G. David, Bookseller

Part I: A quest for nature books

In St. Edward’s Passage, one of the many stone-and-cobble folds of the Cambridge city centre off of the teeming King’s Parade, there is a secondhand bookshop that is exactly what you would expect a Cambridge bookshop to be. Looking over the little jungle-y churchyard of St. Edward King and Martyr Church, an unassuming but functional blue awning announces in bold letters G. DAVID, EST 1896, and a few outdoor shelves, crates, and display windows announce a clutter of books. Entering puts you in a bookshelf sandwich. You are pressed breathtakingly close to dozens of dashing and eclectic strangers; breathing books, inhaling titles. (The same could be said about your proximity to the other patrons dancing past you in the between-bookshelf space.) The first glimpses on my first visit were enough to put me in a literary swoon—poetry by Ted Hughes, contemporary fiction, something called Treasured Island: A Book Lover’s Tour of Britain, Ursula K LeGuin, Dickens, Darwin. There were quirky posters and postcards pinned to the wall, black and white photos of historical David’s Bookshop milestones, photos of notable people with G. David bags (including Michelangelo’s David), and an envelope addressed only to “David’s Bookshop, The Passage, Cambridge” with a sticky note proudly announcing that it found its way here. And there were more rooms, and a downstairs. (No photography allowed, or I would have eaten it all up in my camera.)

Needless to say, I left with more books than I had come to buy.

My discovery of this bookshop (which had probably been recommended to me since I now recommend it to everyone new to Cambridge, but I didn’t remember if so) was precipitated by a newly amassed reading list inspired by Robert MacFarlane’s Landmarks (the same book that helped convince me to start this blog). I wanted to read all the nature books he had tantalizingly synthesized, and I wanted to buy them locally to assimilate the books even more closely—physically—with my Cambridge experience. (If you want to know, the list was: JA Baker’s The Peregrine, Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams.)

I started with a different secondhand bookshop tucked in the same St. Edward’s Passage. Sarah Key’s Haunted Bookshop was literally a hole in the wall, a smattering of antique books in the tattered gold-lettered shades of dark red, green, navy, brown that I associate with my mom’s shelves of collected antiquarian books at home; and two older ladies chatting in the “back” just a bookshelf or two deep from the door. There was one narrow staircase with a sign that said “Before you take a step, ASK” so I didn’t bother. The books I was looking for weren’t there.

Just down the passage though was David’s Bookshop, which was exactly what I was hoping for—just as narrow and cramped but much bigger and robust with literature. I discovered that downstairs was the Nature section, which had a good selection, including stacks on the floor, but still only a selection; I didn’t find my quarries. I went to give my list to the bookseller at the till (British for cash register…), who, with close-cropped white hair and small eyes, seemed like the type of bookseller who would know his stock. That was an accurate impression. He came musingly downstairs and found The Peregrine, one MacFarlane book, and several more I hadn’t been looking for but which I left with: he could hold his own against an Amazon recommendation algorithm. It turned out he had no inhibition against talking a customer’s ear off at the till either; the nature books had put him in a reverie of writers he knew and who knew each other. Tragically, I did not take good notes at the time, and this is all I have left of that wandering reminiscence: Ronald Blythe, Tim Dee, Richard Mabey, On the Badger, and someone’s log cabin.

The message on the shop’s website is right in line with my experience:

Established in 1896 by Gustave David, G.DAVID  (David’s Bookshop) has traded  in St. Edward’s Passage, Cambridge through three Centuries.  Still an independent bookshop, there has been a member of the founder’s family involved ever since.  ~  We deal in Antiquarian, Second-hand &            Remaindered (Reduced Price) Books, Maps, Prints & Engravings in many subjects. ~The partners have over a century of combined experience in the trade & might just be able to answer the questions that the online giants don’t even know exist !

The disappearance of ‘Bookshops’ over the last several years has been our saddest experience (there were 20 in Cambridge when I started working here). We chose not to ‘go online’ and thus avoid direct contact with our customers, therefore this site is merely a web ‘presence’ . 

