The Other Day I was on holiday and walking along the front at Lyme Regis. A July day, not hot as it should be, but overcast with drops of rain in the cool breeze. I had stared out to sea, eaten an ice-cream without a seagull dropping in to take a swipe and visited the junk shops which aspirationally had called themselves Antiques. I had found nothing tangible, but used my camera to create a visual memory for other projects. As a last resort before lunch I wandered into a book shop with the intention of browsing and not buying before grazing on a seafood lunch. My eyes scanned the shelves of the pre-1900's. Interesting, but nothing that my floorboards needed [bookshelves are now full] but the shop was enticing. That smell, those piles of books that require you to turn your neck sideways to read the spine. Your camera dangles and sways in the way of your vision and you contort yourself into an odd position as you push the hair out of your eyes, hold back the physical to enter the world of make-believe. No, nothing. But just before I left my eyes found the early 20th Century section and darted to the W's and there it was.
My heart skipped a beat, I could hear that voice in my head as I held my breath and pulled the book from the shelf it can't be. A Dorothy Whipple I had not read and an autobiography at that. I turned the book in my hands and opened the front cover, gently. The jacket was fragile and torn, inside in pencil was the price, yes, expensive for a hardback but not too expensive and certainly less than the mind had raced to calculate in those few seconds. No, the shop didn't accept cards and I didn't have enough cash. The nearest cash point was broken and I dashed into a games arcade to buy my currency. Such is the desperation of acquisition, an arcade I would never normally visit and to be charged for withdrawing cash quite beyond my normal standards. But hey ho, there is a time for firsts and I wanted that book, needed that book, that was now sitting with the bookshop owner with the promise that she wouldn't let anyone else have it, hold it, look at it.
To be fair, the wonderful woman in the shop had said I could pay her later. I had looked at her bemused. This would not happen anywhere else. A stranger offering a loan. Maybe, she knew a Dorothy Whipple reader would not steal. Maybe she recognized that moment a book lover finds a treasure. But I could not entertain the idea. I wanted to own the book outright before I turned the pages beyond the title dedication. I wanted to hold the book in my hands much as the illustration by J.Morton Sale has Dorothy holding her doll.
I rushed out of the bookshop, Dorothy was wrapped in a pink candy stripped paper bag. Better than any seaside stick of rock I have my seaside memory of Lyme Regis. So, now the book is mine, with its own book plate Ex Libris, with one known previous owner, MB Hale 1936. I promise to look after your book and sign it with nothing but a visual copyright of your paper record of your library.
Dorothy Whipple has signed the cover as other books of that time did. But you need to to remove the dust jacket to see the impression. I am sure that many other Whipple fans would love to read this book, and see if any favourite characters from her novels have found their genesis in this memorial edition. I wonder if Persephone books should re-publish this?
I am yet to read it in full, so cannot say what I have found. But rather like a postcard here is the opening paragraph,
'To write this book I must send myself back through the years. My self is reluctant to take the journey. It would rather keep with me in this little house at Newstead, savouring the present.'
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