2

Confessions of a Bibliophile

1. Two Mistakes

The phone rang.

“Book Department,” I said.

“There’s a Mrs Wright here to see you.”

“I’ll be right up.”

As I hurried to the Valuations Counter, with that sense of

unreality which the prospect of meeting a stranger always

instilled in me, a distinct image of Mrs Wright had already

formed in my head. Where do these imagined people come

from, the ones we expect, but never meet? On the strength

of a mere five minute phone call a week before, I was

expecting a solid, middle-aged woman. Instead, I found

someone very old, very frail and very small, whose eyes,

reddened and distraught, stared up at me with a terrible

entreaty, as if she was drowning.

“Hello, Mrs Wright,” I said, shaking her hand; or, rather,

taking hold of it for a moment, feeling its intricate joints

beneath the dry fabric of her skin.

She didn’t acknowledge me. Instead, she said “This is my

husband,” indicating the man standing beside her. He was

wearing a suit and tie, but something didn’t seem quite

right with him, as if the suit and tie belonged to someone

else. His eyes were, like his wife’s, hungrily transmitting a

need which I couldn’t identify. I shook his hand in turn: it

was powerfully tight and needy, like something that might

grab your foot in the sea and not let go.

“I flew Spitfires,” he said.

3

“Don’t, Arthur.”

“Spitfires,” he said. His eyes filled with tears. “They went

out,” he said, “but never came back. They drowned.” His

voice rose to an alarming cry, and splintered: several

people glanced at him.

“Arthur,” said Mrs Wright.

“People don’t know that,” he went on. “Harry, Tom,

Charlie. All of them. Shot down over the sea. All drowned.

All of them.”

“He’s very upset,” said his wife, laying her arm on him. It

was as if she was talking about something that had

happened to him five minutes before; not fifty years.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what I was apologising for.

I realised I was still holding his hand. He was trembling

wildly now; but then he gave me a nod, an affirmation of

sorrow, and let go.

“We’ve brought the books,” said Mrs Wright.

*

My first job after leaving university was as an ‘audio

typist’ for an auction house. As auction houses went, it was

pretty low on the food chain: you could almost call it

‘bottom-feeding’. But, so keen was I to secure a place in an

auction house – any auction house – that I had taken this

lowly administrative role on a salary of £7,000 per annum.

4

This was back in 1989, but even then, it was pretty bad. I

was so poor I used to steal instant coffee from the big tub

in the staff canteen, scooping it, when no one was looking,

into a Styrofoam cup and sealing the top with Sellotape.

Although I was fresh from university, and steeped in

English literature, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, typing

was my only employable skill. I had developed it after my

mother had presented me with her old ‘manual’ typewriter

when I was five. I never looked back. By adolescence, I

could manage phenomenal speeds, with just two fingers.

Indeed, when I attended my initial interview at The Brook

Street Bureau on Victoria Street – a depressed graduate,

for whom the real world of employment was a gradually

dawning horror and lying in bed all day already a fond and

distant memory – the assessor, Rachel, stopped me within

seconds of starting my typing test to summon her

colleagues from their surrounding offices. “Come and look

at this,” she said. They gathered around and watched, in

fragrant, glossy-lipped amazement, as I started again,

rattling away like a First World War machine gun. Yes, I

made mistakes, but, boy, was I fast. Rachel said I was the

fastest typist (with two fingers) she’d ever seen.

Then, through the agency, I took the job at the auction

house.

One day, when everyone else was engaged in their – as I

saw it – enormously exciting and successful occupations of

valuing Chippendale furniture, discovering lost

Rembrandts and growing eccentric moustaches, I was

sitting at my desk with my earphones plugged in –

somehow amplifying my isolation – when it suddenly

struck me, at twenty two years of age, that I had wasted my

whole life. I stopped typing and began crying quietly and

steadily to myself. No one noticed. The office, bright with

summer sun, revolved around me in a kaleidoscope of tears.

Six months later, I got my break. Having once vaguely

expressed an interest in books, I was ‘promoted’, if that’s

the right word, to a new position as ‘Junior Specialist’ in

the Book Department under the delightful tutelage of its

dapper Old Etonian head – and only other member – Jan.

