Wednesday 18 June 2014

18/6/1959 - Double the poetry...

Two poems from Cyril, the bookshop owner, 55 years ago today. There he is, pouring his heart out to his muse. And then, suddenly back to reality in his sign-off to let Marianne, his revered customer, know that he was off on his summer holidays for a fortnight...


Who has not looked into your lovely eyes
And left behind more than mere memory?
Did not I seek for countless weary days
To find among the stars, the skies,
Each limpid pool, the running rivulet,
The glistening dewdrops on fresh morning lawns,
Deep lonely lakeland tarns and meres where
All the mysteries of earth and sky are held
Imprisoned for eternity? - their glory?
I sought in vain the paths
Of rain where every gleaming leaf
Lay diamond-wise;
I spent long hours in contemplating
Ever changing seas, even the haloes
Of the moon where her magnificence had cast
A fairy veil about the sky.
All these and more, I vainly sought
Until at last the goal
Of all things beautiful, your eyes
I saw again, and there found paradise.

18/6/1959

Now I am come to lengthened pain
Who once before the gates of Paradise
Did stand, and would have entered there
Had I the merits of your price.

O fearful agony!
How shall I bear the ruth
And scourge of bitter time
Without consoling youth?

18/6/1959

I shall be away for a fortnight from Tuesday next

Sunday 15 June 2014

15/6/1959 You once did say...


You once did say
That you could not say 'no'
To anyone. To question this
Would be impertinence for me
Who gladly would say many things
If you'd agree, but I
Want only that which cannot be
And mere agreement would not do.
But if, for once, in charity
You would say 'no' to me
When I write things you do not like
(However great my misery)
I would not venture so again
For, whate're you say, my only aim
Is but to please
Although it cost me more
Than I might care to say.
15/6/1959

Monday 9 June 2014

9/6/1959 You did not come...

Oh Cyril... It seems that today, 9 June 1959, Mr Nash was hoping his young lady customer, Marianne, would pay his bookshop in Bishopsgate a visit at lunchtime. And it seems that she didn't turn up...

Today I shall see you
And you will enter
With your sweet decisive step
And I shall lose long moments
Seeking other people's wants
While you are where all time,
All seeking ends for me.
And soon, so soon, you'll say
Those farewell words inconsequent to you
But which do sentence me
To stay with fantasies of memory
Until your presence brings again
Those moments of reality
9th June, 1959
You did not come....behold this dreamer

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Mr Nash writes a poem for another customer

Laurence Worms, who bought Jon Ash bookshop from Cyril Nash and Hugh Jones in the early 1970s, put me in touch with another regular customer from the time of Marianne's visits - Alan Cole. Alan very kindly shared with me the following:
"I used to visit Jon Ash almost every lunchtime when I was working for a French bank in the City. From them I obtained much of my collection of early books, manuscripts and letters. After I retired I started teaching palaeography at the University of London and the latter acquired the collection of some 140,000 items covering the history of writing from around 6500 BC to the present day to become the Museum of Writing Research Collection."
Alan Cole, founder of the Museum of Writing
and Lecturer in Paleography at University of London
"Laurence Worms forwarded your blog to me, which I read with great interest and much reminiscing, because Messrs Jones and Nash played an important part in my life for some 15 years.
"I first came across Jon Ash in October 1955, one week after starting my job in the City and I continued to go to the shop almost daily until 1971, with a break for National Service and a time working abroad. Hugh Jones was the silent partner, not in the legal sense, but vocally; he only said what was needed at any one time. Cyril on the other hand could be heard arguing the toss with a customer or dropping books down the back of the shelves and not quite silently oathing as he tried to extricate them. They often bickered about prices and whether they should purchase books that were offered to them. However, they were very close as work partners and I became very fond of both of them because of their idiosyncrasies and because they were such a knowledgeable, loyal and kindly pair.
Cyril Nash (l), Hugh Jones (r)
"I also knew Marianne quite well, as we were sometimes on opposing sides when after the same book, which happened on several occasions. She actually took me out to a nearby café on one of those occasions to sweeten me up and persuade me that I did not really want that particular book. In fact, I seem to remember that it worked that once and she walked out of the shop clutching the book in triumph. We were often in the shop at the same time, along with another small number of regulars and Hugh Jones named us The Clique, appropriately! We often joked that Cyril fancied Marianne, in a friendly way, as he always became very officious and slightly embarrassed, usually looking down when she was in the shop and he was trying to get the best price for a book she wanted. I know that he wrote poems about her and sometimes other customers, as I found him doing so one evening after the shop had closed and I was browsing - in the good old fashioned sense. I have one that he wrote about me somewhere in the loft that went on about penny-pinching bankers with half-eaten sandwiches trying to bankrupt him. It appears that he had been writing poetry for many years and the rumour was that he had written a book; whether it was poetry or not we never knew."

