Part 17

So far as the East End of London is concerned, there is not, perhaps, very much to say. The second-hand bookselling trade for the past half-century has been confined in a large measure to three firms--R. Gladding, an octogenarian, who dealt almost exclusively in theological books, whose shop was at 76, Whitechapel Road, and who retired at the end of 1893; E. George and Sons, who have been for many years established at 231, Whitechapel Road, and have lately acquired Gladding's shop; and Joseph Smith, 2, Oxford Street, Whitechapel. The two last-named firms are, in their respective ways, of more than usual interest. Mr. E. George, whose father, William George, was also a bookseller, started in business on his own account between thirty and forty years ago, his stock-in-trade consisting of four shillings' worth of miscellaneous volumes, which he exposed for sale on a barrow close to the old Whitechapel workhouse, which occupied the ground on which one of Mr. George's shops now stands. Mr. George has built up one of the most remarkable and extensive business connections in existence. His stock may be roughly calculated at about 700,000 or 800,000 volumes or parts, two large houses and warehouses being literally crammed full from top to bottom. There is scarcely any periodical or transactions of any learned society which they are unable to complete, and in many instances--_Punch_, for example--they have at least a dozen complete sets, besides an infinity of odd numbers and parts. It is scarcely necessary to point out that Messrs. George's business has very little to do with the locality in which their shops are situated. They are the wholesale firm of the trade, and the larger part of their business is done in the United States and among the provincial booksellers of Great Britain, ten huge cases and a complete set of Hansard being on the eve of exportation to America at the time of our visit. It is a curious fact, and one well worth mentioning, that until last year (1894) this firm never issued a catalogue. It is also interesting to point out that their shop at 76, Whitechapel Road is one of the most admirably arranged bookstores in the country. It was specially constructed, and is not unlike a miniature British Museum Reading-room; there are two galleries, one above the other. The second East End worthy has a literary as well as a bibliopolic interest. Joseph Smith will be better remembered by posterity as the compiler of a 'Catalogue of Friends' Books,' and of the 'Bibliotheca Anti-Quakerana,' than as a bookseller. He was twenty years compiling the former, and is perhaps one of the most striking illustrations of the wisdom of the theory that the bookseller who wishes to be a success should never read! Joseph Smith is of the Society of Friends, and among his schoolfellows were John Bright and W. E. Forster.

Second-hand bookselling in the East End has declined during the past quarter of a century from several causes, the chief and most important being the almost complete withdrawal of moderately well-to-do people from the locality. The neighbourhood has become so exclusively inhabited by the poorest of the poor, and by the desolate immigrants from all countries, that the higher phases of bookselling have little chance of flourishing. Mr. E. George informs us that fifteen or twenty years ago he frequently sold in one day books to the value of £15 to genuine residents of the East End, but that he now does not sell fifteen shillings' worth. So far as local customers are concerned, he might just as well have nothing more elaborate than a warehouse.