The interview went like this.

Jan: “Do you like books?”

Me: “Well, yes.”

Jan: (holding up a book). “What’s this?”

Me: “A … book?”

Jan: “Brilliant. You’ve got the job. Welcome aboard. Two

sugars, please. And leave the bag in.”

It was quite fun: I did some basic cataloguing and

counted an awful lot of plates. Jan saw me off at 5pm each

day by calling brightly “Thanks for popping in!” At night, I

immersed myself in Alan G. Thomas’s Great Books and

6

Woolf, Virginia

OrlandoPublished: Crosby Gaige,

New York, 1928.

£3,000.00

click for more information

Book Collectors and John Carter’s ABC.

It paid off. My annual salary was increased to £7,500

and, on the strength of it, I bought a new suit. Well, I say

‘new’. I mean it was ‘new’ to me.

But I’d arrived.

In this auction house there was no such thing as ‘training’

– unless you counted Jan’s rather haphazard and patrician

guidance – and I was thrown in not so much at the deep

end as at the bottomless one. Suddenly, miraculously, I

was a ‘Book Specialist’. People, unbelievably, came to show

me their books. I remember a hapless colleague, a porter,

experienced a similar apotheosis, finding himself

appointed, quite randomly one morning, to the role of

‘Print Specialist’ (the previous one having suffered a

nervous breakdown).

One day we were standing next to each other at the

valuation counter where we performed our imperilled

charades of ‘expertise’. A member of the public – a

knowledgeable one too, judging by his

unforgiving steel-rimmed glasses,

bow tie and big successful overcoat

– had brought in a William Blake

print to be valued. He held it

forward for the ‘expert’ to

examine; the ‘expert’ who

8

confessed, with a disarming shrug, that he had, quote,

“never heard of William Blake”. “Excuse me,” the client kept

repeating, understandably dumfounded, glancing at me for

corroboration, “Are you sure you’re the Print Specialist?”

*

So that’s how I came to be here, standing at the valuation

counter, nervously watching as Mrs Wright extracted from

her bag a few leather bound books – thirteen in total – and

placed them in a row in front of me: like bodies, for

identification.

“They belonged to Arthur’s great grandfather,” she

explained. “Didn’t they, Arthur?”

He didn’t reply. He was staring at me, his mouth moving

with unsaid words, confessions. I sensed, very strongly,

that he was barely with us: that he was in a cockpit

somewhere, high above the English Channel.

Of course, I knew nothing about books. But when Jan was

away on a ‘valuation’, or just ‘couldn’t be arsed’ (his

phrase), it was left to me, the impostor, to muddle through

with clients at the counter. And rather than explain the

situation to this elderly couple, who seemed to be

depending so very much on me, I pretended I knew what I

was doing.

Big mistake.

9

I picked up the first book. It was an odd volume of TheSpectator, dated 1788, in a worn calf binding. I matched it

up with three other volumes from the same periodical. At

least I could read Roman numerals. Four out of twelve.

“Do you have any other volumes of this?” I asked,

convincingly.

“Oh no,” she said. “Do we Arthur?”

He shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “That’s all of them

there.”

It got worse. Amongst the other books was a 19th-century

New Testament, a grubby Book of Common Prayer from

the same period, a single volume of a late edition of JosephAndrews, an almanac for 1802 which had lost its only

claim to interest, its frontispiece, and something without a

title page which appeared to be in Greek or Hebrew (or

Martian for all I knew) and was bound in vellum. I picked

it up and pretended to study it closely: in reality, as an

object, it was entirely opaque to me, and no amount of

staring could help. But they didn’t know that. At least, I

hoped they didn’t. For all they knew, I had a PhD in

Martian.

“This is rather nice,” I said. Specialists quite often said

banal things like this, usually as a prelude to saying

something spectacularly learned. “It looks quite old,” was

what I came up with.

“Do you think it might have any value?” stressed Mrs Wright.

