I look up from the notebook. Pont-de-Montvert has retained the stony granite-built traditional aspect of traditional villages in this part of the Cévennes. Stevenson writes that it is here that the repressive Abbé de Chayla lived — the ‘Archpriest of the Cevennes’ who sparked the rebellion of the Camisards. His house in Pont-de-Montvert served as a prison for Protestants who were tortured. As Stevenson recounts, Chayla ‘closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal, and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they were deceived in their [religious beliefs].’
I look for signs of where the house might have stood before it was burnt down in July 1702 and the Abbé killed.
‘One by one, Séguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. “This,” they said, “is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents.” Each gave his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away towards Frugèresmap, farther up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving Du Chayla’s prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place.’
The subsequent Protestant rebellion was severely repressed by Louis XIV. I have a good feeling about this place that I can’t explain. It’s got nothing to do with its Protestant heritage for I have no affinity to any religion. It’s pleasant also to be close to so much water in the heat of the day. The village was built at the confluence of the Tarn, Rieumalet and Martinet rivers, beside which is situated the municipal campsite. As is usual, the facilities are good. After showering I get into conversation with a German couple who are desperate for reading material. I give them the Sylvia Plath and the P. D. James but they insist on handing me 50 francs after I decline a beer from their camping van fridge. What is going on? This was a trip to take stock of my life but I’ve unintentionally become involved in a book deal of sorts.
I use the money to buy the bilingual edition of Travels with a Donkey.
(From Clear Waters Rising by N. Crane ‘It wasn’t until I read his journal that I realised he’d lopped off the end of this passage when he rewrote the text for TWAD. After “I travel for travel’s sake,” he added in the originaclass="underline" “And to write about it afterwards…”’
A Royal Customer, Bangor, November 2009
The book in my hand connects me to royalty, albeit tenuously. Laurie Lee’s The Firstborn is illustrated with black and white photographs taken by the author. He wrote it while contemplating the future of his newborn child.
A few days following my birth in October 1964, my aunt gave my mother a copy of this book.
‘This moment of meeting seemed to be a birthtime for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing I knew would be the same again. She is of course just an ordinary miracle, but is also the late wonder of my life. So each night I take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her.’
Recently, I removed the book from the ‘family, not for sale, I’ll murder you if you do’ shelf. It was given a description of its condition and edition (second impression) and put on sale through Amazon.
A member of the Royal Family has just purchased the book online.
Book Blindness, Twickenham, 1997
According to my database, the book is in the box labelled ‘Strawberry Hill 22’, which in another life contained Sainsbury bananas. I’ve been through boxes 21 and 23 and am now looking through box 22 for the third time. In my mind’s eye the book resembles an Everyman’s Library (Dent) small format hardback. I recheck my database. I recheck my invoices. No record of a sale. The book must be there. I make myself read out the title of every book and it is only then that I spot it. It’s a bloody paperback.
Book blindness is a condition that afflicts all sellers at one time or other.
Travelling to Paris, 1989
Phil, friend and sub-editor, has presented me with a guidebook as a leaving present in which he has inscribed the following lines from a poem by Auden:
Having quit my job, I am now officially destined for France. A change of clothes fills my rucksack and I have a suitcase of books either written in French or that have a connection to France. They’ve been acquired, in the main, from charity shops and, after some investigation, I’m optimistic about selling at least two of them. Tout l’inconnu de la Casbah by Lucienne Favre was published in 1933 by the Baconnier Frères. Recounting life in Algier’s Casbah, it is delicately illustrated by Charles Brouty, who also worked on other popular books concerning Algeria. The other banker is Norman Cameron’s 1940s translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, published by John Lehmann. Rimbaud himself published Une Saison en Enfer, an extended poem that later influenced the Surrealists.
The crossing is late at night on a ferry populated by as many staff as passengers. The crew, fresh and alert, crack jokes while the passengers, unused to the late hour, eat and drink in the canteen with an air of mournfulness. In between mouthfuls, I look out of the portholes. They aren’t actually portholes as such, but I feel that the apertures, which are just big windows really, should carry more of a nautical connotation. It is dark outside and only with difficulty can I make out the movement of water. I think of school trips to France. Flick knives bought in Boulogne. Firecrackers too, and more interest shown in mopeds than boulangeries. On the ferry’s return to Dover, a rumour spread fast that custom officials are as punitive as they are vigilant. In the ensuing panic, thirty contraband weapons were lost to the sea. Only Eddy had kept his nerve.
I drink an insipid cup of coffee (the last for some time, I imagine, since a quick return to England is not an option) before descending two decks to use up my English change on the fruit machines. Several passengers wanting French currency discover that the bureau de change is closed. Returning to the canteen, I feel strangely serene until approached by two sickly pale kids who brandish plastic toy guns. They make the inevitable sound effects before being ineffectually admonished by parents who look barely out of their teens. The only other person within range to be irritated is a fat man in smart business attire. He, however, seems to have set himself the task of exhausting the ship’s entire supply of lager. Alcohol makes him oblivious to the noise or anyone else’s company. I order a lager myself while it is still possible. Surveying the rest of the canteen, I wonder idly if there are any lone passengers of the opposite sex.
In French waters we reassemble with surprising efficiency and the coach leaves the ferry at Calais without a hitch. Shifting restlessly on hard seats, I try to trick myself into believing I am at ease. Some people evidently succeed, sleep carrying them away from the discomfort of the coach.
At 6.30 a.m. on an cold overcast morning in early October the coach reaches its Paris destination, a grotty bus station in the city’s northern suburbs. In the bleakness that envelops the place and the moment, I experience a pang of self-pity. No family or friends clamour to meet me. The driver, a red faced man with beefy arms, opens up the belly of the coach and gets annoyed with the passengers impatient to reclaim their luggage. The removal of rucksacks and cases from the undercarriage is exclusively his preserve, even if it does involve a great deal of huffing and puffing.