Whether one is in Hungerford or Hull, Southampton or Scunthorpe or Bath or Basingstoke, one thing that is likely to be found is a shop selling books. This shop may be a charity shop selling a variety of paperbacks and the odd older book or an antiquarian bookshop selling very specialised books or it might be an antique shop/arcade, which has a section devoted to books.  

Here in the Berkshire and Wiltshire borderlands, we have quite a few which for a book collectors such as myself act as a magnet. I can never go to the likes of Marlborough without spending a little time looking through the dusty bookshelves of various outlets in the town. To live in Hungerford and work in Henley on Thames is also a bonus as both towns have a number of businesses that include the selling of books. I have to confess I am an addict. 

But what of this condition, which many such as myself suffer from. In its simple form it is no matter where you are a longing to go into a shop that you spot selling second hand books. You know that you are not going to find a James Joyce signed first edition, but to pass a shop selling second hand books and not go is the quickest way to achieve a feeling of cold turkey as you journey away from the shop. 

This addiction is not helped by what I term the lucky find. Recently, whilst in a suburb of London I spied a second hand bookshop as I was being driven home. I persuaded the driver to stop (and agreed to pay the parking charge) and whilst he grabbed a coffee, I looked around the shop. Within seconds I had found a signed Henry Williamson in the Two for Two Pounds section of the shop (although I wondered at the shop owners sense of humour) as well as a rather nice nineteenth century book of hymns. As we drove away towards the motorway, I held my objects of desire thinking that if I had not stopped and bribed Keith with a cup of coffee and a parking receipt then I would have missed these wonderful books. Although rewarding I knew that I had not helped myself, I had succumbed to another fix. 

Over the years of book collecting I have limited myself to antiquarian books, first editions and any signed books, my study will not take any more. However I have lapses and quite frequently buy books outside of my self set criteria. A1950 book of French Grammar was a good example, which I purchased as the bookshop in Paris where it originated from was not far from the bars and cafes that Jean Paul Satre and Albert Camus used to frequent.

Although I am generalising, we currently have a number of very good programmes on television which are antique based and although I have mentioned this before it is a very infrequent occurrence when a book makes it to one of the shows. I can remember a set of Jane Austin firsts and a signed copy of an Edward Fitzgerald but not many others spring to mind. In a way this is the drug of my addiction. You are aware that the rarest books may at your fingertips just awaiting your discovery.

For me it is not the monetary value (it never has been) but the ownership and preservation that appeals. In these days of stress and frustration what is a better antidote that to spend an hour or so looking through a second hand bookshop be in part of an arcade or a premises in its own right. A year or so ago I found a signed copy a Vita Sackville West tucked away in a bookshop. I purchased it for less than a fiver and felt a natural high as I walked towards my hotel in the city. The weather had been foul that day with persistent showers (it must have been summer) but this did not matter my addiction had been satisfied for another day

Some book collectors will pay a small fortune for a desired book but this is not for me. I often see objects of desire (signed DH Lawrence firsts etc) costing hundreds if not thousands of pounds which if a perfect world would be fun to own, but never in my wildest dreams would I pay the asking price because in my view (which may be peculiar) this corrupts the whole idea of my book collecting. The fun (addiction) is to discover the book you have been looking for (a signed Alfred Williams anyone !) tucked away in an obscure bookshop and purchasing it with your spare change. 

Anybody with my nature of addiction will in a very short time soon learn the value of books. Whilst there are many many bargains to be found if you look hard enough you can also pay quite high prices for quite ordinary books. I have noted in some charity shops that if a book is over a hundred years old they quite often price the item at between five and ten pounds, whereas more valuable modern first editions only cost a couple of pounds. Recently I pointed this out to a charity shop worker noting that the Longfellow (a common edition) which had been priced at £9.99 could be picked up for less that £5.00 elsewhere and if you were lucky enough to live in Hungerford for less than a pound. I also brought to the counter a signed Martin Amis first for which they were asking the sum of £2.99 noting that they could get much more for this book. The chap behind the counter whilst thanking me stated that the books were priced by an expert and they did not have much say in it. This peculiarity in pricing was not confined to this charity shop as I have found this inconsistency elsewhere. 

The issue of pricing is not confined to charity shops. I have quite frequently visited specialised second hand book shops and have noted extremes in pricing where certain books which are not all that rare (say a John Fowles, Daniel Martin) have been priced at £45.00 for a first whereas you can usually get a good first edition for less than a fiver elsewhere. A good example was an H E Bates first edition which I purchased in a charming café come bookshop in Devizes for four pounds. When in Henley the following day I saw the self same copy in priced at £65.00. I do not blame the booksellers for this as everyone has to earn a living and if there is a market then go ahead but in these cases an addiction is a bonus as you very quickly become aware of the actual value of books. 

