Blessing the Booksellers

Woke up this morning and the very first thought I had was what it would be like if there were no bookstores anywhere. I know exactly what triggered it – just before I went to bed last night I pulled out some old copies of Biblio magazine from 1997, the year we began Garrison House Books, and took one of them upstairs with me. For some reason they emitted a gravitational pull back to the days when internet selling seemed radical and the Kindle wasn’t yet a glimmer in Jeff Bezos’ eye. Back then I thought – no, I KNEW -- I would do this glorious thing for the rest of my life. I had an internet friend from Florida who was 82 years old and had launched her business about a month before I launched mine. She went to the sales with a little fold-up cart, listed her books, and had more fun than probably should be legal.

“Sign me up for that and I’d die happy,” I told Eric. It never occurred to me that not twenty years later books, my solace and faithful companions since childhood, would spin like a top around the eye of a tornado.

I thought of that last night when I stumbled on an article about Baldwin’s Book Barn located in the Brandywine Valley of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing their listings from my earliest days on Advanced Book Exchange and I frequently see them still. I’m sure I read the article 14 years ago, but probably not as avidly and emotionally as I did this time. Rarely am I without words, but as I write this they come slowly, so slowly, as though they, too, are in danger of extinction. Baldwin’s started in 1934 in the basement of a real estate office with a small collection of history titles, a pile of postage stamps, and a gravitational pull all its own. Gradually it grew until 1948 when the present stone barn opened its doors to book lovers seeking treasure, a good read, pleasant hours, literary conversation, and balm for the soul. Today ownership has transferred to the second generation.

“…. And for all the booksellers of the world.”

A stray line – something about God, blessings, and booksellers sprang to mind as tears sprang to my eyes. It teased and bedeviled me, that line, but the harder I tried to retrieve it the more obstinately it refused to name itself. It seemed important that I remember it though, so I climbed out of bed, went to my office and took from the shelf a tired old copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations that I got as some sort of reward from the Book of the Month Club the year I was married. Fortunately, there was only one listing with the key word booksellers.

“For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.” Christopher Smart (1722-1771) Jubilate Agno.

I have no idea where I ever heard those words in the first place, though they ring with similarity to the Jubilate of The Book of Common Prayer,  but I know one thing for sure. I needed them in the dark. And I need them still in the light, if only to assauge the fear I press hard between the pages -- out of sight and out of mind. Until …

P.S. I just saw on the internet that Baldwin's Book Barn is for sale.