of gain and work that is based upon books, have loved them with rapture and have believed in the infinite power of the most beautiful."
The bookshop owner reports that, "Some mornings alone in our bookshop, surrounded only be books arranged in their cases, we have remained contemplating them for moments on end. After a moment our eyes, fixed upon them, saw only the vertical and oblique lines marking the edges of their backs, discreet lines set against the gray wall like the straight strokes drawn by the hand of a child. Before this elementary appearance that is charged with a should made up of all ideas and all images, we were pierced through by an emotion so powerful that it sometimes seemed to us that to write, to express our thoughts, would solace us; but at the moment when our hand sought for pen and paper - somebody entered, other people came afterward, and the faces of the day absorbed the great ardor of the morning. We have often felt that 'all grace of labor, and all honor, and genius,' as Claudel says in 'La Ville (The City),' were granted to us; in that work there are many other words besides that seem written for us, and we can say with Lala….'As gold is the sign of merchandise, merchandise is also a sign…..Of the need that summons it, of the effort that creates it,……And what you call exchange I call communion'."
"When we found our house (shop) in November 1915, we had no business experience whatsoever, we did not even know bookkeeping, and along with that we were so afraid of passing for paltry tradespeople, that we pretended without end, to neglect our own interests, which was childishness besides," records Monnier. "It is ordinarily believed that life extinguishes enthusiasm, disappoints dreams, distorts first conceptions, and realizes a bit at random what has been offered to it. Neveretheless, we can declare that at the beginning of our undertaking, our faith and our enthusiasm were much less great than they are today. Our first idea was very modest; we sought only to start off a bookshop and a reading room devoted above all to modern works. We had very little money, and it was that detail that drove us to specialize in modern literature; if we had had a lot of money, it is certain that we would have wanted to buy everything that existed in respect to printed works and to realize a kind of National Library; we were convinced that the public demands a great quantity of books above all, and we thought that we had much audacity in daring to establish ourselves with hardly three thousand volumes, when some reading-room catalogs announced twenty-thousand volumes, fifty thousand, and even a hundred thousand of them! Truth is that only one of our walls was furnished with books; the others were decorated with pictures, with a large old desk; and with a chest of drawers in which we kept wrapping paper, string, and everything we did not know where to put; our chairs were old chairs from the country that we still have. This bookshop hardly had the look of a shop, and that was not on purpose; we were far from suspecting that people would congratulate us so much in the future for what seemed to us an unfortunate makeshift. We counted upon our first profits to increase our stock without end. These first profits were above all based upon the sale of new and secondhand books, for we did not dare to hope to find subscribers to our reading room until after several months."
She suggests, "One of the great problems of our commercial beginnings was the construction of an outside display stand for the secondhand sale. This operation required our presence for more than five minutes, during which we were exposed to the looks of the passers-by; we had to carry outside the trestles, the case, then the books and the reviews, which were old things that had come for the most part from family libraries. The first time that we made that display we were aroused to the point of anxiety, and when the last pile had been arranged, we escaped hurriedly into the back room of the shop, just as if we had played a bad trick on the passers-by; we looked through a gap in the curtain at what was for us an extraordinary spectacle, the formation of a little group in front of the books; the faces that appeared behind the shop window sometimes made us burst out laughing, sometimes shiver with apprehensions; if those people were to come in, address words to us! And here was an old lady who took a volume from the display and prepared herself to accomplish that grave act of becoming our first purchaser; one of us decided to emerge from the back room and stammered a ceremonious good day to the lady, who, with a very natural manner, showed what she had chosen - it was Henry Greville's 'L'Avenir d' Aline (The Future of Aline)' marked at seventy-five centimes; she had the kindness not to haggle; if she had haggled the situation would have become painful; we would have been torn between the temptation to give her the volume so that the deal might be more quickly settled and the duty of maintaining our really very modest price to show her that we were serious booksellers who did not charge too much. It was necessary all the same to wrap the book, tie it up with string, take the money, give the change out of a franc; thank effusively. That old lady, at last perceived the extraordinary emotion that she was provoking; she went away more troubled than she wished to let it appear and did not come back."
I will make another return visit to see Adrienne Monnier, in tomorrow's blog, and I would like to highlight some of the meetings she and Sylvia Beach had with famous writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliott, and James Joyce. It's enough to make you want to open your own bookshop.
There are times these days, when it seems the printed hard copy book is on the way out, so to speak. I am a loyalist, who while embracing the advances of technology, will never, ever, abandon a real book for an electronic device that claims to be its equal. Like a real Christmas tree…..there's a beautiful aroma of print, paper and binding, that just doesn't emit from an electronic device. My favorite book related movie, of course, was "84 Charing Cross," and to be in the book shop that was depicted in that movie……the dream of dreams. To be the proprietor of a shop of that calibre……well, a fellow can ponder the possibility…..can't he? Hope you can find some time to visit again tomorrow, as we make another visit to La Maison des Amis des Livres, in Paris, via the words of shop owner, Adrienne Monnier.
Thanks for showing your support for book sellers, antique dealers, collectors and all the others, who love history and all the wonderful relics it leaves behind to cheerfully hunt and gather. Books? Just the tip of the proverbial iceberg? There's just so darn much to collect.
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