The Last Bookaneer Read Free Page A

scruff.”
    It was a small, worm-eaten thing. He waited for my assessment.
    â€œIt appears to me to be a collection of poems,” I said. “It is in tatters, I’m sorry to report, Mr. Fergins. It is missing a title page, which I suppose ruins the ability to resell it. And on top of that, it has been defaced—there is writing in pencil on many of the pages.” Words had been circled, underlined, drawn over with arrows into the margins, where there were illegible markings.
    â€œGood, good. That is a volume of John Donne’s poetry. It is not a first edition, nor a rare one, and the thing presents no particular features of bibliographical interest. Yet, in my estimation, that would be worth in today’s market more than a thousand dollars.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause this copy belonged to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Those marks you noticed written in pencil are the notes Coleridge made on Donne’s poems. Imagine! It is the real power of a book—not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature. It reminds one of the quote from Francis Bacon about books.”
    I did not know the quote, never having read Bacon. But I was too timid to ask that or much else as he paraded me through the rest of his temple of books and excitedly showed me his favorites. He taught me what “signatures” could be used to identify a first edition, and how to most efficiently compare editions of the same books for changes and imperfections. He showed me books that other collectors or sellers had tried to repair only to further injure the edges of the papers, a problem, he explained, that booksellers referred to colorfully by saying the book had been “bled.” He discussed prices of the books, contrasting what he paid with the actual or current value. I was flattered because his tone suggested I, too, could learn a trade in books if I desired. But it was disorienting to hear these names—Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, my own sacred Milton—coupled with the crude sounds of numbers. “Now, if you remember only two things from my lessons, promise me it will be these: do not follow the latest fashions of Parisian collectors, and never pass up the chance to buy a book of English poetry dated before 1700.”
    â€œI promise, Mr. Fergins.”
    Through all of this, a small but persistent clicking sound could be heard, then another simultaneous clicking over the first. The bookseller let out one of his sudden laughs. Imagine an old wolf howling for the last time before lying down to die, and there you have his memorable style of laugh. “You are looking around for a clock, I take it. No, there are many things that have become dearer to me since the day I left London, young Mr. Clover, but time is not among them. In fact, I have no use for it outside the timetable for your railroad. The sound you are hearing comes from inside there.”
    He led me to a large glass case and pried open its iron cover. The floor of the case was filled with pine and buttonwood leaves. On top of this soft bedding were elaborately constructed compartments with strips and squares of various materials—leather, cloth, paper. There were two ventilation windows on the sides of the case, and a petroleum lamp burning hot, with a saucer of water over it that created a mist you had to squint through. I stepped back, startled by an unexpected movement. The case was filled with an assortment of translucent worms. He told me a professor of one of the city colleges had loaned him all of it in order to observe the creatures inside. Then he handed me a magnifying glass to look through.
    â€œWhat are they?”
    â€œBookworms. Well, that name itself has always been wrong. There is no actual species called a bookworm. We who have an interest in books imagine these pests all fit into one type of category because it grants