Looking into the past

A day in London trying to source the  diverse  requests of a 90-year old: items  wished for in one instant, often forgotten the next. A magnifying glass that hangs around the neck, spongy insoles for slippers, smoked haddock, net curtains, and photographs of this Bloomsbury cul-de-sac where our father once long ago ran an antiquarian book shop.

The Salamander Book Shop of 16 Silver Street has a Harry Potterish ring to it now and  the location's name has actually been changed to Barter Street. In the 1920s, decades before I was born (though not so my half-brother), the shop was owned jointly by our Russian father and his Anglo-Czech friend, business partners who, supposedly, supplied bibliographic knowledge and financial acumen respectively. Specialising in early medical, science and natural history books, gastronomy, herbals and incunabula (pre-1500 printed material), they did well enough at first, selling to celebrated names such as Diaghilev and to collectors in America.

My father was notoriously unbusiness-like, often snatching books away from potential customers he did not like the look of and stating that they were not for sale. However on one occasion he insisted on purchasing an unpromising volume of little interest. When his partner remonstrated my father ripped apart the binding to reveal what he had guessed lurked  beneath, a papal bull (a rare document issued by the Pope) but in the past sometimes used as reinforcement by book binders.

Book orders were fulfilled on credit and customers allowed to run up substantial accounts. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 wiped out any possibility of overseas debts being honoured and the Salamander sank into the ashes. The remaining  books followed my father through the subsequent decades, many being blown sky-high in the Blitz, the rest making the journey to Wales and then Oxford where the sale of preserved volumes, thanks to my mother's inimitable haggling skills, tided us over many a financial crisis as I was growing up.

The shop facade has barely changed over all these years but there now remains no evidence here that The Salamander Book Shop ever existed. However, googling revealed a PDF of The American Mercury (a literary magazine) for November 1930 which contains a small box ad for the business, on page xxx. I was relieved to find this for otherwise I fear the place would have as little credence as Diagon Alley.