The Romance of Certain Old Books

I've never liked the heat. Whilst I love the sunny days of summer (and especially its beautiful evenings), I'm not one for 'going out in the midday sun' (Englishman though I am) in the hope of a tan. 

But a recent tweet from Mat Tobin, accompanied by a photo of a clearly much-loved and vintage Ursula le Guin, made me think about just how much I do, however, love the tanned pages of an old book: the papery dustiness of a volume that has sat on a shelf for years, but that once upon a time had been taken down and read and re-read, squashed into a bag, lost on a train, sat on a cafeteria table, or all of these and more, is irresistibly redolent of a romantic past. 

This summer, I will be sharing photos of and reflections on certain old books from my collection that I genuinely love (#SummerOfOldBooks). Why there is such an affection for them, I shall have to see, because in most cases I really don't know what makes these things, tired and tattered as they are, so special. And whilst this task, born on impulse seeing that le Guin paperback, is perhaps pointless, likely quixotic, and most certainly odd, I hope that it may fruit something of why I am a reader. 

Maybe. 

***

Day 1: Union Street by Charles Causley (publ. Rupert Hart Davis, 3rd impression, 1960)

Only the spine is tanned. The rest of this slim volume is in good condition considering its sixty-two-year vintage. Edith Sitwell's introduction starts ominously: 'Re-reading the other day the sermons of Jeremy Taylor [...]'. She then goes on to make connections between CC and Goethe, Graves, Clare, W.P. Ker - all rather portentous - though her final comment on how CC's poems in the collection have 'budded into the light' is (finally) spot on. 

I've known Causley's poetry since I was young and it remains special to me because for all its simplicity, I cannot fully grasp it. It is ghostly and elusive, a private world that speaks to us all. 

Day 2: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, illustrated by John Lawrence (Hamish Hamilton, 1st edition, 1983)

The first of what will undoubtedly be a fair few volumes of supernatural fiction appearing here. This is an Ex Libris edition complete with tatty dustjacket and multiple stamps throughout. 

When I bought this copy last year, it arrived in the post with a considerable lean to the spine. About twenty years ago, I learnt a trick from a London bookseller to rectify this sad decrepitude and this was the first book I've ever owned in such a state. He told me to read the book backwards. I didn't but, cautiously at first, I opened the book fully a page at a time starting from the back. I did this on every page and when I eventually arrived at the start, the spine had returned to its usual shape, leaving me with a great feeling of satisfaction!  

Whilst I am not a fan of old library editions, the charm of seeing the old return-by slip at the front of the book is compensation for the general grubbiness. The slip has been strongly glued down here, then torn out leaving flakes of a label and two incomplete date stamps from 1986. This gem of a book was withdrawn from circulation and 'SOLD 1/3/01' for just 60p. 

These carefree (sometimes careless) markings of a book's lending library heritage often have a strange storytelling quality of their own. For example, a couple more stamps also appear slap-bang in the middle of John Lawrence's eerie sketch for the frontispiece spread. Mrs Drablow, wandering for eternity, seems unintentionally highlighted amidst the gravestones by a large circular library inkstamp and a second one (ironically) labelling her in large capitals: 'DISCARDED'. 

Day 3: Masquerade by Kit Williams (Jonathan Cape, 1st edition, 1979)

This pseudo 'children's picture book' was infamous in the late seventies. Kit Williams had created a series of pictures (along with a story about the Moon, the Sun and a Hare) holding clues as to the whereabouts of a real 18-carat gold, hare-shaped amulet, which Williams (and Bamber Gascoigne!) had secretly buried somewhere in England. This set off a national craze of amateur sleuthing and literal digging as copies of the book flew off the shelves. 

A documentary about Kit Williams, his art, and the story of the Masquerade phenomenon was made for BBC4 in 2009. Its macabre imagery of dead hares and whining soundtrack feels a bit weird, definitely odd; but then the whole story of the book and the treasure hunt is like that. Even when the amulet was ultimately found, it wasn't entirely by solving the book's puzzles, and how it was done (and the failed, but near-win attempt) is an entertaining tale in its own right.

There are a few others of this kind of book on my shelves - Williams' 'untitled' volume about bees, even a Cadbury's creme egg one! - but none of them match the strangeness of the surreal-folk style of Masquerade - and I have a strong, creeping feeling that that book hasn't yielded all of its secrets quite yet. 

