Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

When I took the mail sacks over to Wilma, I said good morning to William and commented on the warm, sunny weather. He replied, ‘Aye, the rain won’t be far behind it.’

At 11 a.m. there was a talk about Robert Service, the Canadian poet, by Professor Ted Cowan upstairs in the drawing room. As with most of Ted’s talks, it was very well attended. Shortly after it had begun, two very smartly dressed young men in suits, with American accents, came into the shop and asked if we had a copy of The Book of Mormon . On closer inspection I spotted that they had black name badges with ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ printed on them. Nicky was visibly suspicious of them, just as the cat is when a dog enters the shop. When they were just out of earshot, she said, ‘I dinnae like they people. They’ve got some very strange ideas.’

Till total £420.20

34 customers

Online orders: 6

Books found: 5

At 9.05 a.m. a customer came in trying to sell a box of books on Christian Science. He told me that a load of Christian Scientists had already picked over the collection and taken some of them for free. He was telling me this as he was trying to sell it to me. If a bunch of Christian Scientists didn’t want books on Christian Science for free, then I certainly was not going to pay for them, particularly when they were covered in cat hair.

Late in the day a customer, when asked if he’d like a bag, replied, ‘Desperately.’

Over the past few days about £400 worth of books from the railway book deal in Glasgow have sold. They probably account for half of all the books I have sold in the last week.

Till total £408.88

46 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

As a customer was looking at the Birlinn reprint of Barnard’s The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom in our new books section, I happened to be passing to put new stock out and I heard the words ‘cheaper on Amazon’ whispered to his companion. He didn’t even have the courtesy to wait until I was out of earshot.

Till total £426.50

21 customers

Online orders: 7

Books found: 3

After lunch Alastair and Leslie Reid called in to say hello. They live in New York and come over every year to enjoy the Galloway spring months. Alastair was born in nearby Whithorn, the son of the Church of Scotland minister. He is a writer of extraordinary talent, now in his eighties. He is a poet, and also writes for The New Yorker . In recent years he has come to appreciate what he describes as his ‘flinty beginnings’ in Galloway, and every spring he and Leslie return to the place where the warm embrace of childhood friends and the memories of that season, with its familiar smells and sounds, transport him to the time before his wanderlust took him around the world. He introduced the poetry of Neruda and Borges to Europe. Despite (or possibly because of) his roots he has made no secret of his dislike for some elements of Scottish life. In the introduction to his book Whereabouts he writes: ‘The two pieces “Digging up Scotland” and “Hauntings” represent my coming to terms with my flinty beginnings, but while I am still haunted by some Scottish landscapes and weathers, I never feel at home in the wariness of its human climate.’

Those words were written in 1987, and I suspect that his annual visit is an indication that perhaps he now does feel more at home in Scotland’s human climate. It is always the most enjoyable rite of spring to see them both, to have them over for supper, to drink whisky together and for that favour to be returned at least once every visit. It has been an enormous privilege to have come to know both Leslie and Alastair. His has been the most extraordinary peripatetic life, which, he is fond of saying, stems from the first time he saw Irish travellers passing the manse in Whithorn. He asked his father where they were going, to which his father replied, ‘They don’t know.’ This fired Alastair’s imagination, and I suspect that at any time in his life if he was asked where he was going, his response would have been ‘I don’t know.’

Till total £192

19 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

A customer appeared at 9.15 a.m. with a fishing waistcoat and an over-groomed moustache, leaned over the counter and pompously asked if we have a section on ‘The Great Game’, as though he was Clive of India.

An elderly couple bought a book on the music of Scotland and commented as they were paying that they had found a hardback book of poetry by Stevie Smith that was £1 when it was published in 1970. They were surprised by ‘how much’ I was selling it for, which, it turns out, was £6. Often when this happens I attempt to explain that not everything goes down in value as it gets older, and in any case it is all relative. If that book were to come out in print today, it would probably be selling for at least £12. John Carter (from whom I bought the shop in 2001) used to reply to customers who accused him of naked profiteering by selling a book that was two and sixpence for £1 that, ‘If you’ve got two and sixpence, you can have it for two and sixpence.’ John was very good to me when I took over the business, and accompanied me on my first few book-buying deals, as well as showing me the ropes for a month before the shop became mine. One of his many pieces of invaluable advice was ‘My motto is the same as the Roman army: SPQR – small profit, quick return.’

At 3.15 p.m. four heavily built American men came in looking for ‘old Bibles’, so I showed them several from various periods going back as far as 1644. They didn’t buy any of them, and all insisted on calling me ‘Sir’.

Till total £271.49

13 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Uneventful day. Spent most of it reading.

Till total £114.98

12 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Another quiet day in the shop. Re-priced some of the stock in the antiquarian section, including a third edition (1774) of Thomas Pennant’s A Tour in Scotland 1769 . The mid-eighteenth century appears to have been a popular time for books about tours of Scotland, normally illustrated.

Probably the most well-known tour – largely because of the already established fame of its author and his companion – is that of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson in 1785, when they toured the Hebrides. On their travels, they took with them a copy of Martin Martin’s A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703), of which Johnson was (typically) critical. This copy of Pennant came from a large house in Ayrshire which contained a wonderful library of such things. Daniel Defoe got in before Pennant and Boswell, writing A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), and among the other Scottish tours currently in the antiquarian section are Garnett’s Observations on a Tour Through the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland (1811), with maps and beautiful oval copperplate illustrations, and Campbell’s A Journey from Edinburgh to Parts of North Britain (1802), again with fine copperplate illustrations. The descriptions of the landscapes, the people and their lifestyles, along with the contemporary illustrations, provide the most accurate impression of what life in that period must have been like, making them not only beautiful books but invaluable social historical documents. Finding such items in a collection is always a joy.