10

“It may have some,” I said. “In all honesty(Ha!), I need to

do some research.” I felt like I was throwing them a lifeline,

only the other end wasn’t attached to anything. I added,

brightly, “I think it’s in Greek.”

“In Greek?” said Mrs Wright, clearly impressed. “Is that

good, or bad?”

“Oh, good,” I said. “Definitely good.”

“Do you hear that Arthur? The young man says it’s in

Greek and that’s good. Arthur?”

Later that afternoon, when Jan had come back from his

‘valuation’ (redolent of red wine and cigarettes), he went

carefully through the little collection which I had taken in

from the Wrights, one by one. “Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap,” he said. “I

can’t believe you took these in.” He lit a cigarette.

“What about this one?” I said, showing him the one I’d

saved till last, the little vellum-bound book in which I had

invested so much vicarious hope.

He opened it.

“Oh – my – God!” he gasped. He sat down, or, rather,

collapsed into his chair.

“What?” I said.

“I can’t believe it!”

“What is it?”

“Crap,” he said, and tossed it accurately into the bin.

11

I dutifully retrieved it.

“What estimate did you put on them?” he said, blowing

smoke in my direction.

“Thirty to fifty.”

“Pounds?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” he said. “Someone might buy them, I suppose.

A blind one-legged dwarf from Albania, for instance. Is

there any wine in that cupboard? Get us some would you?

There’s a good chap.”

The date of the sale was set for August 15th. This was not

an auspicious time to sell books, or anything for that

matter, but Jan had thought we needed to have a ‘clear out’

of the department’s warehouse and there was also the

troublesome runt end of a dealer’s stock to be disposed of,

everything to be sold without reserve. Despite my

protestations, he insisted that I put Mrs Wright’s books in

this sorry sale of no-hopers, also-rans and rejects,

catalogued as a single lot with minimal description: ‘A

collection of 13 miscellaneous books, one in Greek and

bound in vellum.’ The tantalising addendum, made

speculatively, was entirely my own; thankfully, Jan didn’t

notice it.

Regarding the poor timing of the sale, I comforted myself

with the following reasoning: the dealers might think that,

12

because the sale was in August, there would be bargains to

be had and, consequently, they’d show up in their hordes.

They didn’t. Ten minutes before the sale was due to start,

there were four people in the room: an elderly book dealer

whose name I could never remember, and three others I

didn’t recognise but whose attitudes of slumped

despondency hardly filled me with optimism. They seemed

to be together. One, I noticed, was even listening to a

Walkman: its solipsistic itching filled the saleroom. This, I

thought, glumly, was going to be a very long day. We had

400 lots to get through, with not a single decent book

amongst them.

And yet … And yet … There was something about that

little volume in Mrs Wright’s lot, something I couldn’t

quite put my finger on. Although my technical knowledge

of books was limited, I felt I had a fine instinct; I thought I

could pick up on things which Jan – with his years of

experience, his cynicism, his long lunches – had become

inured to. And my instinct here told me that there was

something very interesting about that little book in its old

vellum binding. In fact, I strongly suspected, based on no

evidence whatsoever, that it must be worth a lot of money,

and that later, after the sale, I might have cause to make a

rather exciting phone call … “Mrs Wright? Are you sitting

down? You are? Do you remember that little vellum-bound

book ..? The one I was so excited about ..?”

I heard a commotion. Encouragingly, a group of people

had entered the saleroom. Then I saw – with mixed

feelings, but predominantly a sinking one – that it was Mrs

Wright who was marshalling them. Manufacturing an

enthusiasm I didn’t feel, I bounded towards her and shook

her excitedly by the hand. She seemed rather proud to

show me off to her companions.

“This is the Book Specialist,” she said, with proprietorial

relish, and I felt her tiny arm about my back. They cooed at

me and wondered why they didn’t recognise me from TheAntiques Roadshow. Mrs Wright introduced her retinue.