Many interesting bookish events have, nevertheless, transpired in what is now the slummiest district of London, and if the best of these anecdotes were collected they would fill quite a big volume. They are very varied in character, and some of the stories have very different morals. Here is one related concerning the Rev. Mr. Brand, to whom we have already referred. He was a clergyman of that district, and, it is feared, sometimes neglected his religious duties for the more engrossing charms of the chase. One Friday afternoon he was roaming in the neighbourhood of his church, when his eye fell on the shop of a Jew bookseller which he had not before noticed, and was astonished to see there a number of black-letter volumes exposed for sale. But the sun was rapidly going down, and the Jew, loath to be stoned by his neighbours for breaking the Sabbath, was hastily interposing the shutters between the eyes of the clergyman and the coveted books. 'Let me look at them inside,' said the Rev. Mr. Brand; 'I will not keep you long.' 'Impossible,' replied the Jew. 'Sabbath will begin in five minutes, and I absolutely cannot let myself be drawn into such a breach of Divine Law. But if you choose to come early on Sunday morning you may see them at your leisure.' The reverend gentleman accordingly turned up at eight a.m. on Sunday, intending to remain there till church-time, he having to do duty that day. He had provided himself with the overcoat which he wore on his book-hunting expeditions, and which had pockets large enough to swallow a good-sized folio. The literary treasures of the son of Israel were much more numerous than the Gentile expected. At this time there was not such a rush for Caxtons as we have witnessed since the Roxburghe sale. Mr. Brand found one of these precious relics in a very bad condition, although not past recovery, paid a trifling price for it, and pocketed it. Then he successively examined some rare productions of the presses of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and so forth. The clergyman's purchases soon began to assume considerable proportions. Archimedes was not more fully absorbed in his geometrical problems when the Roman soldier killed him, than the East End clergyman in his careful collations. He was aroused, however, from his reveries by the Jewess calling out: 'Mike, dinner is ready.' 'Dinner!' exclaimed the parson. 'At what time do you dine?' 'At one o'clock,' she replied. He looked at his watch. It was too true. He hastened home. In the meantime, the beadle had been to his house, and finding he had left it in his usual health, it was feared some accident had happened. The congregation then dispersed, much concerned at the absence of the worthy pastor, who, however, atoned in the evening, by unwonted eloquence, for his unpremeditated prank of the morning.

HOLBORN AND NEIGHBOURHOOD.

As a second-hand bookselling locality, Holborn is one of the oldest of those in which the trade is still carried on vigorously. As a bookselling locality it has a record of close on three centuries and a half. As early as 1558, a publisher was issuing cheap books in connection with John Tisdale, at the Saracen's Head, in Holborn, near to the Conduit, and in one of these booklets we are enjoined to

'Remember, man! both night and day, Thou needs must die, there is no Nay.'

Probably the earliest, and certainly one of the earliest, books published in Holborn was the 'Vision of Piers Plowman,' 'now fyrst imprinted by Robert Crowley, dwellyng in Ely-rents in Holburne,' in 1550, which contains a very quaint address from the printer. In and about the year 1584, Roger Warde, a very prolific publisher, was dwelling near 'Holburne Conduit, at the sign of the "Talbot,"' and a still more noteworthy individual, Richard Jones, lived hard by, at the sign of the Rose and Crown.

Early in the seventeenth century, several members of the fraternity had established themselves in and around Gray's Inn Gate, then termed, more appropriately, Lane. Henrie Tomes published 'The Commendation of Cocks and Cock-fighting' (1607), which, no doubt, the 'young bloods' of the period perused much more diligently than more instructive and edifying books with which Mr. Tomes also could have supplied them.

Its most famous bibliopolic resident, however, is Thomas Osborne, or Tom Osborne, as he was called in the trade and by posterity. Tom Osborne's fame began and ended with himself. Nobody knew whence he came, and probably nobody cared. His catalogues cover a period of thirty years--1738-1768--and include some very remarkable libraries of many famous men. In stature he is described as short and thick, so that Dr. Johnson's famous summary method of knocking him down[192:A] was not perhaps so difficult a feat as is generally supposed. To his inferiors--including, as he apparently but ruefully thought, Dr. Johnson--he generally spoke in an authoritative and insolent manner. As ignorant as Lackington, he was considerably less aware of the fact. Osborne's shop, like that of Jacob Tonson[192:B] at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, was at the Gray's Inn Road gate of, or entrance to, Gray's Inn. His greatest _coup_ was the purchase of the Harleian Collection of books--the manuscripts were bought by the British Museum for £10,000--for £13,000, in 1743. It is said on good authority that the Earl of Oxford gave £18,000 for the binding of only a part of them. In 1743-44, the extent of this extraordinary collection was indicated by the 'Catalogus Bibliotheca Harleianæ,' in four volumes. The first two, in Latin, were compiled by Dr. Johnson at a daily wage, and the third and fourth (which are a repetition of the first two), in English, are by Oldys. A charge of 5s. was made for the first two volumes, which caused a good deal of grumbling among the trade, and was resented 'as an avaricious innovation,' but Osborne replied that the volumes could be either returned in exchange for books or for the original purchase-money. He was also charged with rating his books at too high a price, but a glance through the catalogue will prove this to be an unjust accusation. The copy of the Aldine Plato, 1513, on vellum, for which Lord Oxford gave 100 guineas, is priced by Osborne at £21. The sale of the books appears to have been extremely slow, and Johnson assured Boswell that 'there was not much gained by the bargain.' Nichols' 'Literary Anecdotes' (iii. 649-654) gives a list of the libraries which Osborne absorbed into his stock at different times, but few of these are anything more than names at the present day. Osborne is satirized in the 'Dunciad,' but, according to Johnson, was so dull that he could not feel the poet's gross satire. Sir John Hawkins states that Osborne used to boast that he was worth £40,000, and doubtless this was true. His

