It was clear that these two women could not live in London on
seventy-five pounds a year, most certainly not with the prospect
before them, and Clara cast about for something to do. Marshall had
a brother-in-law, a certain Baruch Cohen, a mathematical instrument
maker in Clerkenwell, and to him Marshall accidentally one day talked
about Clara, and said that she desired an occupation. Cohen himself
could not give Clara any work, but he knew a second-hand bookseller,
an old man who kept a shop in Holborn, who wanted a clerk, and Clara
thus found herself earning another pound a week. With this addition
she and her sister could manage to pay their way and provide what
Madge would want. The hours were long, the duties irksome and
wearisome, and, worst of all, the conditions under which they were
performed, were not only as bad as they could be, but their badness
was of a kind to which Clara had never been accustomed, so that she
felt every particle of it in its full force. The windows of the shop
were, of course, full of books, and the walls were lined with them.
In the middle of the shop also was a range of shelves, and books were
stacked on the floor, so that the place looked like a huge cubical
block of them through which passages had been bored. At the back the
shop became contracted in width to about eight feet, and consequently
the central shelves were not continued there, but just where they
ended, and overshadowed by them were a little desk and a stool. All
round the desk more books were piled, and some manoeuvring was
necessary in order to sit down. This was Clara's station.
Occasionally, on a brilliant, a very brilliant day in summer, she
could write without gas, but, perhaps, there were not a dozen such
days in the year. By twisting herself sideways she could just catch
a glimpse of a narrow line of sky over some heavy theology which was
not likely to be disturbed, and was therefore put at the top of the
window, and once when somebody bought the Calvin Joann. Opera Omnia,
9 vol. folio, Amst. 1671--it was very clear that afternoon--she
actually descried towards seven o'clock a blessed star exactly in the
middle of the gap the Calvin had left.