The love of books

Friday, October 13th., At home.

The individual alone in London has a special need for books. It is only the solitary man who really appreciates the full significance of that extraordinary word book. Books he must have, books he must understand, and books he must love - or it will be better for him that he had never been born, or at least that he had stayed in Burslem and married the draper's pale daughter.

Having carefully considered, I take the view that the average young man alone in London, with an income of £120 a year can afford to spend £4 on books. "But", you will say, "what can be done with £4?" A great deal if you go the right way about it.

In the first place it is necessary to enlarge one's notions of the book market. The average man's notion of the book market is a beautiful shop window, with rows of beautiful new books in speckless and variegated bindings. If he enters the shop he is unlikely to find anything with a price less than six shillings - prohibitive; £4 will not last long here. This is the part of the book market which the book buyer of limited means, and the book lover who has a broad view of literature, should leave well alone. Our average young man must not enter a book shop to spend more than half a crown on a book, and not often to spend more than a shilling.

He must also get firmly fixed into his head the indubitable truth that it is advantageous to keep oneself quite a year behind contemporary literature; this rearwardness saves both time and money. And, further, he must continually dwell on the relative unimportance of contemporary literature compared to the whole of literature.

Farringdon Road

As a violent contrast to the richness of the new bookshop, and by way of initiating him into the methods of the cheapest book buying, I will direct my young man eastwards. Let him visit Farringdon Road, Aldgate and Shoreditch, and gaze upon the thousands of books there displayed on barrows in the street. He will find that prices of books commence here at a halfpenny apiece, and go up to a shilling apiece; a shilling is princely. Now about 99% of these books will be useless to a man of literary taste, but the remaining 1% will not be useless and I reckon that at any one time there will be at least 50 books worth buying on Farringdon Road alone. Of course these books need to be carefully searched for, but what man who loves books will find time spent searching for them the least bit onerous? I calculate that my average man should be able to acquire at least fifty, and perhaps seventy five, books annually with his £4.

I should point out that the man who seriously takes to book buying, even inexpensive book buying, is seldom content to remain a purchaser of books for the purpose of reading. He develops into a purchaser of books as curiosities, and his library grows into a museum, as well as a storehouse of ideas. In other words he becomes a book collector. I am myself an incorrigible book collector.