Women have a good deal to do in public life in Boston, and women are determined to be the intellectual guides of Boston book buyers, at least of such as wish to be “modern” and “up-to-date.” The Garden Side Book Shop is conducted by women exclusively. I dare say women must also be the chief buyers. The most marvelous and costly bindings on rows and rows of shelves. Books of poetry, novels, anthologies that were never heard of and what is still worse, will never be heard of, are beautifully dressed like brainless women, who wear gowns of Worth or Lady Duff-Gordon. Mrs. Bertha Beckford, one of the proprietors, approached me with the charm of the reception lady in a fashionable hairdressing establishment, and invited me to inspect “some darling little books, the sweetest ever, just arrived from Paris.” I followed her to a little salon done in pink and canary and viewed little miniature books, bound in French crepe, a wallpaper effect. There were French anthologies of bits of poetry and of war sentiment. Dowagers, with grown-up granddaughters, and studded lorgnettes went into fits of ecstacy over the “darling books,” and I shouldn’t be surprised if they bought some and took them “as much appreciated gifts” to some home for convalescent soldiers and sailors.
Book Shops for Boys and Girls
“Splendid,” I thought, seeing the sign next door. The shop where boys and girls can come and choose their reading. It’s located on the fourth floor of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. It looks like a pharmacy. There wasn’t a boy or girl in sight. A few old ladies, who must have left the sewing circle on the third floor, were sitting about, reading. I looked around the shelves and I wondered if all the Boston boys and girls lack red blood and the gift of fancy and actually read the books I saw. Miss Alma Howard, one of the dispensers of this shop, told me that all books are being carefully censored and selected by one Bertha E. Mahoney, the director of the Book Shop of the Union. Bertha seemed to be the ruling spirit. She has forbidden such and such books, she has placed others on the blacklist, but she also selected books that ought to be read by boys and girls. I asked what literary qualifications Miss Mahoney had to qualify her for the censoring. All I could gather was the fact that Miss Mahoney is Miss Mahoney, a whilom superintendent of the food shops of the union on the floor below. Needless to say, the union is a highly aristocratic place, frequented exclusively by the flower of Boston’s ultra fashionables. Why doesn’t someone start a real book store for boys and girls? Accessible to everyone, where second-hand books could be had for ten cents or a quarter?
Every other old building in Boston, and many churches bear honor tablets, telling us that here assembled revolutionists of 1776. The Boston of today, with all its laws of restriction and of censorship, is proud of its ancient rebels. How paradoxical! In talking about laws, a new one has just been enacted. The police apply to the sale of second-hand books the same rule as to the sale and buying of second-hand clothing. A dealer, purchasing books from anyone, has to report the purchase to the police, describe the article purchased and has to wait thirty days before he can sell it. The law requires that each book dealer must pay five dollars for a license. A similar law had been enacted 60 years ago, as a civil war protective measure. Oh, Athens of America! Selling books with a second-hand clothes dealer’s license!
Books in Ice Box
Opposite the Copley-Plaza, in a fashionable little building of its own, is the Dorado of America’s rejected poets and poetesses, essayists, novelists, free verse artists and of everybody else Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound would press to their bosom. Here is the book shop of the Four Seas Publishing Company, and never was there a greater collection of literary atrocities in one room than in this airy, inviting “Hall of Fame.” The soul of Amy Lowell greets one uncannily articulate from the page of each book.
A very ambitious clerk praised the authors of the books higher than genius has ever been praised in America. “We have bought 81 titles from the Badger Publishing Company only recently and have not spared any expense to print the most attractive title and jackets for this new addition to our stock.” Everybody knows the Badger books. The Badger Publishing Company gladly accommodates authors of novels and extends to them the privileges of their printing establishment, provided they are willing to pay for publication.
I descended to the basement to see the enormous stock of books the Four Seas Company had acquired. The store must have been occupied by a wholesale florist previously, and the most tremendous ice box I ever saw in my life filled the whole basement. The Badger books, thousands of them, were neatly piled up in the ice box. They were in the proper place, indeed.
The Mysterious Book Shop
On Washington Street is a very attractive book store, conducted by a blind couple. Man and wife about thirty years of age, both totally blind. The shop is scrupulously clean. If you ask for a book, the proprietor will find it in a miraculous way, provided it is on the shelves. If you are browsing about, picking up a book here or there, he will ask you to read off to him the title, and then tell you the price. Both look happy, contented, and seem prosperous.