The Brightfount Diaries

BRIAN ALDISS

The Brightfount Diaries

For my dear ‘Polly’

You are the music while the music lasts

About half of this material originally appeared in the pages of The Bookseller. For permission to reproduce it here – and for many other kindnesses – I am indebted to the Editor, Mr Edmond Segrave.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

June

June–July

July

August

August–September

September

September–October

October

November

November–December

December

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

This is my pet book – the book with which I first dipped my toes into the chilly waters of publication.

Some time after WW2 was over, I returned from the East seeking the grant I would need in order to attend university. I was eventually told that the ex-service grant system was closed.

So, I took an ill-paid job in an Oxford bookshop. At least I was to be among books, those friendly fruits.

The official magazine of the book trade was, and still is, The Bookseller. Weekly copies were circulated among the staff. In the fifties, articles were published about the ‘big cheeses’ who comprised the book trade. There was no mention of those slaves, like me, who actually manned the counters and faced the customers.

I wrote a letter about this state of affairs to the editor of The Bookseller, a Mr Edmond Segrave, saying that ‘the pale face of the bookseller’s assistant was the backbone of English literature.’

Mr Segrave enjoyed the joke and dropped me a line in return. It was then that I conceived the idea for a series of comic sketches set in an imaginary bookshop.

Mr Segrave summoned me to his office. I wore a tie for the occasion. He said they had never published, never tried to publish, a comic series. If I would write six of these proposed pieces, he would consider them to see if he found them funny.

So, that I did. I worked near the celebrated Oxford bookseller, ‘Blackwell’. So, playing on this, I chose the name for my fictitious shop: Brightfount’s.

Those weekly instalments began to appear in The Bookseller. Publishers, it was reported, were amused.

‘Brightfount’s’ had been appearing regularly for about two years when I received a letter from Mr Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber. He asked if I would care to turn my weekly column into a book.

During the next six months, six other publishers wrote to me with similar proposals. But I could not have had a better publisher than Faber, nor had a more pleasant man to deal with than Monteith. He and I had two items in common; both of us as boys had subscribed to Modern Boy, (which published original ‘Biggles’ stories), and both of us had served in Burma, fighting Japanese forces.

I have always been confident. But about two weeks before The Brightfount Diaries’ publication day, I suffered the equivalent of stage fright. The public! – What if they don’t laugh?

Fortunately, they did. My long shambles of a career had begun.

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2012

June

SUNDAY

Last week at ‘Hatchways’. Shall be sorry to leave here, partly for Aunt Anne’s sake – she is becoming afraid of being left with Uncle Leo – and partly because I shall miss the country. Shall even miss that seven mile cycle in to work each morning, which I have cursed so often.

Been glorious day. Just looked out of my window to see, low over Claw Marsh, sun setting behind Drabthorpe Priory, while down on the lawn Uncle Leo stood knee deep in the fish pond.

‘Whatever are you doing there?’ I called in some alarm.

‘I hope I have not warped the course of your life too much,’ he bellowed back. ‘You must remember I have had to sacrifice a lot for your mother; she has been a difficult woman, Derek, a difficult woman – always remember that.’

‘This is Peter up here,’ I called back, not without embarrassment, remembering Colonel Howells next door was probably within earshot. ‘What are you doing?’

He climbed slowly out of the water, shouting as he did so, ‘I’m just considering erecting some tessellation instead of that parapet; it would just break the line of the roof nicely. Come down here and see.’

‘Not if it means standing in the middle of the fish pond.’

Nevertheless went down. Uncle was standing there wringing out his trousers. Asked him cautiously what made him call me Derek.

‘Got the boy on my mind, you know, with him coming back to England soon,’ he explained. ‘Shouldn’t be turning you out otherwise.’ Then he rapidly changed subject and said, ‘You work in a bookshop. Bring me back any books on tessellation you have.’

Can’t remember single book on tessellation at Brightfount’s, but Uncle must be humoured. My cousin Derek and his wife Myra and her sister Sheila are all descending on Uncle and Aunt, to live at ‘Hatchways’ until they can find house of their own. No doubt prospect makes him feel a little odd.

