How's this for a Preface?
'This book was written under considerable difficulty. I had not recovered from a very severe and lengthy illness, which began with pneumonia. The infection from this permeated my body, and the bad poisoning of one finger lasted for fifteen months. This was agonisingly painful, and I could only use either hand with great difficulty, as the poison spread gradually. The reminiscences in this book are of the past. I do not refer to any of my dearly loved living friends. I trust that I have hurt nobody. It is true that, provoked beyond endurance by their insults, I have given Mr Percy Wyndham Lewis and Mr D.H. Lawrence some sharp slaps. I have pointed out, also, the depths to which the criticism of poetry has fallen, and the non-nutritive quality of the bun-tough whinings of certain little poetasters – but I have been careful, for instance, not to refer to the late Mr Edwin Muir (Dr Leavis's spiritual twin-sister). I have attacked nobody, unless they first attacked me. During the writing of certain chapters of this book, I realised that the public will believe anything – so long as it is not founded on truth.'
The writer is Edith Sitwell, and the illness she describes was all too real: she died shortly after writing this arresting Preface, on December 9th, 1964. It prefaces her autobiography, Taken Care Of, which I happened upon at a bookshop in the outwardly unprepossessing (new) market hall in Shrewsbury. This bookshop, with its well chosen, well curated and keenly priced stock, is presided over by, of all the unlikely things, an attractive young woman – a great rarity in a world traditionally peopled by festering male misanthropes. She clearly knows her stuff too... Anyway, I snapped up Taken Care Of, and I fancy it's going to give me a lot of pleasure, as did my earlier foray into Sitwell country, English Eccentrics –
see here and here and here.
The opening chapter is titled 'An Exceedingly Violent Child', and begins with a quotation from Kierkegaard ('I am Janus bifrons: I laugh with one face, I weep with the other'), and later chapter headings include 'In Disgrace for Being a Female', 'The Primulas Had Meant No Harm', 'The Turkish Army Put to Flight' and 'Vulgarity As It Has Been, Will Be, Ever Shall Be, Amen'. I think it's going to be quite a ride.
Thursday, 1 August 2024
Taken Care Of
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"festering male misanthropes". Harsh words Sir, (and speaking as a sometime member of the bookselling class) but only too true. I know the Shrewsbury market book stall you visited, it's always fun to find such stalls amongst vegetable and knick-nack sellers. BTW I wonder what the oddest bookshop/stall you've visited is? I rate the Scarlet Pimpernel bookshop in St Leonards as one of the strangest. Owned by an ironic, and probably misanthropic Frenchman, the unprepossessing exterior hides an interior graced with a sweeping ballroom staircase, each step of which is festooned with tottering piles of books. Hidden upstairs, and secreted behind stacks, is the shops only employee who relentlessly types descriptions of the aging and hopeless stock.
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Well I must certainly drop in on the Scarlet Pimpernel if I get the chance. I like that Thai restaurant in Hastings that doubles up as a bookshop. One of the oddest bookshops I've visited was in a coastal suburb of Wellington – a small shop in which every surface was piled high with (mostly tatty) books, arranged by a system known only to the owner, who sat brooding miserably in an alcove dug out from one of the book mountains. He seemed to have not the slightest interest in selling anything, and must have devoted all his energies, such as they were, to buying, probably by weight.
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