Smith's Bookshop
Powys describes a number of bookshops he frequented, including Smith's second-hand bookshop, which was at 41-43 North Street. Here he bought the weighty first edition of Dryden's Vergil which he later hauled over the downs in order to exchange it for paperback volumes of Maupassant.
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' There was an amazing second-hand shop for instance in those days in the very heart of Brighton, within a few hundred yards of the Regent's famous pavilion. It was kept by a dignified little man called "Mr. Smith," whose chief assistant was a huge black-bearded fellow, resembling the ogres in fairy-tales, but with one of the mildest and most Early-Christian countenances I have ever seen.' |
He also mentions North's bookshop, where he first discovered Yeats, which was 'on what I think was called the Western Road'. North's bookshop was at 30 Church Road, Hove, which is a continuation of Western Road. Other bookshops, including one of which JCP says he accurately foretold the death of the proprietor as a punishment for the heresy of having questioned the authorship of the works of Shakespeare, have proved harder to identify.
Just around the corner from the bookshop was Middle Street school. The school served as the medical examination centre for Sussex when the age of conscription was raised to 55 in 1918 during the First World War.
' Many a time had I passed that particular infants' school without a suspicion that a day would come when I should skip about naked as a frog within these walls while I was tested for serving my Sovereign...but I was treated with extraordinary tenderness by the military examiners at that Brighton infants' school.' |
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Powys's account of his treatment is confirmed by contemporary press reports which refer to the comfortable furnishings and carpets provided and mention the many letters received praising the courtesy and kindness of the staff. The school is still there, although the old buildings were knocked down and replaced in the 1970s.
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