The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307387028
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

THERE WERE OTHER VISITORS over the next few weeks and, when Samuel Ireland placed an advertisement in the Morning Chronicle concerning “The Shakespeare Museum,” their number increased.

William had discovered some related items—a letter from the Earl of Southampton to Shakespeare, a summons to the dramatist for non-payment of church rates, a short note from Richard Burbage on stage properties—and the bookshop had indeed come to resemble a cabinet of Shakespearian curiosities. William himself had no wish to manage or to supervise the proceedings. That role was reserved for his father, who had purchased a new bottle-green jacket from the firm of Jackson and Son in Great Turnstile Street. Rosa Ponting sat, with her needlework, on a chair by the door. She was there ostensibly to safeguard umbrellas and coats, but it was Samuel Ireland’s hope that she would be mistaken for a collector of entrance fees: she did not object to silver being pressed into her hand, and swiftly placed the money in a large work-bag that also contained her fan, her snuff-box, her purse and her handkerchief. She welcomed each visitor in the same fashion. “The play is in the left-hand cabinet together with the letters. The receipts and bills are on the adjoining counter. Please not to touch the glass nor spit upon the floor.”

She enjoyed her role. As a child she had helped her mother on a fruit stall in Whitefriars Market, and had enthusiastically joined the cacophony of voices that accompanied each day’s trading. She had shouted “Pippins” till she was hoarse. In fact she guarded the bookshop and its exhibits with exemplary care. She knew every tread on the wooden boards; she could tell if someone attempted to climb the stairs, or to wander behind the counter. If a visitor so much as breathed on the glass, she turned her head sharply and glared at the offender. She had no interest in, or curiosity about, Shakespeare as such; but she was pleased that William was advancing the family’s fortunes in such an unexpected manner.

That they were a family she had no doubt. She was in fact secretly married to Samuel Ireland. They had been joined, without ceremony, by a naval chaplain in Greenwich; it was only on this condition that she had moved into Holborn Passage. William’s mother had died in childbirth and the infant had been taken by the midwife to the midwife’s sister in Godalming, in which family he remained until he was three years old. William remembered nothing of this, and his father did not enlighten him. He was returned to Holborn Passage soon after his third birthday, when he was greeted by Rosa with arms outstretched. The small boy had looked away, and cried. He seemed pleased by the surroundings of the shop, however, and, as Rosa put it to her husband, “took more kindly to the books than to the people.” Rosa was in fact hurt and perplexed by him. He met all her attempts at affection with brusque inattention.

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