That evening Arthur would host the weekly meeting of the Barchester Bibliophiles. The bibliophiles consisted of Arthur, Oscar Dimsdale, and David Denning—three confirmed bachelors who shared a love of all things bookish.
Oscar, by trade a maths teacher at the local comprehensive school, lived with his aging mother, and spent much of his time at the cathedral. Not only did he organize the library, he also oversaw the laundering of vestments, stocked supplies in the vestry and sacristy, and helped the vergers in a plethora of ways. He would have liked to be a lay reader—reading the lessons at services—but he was prevented by his peculiar habit of breathing at just the wrong place in a sentence. This impediment made his speech seem both rushed and halting, and while Arthur and David had grown used to it, the precentor had decreed that such a manner of speech disqualified Oscar from reading Scripture. It was the official reason why Oscar, despite his years of service to the cathedral, had never been invited to become a lay canon. Arthur had it on good authority from the dean that the real reason was that the bishop insisted that lay canons be prominent, preferably wealthy, members of the Barchester community, but he would never tell Oscar this. Arthur had always assumed that Oscar was gay, but he fancied himself both too liberal to care and too old-fashioned to ask. Oscar never mentioned his love life.
The same could not be said for David Denning. Oxford educated, though several years younger than Arthur, David had followed a girl to Barchester after university. The romance had lasted just long enough for David to spend his small inheritance on a failing bookshop off Barchester High Street. Since then his relationships with books had been far more enduring than those with women. He had added an antiquarian section to the shop that had previously sold only new bestsellers, started a popular series of author events, and installed a café. However, he also had a bad habit of seducing his shop assistants—who were invariably beautiful young women. Oscar had suggested that perhaps hiring a middle-aged man might bring a little stability to the establishment. Shop assistants at Denning’s rarely lasted more than a few months. Once David had cast them aside romantically they had little interest in continuing in his employ. Unlike Oscar, David had few qualms about sharing his sexual exploits with his literary friends—so few, in fact, that Arthur and Oscar had made a rule: No discussing private affairs (in the most obvious sense of the word) at meetings of the Barchester Bibliophiles.
David had wanted to name the group “The Holy Trinity,” but Oscar had objected to this as irreverent; Arthur would have none of “The Three Musketeers,” saying that they should at least honor English, not French, literature; and David had squashed “The Pickwick Club” on the grounds that there had been four Pickwickians, not three. That left them with the Barchester Bibliophiles (or the BBs for short), which eliminated any reference to the group as a trio, thus leaving open the possibility, remote though it was, of another bachelor book enthusiast one day joining their number.
Arthur would host the bibliophiles in his sitting room, where he carefully displayed his collection of the works of English humorists. He enjoyed sharing this collection with Oscar, David, and anyone else who happened to visit his cottage, but it was not his only collection, or even the collection with which he spent the most time. That collection was shelved upstairs in his study, his sanctum sanctorum, into which neither David, nor Oscar, nor any other visitor had ever been allowed.
The collection in the downstairs of Arthur’s cottage covered the years from about 1850 to 1950. On one wall of the sitting room hung five antique prints from Vanity Fair magazine—Max Beerbohm, F. C. Burnand, W. S. Gilbert, John Tenniel, and Tom Taylor. Below these a low bookcase ran between the front door and the corner of the room. On the opposite wall, built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace showcased his collection of P. G. Wodehouse.
Arthur’s grandfather had given him not only a love for Barchester and Grail lore but also for all books. When Arthur had discovered his collection of P. G. Wodehouse, his grandfather had encouraged the boy’s passion, and being able to escape into the world of Jeeves became yet another pleasure associated with those summer visits. Arthur’s grandfather had died two weeks after Arthur began his career as an undergraduate at Lazarus, casting a shadow over his Oxford days. But Arthur also inherited the Wodehouse collection, and, as a way of keeping his grandfather’s memory alive, he began adding to it, haunting the used bookshops of Oxfordshire. By the time he finished university, Arthur had a growing collection that traced Wodehouse’s influences and covered a wide range of English comic writers.
Now books covered the entire fireplace wall of his sitting room, from floor to ceiling. Many of his grandfather’s Wodehouse books gleamed in their original dust jackets, carefully preserved in glassine wrappers. Surrounding this core of Jeeves and Blandings Castle and Mr. Mulliner, Arthur had shelved everything from old Punch magazines to works by Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Kingsley Amis, and Jerome K. Jerome. In archival boxes he stored comic almanacs illustrated by George Cruikshank and satirical pamphlets by authors as famous as Lewis Carroll and as obscure as Theodore Buckley. He loved the lesser-known humorists, and tonight he would read from a booklet by Buckley.
A reading from a recent acquisition or a beloved old friend was always part of the BB meetings. The bibliophiles met on Wednesday nights, rotating hosts. David convened the group in a cozy room in the back of his bookshop, furnished with comfy leather furniture and lined with the antiquarian stock that was too valuable to display in the main part of the store; Oscar, so as not to disturb his mother, hosted his evenings in a room just off the cathedral library with a small fireplace and cases that held boxes of ancient documents. Arthur was the only one of the trio who welcomed the others into his home.
By seven thirty, drinks had been poured—beer for David, white wine for Oscar, and port for Arthur—and Oscar was showing round his latest acquisition. Oscar had begun as a collector of J. R. R. Tolkien. But as prices for Tolkien skyrocketed after the Lord of the Rings movies were released, he changed his focus to Tolkien’s influences, from early English poetry to Icelandic epics. The book he proudly displayed tonight was the 1870 first edition of an English translation of the V?lsunga—a Nordic saga that had also been a source for Richard Wagner, and which featured both a magical golden ring and a broken sword reforged. The translation had been done in part by William Morris, the great designer, poet, and printer of Victorian England. The volume was bound in green cloth, with a stunning floral cover design by Morris’s associate Philip Webb.