BOOKSELLING IN CALCUTTA.
Looking over your Queries this morning, my attention was drawn to that now in course of elucidation in your pages—the origin of the phrase "Sending a man to Coventry." I am not about to offer any explanation thereof, but simply to chronicle in your columns, more for the amusement than the edification of your readers, a reminiscence of an eccentric application of a passage in Shakspeare bearing upon this popular dislike to Coventry.
Any of your readers who may have visited the capital of British India will recollect the native kitaub-wallahs, or booksellers, who drive a good trade in the streets of Calcutta by thrusting their second-hand literature into the palanquins of the passers, and their pertinacity and success in fixing master with a bargain. For the information of the untravelled, I may further remark that these flying bibliopoles draw their supplies from
the daily auctions arising out of the migratory habits or the mortality to which the residents in that city are subject; and it would somewhat astonish our Sothebys and Putticks to see the extent of these sales of literary property, and derange their tympanums to hear the clamorous competition among the aforesaid half-naked dealers for lots not catalogued with their bibliographical precision. The books thus purchased, I may further observe, are subject to the overhaul of the better-informed of the tribe before they make their appearance in the streets; when deficiencies are made good, bindings vamped, and lettering attempted: finally, they are placed in the hands of the hawkers, when the following peculiarities are detectable:—where a title or last leaf may have been wanting, these Calcutta editions occasionally display a prophane book with a sacred title; or a pious treatise, for the sake of the word "Finis," made complete by affixing the last leaf of Tristram Shandy or the Devil on Two Sticks! Less intelligent jobbers will open their book, and, finding the first word "Preface," clap it incontinently in gilt letters on the back! I leave the imagination of the reader to fill up the cross-readings which would likely result from such practices, and revert to my anecdote, which I had almost lost sight of.
Some twenty years ago, then, the dingy tribes were startled, and the auctioneer gratified by the appearance of a new face in the bidders' box—a brisk little European, who contested every lot, aiming, apparently, at a monopoly in the second-hand book trade. Shortly thereafter, this individual, having located himself in a commanding position, came forth in the daily papers as a candidate for public favour; and, in allusion to the reformation he contemplated, and his sovereign contempt for his black brethren, headed his address, to the no small amusement of the lieges, in the Falstoffian vein:
"... No eyes hath seen such scarecrows.
I'll not march thro' Coventry with them, that's flat!"
This joke was no doubt thrown away upon his Hindoo and Mussulman rivals, but, alas for the reformer! he little knew the cold indifference of the Anglo-Indian about such matters, and, as might have been expected, he failed in establishing himself in business, and ultimately fell a victim to the climate. Of the previous history of this one, among ten thousand, who have left their bones in the land of cholera, I know nothing beyond the fact that he was a son of Thomas Holcroft, a dramatist of repute in his day.
J. O.