Duck Queen
with Faery Changeling
(in case you were wondering)

Day 4: A Book of Charms and Changelings by Ruth Manning-Sanders (Pan Books, 1974)

The reason for including this one should be obvious from the photograph of the front cover. Nowadays, strangely enough, such macabre taxidermy dress-ups are seemingly absent from children's book design... 

Day 5: A Book of Beasts by T.H. White  (Jonathan Cape, 1954)

My fascination with bestiaries most certainly goes all the way back to when I read Nesbit's The Book of Beasts as a child, and adored the idea of a magical book that would bring the illustrated creatures to life. I've owned a few over the years, but this edition of a medieval Latin manuscript is one that I have held on to, mainly for its stylized illustrations and bizarrely entertaining descriptions. In one passage, for instance, a Cocodrillus' dung is described as being an excellent base for an ointment. 

Day 6: Georgian Poetry Selected and introduced by James Reeves (Penguin, 1962)

This is a lovely volume of poetry. Not all of it is good poetry but the whole book creaks with an autumnal haze, sometimes warm light, sometimes chill mists. There are many of my favourites here, chief among them Walter de la Mare (who will appear later in this blog) and Edward Thomas. 

Two neon-pink sticky labels are still present from when I selected poems to set for a song cycle. One of them made it to the final cut; the other, The Beechwood by Andrew Young, still languishes here. Looking again at the latter poem, I can spot the lines that originally caught my attention and which sum up the whole 'story' of the cycle I eventually wrote: 

And yet I never lose the feeling

That someone close behind is stealing

Or else in front has disappeared;  

I won't remove those sticky labels. They are part of that 'someone close behind'.  

Day 7: The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston (Faber, reprint 1956)

When I was a student, I walked into a charity shop one day to find three Faber hardcover editions of Lucy Boston's Green Knowe series - Children, Chimneys, River - in pristine condition. River was a first edition, Chimneys a second and Children, I think, a later reprint but still with Peter Boston's beautiful lino-cut insertions. (I later found out that these illustrations were costly to produce and were dropped in some later reprints). 

The books were priced very cheaply at just a few pounds each but I only had enough to buy two at the time. Not realising the incredible bargain on offer, I left Children, being priced at a pound more than the other two, behind; I thought I would perhaps come back the next day to pick it up. It turned out to be a decision that I sorely regretted. The next day it had (obviously!) gone. 

Over the years, as my collection of all six novels (in first or early editions and with original dustjackets) grew, I realised with a sinking feeling that the first book in the series would always be very difficult to obtain - either copies were extraordinarily expensive or were lacking dustjacket or were tatty beyond repair. I had missed my chance. 

Last year, fortune smiled on me as I found this copy and now, finally, the six books in the series sit together on my shelf. They have a very particular look - papery jackets, a little worn in places, artful spine design - which I love. The stories blur and play with time but, through owning these older editions, I've learned that even the physical objects do that too. 

Day 8: Yum Yum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg (Viking Kestrel, First American edition, 1985) 

I used to have this book as a child but not the copy I now own. This one was found second-hand and, surprisingly, it came nearly complete with all its cut-outs (and a bonus). 

The Ahlbergs understood children's minds and humour in a way that I don't think has ever quite been matched by any other author or illustrator. Their books are always playful and I particularly admire the way they avoid any hint of arch irony that could so easily creep into their narratives. 

The sadly absent
ice-cream sundae

In Yum Yum, each double page spread has a set of two or more cut outs that can be mixed and matched between the slots on the page. So the reader can enjoy swapping the robot's tin-can-and-springs breakfast with the little human's boiled egg. But of course that's the tidy grown-up way of exploring the book. Children swap the foods all over the place so the children's birthday party spread is filled with plates of worms, the dog gets a lime jelly, while a gruesome monster enjoys a box of liquorice-allsorts. 

I am lucky that my copy has all the cut-outs present; all but one - the final page's slot is empty. 'Ice Cream for You' is missing but to compensate, there is an extra birthday cake slotted into the party scene. I like to think that two children both owning the book once decided to swap their cut outs - one preferring ice-cream to cake. Perhaps, out there somewhere, there is another copy of Yum Yum with two sundaes. Maybe it's your own!

