legends · 3 min read ·
Marginalia
A second-hand guide to the Northumberland coast carries pencil notes, and someone starts answering them in ink.
**Bookseller's listing · Hallam & Sons Rare Books · Lot 77**
*A Guide to the Coast of Northumberland, 1931 edition. Good condition. Former owner's pencil notes throughout. Some pages damaged by damp. Price: £14.*
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**Marginal note, p. 12 (in pencil, small, neat):** *Lighthouse at Skerrow is not shown on the map. I asked the postmaster. He says there isn't one.*
**Marginal note, p. 12 (in ink, later, different hand):** *Look again.*
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**Marginal note, p. 38:** *Fishing village of Lowe's Cove: population given as 210. I counted the chimneys from the headland. There are 211. The extra one smokes in winter, though nobody lives in that house.*
**Marginal note, p. 38 (pencil):** *You're counting the wrong house.*
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**Marginal note, p. 61:** *Coastal path, north of the cliffs: "pleasant walk, one hour." It took me four hours and I came back the same way I went. I passed the same cairn three times. Each time someone had added a stone.*
**Marginal note, p. 61 (ink):** *Yes. Please keep adding them.*
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**Reader's message to the bookseller (Ellen Shore, 4 Oct)**
I bought the Coast guide from your listing. The notes are fascinating. But the book has changed since I started reading it. There are answers in the margins now, in ink, responding to my own pencil notes, which I've been making in a different book on the same subject, and which I haven't shown anyone.
Please tell me who owned it before me. The name on the flyleaf is blank.
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**Bookseller's reply (Hallam & Sons, 6 Oct)**
Dear Ms Shore,
The previous owner's name is not recorded. The book came to us in a box of the estate of a retired schoolmaster from Lowe's Cove. His papers mention a correspondence with a reader he had never met. The reader wrote in the margins of library books, and the schoolmaster replied in his own copies.
We have checked the rest of the box. There is a letter from the reader, dated 1931, which says only: *Dear friend, I am sorry I cannot be there to see you finish the walk. I have been at the top of the cliff for a long time. Please write back.*
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**Marginal note, p. 61 (pencil, new)**
*I've finished the walk. I'm at the top now. The cairn is complete. I've put the last stone in place, the one that was missing for ninety years. Thank you for keeping count.*
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**Reader's message (Ellen Shore, 9 Oct)**
The notes have stopped being about the coast. They're about my flat. Pencil notes in the margin of page 61: *The stairs creak on the third step. The kettle is always warm. You've been reading in the chair by the window since September, and I've been reading over your shoulder.*
I haven't been in the chair since September. I've been reading in the kitchen.
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**Marginal note, p. 1 (pencil, new, in a beginning position the book did not have before)**
*Ellen, you've reached the front of the book. You can stop now. Look up. The lighthouse is on the map. The postmaster says there is one.*
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**Bookseller's note (Hallam & Sons, 15 Oct)**
Lot 77 has been returned by the buyer. She sent it back by courier, with a note: *The book has no pages left. Every page has been written on, and every note is in my handwriting, and I can't remember any of it.*
We inspected the volume. There are no blank pages. The text is complete, from the title page to the index. The last page of the index has an entry that is not in any index: *Shore, E., keeper of the light at Skerrow, 1931 to present.*
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**Final margin note (Hallam & Sons, 27 Oct, p. 224, the last page)**
*Lot 77 has been listed again, at £14. The new buyer has already written in the margin, in pencil, on p. 12: Lighthouse not on the map. Checked with the postmaster.*