Morley

I seem to write my reviews in protracted parts now – there are the bits I can’t help typing out and posting as soon as I read them, and then, rolling along months later, comes the actual review proper.  The snippets are probably more enjoyable to read, and certainly speedier to write, but I’ll leave that sort of blogging to people like Claire who does it so beautifully.  Me, I like the sound of my own voice.  So not only did I give you Christopher Morley’s delightful, wonderful essay ‘On Visiting Bookshops‘ back in July (go and read it now, if you didn’t then) but I’ll cover the whole collection it came in: Safety Pins (1925).  (I’m pretty sure these essays are collected elsewhere under another name, or scattered through different collections – grab any book of essays with Morley’s name on it!)

Morley was best known to me as the author of Parnassus on Wheels, which I love, and its sequel The Haunted Bookshop, which is a curate’s egg.  I love little literary or personal essays, and was delighted to find that he had written some – doubly delighted when I discovered that it included bibliophilia of that order.  The rest of the collection is something of a mixed bag – brilliant at its best, and humdrum at its worst.  Actually, that assessment isn’t quite fair: I find him fascinating when our interests overlap, and less so when they don’t – only the greatest essayists can make a subject compelling which would otherwise be considered dull.  I don’t even remember the topics of those that I skimmed through, so let’s move on to those I loved?  And when I love Morley’s essays, I really love them.

When he writes about books and writing, I am besotted – ‘The Perfect Reader’ is sweet and sensible; ‘On Unanswering Letters’ is farcical and yet oh-so-true (how letters are accidentally left unanswered for so long that it is impossible to do so, and no greeting works); he even admits to ‘the temptation to try to see what books other people are reading – this innocent curiosity has led me into many rudenesses, for I am short-sighted and have to stare very close to make out the titles.’  But beware the man who falls asleep while reading in a chair:

And here our poor barren clay plays us false, undermining the intellect with many a trick and wile.  “I will sit down for a season in that comfortable chair,” the creature says to himself, “and read this sprightly novel.  That will ease my mind and put me in humour for a continuance of lively thinking.”  And the end of that man is a steady nasal buzz from the bottom of the chair where has collapsed, an unsightly object and a disgrace to humanity.

Not even Shakespeare is safe from Morley’s attentions – in ‘On Making Friends’, he gives his own views on those tenets laid down in Hamlet:

Polonius, too, is another ancient supposed to be an authority on friendship.  The Polonius family must have been a thoroughly dreary one to live with; we ave often thought that Ophelia would have gone mad anyway, even if there had been no Hamlet.  Laertes preaches to Ophelia; Polonius preaches to Laertes.  Laertes escaped by going abroad, but the girl had to stay at home.  Hamlet saw that pithy old Polonius was a preposterous and orotund ass.  Polonius’s doctrine of friendship – “The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel” – was, we trow, necessary in his case.  It would need a hoop of steel to keep them near such a dismal old sawmonger.

You probably sense Morley’s tone – and have a good idea whether you’ll love him or loathe him.  Some people do have an odd hatred for insouciant humour.  Morley’s essays are like A.A. Milne’s or Stephen Leacock’s or anybody who deals in slightly over-the-top whimsy – but rooted in a love of ideas and a passion for literature.  Morley becomes earnest, when on the track of his hero R.L. Stevenson, but is equally adept at cod-earnestness – for example, in the title essay, in praise of ‘Safety Pins’:

The pin has never been done justice in the world of poetry.  As one might say, the pin has no Pindar.  Of course there is the old saw about see a pin and pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.  This couplet, barbarous as it is in its false rhyme, points (as Mother Goose generally does) to a profound truth.  When you see a pin, you must pick it up.  In other words, it is on the floor, where pins generally are.  Their instinctive affinity for terra firma makes one wonder why they, rather than the apple, did not suggest the law of gravitation to some one long before Newton.

