It was clear that these two women could not live in London on
seventy-five pounds a year, most certainly not with the prospect
before them, and Clara cast about for something to do. Marshall had
a brother-in-law, a certain Baruch Cohen, a mathematical instrument
maker in Clerkenwell, and to him Marshall accidentally one day talked
about Clara, and said that she desired an occupation. Cohen himself
could not give Clara any work, but he knew a second-hand bookseller,
an old man who kept a shop in Holborn, who wanted a clerk, and Clara
thus found herself earning another pound a week. With this addition
she and her sister could manage to pay their way and provide what
Madge would want. The hours were long, the duties irksome and
wearisome, and, worst of all, the conditions under which they were
performed, were not only as bad as they could be, but their badness
was of a kind to which Clara had never been accustomed, so that she
felt every particle of it in its full force. The windows of the shop
were, of course, full of books, and the walls were lined with them.
In the middle of the shop also was a range of shelves, and books were
stacked on the floor, so that the place looked like a huge cubical
block of them through which passages had been bored. At the back the
shop became contracted in width to about eight feet, and consequently
the central shelves were not continued there, but just where they
ended, and overshadowed by them were a little desk and a stool. All
round the desk more books were piled, and some manoeuvring was
necessary in order to sit down. This was Clara's station.
Occasionally, on a brilliant, a very brilliant day in summer, she
could write without gas, but, perhaps, there were not a dozen such
days in the year. By twisting herself sideways she could just catch
a glimpse of a narrow line of sky over some heavy theology which was
not likely to be disturbed, and was therefore put at the top of the
window, and once when somebody bought the Calvin Joann. Opera Omnia,
9 vol. folio, Amst. 1671--it was very clear that afternoon--she
actually descried towards seven o'clock a blessed star exactly in the
middle of the gap the Calvin had left.
The darkness was very depressing, and poor Clara often shut her eyes
as she bent over her day-book and ledger, and thought of the
Fenmarket flats where the sun could be seen bisected by the horizon
at sun-rising and sun-setting, and where even the southern Antares
shone with diamond glitter close to the ground during summer nights.
She tried to reason with herself during the dreadful smoke fogs; she
said to herself that they were only half-a-mile thick, and she
carried herself up in imagination and beheld the unclouded azure, the
filthy smother lying all beneath her, but her dream did not continue,
and reality was too strong for her. Worse, perhaps, than the eternal
gloom was the dirt. She was naturally fastidious, and as her skin
was thin and sensitive, dust was physically a discomfort. Even at
Fenmarket she was continually washing her hands and face, and,
indeed, a wash was more necessary to her after a walk than food or
drink. It was impossible to remain clean in Holborn for five
minutes; everything she touched was foul with grime; her collar and
cuffs were black with it when she went home to her dinner, and it was
not like the honest, blowing road-sand of Fenmarket highways, but a
loathsome composition of everything disgusting which could be
produced by millions of human beings and animals packed together in
soot. It was a real misery to her and made her almost ill. However,
she managed to set up for herself a little lavatory in the basement,
and whenever she had a minute at her command, she descended and
enjoyed the luxury of a cool, dripping sponge and a piece of yellow
soap. The smuts began to gather again the moment she went upstairs,
but she strove to arm herself with a little philosophy against them.
'What is there in life,' she moralised, smiling at her sermonising,
'which once won is for ever won? It is always being won and always
being lost.' Her master, fortunately, was one of the kindest of men,
an old gentleman of about sixty-five, who wore a white necktie, clean
every morning. He was really a GENTLEman in the true sense of that
much misused word, and not a mere TRADESman; that is to say, he loved
his business, not altogether for the money it brought him, but as an
art. He was known far and wide, and literary people were glad to
gossip with him. He never pushed his wares, and he hated to sell
them to anybody who did not know their value. He amused Clara one
afternoon when a carriage stopped at the door, and a lady inquired if
he had a Manning and Bray's History of Surrey. Yes, he had a copy,
and he pointed to the three handsome, tall folios.