~                   ~ We are here Mon-Sat. 0900-1700.  Please phone or email  ~

Our shop at 16 St. Edward’s Passage, whilst somewhat ‘hidden away’ , is situated  very close  to the Market Square , the Tourist Office &  King’s College Chapel . The ‘Tardis-like’ shop carries a  surprisingly large and  varied stock. Update 2017: We are now listed, by Pitkin Guides, as a University Museum !  Some days it feels just so, but this is incorrect ( however, all ‘reasonable offers’ considered )

Part II: A quintessential Cambridge encounter

Since my first visit earlier this year, I had dropped in again but didn’t go on another dedicated shopping trip there until last weekend. This visit brought me to the true antiquarian section of the shop, which I had only skimmed past on previous visits even though it takes up a third of the shop and has its own till. This is the real deal—valuable first editions behind glass, old maps on the walls, etc. Incidentally, I was looking for loose-leaf botanical engravings cut from old books, which my flatmate had come home with once (my respect for her, already high, rose even higher). Apparently they have drawers full of them, which I had missed.

But this wasn’t all I was destined to find this time.

On my way in, I happened to spot Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood on the Local Interest shelf and snatched it up—it’s been on my list since early in my Cambridge time. Gwen Raverat is a Cambridge beloved, born here in 1885, an artist and writer and granddaughter of Charles Darwin. Her memoir is a big part of her fame, I think, but she did really nice woodcuts. (As an aside, I read the first few chapters when I got home and it’s as delightful as I hoped it would be, a wittily sarcastic but loving memoir of growing up just around the corner from where I currently live: her home was Newnham Grange, the stately Georgian residence that is now part of Darwin College. She describes looking out over Silver Street and the Queen’s College green that I cycle past every day. I appreciate the geography all the more having spent a few hours in the Darwin gardens a few weekends ago for a quartet gig, setting up our instruments on one of the islands that Gwen’s father George Darwin built foot bridges between, peering across the branch of the mill pond at the pub patrons lounging with alcohol in plastic cups, or else the cows, on the meadows.)

The story does not end there.

In the antiquarian section, I had only been poking around for a few minutes when a middle-aged, brown-skinned, bespectacled man who I had noticed standing contemplatively among the books said without preamble, “You’ll find some of the greatest women of Cambridge in that book.”

I looked over and realized he was talking about Period Piece. I nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s the impression I’ve gotten.”

He went on, nodding back knowingly, “We hardly hear about them but they were responsible for modernizing Cambridge.”

“Very cool,” I said, feeling slightly awkward at his unsolicited intensity but sympathetic to it. I flipped through the book as a social buffer. “I’m at Newnham College so yeah, I’m quite interested in learning about them.” I don’t know if he had already noticed my blue Newnham lanyard. [Newnham College, the oldest remaining women’s college at Cambridge, is a wonderful trove of feminist history. I promise I will write a blog post about Newnham College sometime.]

He approved of this, and after inquiring about my studies and introducing himself as Antony, he explained that he was a local historian. “I’m part of a group trying to tell these stories, because there’s so much being forgotten. I’m working on a book about the women who were really instrumental in shaping Cambridge around that period.”

He gestured at Period Piece. “Gwen’s mother Maud was responsible for the first female police officers in Cambridge.”

 I don’t remember the exact transitions between the women he started to tell me about—quite possibly there were none. And I’m paraphrasing.

“Have you heard of Florence Ada Keynes? How about John Maynard Keynes? His mother. It was thanks to her he became the economist he was, you know—behind every great man…” He smiled away the rest of the saying. “And she was crucial in modernizing Cambridge.” He kept using that phrase. “She was responsible for finally getting the Guildhall built, when she was mayor of Cambridge, since the men couldn’t get their act together for years.” He chuckled at that.

“Eglantyne Jebb—founder of Save the Children, campaigned for the Liberal party. Here—” He pulled out his phone and scrolled to a photo of a striking black and white portrait of a woman with sweeping bangs. “We just discovered these glass plate negatives a few months ago, never been developed. Yeah, in the archives at the Cambridge Library. We went through all the indexed names and found these and we were floored when we developed them.”