Well, quite.  I keep using the word ‘delightful’, but it is the perfect word for Safety Pins.  If he is not entirely consistent, at least that is better than being consistently dull.  There is plenty here for the bibliophile, and plenty more for those who like to laugh at the little things in life.  I love it – I think a lot of you will too.

Other things to get Stuck into:


Once a Week by A.A. Milne – every now and then I eulogise about AAM, and hope that one or two of you will try him and love him.  The review I link to is really more about Punch, but hopefully you’ll be inspired to try Milne’s whimsical, clever essays.


Literary Lapses by Stephen Leacock – the great Canadian humorist deserves a better post than I gave him, but you can at least read one of his pieces there.  His sketches and essays brim over with humour, and he was wonderfully prolific too.

Any other humourous essayists you think I would enjoy?

Never let it be said that I am a spontaneous man. Over three years ago, Danielle from A Work in Progress sent me Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley, in exchange for Miss Hargreaves. I can’t remember whether Danielle has read Miss H yet, but I do know that I was making slow progress myself. After 16 months I read, loved, and reviewed the first title (the second is a sequel, but can equally well be read as a stand-alone novel) and promised to read the second ‘soon’. In fairness to myself, I did add the following footnote: ‘Soon is a relative term. I mean before books become obsolete.’

Fast forward another 18 or so months, and here we are… (this is why I love it when bibliophiles give me books – they don’t expect me to have read them by that time next week.)

I should start by saying that The Haunted Bookshop (1919) is a misleading title. It is quickly explained that the haunting refers to the authors who linger there through their works; for Roger Mifflin and his wife Helen (the heroine of Parnassus on Wheels) have left their travelling book wagon in a shed, and opened up shop. Mifflin is less sprightly than before; Helen less sharp – but they are older now, and contented marriage has taken the place of peripatetic solitariness, so we can happily forgive them their mellowing. But Christopher Morley is still willing and able to provide a lively character, and he does this in the form of Titania Chapman – the young daughter of one of Mifflin’s friends, who comes to work in his shop, as her father wishes her to better herself. Titania is full of enthusiastic naivety and well-meaning ignorance. Perhaps she can best describe herself, in this revealing excerpt:

“I do hope,” said Titania, “you won’t let Daddy poison your mind about me. He thinks I’m dreadfully frivolous, just because I look frivolous. But I’m so keen to make good in this job. I’ve been practising doing up parcels all afternoon, so as to learn how to tie the string nicely and not cut it until after the knot’s tied. I found that when you cut it beforehand either you get it too short and it won’t go round, or else too long and you waste some. Also I’ve learned how to make wrapping paper cuffs to keep my sleeves clean.”

Isn’t she adorable? And keen to learn – and there is nowhere better to do so than Mifflin’s shop. The first few chapters of this novel take us through some wonderful passages, where Mifflin exalts the joy of reading – nay, the necessity of it. Every bibliophile will love the discussions about the role of a bookseller, and those on the latent hunger for books among the public. It was compelling, absorbing, and utterly right-minded – from the perspective of this bibliophile, of course.

But The Haunted Bookshop has another, rather different, thread running through it – and that is where the other new character comes into play. Aubrey Gilbert (brilliant name) works in advertising and isn’t much of a reader, but wanders into the bookshop to see if the proprietor would consider using his business. Which – somehow – turns into a bizarre sort of thriller. The Haunted Bookshop was written in 1919, and the effects of the War are certainly felt. There is spying; near-kidnap; anonymous ‘phone calls; mysterious disappearing and re-appearing books. Perhaps this kind of thing is your cup of tea. It isn’t mine, and I found all this thread rather tedious. It had little of the ingenuity of Agatha Christie, and quite a lot of the gung-ho, xenophobic bombast of Bulldog Drummond.

