Professor Graham Higgins pushed on through the crowds. Though his new shoes were pinching his feet, he still had a few more book stalls to look at and the market here in the ancient heart of Salisbury would be closing in about fifteen minutes. The winter sun had already dipped below the imposing walls of the Town Hall and the bargain hunters and early Christmas shoppers scampered around in a darkening gloom.
Graham worked in nearby Bristol University and taught a handful of courses centring on Late Middle Age and Renaissance Era Britain and Europe. He loved perusing the book stalls in this haphazardly-organized open-air market in the hope of unearthing some dog-eared treasure on sale for a handful of coins. He liked to compare it to literary gold panning and had a shelf full of nuggets at home to affirm to its potential successes.
He knew most of the sellers here by name and greeted them jovially as he passed along the row of low tables.
“Evening, Bill. Anything new?” he would say to one.
“It’s a cold one today, Alison. Any new stock in?” he would enquire of another.
The smell of roast chestnuts was on the air as a chilling darkness began to fall and several of the stall owners began to pack up. Others beat together gloved hands in an attempt to keep warm and hoped for a final sale or two.
Graham arrived at a stall he’d never seen before and cursed his luck that he’d found it so late. He dived with childlike enthusiasm into a box marked “20p each”.
The second book he picked up set his heart racing. It was a title he’d been seeking out for three years: Watching The Bears Dance: Travelling Shows & Fayres of Early 18th Century Europe. It had been published in 1942 and the copy he now held in his hands was in terrible condition, the spine cracked lengthwise and the front cover held on by a half inch of meshed thread. He paid for the book and headed home, warmed by his triumph.
When he got home, he could barely contain his glee when his wife greeted him.
“Julie, this is an absolute gold mine. Best book I’ve found at that market. I’ll be in my study.”
And with that, Graham went upstairs with a glass of red wine, contemplating an evening of enlightenment.
Opening a few pages, he saw that the book was not very academic neither in tone nor motivation. Each chapter comprised no more than two or three pages of tight print and the effect was to present the reader with a series of anecdotes, spurning stuffy academic commentary. Graham turned next to the contents page where his eyes fell immediately upon one of the chapter’s titles: The American Storyteller.
He read the first paragraph and was hooked.
One of the more fascinating, probably apocryphal, stories to emerge from northern Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century is the tale of the American storyteller, a man who not only told fantastic stories, but also dressed in a bizarre fashion and spoke English with a curious accent. The tall, blonde man claimed to be from the United States of America, a name that would not be used for another seventy years.
Graham went on to read that the storyteller travelled mostly around England for about ten years, with occasional excursions into Germany, Denmark and France. Then, there was no further mention of him. He would tell stories about another world, a world in which people would fly through the sky and cross oceans in ships made of iron without masts or sails. A meal could be prepared for a whole family in a matter of minutes and you could speak to a person fifty villages away without going by horse to them. By all accounts, the man was taken for a wandering madman and worked only for lodging and food. Graham wrote down the name of the travelling show the storyteller was alleged to have worked for: The Blythe Brothers Travelling Menagerie and Show.