Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay

acquiring Venus, but I flick my catalogue, meaning “Seventeen and six.” What is this? He does not see me; he looks towards some haggling bookseller who has blown his nose; he says, “seventeen and six,” but not to me. I too blow my nose; the word is now “One pound,” but it is the word of the dumb Mr. Robinson, who has tilted his bowler hat to the left.“Guinea,” I mutely cry, flapping my catalogue like a signal of distress. He will not look, he passes by; he observes Mr. Jones to scratch his cheek, and says “Twenty-five.” I am as a desperate castaway on a lone island, signalling vainly to ships that steam unheeding by, picking up other castaways from other islands, but never me. In vain I flap my catalogue, cough, clear my throat, cross and uncross my legs, jerk my chin. The
Bucaniers
are flung to and from between Mr. Jones and Mr. Robinson in mute, tense rally and return. “Thirty. I am bid thirty …” Mr. Jones is slackening; he performs no more little actions; he slumps in his chair; the game is to Mr. Robinson. I cannot endure it; I spring to my feet. That chaste and muted hall is rent by a cry. “Two pounds.”
    The crude and raucous vocality of my bid shocks the mute multitude to surprise. The auctioneer at last looks my way; impassively he murmurs, “I am bid two pounds. Going for two pounds.” He rakes Messrs. Robinson and Jones with enquiring eyes; he decides that their gestures are those of bored negation; they have lost interest in the
Bucaniers
, and are thinking about something else.
    â€œSold for two pounds.”
    The
Bucaniers
are mine.
    But I should have said thirty-five. The
Bucaniers
were not mounting by ten shilling steps. The delirium of auctions turns the brain.

Booksellers’ Catalogues
    How lightly, softly, insinuatingly, they arrive, flipping through the letterbox, alighting like leaves on the passage floor; green like leaves of spring, red or brown or orange like leaves of autumn, or white like drifts of snow; but each folded neatly and precisely in a wrapper of thin or stout dun-coloured paper. I will not open them; I will not slit that concealing jacket that protects me from the song of these luring sirens; like Odysseus and his sailors, I will be deaf and blind. I will cast them, as I cast without a pang all the other catalogues of merchandise that arrive in my home, unopened into the waste-paper basket.
    That small, orange-red being, the colour of a street beacon, in its stout paper jacket—I gather it up to fling it into the basket. Two inches of orange-hued catalogue protrude from each end of the wrapper, closely printed; odd, how booksellers seem always short of paper, so that they have to use every inch of even the covers of their catalogues for their lists of wares. What shows on the two inches of double column visible above the wrapper is:
    1063 [Utterson (E. N.)] Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry: re-published principally from Early Printed Copies, in the Black Letter,
with woodcuts
, 2 vols in one, 8vo,
half morocco, t.e.g., uncut
, 8s 6d [J.6] 1817
    1065 Vergil (Polydore) English History, from an early translation, Vol. I., containing the first eight books, comprising the period prior to the Norman Conquest, edited by Sir Henry Ellis, sq. 8vo, 4s 6d [J.1] 1846
    1066 Viccars (Joanne) Decapla in Psalmos, sive Commentarius ex decem Linguis MSS. et impressis Hebr. Arab., Syriac, Chald. Rabbin., Graec., Roman, Ital., Hispan.
    1076 Weekly Entertainer (The); or Agreeable and Instructive Repository, containing a Collection of Select Pieces both in Prose and Verse; Curious Anecdotes, Instructive Tales and Ingenious Essays on different subjects, Vol 41-42, 2 vols in 1, 8vo,
old boards, calf back (two pp. torn)
, 12S 6d [G.16]
    Sherborne
, 1803
    With Index to Vol. 41. Short accounts of Ancient English Sports, Balloons, Cockfighting, Origin of War, Rebellion in Ireland, etc.
    1077 –––Ditto, Vols