FRED BASON'S DIARY —Edited by Nicolas Bentley—British Book
Centre .Out of the murk of the London slums, as he tells it himself, arose a
“bloody bookworm” named Fred Bason. At 15, Fred already had his own
library, consisting of Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, Liza of
Lambeth, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Pears' Cyclopdia, the 1881
volume of the Strand magazine, Wild Wales and Two Years Before the
Mast. He was much happier browsing through this library than he was
lathering the “filthy faces [of] nasty old men” in a slum barbershop
or eating “sawdust and chips” at “the wrong end of a
planing machine” .In desperation, Fred bought a batch of 28 books at a sale for 8s.,
cleaned them up and hawked some of them around the second-hand shops in
a sack. At day's end, Bookseller Bason had made enough profit to convince him that a load of second-hand books and some stout
burlap were all a true bookworm needed to “make a living and be free.”Reluctant Lions. Today, Cockney Bookman Fred Bason is a minor British
institution. He addresses Rotary luncheons, mimes on BBC television and
exchanges bibliophiliac chatter with his pal, “Willy”
Maugham. Nonetheless, at 42, Fred still lives in shimmy Walworth, and
though he also owns a bookshop now, still hawks books from a barrow “in
the gutter.” Like every famed “character,” he is permanently hoist with
his own reputation: he can no more afford to become rich, or
grammatical, or stop collecting autographs or saying “blimey!” than
Groucho Marx can afford to adopt an upright, manly stance and a look of
sincerity.Fred's Diary is at once an abbreviated record of Bason's daily
life and a rung-by-rung account of his climb to Cockney notoriety. By
dint of hanging around theater exits with an autograph album and
writing very polite letters to celebrities, young Fred soon got on
signature terms with everyone from Arnold Bennett to George Bernard
Shaw. A few literary lions headed into the deep bush when they scented
Fred on their trail. Poet John Masefield, for instance, responded to
Fred's advances with a “chilly” printed card, and that “awful snob”
Rudyard Kipling, trapped by Fred outside a museum, “raised his stick as
I raised my hat.” But for the most part
Fred managed to turn his literary relationships into a neat, profitable
routine:”Had lunch with John Drinkwater today and he autographed five of his
books which I've had in stock three or four years. I put it to him
squarely: they “won't sell unsigned, but if you'll autograph them I can
sell them in New York next week. Like a good pal he obliged, and a nice
lunch thrown in as well . . .”Today I broke fresh grounds with a huge gamble. I have paid 11 10s.
0d. cash for Of Human Bondage, first
edition . . . Willy is coming to tea next Friday. If he will autograph
this copy I am sure that I can get 20 for it . . . Later: Willy
obliged—but he autographed it to me. I can't afford to keep it. It's
the most precious thing I possess. Oh, I wish I was rich! . . . Later:
An American named Schwartz has paid me 21 for it . . .”