For all collectors (addicts) there is a High Church where you must go as often as you can. Mine is the Charing Cross Road in London which I visit whenever I am in town. I have known it for over forty years and even if I rushing from A to B, I still make time to spend some time browsing and buying. I was actually in London yesterday  and after seeing my daughter and granddaughter onto a train to their home in the Garden of England, I actually found that I had time to kill (a rare commodity). I walked across the Thames towards the South Bank (which I recommend) and progressed in the general direction of Holborn (after crossing the river again). There was a high autumn light and as I walked in the general direction of the Charing Cross Road I began to think how in some ways London was beginning to resemble Paris. There was a thriving café society and for the first time in years the city looked to have been cleaned up. That said, Paris does not have the dreaded Boris Bikes as well as the Rickshaws that further endanger you as you take your life in your hands crossing the road. 

In time I was near my church but before this I had coffee at 84 Charing Cross Road   which was the site of the Marks & Co Bookshop made famous by the book of the same name by Helene Hanff. There is plaque outside of the premises noting this connection but I doubted that many of my fellow diners realised where they actually were. I felt that I could see the ghost of Frank Doel and as I looked towards the Palace Theatre across the road, which was playing Singing in the Rain, I wondered if Frank and his family had seen the original movie made in the 1950s.

The area around number eighty four has changed a lot since the 1950s, but is essentially the same. The sleaze of the 1970s has for the most part disappeared and the Charing Cross Road has in my view returned to the road (apart from the many modern chains) that Frank would have recognised. Sadly there are fewer independent bookshops (or so it seems) but for an addict like me there are more than enough. What I value the most is that if you look in the windows you could see a signed Anias Nin ( I did not ask the price) or some other very expensive book and in a way could be put off by the prices but appearances deceive. The actual shop level floors for the most part carry rather expensive editions. But persevere  for most of these shops have a basement which is usually only accessible by a set of lethal narrow stairs. For addicts this is an added treat (as long as you survive the stairs) 

When you arrive in the basements you are faced by room after room of books on every subject. The shops are like Dr Who’s Tardis. In parts of them you cannot swing a cat and always are only a heavy passing lorry away from being engulfed in a literary avalanche, but this is the charm of these locations. One could quite easily spend many hours in them. It was in the final shop that I visited that I really came to terms with my addiction. I had previously purchased a fine 1818 book of literary criticism and was probably about half an hour into a bargain basement (all books £1.00) and having survived the ladder with wheels (the busybodies at the Health and Safety Executive would need to take very long holiday after using this dated equipment) to find my wife a very high copy of Schillers Werke I retired to a deep recess of the poetry and plays section it was there I found a signed copy of a book of poetry from a  poet I greatly admire, Walter De La Mare.

 I climbed up to pay desk on the shop level to pay for my goods when I spotted a Mary Webb volume of poetry. As I handed a twenty pond note across to pay for my three pound selection of books the bookseller noted that he had had a run on twenty pound notes that afternoon and did I have anything smaller. In change I had only two pounds and I offered to put the Mary Webb back and return after I had found the exact money elsewhere. The bookseller noted that I must have been the first person for over a decade to take an interest in Mary Webb’s poetry and accepted the two coins for the three books adding that is was nice to find a another admirer. 

As I walked towards the maelstrom called Piccadilly Circus tube station I at last felt I had discovered the reason for my addiction. It was the eccentricity of the pursuit. The highs when an object of desire is finally located and the sheer disbelief when you find for instance that somebody had listed amongst the crew of a Spanish ship the names of the captains pet rabbits. Many years ago somebody somewhere for whatever reason had taken pains to preserve this information and a couple of centuries later here I was reading that one of the captains rabbits was called Hector. 

My addiction is not over, I may have identified it after all these years but tomorrow,as with The Flying Dutchman, I will be haunting bookshops seeking out the unusual and my objects of desire. It will never cease.
  

Stuart Miller-Osborne  

 Jerry has written a wonderful article on the humble Bellows together with photographs, and interestingly, he has penned a wonderful section on repairing them. I will never look at bellows in the same light again!  Please enjoy reading it – it is quite fascinating!

Over the years, I suppose I must have rebuilt, repaired, and otherwise recycled well over 200 pairs of bellows, from early Victorian to later 19th & 20th century versions, some well past their individual sell by dates, to virtually mint versions which really only need minor refurbishment and a coat of beeswax polish.

What started out as a very needed, home built fire starter, consisting of at best two pieces of wood, roughly shaped in the form of a rounded oblong with a rectangular handle at one end, and a shaped , rounded funnel at the other, joined by a brass tube, some plain, some ornate, the two pieces attached to each other by a pair of shaped leather sheets, making the whole contraption an article for basically puffing wind into the heart of a recalcitrant fire, in order for it to ignite, and saving the peasant family from freezing, to the later highly decorated,  but still functional device so beloved by the Victorian & Edwardian family, as an adjunct to their fireplaces.

