Gerry Wolstenholme's Blog - Posts Tagged "eric-barton"
Curmudgeonly bookseller? … or, All-round good egg?
Eric Barton 7 May 1909 to 21 May 1997
I discovered some back issues of Picture Postcard Monthly and decided to have a browse through them before discarding them. And in the July issue for 1997 I discovered a piece entitled The first postcard dealer – Eric Barton. I immediately realised that this was the Eric Barton that I had met and got to know, especially when in the first paragraph it mentioned his Baldur Bookshop on Hill Rise, Richmond. That is where I got to know him, quite late in my bookselling career I should add.
The last statement is something of a surprise for Richmond, and John Prescott’s establishment in particular, was one of my favourite book-hunting grounds and I had visited it regularly throughout my early years of bookselling. But I had heard of the reputation of the owner of the Baldur Bookshop so I studiously avoided going there while in Richmond as there were other profitable outlets to visit where the welcome was more wholesome, shall we say.
Then some years later, after I had returned to my hometown of Blackpool, and visited London for book buying trips I was in Richmond with my wife, daughter and Mum and Dad and while they went shopping I decided to go and pay a visit to the Baldur Bookshop. It was a wintery November day and as I opened the shop door the doorbell sparked Eric into action. I was greeted with a loud shout from the rear of the shop where Eric sat on his cushioned chair and tried his very best to discourage customers from entering. ‘What do you want?’ was the cry. ‘I just wanted to have a look round to see if there was something for me to buy,’ I replied. This brought from him ‘Well, what are you looking for?’
As a youngster I would probably have been intimidated by his approach and stopped in my tracks but then, well established, I simply proceeded into the well stacked shop. Indeed the shop had been described as ‘one of the most individual, maddening but rewarding secondhand bookshops in the London area’. His approach was summed up by Michael Goldsmith in that 1997 article with ‘[H]e presented a more austere figure – and several visitors confirmed to me that he was the sort of chap who would truculently throw you out of his shop rather than serve you if he didn’t care for “the cut of your jib”.’
Eric had opened the shop on Hill Rise in 1936 with a partner, who soon disappeared, and had developed it into what it was since that date. He spent some time in the forces and on his return he acquired huge quantities of postcards and he is credited with almost single-handedly reviving a postcard craze that had died out with World War I. By the 1950s he was acknowledged as having over a million postcards in stock but by the time I was there this had been well picked over but there were still dozens and dozens of boxes of postcards interwoven with the thousands of books.
He had acquired any number of celebrity customers during his time including Caryl Brahms, Ronnie Barker, John Arlott, TS Eliot, Compton Mackenzie and Bernard Levin, as his business expanded. By the time I arrived he was winding down a little and some six years after my visit he retired in 1993 when his extended 15-year lease ran out. Interestingly, one of his accomplishments had been that he persuaded the then London County Council to install a plaque on Oscar Wilde’s Tite Street home in Chelsea.
But back to my visit we discussed trends in bookselling and when I mentioned cricket as one of my main interests, he changed completely. The 1997 article explains this with Goldsmith saying ‘once you got him going on his three favourite topics, cricket, the weather and reminiscences of the postcard world – he was off like a train!’ And fortunately one of my subjects coincided with one of his so we were, almost instantly, friends!
I spent a pleasant hour or so with him and then, as I was about to leave, he announced, ‘I have a present for you.’ He went to the back of the shop and brought out a battered Panama hat. A long-time MCC member and attendee at Lord’s, he told me, ‘I wore this at the Eton versus Harrow game at Lord’s in 1936 and I want you to have it.’ I immediately fell in love with it, thanked him and departed into the November gloom proudly wearing it. When I met up with my folks outside the department store where we were to have coffee, my daughter almost collapsed on the floor when she saw me approaching in this Panama and it remained a family joke for many years. Almost as long as the hat lasted me, for I wore it religiously until it was beyond wear – even then my son-in-law extended its life by wearing it while working on his garden for some years!
So, as you can imagine, my feelings for Eric Barton were, in the words of the heading of this article, ‘all-round good egg’ for he was certainly a character and an entertaining one at that. Thank goodness I got over that initial ‘What do you want?’
