The Story of
ift. GRAHAM DUKES (University College Hospital) IHAVE been to an Exhibition of Industrial Art. It was a depressing experience, full of wardrobes with legs askew and knobs awry, and triangular tables ideal for putting into the triangular corners of overcrowded triangular living- rooms. I sat for five uneasy minutes in a ten-guinea nothing- ness of wire and plywood, and I fear that I left it a little bent. Thereafter I discussed Form, Utility and the Search for Beauty, with earnest, bearded young men in sandals; for this is 1954. I am twenty-three, and I must move with the times. But I came away a little saddened, and inevitably reminded of the story of Mr. Ecclebury and Mr. Crow.
Mr. Ecclebury was our local printer when I was very small. His shop stood in the High Street, and the array of type in his composing room would have brought joy to Victorian hearts. His imprint appeared below the rich black feasts of Granby, Sans and Egyptian which proclaimed the Charity Bazaars of our town) and on the neat cards which in impeccable Royal Script hailed the arrival of our youngest citizens, or which in grave Gothic recorded the passing of our oldest and most substantial aldermen.
For a little boy, Mr. Ecclebury's shop presented the most fascinating façade in town, for it was completely in character with his type. Here were no vastnesses of sheet glass and electric brilliance; instead, there were tiny, dusty panes which concealed, until you peered close to them, the shelves of pens and crayons and the great black bottles of writing fluid which stood behind.
To open the door, you twirled at a loose knob set un- accountably close to the ground, and a brass bell was set a-wobbling on the end of its spring to herald your entrance. The shop was long, dark and narrow; a great solid oak counter ran through it and disappeared into the gloom at the far end. Mr. Ecclebury himself, a mild old gentleman with a benevolent expression, would be leaning on the counter as you came in, surveying you critically over his glasses. His movements, as he sought out the penny rubbers and twopenny packets of marbles which I used to buy from him, were as respectful and grave as if he had been supplying the stationery requisites of a prelate. ' Sonny ' I might be in the sweet-shop around the corner; I was ' Sir' to Mr. Ecclebury.
When there was family printing to be collected, Mr. Eccle- bury would turn to the darkness behind and. ` Mr. Crow, a Moment, if you please,' he would murmur. Until that moment You might not have known that there was anyone else at work in the shop; but there, in the shadows, lit only by a shaft of grey light from a little window, sat Mr. Crow, clerk to the Prm, at a tall and heavy oak desk; he sat on a very high stool heavy which his legs dangled, and he wrote continuously In neavy red-leather volumes. It was his face which impressed me Most; from the wing collar to the few strands of grey hair Which remained, his expression was habitually one of deeply. Wrinkled despair. Called now into consultation with his master, he would adjust his pince-nez, slither down from his perch, and advance noiselessly and apprehensively out of the shadows to stand, the very image of respectable, moth-eaten woe, as if he Were inevitably about to receive notice of instant dismissal. His humility would have delighted a Scrooge; to this day I cannot believe that the gentle, soft-spoken Mr. Ecclebury had reduced him to this piteous condition. ' Mr. Crow, will you kindly enquire for Mr. Dukes's letter- heads? ' I never tired of watching what came next. Away Pliecisely what was through that hole I did not know; I knew only that it emitted light, and perhaps heat, and a repetitive thump-bang-squeak of a noise which never seemed to cease. There was a voice down there, which never said much more than ` Ah ' and ' Mmm,' and which appeared to growl con- tinuously when addressed by Mr. Crow. Not until I one day beheld a black hairy arm appear from the depths to deliver a packet of invoices did I light on the awful truth. It was, I admit, a truth coloured by memories of the Three Billy Goats Gruff; but in the circumstances it fitted admirably. I became convinced that Mr. Ecclebury kept a Troll in the cellar. Thus was explained the dread with which the unfortunate Crow appeared to regard the hole. He knew, and now I knew too, that if that hairy arm were once to seize him, he would be dragged below and greedily gobbled up, pince-nez and all, in a matter of seconds.
Whatever the merits of my theory, 1 was seven years old, and perhaps it offered a satisfying explanation for the mysteri- ous, fascinating, impressive atmosphere which 1 always asso- ciated with the place. For whilst no one could have said that Mr.. Ecclebury, still less the tremulous Mr. Crow, was a particularly stolid figure—a whisk of wind would have carried them both through the window--the shop itself had a stability and a solidity born of timber and brass and tradition. The doors of the cupboards along the wall opened and closed ponderously; the pendulum clock had ticked half a century away. A horse might safely have danced upon Mr. Crow's desk, though Mr. Crow would have permitted nothing so indecorous. The very pen nibs lived in a massive mahogany cabinet with mother of pearl labels to its drawers. It was a background into which the two old gentlemen fitted perfectly, and in which they seemed to have taken root.
All this, as I have said, was a long time ago, and only this year have I been back to the town. I hardly expected that Mr. Ecclebury would still be there; the High Street had become an avenue of chromium plate against walls of concrete and black.glass, where an orgy of neon signs blinked in vain com- petition with the summer sun. And then I came round the bend in the street.
eeelebary. screamed a row of scarlet wooden italics, spiked to a rectangle of polished slats above the window; modern printing squeaked a row of similar hideosities below. Where once through misty panes I had read of the old-fashioned blessings of the Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley Pen, there stretched a formless expanse of glass, from behind which a sun-tanned cardboard beauty extolled the slippery virtues of the Rollaround Riter: nd in the corner of the window, a little plate read: NU-SELL LTD
The Twentieth Century Shopfitters
Scrubnall Heath Inside, it was a pathetic spectacle. From ceiling to floor, the walls were covered with red and white striped shirting; the oak cabinets had been swept away; the clock ticked no more. Behind the counter, with the air of an Emeritus Professor doomed to spend the rest of his days in a funfair, stood Mr. Ecclebury. But be did not lean on the counter; for the counter was a rimless glass box, mounted upon four little peg-like trotters which diverged from each other at an alarming angle.
Pen■nibs? Certainly, sir.' A pressed steel door swayed open, and then closed with a tinny, empty clang.
Ah, yes, sir, times are changing, and they say that it doesn't pay to fall behind.' He spoke as a man who had assumed the convictions of a crazy world against his better judgement. We had it done properly, of course, by a gentleman from wards into the depths, and in a voice more suggestive of suppli- cation than command, he would call for my father's order. London. Turned us upside down, they did, sir. And charged us a pretty penny, too, eh, Mr. Crow? Mr. Crow was in his old place; he was bathed in the refrig- erated light of a fluorescent tube; from the wall before him there jutted out a shelf of plywood which curled at the edges, and which was supported by two thin, gleaming chains, and on this lay the heavy red-leather volume, and a conical scarlet inkwell. There sat poor Mr. Crow, deeply unhappy, on a square Of yellow plastic supported on three wiry wobbly stalks, which shivered in unison with the thump-bang-squeak from the cellar. He slid down and came forwards into the shop; there he stood, wringing his hands, and gazing down at the hole, the one familiar thing that remained.
`Indeed, sir, yes, a pretty penny as you so rightly observe, sir. But we are finished with all those men now, I expect.' He contrived to let a weak smile flit across his features. I suppose it was a smile of resignation to the inevitable. Yet if I had been seven years old again, I could have persuaded myself that as he said, We've finished with them,' I saw him wink surrep- titiously at something greedy and wicked in the cellar. And not for one moment could I have blamed him.
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