'Bushy bob, well powder'd every day, Bloom'd whiter than a hawthorn hedge in May,'

was one of his acquired peculiarities. Nichols tells us that the expression 'rum books' arose from Osborne's sending unsaleable volumes to Jamaica in exchange for rum.

But whilst Tom Osborne was _the_ bookseller of Holborn, there were many others well established here during the last century, and whose names have been handed down to us by the catalogues which they published. William Cater, for instance, was issuing catalogues from Holborn in 1767, when he sold the libraries of Lord Willoughby, president of the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1774 of Cudworth Bruck, another antiquary. Cater was succeeded in 1786 by John Deighton, of Cambridge. In the person of Henry Dell we get a literary bookseller, who had established himself first in Tower Street, and in or about 1765 in Holborn, where, Nichols tells us, he died very poor. He wrote 'The Booksellers, a Poem,' 1766, which has been pronounced 'a wretched, rhyming list of booksellers in London, and Westminster, with silly commendations of some and stupid abuse of others.' Other Holborn booksellers were: William Fox, 1773-1777; John Hayes, who died November 12, 1811, aged seventy-four, and 'whose abilities were of no ordinary class, and his erudition very considerable'; John Anderson, of Holborn Hill, 1787-1792, who sold the library of the Hon. John Scott, of Gray's Inn; Francis Noble, who, besides being a bookseller, kept for many years an extensive circulating library in Holborn, but who, in consequence of his daughter's obtaining a share in the first £30,000 prize in the lottery, retired from business, and died at an advanced age in June, 1792; Joseph White, 1779-1791; and William Flexney, who died January 7, 1808, aged seventy-seven, and who was the original publisher of Churchill's 'Poems,' and is thus immortalized by that versatile 'poet':

'Let those who energy of diction prize, For Billingsgate, quit Flexney, and be wise.'

Percival Stockdale, in his 'Memoirs,' speaks highly of his 'old friend' Flexney, 'with whom I have passed many convivial and jovial hours.'

J. H. Prince, of Old North Street, Red Lion Square, Holborn, who wrote and published his own eccentric 'Life' in 1806, and who, trying and failing in nearly everything else, took to bookselling and book-writing, evidently, like many other authors before and since, found soliciting subscriptions for his book 'a most painful undertaking to a susceptible mind.' His motto was, 'I evil ni etips,' or 'I live in spite.' A much more important bookseller of Holborn was John Petheram, who lived at 94, High Holborn in the fifties, and whose catalogues were styled 'The Bibliographical Miscellany'; for some time, with each of his catalogues he issued an eight-page supplement, which consisted of a reprint of some very rare tract; the selection of some of these was in the hands of Dr. E. F. Rimbault. A complete set of these catalogues would be extremely interesting; we have only seen half a dozen of them, and these are in the British Museum. A somewhat similar effort to give an extra interest to catalogues was made a few years ago by J. W. Jarvis and Son, of King William Street, and also by Pickering and Chatto, the Haymarket; but the experiment apparently did not succeed.