MONDAY

Borrowed Huxley’s Doors of Perception for the weekend. He advocates a substitution of the drug mescalin for those dubious Western narcotics, cigarettes and alcohol. Was carried away by his fervour (Huxley always mesmerises me). Eager to experience the beatific vision, I hurried round to Loghead and Beale, the chemist’s, in the tea break, and ordered a half gramme of mescalin.

‘Mescalin?’ the chemist asked, puzzlement in his voice.

He knows me well, and at first I thought he was merely surprised to find I was not after aspirins. But it transpired that he had never heard of mescalin. Nor did he find it in the pharmacopoeia.

‘Huxley experimented in California,’ I said.

‘Ah … That explains it. It’s American.’

So have not experienced that blessed state of beatitude; instead, feel merely a slight frustration. The only consolation about the business is that I described Huxley’s book so glowingly to my chemist friend that he parted with six shillings for a copy on the spot!

Publishers show a business-like alacrity to link books with films: would not a similar arrangement with Boots be easy to make? How fascinating to organize a ‘Read the Book – Taste the Drug’ campaign.

Or perhaps a limited edition could be produced complete with an unbreakable phial of mescalin contained in a back flap. Such a reasonable policy might bring considerable financial rewards; for instance, the tome would probably be chosen as the Underworld’s Book of the Month.

TUESDAY

Travellers much in evidence. What nice hats the Heinemann men wear!

In the quaint, gangling structure known as the book trade, the publishers’ travellers play an important part. Like bees going from hive to flower they provide vital links between the strongholds of London W. and such shabby outposts of literacy as Brightfount’s.

Had to barge into Mr Brightfount’s office while M—’s rep. was there to get a book set aside for someone. Mr B., looking very cheerful, hands in pockets, canting his chair back dangerously, was saying, ‘Of course you know we never had any Ascent of Everest on subscription order!’

Thought this quaint thing to boast about, later realized it must have been a counter-gambit to a new mountaineering book produced as ‘another Sir John Hunt’.

Sold our second-hand copy of Augustus Hare’s Walks in London. Noted from its costing that it was bought into stock year I was born. Twenty-five years on one shelf! Hope it gets a good home.

Pretty busy in afternoon, but found time to play one of Mrs Callow’s hard little games. Think she organized it to brighten up old Gudgeon, who wears far-away look: it gets further away as his holidays get nearer.

Object of this game was to think up literary animals. Thurber had a peke called Darien: did we know any other such pleasant beasts? Dave announced that a Maori had a little lamb, but this was disqualified. We could only produce that hybrid, the old English Bear-wulf, and a Gorbuduck. So Mrs Callow won with a Shakespearian nursery animal called Fardels Bear.

At this point Mr Brightfount appeared, and we returned to our posts. The bear presumably went back to Hoo Wood.

Actually found a book on fortification in our Architecture for Uncle Leo. We are a bit short of staff at present, have been since Miss Harpe departed, and on top of that Edith was away to-day with a cold or something. So I left shop late, and cycled slowly home enjoying sunshine. Arrived at ‘Hatchways’ to find Uncle had gone to bed.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked Aunt.

‘Nothing, as far as I can make out. He simply said he wanted to go to bed with the birds.’

‘But the birds won’t be going to bed for two or three hours yet!’

‘You remember those stuffed owls and things in glass cases up in the front attic? He’s gone to bed with them. I don’t pretend I’m not worried.’

WEDNESDAY

Our junior partner, Arch Rexine, and I spent most of the morning cataloguing. Trade very quiet. A traveller in to see Mr Brightfount, reappeared to tell us the one about the Army Captain and the frog who turned into a beautiful princess in the middle of the night.

Just before closing, about ten to one, a flock of people came in, talked volubly together without looking at the shelves and left after a quarter of an hour without buying anything.

Dave hastily put the blind up, but before he had turned the key one of the talkative group thrust his head in again and said, ‘I say, I forgot to ask – have you a copy of Local Government and Local Expenditure?’

