Ian Jackson, the highly erudite and witty antiquarian who died suddenly on February 18, contributed some of the most unusual, droll, and entertaining essays and books one can find in the literature of contemporary bibliophily. I’m saddened at the thought that we won’t now see more of his sly, original antiquarian musings.
One of the earliest things he did that amused me much was a trilogy of ‘guide’ books that explains why a once magnificent bookshop called Serendipity wilfully conducted its business in a quixotic, puzzling fashion. Jackson did this by examining why Serendipity’s equally singular owner, Peter B. Howard, ran it in the eccentric, totalitarian and generous way he did.
Brilliant curmudgeon
The three volumes, all illustrated, were titled: The Key to Serendipity:How to Buy Books from Peter B. Howard, The Key to Serendipity: How to Find Books In Spite of Peter B. Howard, and Ranjitsinhji’s 9,000 Elephants Visit Serendipity Books .
The last in the trilogy, about maharaja and cricketer Ranjitsinhji’s elephants visiting this bookshop, was written for Jackson’s little son, and tells the story in pictures and text of how Ranjit’s elephants are on a rampage to Serendipity Books, and on arriving are surprised to find they needn’t have bothered at all — the bookshop looked like a herd of elephants had already been through the premises!
I came very late to the legend of Peter B. Howard and his one of a kind bookshop. Around the time I began learning of him, there were already four monographs privately printed as tributes to Peter and Serendipity. On blogs and websites there were accounts from his longtime customers and colleagues about their experience of being in this cavernous bookshop in Berkeley, California. One thing that ran through most of the accounts was the kind of compassionate and brilliant curmudgeon he was, and his unpredictable dealings with customers and those in the trade.
Once a customer foolishly asked Howard if there was any rhyme or reason to the way he shelved the books, and Peter is said to have arched his eyebrows and replied: “Yes, my rhyme, my reason!”
Lucky bargain
You had to be careful what kind of questions you asked Peter. The wrong one meant you would be ignored. If the books you’ve brought to his desk to purchase met with his approval, he would light up and ask you questions.
Howard died in 2011 but had started dealing in literary manuscripts as early as the late 60s, quickly becoming a towering figure in modern rare bookselling. I’d like to mention a serendipitous little find I made connecting Jackson and Howard that also turned out to be a lucky bargain.
One day, in August 2014, I was looking for a letterpress keepsake tribute to Howard and located a copy at “R&M Gerber Books”. Or at least I thought I had until the proprietor, Richard Gerber, informed me it was the trade edition. Just before he rang off, he said, offhandedly, “I think I might even have one or two of these keepsakes signed by him.”
At my end of the receiver, I whistled silently — anything signed by Peter Howard would be fantastic to have but I already knew that something like that would be beyond what I could afford, since it was bound to be scarce.
I would be delighted to get hold of a signed copy, I said, not daring to ask him how much. He said he would email me once he had found them. After ringing off, I began searching for Peter Howard signed items in the market — there were none. The only thing closest to it was a copy of The Key to Serendipity , with this bookseller description: “Written on the front free endpaper of this copy is the single word, “mine” — denoting Peter B. Howard’s personal ownership of this particular volume, in the late legendary bookseller’s own hand.”
A great bookman
The price was predictably high. That’s that, I thought. Surely, Mr. Gerber’s copy wouldn’t be something I could hope to buy. A little later there was mail from Gerber Books.
He had found them: two volumes of Jackson’s A Key to Serendipity, both signed and dated by Howard on the title page, and he would let them go for a price that suited me. Bless him. I sent a cheque right away, telling him I wanted only one of the two signed copies. Gerber told me later that Peter had actually signed this copy for him at a book fair. (At the first chance I got, I had the copy re-inscribed to me by Jackson!) “Peter was really a great bookman,” reminisced Gerber to me. “I will always remember his generosity, great stories, and the old Porsche always parked beside the shop.”
And I will always associate Peter Howard’s generosity with Richard Gerber’s own generosity to me — he could so easily have marked up the price for this signed copy or not parted with it at all, but he let me have it so that I, too, could have a small share — late as I had come to it — in the legend of Peter B. Howard, sui generis bookseller.
The writer is a bibliophile, columnist and critic.