Apart from Holborn, properly so called, Middle Row, an insulated row of houses, abutting upon Holborn Bars, and nearly opposite Gray's Inn Road, claims a notice here, for it was long a book-hunting locality, and two bookshops, at least, existed there until the place was demolished in August, 1867. Perhaps its most famous bookseller was John Cuthell, who came to London from Scotland in 1771, and became assistant to Drew, of Middle Row, whom he succeeded. He was publishing catalogues here from 1787, and did a very large export business with America. He was noted for his stock of medical and scientific books. He was still at Middle Row in 1813, when John Nichols published his 'Literary Anecdotes,' to which he was a subscriber. Cuthell died at Turnham Green in 1828, aged eighty-five. He was succeeded by Francis Macpherson, who issued the thirtieth number of his catalogue in April, 1840, from No. 4, Middle Row. The works offered comprised a selection of theological, classical, and historical books. One of the most curious entries relates to an extensive collection of books and pamphlets by and concerning the famous Dr. Richard Bentley, five volumes in quarto, and thirty-one more in octavo and duodecimo; the set (now, we believe, in the British Museum), doubtless the most complete ever offered for sale, was priced at £25, and was probably utilized in Dyce's editions of Bentley's 'Dissertations,' and in an edition of Bentley's 'Sermons at Boyle's Lecture,' both of which Macpherson published. This catalogue is interesting from the number of illustrations which it affords of the transition period of English book-collecting; the various editions of the classics are priced at very moderate figures, whilst English classics are offered at comparatively 'fancy' sums. For example, a very neat copy of the first edition of 'Tom Jones' is offered at 18s., and a fine copy of John Bale's 'Image of Both Churches,' without date, but printed by East at the latter part of the sixteenth century, at £1 7s. J. Coxhead is another Holborn bookseller who may be regarded as a link between the old and the new. He was at 249, High Holborn in 1840, and had been established forty years. His lists were apparently issued only once or twice a year; one of the notices in his catalogue may be quoted here, as showing the chief medium by which country book-collectors were supplied with their books: 'Gentlemen residing in the country had better apply direct to J. Coxhead for any articles from this list, or they can obtain them by giving the order to their country bookseller, and it will be sent in their weekly parcel from London.' At about the same time, and for nearly the same period, David Ogilby was selling second-hand books at the same locality.

One of the most interesting of the Holborn booksellers was William Darton, of 58, Holborn Hill, of whose shop we give an 'interior' view from a plate engraved by Darton himself. William was a son of William Darton, who founded the famous publishing house of Darton and Harvey, of 55, Gracechurch Street, in the latter part of the last century, their speciality being children's books, which had a fame almost as extensive as those of the great Mr. Newbery himself. He was joined by his brother Thomas, and for two generations a successful business was carried on in this place; the three generations of Dartons were prominent members of the Society of Friends. The house chiefly devoted itself to publishing, but it had a fairly large trade in selling the books issued by other publishers. The firm ceased to exist about the time when the Holborn Valley improvements swept away so many of the old landmarks of that locality. Mr. Joseph W. Darton, the sole partner in Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., is a grandson of the founder of the Holborn Hill house and a great-grandson of the original William Darton. A history of the Dartons would form as interesting a volume as that on John Newbery.

Holborn is an additionally interesting book-locality from the fact that it was from here that some of the first book-catalogues were issued. This important innovation owes much to Charles Davis, whose shop was 'against Gray's Inn.' The earliest of these catalogues which we have seen is a very interesting list of 168 pages octavo, and includes 'valuable libraries, lately purchased, containing near 12,000 volumes in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and English,' 'which will be sold very cheap, the lowest price fix'd in each book, on Thursday, May 7, 1747.' The list is in many respects very curious, not the least of which is that not one of the items offered is priced. One of the facts which strike one most forcibly in this connection is the large capitals which must have been sunk in books even at this early period. Davis, like all the other booksellers--notably Tonson and Lintot--of that period, was a bookseller as well as publisher.