‘Our books are under alphabetical order of authors,’ Dave said sourly. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘Oh. I forget. I had it written down but I’ve lost the piece of paper.’ With that he retreated, and Dave locked the door.

‘You know who that lot was?’ Mr B. said, emerging from his office with his hat on. ‘They’ve come down for the local conference. They’re Efficiency Experts …’

Half-day. Beautiful sunshine. Helen and I swam in the river down past Poll’s Meadow. Not a soul about.

Where do people go to in the summer countryside? Except for Helen and me, everyone might have been sucked up with the morning’s dew into heaven. We soaked in water and sun, and I felt perfectly content – pro tem, anyhow – to remain on earth.

THURSDAY

Foreigner, a Belgian, in shop in morning asking for Galsworthy’s Saga. I tried to imply that Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim presents a more up-to-date, if narrower, picture of us.

‘It must be Galsworthy,’ he said. ‘It is for my friend at home who has never heard of Galsworthy.’

The answer still puzzles me – not so much its meaning as its implication: one of us, despite all appearance to the contrary, was not understanding the other perfectly. What then will his friend make of Soames? (Somewhere here is hidden a pointer to international co-operation.)

Later, while I was wrapping the parcel, I asked our visitor how he liked England (stupid question!). He said he did like it, that it was his first visit here, and that he had always wanted to come over because ‘several of my parents were born in England’.

(Somewhere here is hidden a pointer to international co-operation.)

FRIDAY

A. H. Markham, an old customer and a bit eccentric, bustled in as we opened after lunch and went straight to History. He seized on our new copy of Tate’s Parish Chest (C.U.P., 25s.) and stayed there with it till we closed. Now and again he would pop a peppermint in his mouth and make a note on an old envelope.

Commented Mrs Callow as we trooped out to get our bikes: ‘Quite a tête-à-Tate.’

More cataloguing in afternoon.

SATURDAY

Probably most authors realize how profitable it is to be published in America. Came on an old advert to-day that proclaimed Hammond Innes as the Englishman with most serials in the Saturday Evening Post to his credit. That’ll make some of his rivals wistful! Not that wistfulness will help them get into the Post: the demand is evidently for forthright action.

Still, as Lionel Johnson remarked a while ago:

Some players upon plaintive strings

Publish their wistfulness abroad.

Moral: There may not be a market for every book, but there is for every mood.

Apropos of which, when Dave complained to Mr B. once about some ancient stock, he got the surly answer: ‘There’s a customer for every book, young man.’

‘The trouble is,’ Dave said later, ‘half of ’em are dead.’

Nice to get out of the shop into the summer air. Just getting on my bike when Mr Mordicant appeared; I did my Army service with his son. He is something on the local Journal and Advertiser but never seems to do any work. Ribbed him about this; he said, ‘Well, I’m making a kind of social survey. Nothing organized, you know, but I like watching the odd fish that swim around the tank of post-war England.’

‘Suppose it’s not much different from pre-war?’ I hazard, not quite knowing what to say.

‘Quite different,’ he said. ‘Everything’s changed. People have got an entirely new attitude. You’ll see – I’ll write a book about it some day.’

He’s certainly right about odd fish.

June–July

SUNDAY

Moving day for me. Surprising what lot of junk I’ve managed to accumulate in three and half years here. It’s been home from home indeed, real home being eighty miles away and too far and expensive to get to every week-end. In afternoon, Uncle drove down with me to new digs, which certainly will be handy for the shop.

Landlady is one Vera Yell, nothing much to shout about. Think even Mordicant would agree she is definitely of pre-war vintage. Her husband was once Uncle’s auctioneer. House is one of row of six. My room is up two flights of stairs, looks out over feeble gardens, outhouses, tumbledown walls, backs of other houses and cathedral behind them all.

Room itself is typical bed-sitter; an effort to make it habitable has obviously been made, so don’t grumble. Mrs Yell showed it to me very defensively. ‘I’m afraid the furniture’s not especially new,’ she said.

‘As long as it’s comfortable …’ I replied, glancing rather apprehensively at large photo of large girl in gym tunic hanging by the door.

