Before entering the actual stately home, we noticed a sign in front of its gates, “Second-hand bookstore,” and decided to visit it after the excursion over the mansion. And so we did.
My first idea that it might be a classical tiny place full of dusty volumes, with an elderly volunteer who quietly and politely would recommend us books, turned out to be only partly true: the room was indeed small, but there was nobody who would help us. It was empty and dim: another person quetly sneaked in and began looking through the shelves (they weren’t too full either); the other visitor disappeared as silently as she emerged from nowhere five minutes ago.
The shelves were organised in a more or less standard way (history, science, fiction, non-fiction, sci fi, cookery books, travel guides etc.), but the first glance was unmistakable: lots of them were rubbish (chick-lit and other para-literature, mostly self-help manuals with titles like “How to become a better version of yourself and don’t feel regrets,” or something of this sort).
We went through the piles lazily, and the interest, clearly high at first, started fading away—Jamie Oliver, “Fabulous Wiltshire” (1992), ”Nuclear deterrence, morality and realism,” and so on, and so forth. L. was yawning, I was ready to come back to the gardens (the weather was marvellous). But at the very last moment something drew our attention—a little display, only one with glass, on the table in the darkest depth of the room: there, we found a leaflet, which said “if you want to purchase a book, please, leave your cash in this box [next to the cabinet] or pay with your card in the main entrance.”
The pure simplicity of it and total trust to the customers were charming: that was where we found this Ibsen volume (Volume X from Collected Works complete in 11 volumes), London, William Heinemann, 1907. It included an old stamp “D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co” (the leading Bombay/Mumbai bookstore and publisher in the 19th century) on the cover and an old inscription, “Sylvia <…>”, on the first page.
£10 for everything.
Of course, I bought it: I loved Ibsen all my life (also because of Blok and his essays about Ibsen’s plays), and I’ve never read him in English. The translation is excellent, and my trophy is wonderful.
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