(photo credit)

So this review reflects the book and my reading experience, in that it seems to have a split personality. I loved, loved, loved the sections about books. Morley and Mifflin are alike bibliomaniacs, and Mifflin’s dialogue is at all times scattered with literary references high and low. The Haunted Bookshop serves almost as a literary compendium, so vast and wide-ranging are the allusions. (Some are listed on the book’s Wikipedia page.) But then… but then I would start skimming pages as the thriller story took the upper-hand. Which was frustrating, because if the novel had continued throughout in the vein it started, this would be easily my favourite book this year. Morley, Morley, Morley – what were you thinking?

In the end, which Morley novel did I prefer? I can’t decide whether the best bits of The Haunted Bookshop push it above Parnassus on Wheels for me, or whether the worst bits push it below. Mifflin and Helen are fantastic creations, but only really vibrant in Parnassus on Wheels. I don’t know – I certainly recommend reading both, and this would be a great novel to give any book lover – just make sure you are willing to skim some pages, if your tastes are the same as mine.

Thanks again Danielle for these lovely gifts!

If you can cast your mind back to 27th November 2007 and this post (yes, that is 16 months ago) you’ll remember Danielle and I did a book swap. Miss Hargreaves sailed across the Atlantic, and in return I got two books by Christopher Morley – Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop, both featuring Southern farmer’s-sister Helen McGill and travelling bookseller Mr. Mifflin. And earlier this month I got around, finally, to reading… er, one of them. But it was rather brilliant so I will be reading the second one soon.*

Parnassus on Wheels, which is nice and short, was written in 1917 and has that unmistakable early-20th century tang to it. Wise, straight-talking women of the sort people like Ethan Frome probably stumbled over all the time. Helen McGill, said straight-talking woman – at one pointshe measures a length of time as ‘about as long as it takes to peel a potato’ – lives a life of domestic routine on a farm, and is disgruntled rather than delighted when her brother someone writes a book which becomes famous. She burns letters from publishers and tries to distract him from this high-falutin’ life, which seems insignificant compared to finding all the eggs in the farmyard.

Until Mr. Mifflin comes along, in his Parnassus. A travelling wagon, the sides come down to reveal shelves of books, which he travels the countryside selling. His patter is wonderful; he truly believes in the power of good literature for anyone and everyone (often his only competition is the man who has been around the area previously, selling everyone bound funeral orations). Known as The Professor to most, he is a firecracker, but one with an utterly infectious love of books.
“No creature on earth has the right to think himself a human being if he doesn’t know at least one good book. The man that spends every evening chewing Piper Heidsieck at the store is unworthy of to catch the intimations of a benevolent Creator. The man that’s got a few good books on his shelf is making his wife happy, giving his children a square deal, and he’s likely to be a better citizen himself.”

However, he’s come to the farm to sell Parnassus on Wheels to Helen’s brother, Andrew. His literary reputation makes him a potential seller – and Mr. Mifflin wants to retire. Simply to prevent the distraction to her brother, Helen decides to buy it – leaving a note for her brother:

Dear Andrew, Don’t be thinking I’m crazy. I’ve gone off for an adventure. It just came over me that you’ve had all the adventures while I’ve been at home baking bread […] I’m going off for a little while – a month, maybe – to see some of this happiness and hayseed of yours. It’s what the magazines call the revolt of womanhood. Warm underwear in the cedar chest in the spare room when you need it. With love, Helen.

How can you not like a woman like that?
So, off she goes. Mr. Mifflin shows her how, and soon Helen’s off selling the books herself – though as exuberantly wonderful a creation as Mr. Mifflin can’t stay out of the narrative for too long, and he’s back soon, and in the sequel. This short novel isn’t filled with ‘exciting adventures’ (though there are one or two) – rather it is a paean to the love of books in whatever shape or size they come, and a good-humoured, sensible depiction of a slightly bizarre couple of people pursuing a slightly bizarre aspiration. Utterly wonderful, it’s one of my books of the year already, and I encourage any and every book-lover to give it a go.

*Soon is a relevant word. I mean before books become obsolete.