‘Oh, that’s my younger sister Grace,’ says Mrs Yell hurriedly. ‘I hope you wasn’t expecting Picassos.’

‘Of course not.’

‘What with them and atom bombs and the Russians, and now these poor plastic children, I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’

‘Oh it could be worse.’

‘Yes – and probably will be before it’s better. Anyway, I’ll bring your breakfast up prompt at eight each morning.’

MONDAY

Breakfast was prompt: cornflakes and cold sausage. Walked round to Brightfount’s.

Spent most of morning doing window. Made glorious mêlée of new, second-hand and remainders on theme of ‘Diaries and Diarists’. Am always afraid of getting price tickets wrong since the time we marked a set of Hakluyt £8 8s. instead of £18 18s. Our nice morocco Pepys as centrepiece; it’s been in before, but no matter.

Cross Street looked very pleasant in the sun.

Mr B. spent most of day pricing the library he bought from Professor Carter. One volume had been a gift from a famous author and bore the inscription on the fly-leaf: ‘To D. C., A Parting Shot.’ The book was A Bullet in the Ballet. Was this only the mild joke it seemed, or a veiled but straight tip to D. C. to stay away? An associ-ation or a dissociation copy?

TUESDAY

Slipped out in morning to buy new pair of white flannels, passed two young men talking so animatedly and with such pleasure that I was attracted to them straight away. As they whisked by me, I only caught three words, uttered by one of them in excited tones: ‘I’ve been reading …’ Pass, friend.

V. nice flannels. Expensive. Wore them to tennis with Helen in the evening. Had about enough of her. For one thing, her service is putrid.

WEDNESDAY

Very busy; generally are on half-day. Gudgeon, our senior assistant, had the day off, so most of serving devolved on me. Still no replacement for Miss Harpe, who left in the spring because she was asthmatic and allergic to dust.

In the middle of a rush, some thoughtless millionaire came in and bought our morocco Pepys from the window. Very awkward: nothing decent to fill the gap.

According to Dave, who always ferrets out such tit-bits of information, Mr Brightfount interviewed young girl who starts Saturday; know Mr B.’s choice by now: plump, greasy, prone to sniffing. We’ve got one like that on the staff already – poor old Edith, dumb office wench.

Irritable. On bike ride, Helen and I caught in heavy rain shower. Violent quarrel under horse-chestnut. That’s over! Returned to digs and was furiously barked at by Mr Yell’s dog in the hall. Retreated to room: ‘Lost myself in a book.’

Relevant quote from Rasselas: ‘… the incommodities of a single life are, in a great measure, necessary and certain, but those of a conjugal state accidental and avoidable.’ Must see about getting married; am old enough, if not rich enough. Trouble is, there are few suitable girls – only the Dodd girl, whom I don’t know very well, and Colonel Howell’s daughter Julie, who works in London. Shall probably end up bachelor like Gudgeon; a lifetime of Mrs Yell’s breakfasts stretches before me.

THURSDAY

Gudgeon bought a portfolio of prints for ten shillings yesterday and sold it to Mr B. for two pounds ten. Said he to me, waving the spoils, ‘There’s a beautiful bit of engraving on these notes, you know.’

He starts his holiday on Monday.

Saw Helen in Cross Street. Grrrr!

FRIDAY

Pay-day. Packet seemed thinner than ever. ‘Here’s to the next one!’ old Mr Parsons says each week as he tucks his envelope away.

Arch Rexine loathes to throw a book away; Mr Brightfount pitches them out with heart-warming prodigality. I’ve had several interesting volumes from our ‘chuck-out pile’. Have just found old novel called Store of Gold. Pubd. in the twenties, it is a tale of a future where Big Business has run wild; goodness knows, it may have been credible when it was written. Now, it is alternately funny and fustian. Hero and heroine work in a giant store which stays open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Employees work four hours on, eight off, sleep in gigantic dormitories miles underground. Hero, transferred to Toys, is separated from heroine; book details their struggle to meet in lifts (‘non-stop express to all seventy floors’) and wangle a reunion. It’s comedy-Kafka – or perhaps burlesque-Bennett.