I discovered some back issues of Picture Postcard Monthly and decided to have a browse through them before discarding them. And in the July issue for 1997 I discovered a piece entitled The first postcard dealer – Eric Barton. I immediately realised that this was the Eric Barton that I had met and got to know, especially when in the first paragraph it mentioned his Baldur Bookshop on Hill Rise, Richmond. That is where I got to know him, quite late in my bookselling career I should add.
The last statement is something of a surprise for Richmond, and John Prescott’s establishment in particular, was one of my favourite book-hunting grounds and I had visited it regularly throughout my early years of bookselling. But I had heard of the reputation of the owner of the Baldur Bookshop so I studiously avoided going there while in Richmond as there were other profitable outlets to visit where the welcome was more wholesome, shall we say.
Then some years later, after I had returned to my hometown of Blackpool, and visited London for book buying trips I was in Richmond with my wife, daughter and Mum and Dad and while they went shopping I decided to go and pay a visit to the Baldur Bookshop. It was a wintery November day and as I opened the shop door the doorbell sparked Eric into action. I was greeted with a loud shout from the rear of the shop where Eric sat on his cushioned chair and tried his very best to discourage customers from entering. ‘What do you want?’ was the cry. ‘I just wanted to have a look round to see if there was something for me to buy,’ I replied. This brought from him ‘Well, what are you looking for?’
As a youngster I would probably have been intimidated by his approach and stopped in my tracks but then, well established, I simply proceeded into the well stacked shop. Indeed the shop had been described as ‘one of the most individual, maddening but rewarding secondhand bookshops in the London area’. His approach was summed up by Michael Goldsmith in that 1997 article with ‘[H]e presented a more austere figure – and several visitors confirmed to me that he was the sort of chap who would truculently throw you out of his shop rather than serve you if he didn’t care for “the cut of your jib”.’
Eric had opened the shop on Hill Rise in 1936 with a partner, who soon disappeared, and had developed it into what it was since that date. He spent some time in the forces and on his return he acquired huge quantities of postcards and he is credited with almost single-handedly reviving a postcard craze that had died out with World War I. By the 1950s he was acknowledged as having over a million postcards in stock but by the time I was there this had been well picked over but there were still dozens and dozens of boxes of postcards interwoven with the thousands of books.
He had acquired any number of celebrity customers during his time including Caryl Brahms, Ronnie Barker, John Arlott, TS Eliot, Compton Mackenzie and Bernard Levin, as his business expanded. By the time I arrived he was winding down a little and some six years after my visit he retired in 1993 when his extended 15-year lease ran out. Interestingly, one of his accomplishments had been that he persuaded the then London County Council to install a plaque on Oscar Wilde’s Tite Street home in Chelsea.
But back to my visit we discussed trends in bookselling and when I mentioned cricket as one of my main interests, he changed completely. The 1997 article explains this with Goldsmith saying ‘once you got him going on his three favourite topics, cricket, the weather and reminiscences of the postcard world – he was off like a train!’ And fortunately one of my subjects coincided with one of his so we were, almost instantly, friends!
I spent a pleasant hour or so with him and then, as I was about to leave, he announced, ‘I have a present for you.’ He went to the back of the shop and brought out a battered Panama hat. A long-time MCC member and attendee at Lord’s, he told me, ‘I wore this at the Eton versus Harrow game at Lord’s in 1936 and I want you to have it.’ I immediately fell in love with it, thanked him and departed into the November gloom proudly wearing it. When I met up with my folks outside the department store where we were to have coffee, my daughter almost collapsed on the floor when she saw me approaching in this Panama and it remained a family joke for many years. Almost as long as the hat lasted me, for I wore it religiously until it was beyond wear – even then my son-in-law extended its life by wearing it while working on his garden for some years!
So, as you can imagine, my feelings for Eric Barton were, in the words of the heading of this article, ‘all-round good egg’ for he was certainly a character and an entertaining one at that. Thank goodness I got over that initial ‘What do you want?’
