In the way of antiquity doubtless the New Cut--as what was once Lambeth Marsh is now termed--comes next to the two East End localities above mentioned as a bookstall locality. The place has certainly been a book-emporium for at least half a century. Mr. G. A. Sala declares that he has purchased for an old song many of his rarest books in this congested and unsavoury locality where Robert Buchanan and his ill-fated friend, David Gray, shared a bankrupt garret on their first coming up to London from Scotland. The present writer has picked up some rare and curious books in that locality during the past ten years, and others have doubtless done the same. Not so very long ago a volume with the autograph of Drayton was secured for one penny, certainly not an extravagant price.
[Illustration: _A Book-barrow in Farringdon Road._]
For some years Farringdon Road has enjoyed the distinction of being the best locality in London for bookstalling. Its stalls are far more numerous, and the quality of the books here exposed for sale is of a much higher class, than those which are to be met with in other places. There are between thirty and forty bookstalls or barrows here, and the place has what we may describe as a bibliopolic history, which goes back for a period of twenty years. The first person to start in the bookselling line was a coster of the name of Roberts, who died somewhat suddenly either in December of 1894 or early in January of the present year. Roberts appears to have been a fairly successful man at the trade, and had a fairly good knowledge of cheap books. The _doyen_ of the Farringdon Road bibliopoles is named Dabbs--a very intelligent man, who started first in the hot-chestnut line. Mr. Dabbs has generally a fairly good stock of books, which varies between one and two thousand volumes, a selection of which are daily displayed on four or five barrows, and varying from two a penny ('You must take two') up to higher-priced volumes. Curiously enough, he finds that theological books pay the best, and it is of this class that his stock chiefly consists. Just as book-hunters have many 'finds' to gloat over, so perhaps booksellers have to bewail the many rarities which they have let slip through their fingers. It would be more than could be expected of human nature, as it is at present constituted, to expect booksellers to make a clean or even qualified confession in this respect. Our friend Dabbs, however, is not of this hypersensitive type, and he relates, with a certain amount of grim humour, that his greatest lost opportunity was the selling of a book for 1s. 6d. which a few days afterwards was sold in Paris for £50. He consoles himself with the reflection that at all events _he_ made a fair profit out of this book. If we could all be as philosophical as this intelligent book-barrow-keeper, doubtless the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune would impress fewer wrinkles on our brows, and help us to think kindly of the friends who put us 'up' to good things in the way of gold-mines and generously left us to pay the piper.