26 DECEMBER 1925, Page 20

LONDON TRADESMEN'S CARDS

London Tradesmen's Cards. By Ambrose Heal. (B. T. Batsford, Ltd. £2 2s. net.)

I HAVE never yet found an important book in the twopenny stand of some dealer in old books, nor is that surprising, for I don't know an important book from an unimportant one. I mean that a first edition of a great poet has for me, as a first edition, about as much interest as the first, or sporting edition, of an evening paper. /Jut that doesn't make a bookshop of the old snuff-scented and snuff-coloured kind less exciting. I do not hope to find things that have value in terms of terrene mint, but how often have I not found, and shall I not find books that have been cunningly planted in my way by a bene- volent, though perhaps rather middle-aged fairy !

I have wondered vaguely (though gratefully) who that fairy might be. I gave him any name I could think of, but, of course, anyone with the smallest acquaintance in wizardry, could have told me that it was Heal. Heal ! Obviously. What other name is possible for the agent of release ?

Heal, or, to be more courteous or mundane, Mr. Ambrose Heal, has clearly been lying in wait for me all these years with exactly the one bait that I never did, and never mean to refuse—oddity, which, by its sturdy affectation of ordinariness, just gives this whole dull, ditchwatery world the faintest tilt. Till it becomes almost possible to believe that the real world is the one where you enter Daniel Loudon's one-storey Bunn House at Chelsey, and looking thence, in your wig and cocked hat, gaze with no emotion, except one of polite wonder, at the impossible commercial horrors on the other bank !

Yes I Mr. Hears world of London Trade Cards is the world for me. He begins with an earnest, even, I should think, a learned defence of his hobby. Pish ! You do not defend the spring, nor the habit, among younger collectors of amiable sensations, of making mud-pies. For my part, I am prepared to belieye anything he tells me of the date, the printing, the fundamental difference between a Trade Card and a Bullhead, and a hundred other things of the last importance, if he will only let me escape quietly into the world which has written on the Gate :—

" John Wilkie,

Bookseller and Publisher, at the Bible late Mr. Riehd. Baldwin's, near the Chapter-House in St. Paul's Church Yard."

Let me in, and I promise faithfully not to break anything at all (except, perhaps, the silence with occasional little outbursts) and indeed to behave as did the passenger in De la Mare's " Last Coaehload " :- " they fly, they float,

scamper, breathe= Paradise,' abscond, are gone."

For in this world I shall go first (after having taken my chocolate at the Bunn House) not to a man's shirtmaker, though I confess that Casaltine and Matthews at the sign of the ' Lamb and Star' will delay me. For they sell not only all Men's and Boys' Cloaths, but Drugets, Sagathies, Duroys, Shaggs—and, above all, Shalloons in the Piece. I wish with all my heart that I might have a shalloon in the piece. But I have a still loftier purpose. I am not in search of Asses' milk, though if I were Thos. Edwards (no less a person than grandson to the late Mr. Abraham Eastey) would supply my utmost need, and at every hour of the day. Nor shall I turn aside either with Mr. George Farr, nor yet with his rivals Ray and Lumley, though the first would let me have not only Rappee and Portugal snuffs, but Coniac Brandy, while the latter would not even deny me Hartshorne, Vermichelly or Morel's. Nor even will Thomas Collyer, Haberdasher of Hafts, beguile me, not though he go the length of interpreting himself in French thus : " Merchand Chapelier aux Armes du Roy et Castor dans Exchange all& dans Cornhill d Londres." I shall even brush past the Establishment of WiThna. Conaway, for fear lest I do not fall into either of the categories (Persons of Quality and others) to whom he is disposed to supply not only lamps, lanthorns, and irons of all sorts, but servants to light them. Nor even shall I be lured out of the way by Sibilla Lloyd, Martha Williams and Elizabeth Storey, not for all that they would let me have—Dimity Coats, Sattin and Calicoe, Toilets for tables, Callimanco, Manteels, Mantilets ; nor with their many rivals who will not deny me cherry-derrys, duffel! josephs, grograms, lutestrings, none-so-pretties, padua- soys, shagreens, flowered and plain tabbies. These are a strong bid, but I know where I am bound. I might indeed have looked in at Mrs. Masquerier's Board School. But I find that

to the Upper End of Church Lane, Kensington, where it is situated, it is a shilling stage from Holborn. I regret this the more as " the house is genteel and the situation remarkably

healthful." Not only this but " To those who do not choose to learn all the above branches a reasonable deduction will be made." No I must forgo that excursion, as I must set my face against Elizabeth Barton Stent who would have me purchase " Baggammon Tables and Draft boards and Table- men, Chesmen and Dice-boxes, and Dice, Orrange and Orris peas for Issues and Ruff Orranges." Yes, I will pass all these and end my journey (as I might wish to end my days I) at Francis Noble's :—

Large Circulating Library

at Otway's Head, in King's Street, Covent Garden.

Here, at last, is the bookshop of my dreams I Cool, though half lit with sun, exquisitely clean, and haunted with elegant ghosts in paduasoy. And on the shelves there will be only books that, exciting neither passion nor controversy, conduct me where I can possess my own soul in quiet and dignity. And when night comes, as even in such a bookshop 1 suppose it must., I will lay me down in a bed provided by James Rodwell at the Royal Bed and Star, to which Mr. Heal with a final act of supreme unselfishness has led me.

IIUMBERT WOLrE.