I asked if there were any other books he recommended, and he thought for a moment and then went over to a nearby shelf and pulled out a hefty bright red volume. “Victorian County Histories—this is Volume III, the only one about Cambridge itself.” He opened to the table of contents and ran his finger down the chapters. “It started under Victoria and took them until 1959 to get this done because of the wars and all, so they split up the college histories among all the men—except Newnham and Girton [the two women’s colleges at the time], gave those to Florence and Susan. But look here—” he pointed at the section heading about the City of Cambridge. “They left the bulk to Professor Helen Maud Cam, who became the first female professor at Harvard, headhunted from here. She was excellent. “Staunch supporter of the Labour Party, basically bankrolled the Labour Club building. And a great historian.”

He flipped through the book, pointed out a few more names and maps of Cambridge over the years (speaking about a townsfolk rebellion in the 1300s from the vantage point of “we”—“We burned down a bunch of University property”), and then stopped on a subheader that read “The Spinning House.” “Surely you’ve heard of the Spinning House,” he said, and I hadn’t. “That was one of the more shameful periods of our history here; the University was plucking women like you from the streets and throwing them in prison without a trial just because. They would accuse them of being sex workers. But it was completely illegal. A 17-year-old townie named Daisy Hopkins was the one who finally had the moxie to take it to court and that put an end to that.” (That was one of the stranger and more context-lacking tales he emphasized; the way he told it was less straightforward than my paraphrase.)

I asked if he had a publishing date or goal for his book, and he said, “To be honest, no, because every month I find another amazing woman to add, and that changes the story. It’s nearly impossible to decide where to draw the line. (That’s why I’m leaving the university history, that’s all been done, but the town, now that’s good stuff.) Seriously, I’d love to see this as a period drama, because there are so many interesting characters that weave in and out.” He pulled another book, a small one this time, off the shelf.

“Recognize the name?” Rupert Brooke.

“Sounds familiar…who was he?”

“War poet, and good friends with a lot of these people, the Keynes, the Jebbs…” I noticed before he pointed it out that the caption of the picture he had opened to was of Keynes and Jacques Raverat, Gwen’s husband. “Rupert Brooke was incredibly handsome, I’ll find a picture.” He showed me. “He was bisexual, as was Keynes, and his brother. They were really challenging boundaries. If he hadn’t died in the war he would have been a statesman, parliamentarian. He had what it took. Once he gave a speech just around the corner from here, and not conservative either, he talked about nationalizing land and such.”

Then he was looking up at the shelf across the room. “See the book I’ve been staring down at eye level there? The brown one? The Life of…”

“Henry Fawcett?”

“Yeah, who was he?” It was funny how he quizzed me.

I remembered the portraits in the Newnham Great Hall. “Oh yeah, his wife was Millicent, right? They were some of the founders of Newnham.”

“Right, and they were friends with this circle too. Really amazing people.” He listed some other things they did that I can’t remember.

I noticed the book was by Leslie Stephen. “Leslie Stephen was connected with Virginia Woolf too right?” I didn’t quite remember then that he was her father, and Antony didn’t seem to either. “Yeah, somehow. But it’s funny that people think of her as connected to Cambridge, she was hardly here.”

“I guess she just visited and wrote A Room of One’s Own,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s really it. But there is so much here that people have no idea about.”

Soon after that he finally began to sort of sheepishly bow out, saying, “Well, I won’t keep bothering you with all this history,” but I got out of him that he writes for a blog called “Lost Cambridge” and gives monthly talks at the Cambridge Central Library. I didn’t ask if he was affiliated with the University, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because if I hadn’t already guessed, when I looked him up later I saw that he’s very much town, not gown, in his associations and sympathies (“town vs gown” describes a long-standing tension between University and town folk in Cambridge).

I went back to browsing the illustrations and a minute later I heard him at the till making his purchases. After he left I went to take a closer look at The Life of Henry Fawcett, but it was no longer in the spot Antony had been “staring down.” He must have bought it.

Here’s the blog he writes for: https://lostcambridge.wordpress.com/ The names and stories he rattled off are all in there.

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I also succeeded in my intended purchase (plus Gwen Raverat):