The Grub Street Nights Entertainments - J C Squire

Some second-hand bookshops have shelves entitled Pocket Editions. It must be said that this often seems to entail an optimistic assessment of the capacity of the average pocket, particularly if it is already occupied by pens, ink cartridges, pencil stubs, notebooks, blotting paper, visiting cards, conkers, string, sealing wax, old envelopes, loose change, interesting pebbles, slabs of chocolate, bletting medlars, matches, a compass, a pen-knife, a box of coloured chalks, a worn coin from the Netherlands Antilles, tide tables, and, last but by no means least, a much-thumbed list of second-hand bookshops.

However, Cape’s Travellers' Library series, in its compact royal blue format, is certainly among those more likely to actually fit in a jacket or coat pocket. Like the bottle green of Secker’s New Adelphi Library, it is always worth investigation. The Cape series included Arthur Machen’s Dog & Duck, story collections by A E Coppard, Ronald Fraser’s The Flying Draper, novels by Mary Webb, stories by Naomi Mitchison, and other varied volumes, some now almost forgotten. 

Another in the series was J C Squire’s The Grub Street Nights Entertainments (1924), a collection of stories about the book world. The first of these to appear, ‘The Success’, about a novelist whose career is on the wane, was published in the December 1923 issue, Vol IX, no 50, of the journal he edited, The London Mercury. Others followed, and soon readers demanded a volume of them.

The title of the first story, we will realise at the end, contains a melancholy irony. The plot is in the minor key, concerned with the slow accretions of fate rather than sudden drama. Squire depicts the life of his lead figure, a conscientious craftsman but something of a loner, sympathetically, describing his circumstances, environment and background with telling details.

We are not so much here in the world of complete penury and privation experienced by, for example, Gissing and Machen when they were struggling writers. His author has some, but not quite enough, means, even for a fairly modest existence, so that when his publisher cannot, with regret, offer an advance for his latest book, he is about to descend into even greater difficulty.

The story is particularly observant of the sort of rented rooms and cheap cafes such a figure must frequent. Squire does not evoke the romantic image of the misunderstood genius in the garret: his character has an unobtrusive, steady talent, an awkward integrity, appreciated by some, but not by enough.  The restraint of this approach gives the story a quiet power.

A brief holiday in a cathedral city leads to an encounter with an enthusiastic reader, and through them the echoes of a lost romance, which adds further poignancy to the story. In this evocation of a lonely, haunted figure I think that Squire approaches the qualities of some of de la Mare’s stories.

Another tale is a pleasing literary fantasy about an impoverished collector who spots a valuable rarity at a book auction, which he notices because of the unique spelling of a single word.  There is a high-spirited tale too about a lecturer to a provincial literary society who tells his audience and the presiding Alderman exactly what he thinks of them, which one suspects was an indulgence in wish-fulfilment by Squire.

Two other stories explore ethical dilemmas: what if there are letters that show an eminent much-revered author had a seamier, shadier side? And should a critic praise a book when moved by pity for its desperately ill author? These episodes offer different moods to the first story, but all of them show an affectionate if amused understanding of the book world. The portrayal of collectors, dealers, authors, publishers, journalists, coteries, is nuanced, mildly satirical but with a tolerant attitude to human weaknesses. His characters are generally thoughtful if fallible people doing what they think best.

The Grub Street Nights Entertainments is not among the more often-seen in the Cape series, in my experience, but it would certainly be worth picking up if encountered. Whether it fits in the pocket or not, it would be a pleasing addition to the book-collector’s bedside or fireside table.

(Mark Valentine)