“These are my sisters, Peggy and Shirley. This is my half

sister, Edna. This is her husband, Jack. This is my son,

Ralph, and my daughter-in-law, Alison. This is my grand-

daughter, Kylie, and my grandson, Jehoshaphat. And this

is my friend, Jill. Oh, and that’s her husband, Geoff. With

the video camera. And their son, Jason. And his girlfriend,

Donna.” I thought the last two, who were chewing gum

malevolently and in perfect synchronisation, looked like

they’d come under duress.

“So many!” I said. “Where have you all come from?”

“Derby,” they agreed.

“The Wrights of Derby!” I cried, to a blank reception.

“We came down on the coach last night,” said Mrs Wright,

“and stayed at a Travelodge in Mitcham. Then we had to

take three different buses this morning to get here. I can’t

14

The Bibliophilist’sLibraryPublished: Printed Only for

Subscribers by George Barrie,

Philadelphia, c. 1900.

£4,800.00

click for more information

tell you how excited we are …” I noticed she was clutching

the hastily photocopied ‘catalogue’ I had sent her: a proper

printed catalogue, with colour illustrations, hadn’t been

considered appropriate for this particular sale. “Will you

sign it for me?” she said. Suddenly, everyone wanted theirs

signed, the ones they had purchased for 10p each at

reception, partly for information, but also as mementoes of

their exciting visit to London, their first auction!

As I scribbled at the proffered sheets with a certain

amount of gratification, I asked Mrs Wright, “Is Mr Wright

not here?”

“He wasn’t feeling up to it yesterday,” she said. “But I’ll

phone him with the result the moment the sale is over.”

“Do send him my regards,” I said.

She glanced around the room. “There don’t seem to be …

many …

Thankfully, before I was forced

to lie and tell her not to worry

because there were lots of

commission bids, three loud

raps – like gunfire –

signalled that the sale was

about to commence. The

auctioneer – a charmless

man whose famously

unhappy marriage gave

16

him the air of always wanting to be somewhere else – set

about tediously enunciating the ‘terms and conditions of

sale’ with all the dynamism of an aged priest delivering the

last rites to someone no one cared about. Since I was

‘commissions clerk’, I stood beside him, ridiculous at my

own little podium, from where I watched as Mrs Wright

exchanged excited looks with her companions. Geoff

pointed his camera at me, and waved.

“… and we won’t be showing the books today,” the

auctioneer concluded, without explanation. “Lot One.

Twenty pounds? Ten?” He stifled a yawn. “Pass,” he said.

‘Pass’ was auction jargon for ‘unsold’.

Mrs Wright’s books, second to last in the sale, were lot 399.

During the next two hours, Mrs Wright and her

companions (with the exceptions of the perpetually

masticating Jason and Donna) were transfixed by the

proceedings. Perhaps one in ten lots found a buyer: more

‘passes’ were made than at a conference of travelling

salesmen. If anything sold for over a hundred pounds, it

was received with a subdued, but rapturous, delirium from

the floor. After lot 286, the three sinister strangers left,

leaving only the nameless book dealer (who was asleep)

and Mrs Wright’s immediate family, who thankfully, from

their vantage point in the front row, were unaware of the

yawning chasm behind them.

17

As the last few lots of the sale approached, the auctioneer

seemed to sense that escape was within his reach and his

pace quickened. Geoff started filming as lot 399

approached.

“Lot 395. Ten pounds? Five pounds? Pass. Lot 396.

Twenty pounds? Ten pounds? Pass. Lot 397. Twenty

pounds? Ten pounds? Five pounds? Pass. Lot 398. Five

pounds? Pass. Lot 399. Ten pounds? Pass. Lot 400. Ten

pounds? Five pounds? Pass.” Down came his gavel for the

last time. Bang. “Thank you very much, ladies and

gentlemen,” he said, and hurried off.

I noticed a flurry of activity from the Wrights, which

Geoff was avidly filming: they were all asking questions of

each other. What was the significance of the ‘ten pounds’?

What did ‘pass’ mean? Had the books sold? or not? What

was going on?

The nice Book Specialist would know! He’d tell them

what had happened.

But, strangely, he’d gone.

