Over Bemerton's: An Easy-Going Chronicle

A novel written in the early 20th century. It is a mellow, observant London chronicle following a middle‑aged returnee who settles above a second‑hand bookshop in Westminster and drifts into a web of friendships, family ties, and bookish pleasures. The tone is gently comic and reflective, with vignettes of city life and character study at its heart, especially the narrator Kent Falconer, his capable stepsister Naomi, the bookseller Mr. Bemerton, the voluble landlady Mrs. Duckie, and a caustic journalist, Mr. Dabney. The opening of the chronicle finds Kent Falconer back from long exile, seeking quiet rooms near Queen Anne’s Gate; Naomi steers him to a flat over Bemerton’s bookshop, complete with a formidable landlady and the promise of midnight reading. A chance “for luck” purchase yields a Chinese biographical dictionary that becomes his delight, while a brisk tour introduces his Queen Anne’s Gate household—level‑headed Naomi, opinionated Drusilla, brothers Frank and Lionel, and the ornamental family friend Dollie. Falconer roams a changed London, contrasts hansoms with motor cabs, and savors book‑lover riches, even as he sketches the Duckie clan (including music‑hall star Alf Pinto, dresser Beatrice, and boy Ern) and the shabby waterman at the pub corner. Mr. Dabney of The Balance arrives to rail at new journalism and hedonism, prompting a debate on what might cure the age; Mr. Bemerton grants the narrator nocturnal access to his shelves, revealing a quiet world of cataloguers and literary anecdotes, a hint of an old flame named Miss Gold, and, finally, the narrator’s rapt return to cricket and memories of W. G. Grace.