Many of these functional implements were an art form in themselves; Some were created from two pieces of beautifully grained oak, approximately ½ to 1” in thickness; one piece had a circular hole cut into it to allow air to be drawn in, via a very crude valve, formed by a piece of leather which fitted over the hole, and weighted by a piece of wood glued or tacked to the leather.
Next was a pair of “springs” formed from two pieces of willow, approximately 18” in length, and 1/8th in diameter. These were carefully shaped into an open bell shape, and the ends tacked or secured by leather strips adjacent to the end where the funnel was situated.
By superimposing one willow wand above the other, a form of spring was created, so that by carefully shaping and tucking of the leather pieces which when carefully secured to each piece of shaped wood, created a variable bag, which when pumped created a fairly forceful blast of air from the end. Some of the early bellows made do with a piece of rolled, hammered tin with a nozzle, which was inserted into the end of the two pieces of oak, so that the nozzle could be inserted into the embers without burning. 

The true artistry came about when brass was moulded and shaped to create an artistic, bright nozzle, which still functional, could be polished and shaped to the owners desires- this was further implement by clever carving of the top, or “show” piece of wood, often finely engraved with scroll work, faces, flowers and animals;
Some of the Victorian pieces were also very finely painted, depicting scenes of flowers, horses, anything which could be adapted to the basic shape of the bellows.

Add to this the methods of securing the leather “bags” on top and bottom of the twin pieces of wood, and you have a finely decorated functional yet decorative implement, with brass or metal studs, or pins as required.

Refurbishment.

Firstly, the actual repair isn’t at all difficult; bellows are one of the most simple mechanical instruments you can think of.
But, what is difficult is finding the bits to repair your bellows to their original art form.
Many pairs I have resurrected have had metal springs inserted rather than willow, purely because people can’t be bothered to find and prepare the correct willow twigs. And yes it can be a pain to go down to a river, and spend an hour or more hunting for some correctly sized willow twigs; then to strip them carefully, cut to the right length, then soak them in a bucket of water for 8 hours before carefully bending them to the right shape, and binding the ends, and leaving them to dry, to attain the final shape of the spring.
Once these stages have attained, you then fit them to the lower piece of wood, over the air valve.

Having done this, you make sure that the exit for the air way is clear, and not clogged with carbon and debris from the years of being thrust into the burning embers. This usually entails a bit of careful glueing and nailing; the reason is twofold; the top operating piece of wood rests on a lip created for this purpose on the bottom piece, which also acts as the airway and mount for the brass or metal nozzle. This has to be fairly robust as it takes a lot of mechanical force during its lifetime, and would soon fail if it were not substantial.

The second difficult area, although not insurmountable, is obtaining the right type of leather for the bellows. The days of getting large pieces of scrap leather from chair manufacturers, car dealers, and upholsterers has long gone. Now I find my materials in charity shops ! Leather jackets, especially those from Italy are the best, but you really have to hunt for the best quality; goatskin is certainly the strongest, and most easily workable, and does not tear.

I have left the most difficult bit to the last; yes the pins; oh those damn, unobtainable pins !  If you are very, very careful, you might, just might salvage those exquisite conical brass pins from your old bellows, but don’t count on it- almost invariably they will be corroded, bent, and very misshapen by the time you have weaselled them out from years of being in heated, very hard oak.

Bearing in mind that there are probably 150 or more of these pins in any pair of bellows, and you can see the problem. The more ornate, the bigger the problem; you can, and I have, spent hours and hours trying to source upholstery pins in all the usual places. There are very few manufacturers who take the trouble to make these pins now; most just get a brass disc, and punch a steel pin through the top, with a dab of braze. Hit it once and it pushes straight through- totally and utterly useless.

Once you have a source of supply of all the little pieces, you can start your rebuild !  In actual fact, if I have everything I need, I can do the job in a day- from totally worn out, to a fully functioning smart pair of bellows, fit for display or work.

The whole secret is system; although bellows may vary in design, they all function the same basic way, even down to the commercial type. Al you have to do is to take one step at a time- clean and prepare the wood, repair any cracks etc, repair  the nozzle, glue the
Nozzle mount, refit the nozzle; then clamp the lower piece of wood FIRST. Measure the amount of leather required for the actual bellows; it will usually be no more than a strip 6-7 inches wide, but at least 18” long. Tack one end to a point adjacent to the bellows nozzle, and gently run the leather around the circumference to the other side. Then gently glue around the circumference without stretching the leather- this is most important. Once it is dry, tack the leather in three or at the most 4 places around the circumference. Now you have the lower half in place, and you are ready to insert the top piece of wood- the operating half !

This is just the same as before; the only difference is making sure that the leather is fed in between the springs on each side- an  inch or so is enough, just so that the spring functions as it should.
This sounds more complicated than it is, so don’t despair !
Once you have the leather in place and glued, now you are at the final stage; mount the lower part of the bellows in the vice, and gently put in your pins; the best way is to space them about ¼ “ apart, all round the lower circumference. The do the same to the other half, until you have your bellows complete. Test for functionality, and then trim any leather spare, until it is flush with the woodwork. If you feel you can put in some decorative pins without splitting the top surface, you can; but be careful !
Polish the whole, and admire !

The attached photo of a pair of bellows in a rough state, shows how the leather is badly worn adjacent to the springs, and the engraving on the top bellows plate- carved oak.

Jerry Harwood.