Two weeks after the sale, unable to bear my guilt any

longer, I wrote to Mrs Wright, saying how sorry I was that

we hadn’t sold her books for her. ‘I was particularly upset,’

I wrote, ‘because I knew it meant a lot to you and to your

family.’ By return, she wrote to say that it didn’t matter one

bit and that I should do with the books as I thought best,

18

even take them to a charity shop, because she didn’t, just

yet, feel able to come to London to collect them. ‘Very

sadly’, she wrote, ‘the day of the sale, my dear Arthur

passed away. It has been a cruel blow to us all, and I hate

to think of him being there on his own.’

After I read this, I folded the letter, put on my coat and

told Jan I was ‘popping out’ for a moment.

I went to the car park and, holding my head up into the

rain, wept.

* * *

I had never, to my knowledge, met Bill Bryson, or seen a

picture of him, but this was exactly how I imagined he’d

look: bearded, bespectacled and benign, in an outdoorsy

kind of way. He looked as if he had been hatcheted out of a

block of timber, and, standing there in his woollen jacket,

check shirt and shapeless green corduroys – like the

gnarled trunk of a tree – he said he had a book to show me.

Ten years had passed since the incident with Mrs Wright

and I had moved to a more respectable auction house with

an SW postcode quite low in the odd numbers. In these

intervening years, I had developed, instead of expertise, a

convincing counterfeit of it: a casual, breezy manner, and a

throwaway technical vocabulary (“one of the signatures is

starting, and – oh, look here – just as I thought – your

19

gutta percha is all perished!” might be a typical opening

gambit), which suggested I knew a lot more about books

than I was letting on.

As Mr Bryson fished in his cloth bag, I tried my best to

look as if I was trying hard not to look inconvenienced.

That afternoon, we had a catalogue going to print, and now

the computer seemed to have mangled everything up,

including my head: the last thing I needed right now was a

book valuation. But he was so nice – with those fine

appeasing wrinkles around his eyes, and his kindly,

avuncular, flustered manner – that I was disarmed, even

when I discovered he was an American. I have nothing

against Americans. In fact, I like Americans, on the whole.

But they always make me feel at a tactical disadvantage, as

if, behind our polite social interaction, the relative size of

our stockpile of nuclear warheads was being compared. To

my disadvantage.

He put the book on the counter.

“It’s a first edition,” he said, without the culturally-

uncertain interrogative tone with which Americans

sometimes turn statements into queries.

His certainty riled me: I’d be the judge of whether it was a

first edition or not. “Let’s take a look,” I said.

I knew immediately, and with a certain satisfaction, that

it was definitely not a first edition, and therefore ‘NSV’ (No

Saleable Value). The satisfaction was on two counts. First,

20

Costume PortraitsPublished: ca. early 19th

century [n.p.].

£1,440.00

click for more information

it meant I would get back to my desk sooner (I wouldn’t

have to go through the rigmarole of booking the thing in

for sale) and secondly, I had proved an American wrong:

put that in your pipe and smoke it, Paul Revere! I was

familiar with The Hound of the Baskervilles: in my career,

I must have seen ten, twenty copies of the first edition. And

they didn’t look like this. For a start, the first edition was

yellow. This was red.

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that this isn’t a first edition.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s funny,” he said. “We’ve always been told it was a

first edition.”

With a hint of condescension – manifested in an

exaggeration of the blowing sound of ‘whom’ – I said, “By

whom?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, flustered. “I guess it’s been

a sorta family … myth.”

“It’s a reprint, I’m afraid,” I said, pushing the poor

compromised volume back towards him. “Quite an early

one, but a reprint, nevertheless.”

“And so it’s worthless?”

“Ten pounds? Something like that?”

“Oh gee,” he said, picking it up and popping it back in his

bag. “Well, I guess I can say goodbye to that shopping

spree in your Harrods store.”

22

I consoled him with a patronising laugh, then, having

wished him a good afternoon, hurried down the back stairs

towards the subterranean book department and the

profound mysteries of my computer.

It was about half way down these stairs that something

rather strange happened, and my precipitous pace slowed

somewhat. Hang on, I thought. Wait a minute. Draculawas yellow. The Hound of the Baskervilles …

I began to mutter expletives to myself. By the time I had

reached my desk, I was certain I had made a mistake, but I

had to confirm the fact before I made an even greater one.