Moving further westward, we find records of bookselling for just a couple of centuries back. Robert Kettlewell was established at the Hand and Sceptre, King's Street, Bloomsbury, whence he issued his kinsman's apparently useful, and certainly very dull, pamphlet, entitled 'Death Made Comfortable; or, The Way to Die Well,' and sold a variety of other books besides. Making a leap of nearly a century, we meet with Samuel Hayes, of Oxford Street, and evidently a relative of John Hayes, to whom we have already referred. Samuel Hayes--when not in a French prison, for he was actually incarcerated by Napoleon when on a visit to France--was at this place of business for sixteen years, 1779 to 1795, and published several catalogues. Isaac Herbert, nephew of the editor of Ames' 'Typographical Antiquities,' was selling books in Great Russell Street in and about 1795; Joseph Bell was established as a bookseller in Oxford Street in the earlier part of the present century; Shepperson and Reynolds were in the same thoroughfare from 1784 to 1793, and sold several very good libraries within the period indicated. Writing in 1790, Pennant mentions that the chapel of Southampton, or Bedford House, Bloomsbury, was at that time rented by Lockyer Davis as a magazine of books. How long it had been in Davis's tenancy is not certain, but he died in 1791. William Davis, the author of several interesting bibliographical books, including two 'Journeys Round the Library of a Bibliomaniac,' was at the Bedford Library, Southampton Row, Holborn, during the early part of the century. Name after name might be quoted if any useful purpose would be served.

There are many links which still connect the Holborn of to-day with the Holborn and immediate district of the past. Three have, however, passed away within recent years. Edward W. Stibbs, whose death occurred in the spring of 1891, at the age of eighty, and whose stock was sold at Sotheby's in the following year, was one of the veterans of the trade, and was essentially of the old school--the school which confined itself almost exclusively to classics. The second removal is that of Mr. J. Brown, whose shop was nearly opposite the entrance to Chancery Lane, and was for nearly thirty years an exceedingly pleasant rendezvous of book-collectors, and whose proprietor was one of the most genial of bibliopoles. The third is Edward Truelove, of 256, High Holborn, the well-known agnostic bookseller, who removed here from the Strand, and who had been in business over forty years. Mr. Truelove retired two or three years since. Further up the road, in New Oxford Street, we find the shop of Mr. James Westell, whose career as a bookseller embraces a period of over half a century, having started in 1841. Mr. Westell first began in a small shop in Bozier's Court, Tottenham Court Road, and this shop has been immortalized by Lord Lytton in 'My Novel,' for it is here that Leonard Fairfield's friendly bookseller was situated.[201:A] Bozier's Court was a sort of eddy from the constant stream which passes in and out of Oxford Street, and many pleasant hours have been spent in the court by book-lovers. After Mr. Westell left, it passed into the hands of another bookseller, G. Mazzoni, and finally into that of Mr. E. Turnbull, who speaks very highly of it as a bookselling locality. Mr. Turnbull added another shop to the one which was occupied by Mr. Westell; but when the inevitable march of improvements overtook this quaint place three or four years ago, Mr. Turnbull had to leave, and he then took a large shop in New Oxford Street, where he now is. During Mr. Turnbull's tenancy in Bozier's Court several rivals started round about him; but one after another failed to make it pay, and retired, leaving him eventually in entire possession. Another old Holborn bookseller, Mr. George Glashier, who started in 1841, still has a large shop in Southampton Row; not the shop which he occupied for very many years within a few yards of Holborn, but nearer Russell Square, a less crowded thoroughfare than the old place in the same street or row. The shop now occupied by Mr. A. Reader, in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, has been a bookseller's for over half a century, one of the most noted tenants of it being Mr. John Salkeld, who removed nearly twenty years since to Clapham Road, and whose charmingly rustic shop, 'Ivy House,' is quite one of the sights of bookish London.