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When I worked in a second-hand bookshop—so easily pictured, if you don’t work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios—the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.
Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be
a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop.
For example, the dear old lady who ‘wants a book for an
invalid’ (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old
lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can
find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn’t remember the title
or the author’s name or what the book was about, but she does
remember that it had a red cover. But apart from these there are
two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is
haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who
comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell
you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large
quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of
paying. In our shop we sold nothing on credit, but we would put
books aside, or order them if necessary, for people who arranged to
fetch them away later. Scarcely half the people who ordered books
from us ever came back. It used to puzzle me at first. What made
them do it? They would come in and demand some rare and expensive
book, would make us promise over and over again to keep it for
them, and then would vanish never to return. But many of them, of
course, were unmistakable paranoiacs. They used to talk in a
grandiose manner about themselves and tell the most ingenious
stories to explain how they had happened to come out of doors
without any money—stories which, in many cases, I am sure
they themselves believed. In a town like London there are always
plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and
they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one
of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without
spending any money. In the end one gets to know these people almost
at a glance. For all their big talk there is something moth-eaten
and aimless about them. Very often, when we were dealing with an
obvious paranoiac, we would put aside the books he asked for and
then put them back on the shelves the moment he had (...)
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