I called out to anyone who would listen, “What colour is

the first of Hound of the Baskervilles?”

“Red,” came the answer from three places. Someone

added, “With a pictorial design in gilt and central panel

blocked in black. Come on, everyone knows that.”

“Shit,” I said, matter-of-factly, and hurled up the stairs

again. “Where did he go?” I said to Mary who was in charge

of the valuation counter.

“Who?”

“Bill bloody Bryson!”

“Was that really ..?”

“Mary. Mary. I really do not have the time right now to

stand here discussing with you – much as I’d love to –

whether or not that was the famous American writer and

commentator Bill Bryson, known across the world for his

23

witty apercus chiefly pertaining to English culture.”

“He left,” she said.

I sprinted to the front entrance via an auction of

surprisingly expensive teddy bears.

“Where … did … he … go?” I said, now breathless.

“Who?” snapped Ruth, the elegantly coiffured

receptionist who had mastered the art of looking down at

you even from her sedentary position at the front desk.

“Bill Bryson.”

“Who?”

“Man with beard. American.”

“Oh,” she said. “Him. Well, he asked me for directions to

the underground station so I imagine he must be going

there. He said he’d come from his hotel by bus, but that he

had to get back quickly to meet his wife, something about

some disappointing news …”

I was already half way to the station. On the blustery

concourse there were the usual rapids of people, but there

was no Bill Bryson amongst them in his kayak. I ran back

to the auction house. Ruth observed me gasping for breath

and bent double at her counter.

“Find him?” she said, without the remotest interest.

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose he happened to mention the

name of his hotel, did he?”

“Funnily enough, he did.”

I couldn’t speak: I just looked questioningly at her.

24

“Claridge’s,” she said. She probably kept a suite there

herself.

I took the Piccadilly Line three stops to Green Park, then

the Jubilee Line to Bond Street. This seemed the most

direct route, although, in retrospect (which, looking back, I

didn’t have), instead of the Piccadilly Line, he might just as

well have taken the Circle or District Lines to Victoria and

picked up the Jubilee line from there …

There was no sign of him at Bond Street station. And it

was only as I was tearing down Brook Street that I caught

sight of his distinctive cords in the distance. By the time I

reached him, he was at the canopied entrance to the hotel,

engaging the doorman in conversation. With a strangled

cry, I collapsed against him and cried, “Mr Bryson!”

He steadied me, then studied me. “Hello?” he said,

amused and concerned at once.

“It’s … me,” I gasped.

“I can see that,” he said, “but I’m afraid I have no idea

who you are, young man.”

“From the auction house.”

“Oh my,” he said.

“First edition,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“First edition. In your bag. Hound of the Baskervilles. Fine

copy. Original red pictorial cloth gilt. Estimate £400-600.

Reserve with auctioneer’s discretion. Suggested sale date …”

25

“Would you stand away from the door, sir?” said the

doorman.

“That’s nice to know,” said Bill Bryson. Then he added,

“By the way. I’m not Bill Bryson.”

*

After my efforts, Ike – that was his name – was too nice

not to consign the book, and, in the Autumn – sorry, the

Fall – we sold it for £800, which was a pretty good price.

He was kind enough to send me a postcard after the sale in

which he told me that everyone in Michigan knew about

my record breaking run to Claridge’s. ‘The good thing was,’

he wrote, ‘you admitted your mistake, and put it right.’

The same cannot be said for my conduct with Mrs

Wright: I still have cause to recriminate myself and barely

a day goes by when I don’t think of her or her husband

with a crushing sense of guilt. I suppose Mrs Wright must

have died years ago; I think it unlikely she would have

survived her husband very long. I’m not unhappy: I like to

think of them reunited somewhere.

As for her books, I took them, as she had suggested, to a

charity shop, where I hoped they might do some good. The

volunteer sneered at them, then put them on a shelf at the

back of the shop priced at one pound each.

Nicholas Worskett

26

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