View from the Gutter

FRED BASON'S DIARY (176 pp.)--Edited by Nicolas Bentley--British Book Centre ($2.25).

Out of the murk of the London slums, as he tells it himself, arose a "bloody bookworm" named Fred Bason. At 15, Fred already had his own library, consisting of Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, Liza of Lambeth, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Pears' Cyclopaedia, the 1881 volume of the Strand magazine, Wild Wales and Two Years Before the Mast. He was much happier browsing through this library than he was lathering the "filthy faces [of] nasty old men" in a slum barbershop (his first job) or eating "sawdust and chips" at "the wrong end of a planing machine" (his second).

In desperation, Fred bought a batch of 28 books at a sale for 8s., cleaned them up and hawked some of them around the second-hand shops in a sack. At day's end, Bookseller Bason had made enough profit (15s. 8d.) to convince him that a load of second-hand books and some stout burlap were all a true bookworm needed to "make a living and be free."

Reluctant Lions. Today, Cockney Bookman Fred Bason is a minor British institution. He addresses Rotary luncheons, mimes on BBC television and exchanges bibliophiliac chatter with his pal, "Willy" (Somerset) Maugham. Nonetheless, at 42, Fred still lives in shimmy Walworth, and though he also owns a bookshop now, still hawks books from a barrow "in the gutter." Like every famed "character," he is permanently hoist with his own reputation: he can no more afford to become rich, or grammatical, or stop collecting autographs or saying "blimey!" than Groucho Marx can afford to adopt an upright, manly stance and a look of sincerity.

Fred's Diary (1921-50) is at once an abbreviated record of Bason's daily life and a rung-by-rung account of his climb to Cockney notoriety. By dint of hanging around theater exits with an autograph album and writing very polite letters to celebrities, young Fred soon got on signature terms with everyone from Arnold Bennett to George Bernard Shaw. A few literary lions headed into the deep bush when they scented Fred on their trail. Poet John Masefield, for instance, responded to Fred's advances with a "chilly" printed card, and that "awful snob" Rudyard Kipling, trapped by Fred outside a museum, "raised his stick as I raised my hat." But for the most part Fred managed to turn his literary relationships into a neat, profitable routine:

"Had lunch with John Drinkwater today and he autographed five of his books which I've had in stock three or four years. I put it to him squarely: they "won't sell unsigned, but if you'll autograph them I can sell them in New York next week. Like a good pal he obliged, and a nice lunch thrown in as well . . .

"Today I broke fresh grounds with a huge gamble. I have paid -L-11 10s. 0d. cash (leaving myself with -L-2 capital) for Of Human Bondage, first edition . . . Willy is coming to tea next Friday. If he will autograph this copy I am sure that I can get -L-20 for it . . . Later: Willy obliged--but he autographed it to me. I can't afford to keep it. It's the most precious thing I possess. Oh, I wish I was rich! . . . Later: An American named Schwartz has paid me -L-21 for it . . ."

The Gentle Art. Occasionally, Fred Bason worried about his writing style, once went for advice to Virginia Woolf ("a tall, thin . . . miserably sad-looking woman . . . not in any way distinguished to look at"). She replied (or so Fred thought): "You would perhaps do well to read Stern." So Fred promptly bought a work by G. B. Stern--"but for the life of me I could see nothing [in it] to teach me the gentle art." On complaining to Mrs. Woolf, ha got back a cross note: "Sterne --Sterne with an E on the end! L. Sterne! V.W." And so, continues Fred:

". . . That's how I came to read Tristram Shandy--which I did not enjoy. So I returned . . . to G. B. Stern and for 15 years she's been my favorite authoress. Once I had lunch with her at Albany, Piccadilly. It was a slap-up meal with the nicest steak I've ever eaten ..."

Those who enjoy conning the ups & downs of bookselling will find plenty to please them in Fred Bason's Diary, whether his particular experience of what the market admires is a general one or not. Writes Fred in summation:

"There has been two outstanding bestsellers in my 25 years slum bookselling. They are [Rider Haggard's] King Solomon's Mines and [Marie Corelli's] The Sorrows of Satan . . . The bestselling poetry is still Browning and [Rupert] Brooke . . . My worst sellers are cookery books. My bestselling author is Maugham. My worst seller is Kipling . . ."

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