Maggs Bros
This entry concerns my love of books. Warning is hereby given. If you're not a fan of literature then I'd
say you'll want to skip ahead. Alternatively,
I hear that YouTube is fun, lots of videos.
Some of them have Monster Trucks!
Yeah Bro! I know right. Yeah those rims are. Tricked. Out. Nah, it's all
good, I'll join you when I've finished bettering myself as a human
being.
That paragrapgh does read as rude and dismissive, but I'm
about to start being a massive fanboy, so its hardly an arrogance thing. Anyway, for everyone else still here. This place... I cannot even describe the
wonder of this place.
Stepping away from the Berkely Square Gardens in Mayfair I
made my way into Maggs Bros, a fine example of a mid-eighteenth century town
house, and once upon a time the home of Britain's shortest-serving Prime
Minister. It was mid afternoon, and by
means of an intercom system, I was welcomed by a young lady called Fuchsia into
into my own vision of paradise.
I asked politely if I was able to look around and take some
photographs, not expecting much in the way of hospitality. Instead of being removed immediately, Fuchsia asked if there was anything in the catalogue that I'd like a closer look at
while I waited for somebody to become free enough from doing a job that I would
happily die fighting grizzly bears to have a chance of doing. I attempted to peruse the catalogue she gave
me calmly. I would have stood a better
chance with the bears.
Hundreds of manuscripts and novels, poetry and plays, in first
edition, dedicated, signed and monographed by the very minds that brought them
into being. The most significant
literary figures of the age, bound paper and ink, each with the touch of
history upon them.
I have held the very same collection of atoms that
Hemmingway once handled, if only for a moment.
I have seen the cursive signature of Miller. I decided then and there that if I ever
become a man of means, I would live the most frugal of lives, in the basest of
homes, surrounded by the inventory of this place.
Fuschia, growing more radiant by the second, introduced me
to George*, who was no less handsome and far more dashing (only considering
that it's a gendered word nowadays), who took me upstairs to show me around more of the
stores secrets. The room was beautiful,
and so were the manuscripts and gilded covers that it contained. Much of the second floor's inventory was also presumably, double, triple or septuple the price. He gestured to a set of large covers on a
table next to the window, and we
discussed its contents as I took a close angle shot of the cover.
We were about to move on before my guide, after pausing
thoughtfully for a moment, politely asked me to delete that particular
shot. The item in question was for a
private buyer. No mention was made of
any monetary value of the set in question.
But we both knew what he meant by it.
Maggs Bros has an undeniably charming presence, but to think
for a moment that it is a simply quaint bookstore would be to do it an
injustice. In 1932, they made history,
purchasing a rare Gutenburg Bible and the famous Codex Sinaiticus (an utterly
beautiful ancient handwritten copy of the Greek Bible) from the Soviet
government, the latter for the highest price ever paid for a book at the time,
100,000 pounds. In 1997 they aquired a
copy of the first book ever published in England; The Canterbury Tales as
imprinted by William Caxton for the substantially higher price of 4.2 million.
They also bought Napoleon's penis (yes, really), in 1916,
and sold it on in 1924. Which I find
hilarious, it must have been a weird eight years. Maybe I too should be watching Monster Truck Madness.
I do not believe that I have ever been happier in a given
place. It is entirely possible that due
to the half hour I spent at Maggs Bros. the joy I may one day feel at the birth
of my first-born will be notably diminished by comparison. In conclusion, I would like to pay my sincerest thanks to
all the members of staff who helped me along my way.
And also to the bishop who exorcised the No.
50 of its ghost population in years past.
Yes, to add to everything else, this was once upon a time the most
haunted house in London.
I can see why, I'd never want to leave either.
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