My favourite character was Menucius Replay, who works in the book department. To Menucius (‘the constant burning giant gas jets had etched an ineradicable pallor in his gaunt face’) is given the soul-destroying task of writing two-hundred-word reviews for the weekly publicity sheet of all ‘failed books’ and books cut in price; that is, remainders.

We are told one day, ‘the conveyor deposited before Menucius his quota of work for the next two shifts: a two-volume autobiography of an obscure statesman, a biography of Hannibal, Days Afloat, More Days Afloat, three novels with a religious bias, a symposium on modern science and a book of egg recipes. After but a second’s hesitation, Menucius reached out for Hannibal. Life’s desperate struggle for survival had taught him already to tackle the toughest while he was freshest.’

Dipped into this treasure while dusting and sorting Foreign Lit.

Mrs Callow, just going into Rexine’s room to take his letters, was slightly nonplussed because a customer asked her for Airs of Old Venice. She looked in Music, couldn’t find it, and told the customer so. Gudgeon, without a word, fished the book out of Foreign Hist.: Heirs of Old Venice.

Explaining later, Mrs Callow added, ‘I never turned a heir.’

Which reminds me. Had a hair-cut to-day. Looked at an old Men Only while I waited my turn. One cartoon showed an impressive boss saying to applicant for job: ‘We want reliable men here, self-confident, strong-willed men, capable of saying to their wives, “No dear, I will not ask for a rise”.’

To tennis club in evening. Played one game singles with ginger, freckled chap from Midland Bank.

SATURDAY

Would you believe it!

The rumoured new girl has arrived! And very nice too … Slender, nice high forehead, hair the colour of grapefruit squash. Name: Miss Ellis. She’ll be working in shop with me. Brightfount’s is looking up!

Helen just asked for this.

Chap came in during afternoon trying to sell Rexine glass shelves and chromium stands. Rexine, surveying with dignity our ancient, scarred wood, said, ‘My dear man, we can’t flout tradition; there’s been a bookshop on this site since 1820.’ The dear man suggested it was time for a change.

‘You don’t know the book trade,’ Rexine said, retreating from his dignity with a laugh. When the traveller had gone he added contemptuously to me, ‘Glass shelves! With you and Eastwode beefing about!’

New girl confided before we shut shop that she’s ‘terribly fond of symphonies’. Told her I’d just bought Bizet’s No. 1. Good start.

On strength of this, roughed out sentimental little article on book-selling that I may offer to local paper. It ends with this telling (?) summary of the job: ‘The trade that pays so little and gives so much.’

July

SUNDAY

Rather overcast in morning, but cycled dutifully over to Graves St Giles to see Uncle and Aunt. House in chaos, owing to the grand turn-out in honour of cousin Derek and his bride, who return from Singapore next Friday week. Doubt if Aunt will ever have the place ready in time.

Slightly insulted to see how thoroughly they have thought it necessary to clean my room. It was stripped of everything bar wallpaper.

Uncle Leo paced up and down it excitedly, gesticulating as he did so. ‘I wouldn’t have any furniture in the house at all, if I had my way,’ he says, adding in lower key, ‘not, as you know, that there is ever any likelihood of my having my way here.’ I know nothing of the sort, Aunt Anne being the gentlest of women, and he continues hastily, ‘My whole life’s been devoted to selling empty houses, as was dear old Pa’s before me, and believe me, they’re vastly better without being cluttered by a miscellaneous welter of furniture. You don’t smother the outside with lumber – why spoil the inside?’

Now he is warming to his theme. In trying to sell an odd idea to me, he – how often have I seen him do it! – sells it to himself. A house should be a shell, filled only with the spirit of its inhabitants, a sort of homely monastery. He has forgotten about the necessity for beds, chairs, tables … If he had his life over again, and was free of the tedious necessity of running a miserable, moribund little estate agency (a job he loves), he would live indoors and cultivate his soul. ‘As it is, my soul’s all whiskers and bottom.’ He’d take up Yoga, a sort of Westernized Yoga.