Day 9: Best Stories of Church and Clergy ed. by Christopher Bradby & Anne Ridler (Faber, First edition, 1966) 

This book has a good smell. When I open it, the aroma of aged paper, mould and dust that wafts from its pages perfectly befits the subject. It's a comforting scent, similar to the one you experience in an old church, just minus the incense. The peace and calm of sitting in a church is, for me, very much like that to being in a library and the slight fustiness of the stories seems to bring both places together. It's the kind of book that I might find in a holiday cottage and not really read, but which would send me very happily off to sleep. 

Day 10: Two Dozen Rounds of Nature by Peter Crossley-Holland (Alfred Lengnick, 1954)

This tiny little pamphlet is testament to the joy of second-hand book burrowing. 

Looking through boxes and boxes of chipped, tanned (though not in a healthy way), and very flimsy sheet music is probably the worst job to do in a charity or antique shop. Mostly parlour songs and piano miniatures, written by long-forgotten composers from the 1900s, the decaying pages display titles like 'Fruhlingslied' and 'Romance oubliee', and manage to exude a depressing air of melacholy ('Air Melancholique') whatever the weather. The task is often Sisyphean, fruitless and draining, and it is rare indeed that anything of any value is unearthed. 

Yet the odd occasions that do reward this horrible searching are genuinely magical. Peter Crossley-Holland, the father of the more well-known Kevin, was a composer and ethnomusicologist. I have heard his Symphony but nothing else and it's not easy to find anything published. Then along comes this tiny booklet of rounds, amid all the junk, complete with a rather quirky decoration on the front. What are the odds?! 

The music and the words are by the composer and one of the rounds, Riddle, even has a feel of his son's interest in this kind of Saxon word-play! The melodies are simple but don't always go in the direction you think, and the harmonies often clash with a modal dissonance.They don't work played through on the piano. I would like to hear them sung...

Day 11: The House on the Brink by John Gordon (Peacock, 1974)

This paperback edition of an unjustly neglected masterpiece has probably the most stunning cover I know. An ominous black surround frames a window looking out onto an almost surreal  view. The atmosphere created by the scudding clouds and baleful moon is disarming. There is a figure down by that distant shoreline. They seem to have stopped to look back up towards the building in which we stand - why? But it is the strange humanoid obelisk, watching us from its sea-marsh lair, that truly unsettles. 

This is a perfect illustration, one picture evoking the eerie side of 1970s. It encompasses the main supernatural theme of the plot and at the same time manages to instil that sense of dread and weirdness that runs through the whole novel; that same sense that haunts the Ghost Story for Christmas films, the Usborne Ghosts, those Public Information shockers... Nowadays, we seem to have grown out of that psychic horror but, for me, the Haunted Generation in which I grew up lives on every time I return to the world of that cover. 

Day 12: The Picnic and other stories by Walter de la Mare (Faber, 1941)

There must always be a place reserved for de la Mare in my 'old book' treasures. I found this one on the Cambridge market-stall run by Hugh Harding back in the late nineties and indeed picked up a number of early- and even first-editions of de la Mare there over the years. 

This book, I realise now (though not at the time) is unusual for having managed to retain its thin, papery dustjacket after all the years. It seems even to have resisted a toddler's grasp - there is a little amount of crayon marginalia on the inner pages. 

I recall being very happy to find this collection as it was the first I discovered to contain the story Miss Duveen, a sad, even tragic tale that, as is usual with de la Mare, shows us the inner workings of the everyday laced with an atmosphere of very faint but distinct creepiness. 

De la Mare could be, I'm sure, seen as a fey, old-fashioned, nostalgic writer by many. The thing is, he's really not. 

Day 13: Selected Stories by Martin Armstrong (Jonathan Cape, 1951), The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken (Meridian, 1965), Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home by Joan Aiken (Doubleday, 1968) 

A family collection today (I'm missing a Jane Aiken Hodge, though I once saw one in a Charing Cross Road shop). Joan, is of course, for me, the prize in this trio - the cover is just brilliant! - but she is accompanied here by dad (Conrad) and step-dad (Martin Armstrong). 

Looking at the contents lists, Joan seems to have inherited her dad's penchant for quirky titles (though Joan is always more playful, impeccably so). Some of his  titles here that invite investigation include: Life isn't a Short Story, Bow Down, Isaac! (echoes of Edwardian farce?), and By my Troth, Nerissa! (updated Restoration comedy?). Curiously, the last one in this collection is Fly Away Ladybird, though the story it is a far cry from Joan's Armitage 'ladybird'.