One of the first poems?

The trouble is. The poems aren't all in order. Some are dated. Some aren't. But from reading them all, and building up an insight into the story, I think this could have been one of the earliest ones, possibly January 1959. But I don't really know. Marianne must have caught Cyril's eye as she browsed the bookshelves in his shop. I suppose she would've been quite distinctive - a woman in her early twenties with a penchant for old books. He must've asked her name, as the poem is personalised 'To M M'. He must've written his first poem to her. He must've waited for her to come back to the shop and make her next purchase. He must've hidden the poem inside the book she bought. The poem reads:

"Miserere Mei"

She took the loathsome book

From off these shelves of mine

And came to me with troubled eyes

Because she could not pay the price

So clearly marked inside

(Deliberately high, to fend off youth)

And asked me to reduce it.

I took the volume in my hand

With its corruption plain for all to see

And looked into her eyes

All goodness virginal,

And steeled myself to sharply say

"I will not take a penny less" -

And cursed myself for fool and knave

To see her small face set

Prepared to make this sacrifice,

And pay.

I wonder how this poem was received by Marianne? It didn't stop her returning to the shop, certainly. And so the poems continued...

How we found the poems

Our mother, Marianne, was a keen collector of old books. She amassed a great amount over her lifetime - from books on London, to finely illustrated children's stories - filling bookcases and shelves in almost every room at home. After she died from cancer in 1989, the books remained in the house along with the rest of her treasured possessions. Except clothes - they were forcibly bagged into binliners and taken to the charity shop by a forthright family friend a few years afterwards. I digress.

I was supposedly studying for my A-levels in 1992, but frequently sought distractions from revision. So I started looking at the books. Flicking through them at random, I would find newspaper clippings, bookmarks, recipes, bus tickets... And then poems. One, two, another, another, and oh - there's another!

Telling my father about what I'd found, he recalled Marianne mentioning them years ago - that a bookseller wrote them for her, hiding them inside books she bought from his shop. There was a shoebox in the bedroom wardrobe, he said, with a few of them kept in an envelope. The shoebox was retrieved. The rest of the books were gone through. A collection of nearly 100 poems and a few brief letters came to light. Written as far as we can make out from dates written on some of the poems, between 5 February 1959 and 27 November 1962, with a huge intensity in the first 9 months of that time, until she "bade him stop" according to one of the notes.

What do we know of this bookseller? His name was Cyril Nash. He was part-owner of Jon Ash Rare Books, which was in Cullum Street in the City of London. Based on scanty information found online, he would have been a considerably middle-aged man at this time.

Marianne would have been in her early 20s, working as a clerk at an insurance company in the City. She must have visited Jon Ash frequently in her lunch hour to add to her growing collection of old books.

This blog is in memory of Marianne, and to pay respect to Cyril Nash, for his talent, dedication and obsession in writing these poems. From one of his notes, it seems like he wanted them to be published one day. So we'd like to share them with you.

Eleanor & Imogen, September 2013