And here is that poem from Mr Nash, to Mr Cole. It's so exciting to read another of Cyril's poems, with a different slant on it, but still personal to the recipient and wryly observational of life in the bookshop. I notice the nod to Cyril's previous life selling insurance, as Laurence told me about (referenced in this blog post here). And I love finding out from Mr Cole that there was a gang of customers called 'The Clique', and that Marianne was part of it :-) I wonder what the book that she desperately wanted was - it must be in the collection at home somewhere!

The clock strikes twelve and I begin to tense,
as this is the time that the thirsty sandwich-munching bankers,
fresh from making their pile,
come to the shop on their way to a bar to try and bankrupt me.
They would not know a Shakespeare from a comic,
but they pick books from the shelf as though that is how they spend their day,
making ignorant comments and offering me a pound,
despite the fact that the book is marked ten pounds and is a first edition Hardy.
There are exceptions, of course, that help to pass the day,
He from the French bank, more interested in the written word than the printed book,
at least he know his stuff and buys more readily than most;
with not much of a quibble and as passionate as me, talking books for almost an hour each day.
Two o'clock and the bankers, overfull with beer,
wend their tottering and noisy way back to that humdrum existence I once knew.
I would give nothing to relive those times that I remember well,
but wish to be here, surrounded by books and friends, a life they will never know.

Monday 2 June 2014

2/6/1959 Now that I so seldom see you

Hello June, and hello another poem from Mr Nash to Marianne. Seemingly, she was becoming a less frequent visitor to Jon Ash bookshop, which possibly fuelled Cyril's need to express his feelings in poetry.


Now that I so seldom see you
I look, when you are near,
At all your loveliness till it becomes
Essential part of me
And as the soil gives thanks
In fruitfulness for sunshed benefit
So shall I sing and praise
Until I yield myself at sundown
To old earth again
And link your beauty to eternity
2nd June, 1959


Sunday 1 June 2014

22, 25, 29 May 1959 - Matters of the heart

Cyril continued his love's laments over the second half of May 1959, going some way to explain his feelings and need to write poetry for Marianne. 


To M M
I write for you alone,
Yet I have need
That you should read
Or I become a stone.
That I may fitly praise
Your beauty here
Is bliss most dear
And I am pledged always.
I know you cannot give
Me anything;
Take what I bring
And read, that I may live.
To you my songs are said
And they will end
When you shall send
Them back to me unread.
22nd May, 1959
Marianne.... did you find my 'cedars' poem? That was a shattering and bruising blow! And I deserved it.
The 'cedars' poem he refers to above, I think is the third poem in this earlier blog post.


Triolet
My heart is a lonely lake
That mystifies and taunts me
And always deeply daunts me
My heart is a lonely lake
Whose surface thrills to beauty
Of interlacing sky and tree
My heart is a lonely lake
Which mirrors all delight in thee
25th May, 1959


I know that you do think that I
Am deep in love with words;
And so I am, yet not alone, for they
Are as the air to mortal frame
Yet must defer to life itself
To which we have no claim.
So with these words which serve
To shew my praise for you
And have no other life for me,
For I have waited all life through
To know and praise your loveliness
Which makes all words mere foolishness.
29th May, 1959