Sometimes, it doesn’t pay to be honest. In this case, the unpaid amount of my truthfulness was $6.95 – a reasonable figure for a 103-year-old first edition. Just before mentioning the sales total to the lady on the other side of the counter, I gave the book a second look.
“You weren’t buying this as a work of Winston Churchill,” I asked. “The English politician?”
She replied that she was, and in short order I was canceling the transaction.
We shouldn’t feel too bad – as a reading public – not knowing that there were two famous gentlemen named Winston Churchill. In fact, they knew each other. One was rich and famous; the other was prime minister of England. They were born within a few years of each other.
One in England.
The other in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
While the future English PM was resigning his commission with the British Army, the American Winston Churchill authored his second novel. The book – entitled Richard Carvel – was published in 1898 – and sold two million copies. At the time, there were only 70 million or so living in the US, which would equate to 10-11 million copies sold in this day and age.
Not Harry Potter numbers, to be sure, but not far from The Girl On the Train or The Fault in Our Stars – current books popular enough that they were recently produced as movies.
There were plenty of similarities between our Winston and theirs. Brit-Winston began writing as a correspondent after leaving the army. US-Winston attended the Naval Academy and began writing after resigning from the Navy. Winston-UK wrote as a war reporter; Winston-US edited The Army and Navy Journal. While his counterpart across the water was being elected to Parliament, Winston US Churchill was serving in the New Hampshire state legislature.
In 1919, after authoring a dozen books, the American Winston decided to retire from the public eye, quit his writing, and took up painting and private life. And there is the place at which the future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill claimed the fame of the name.
Without appearances to promote his books or painting exhibitions, the American novelist Winston Churchill was gradually forgotten, and the increasing fame of his British counterpart sealed the fate of the US writer’s obscurity.
Just as it was at the sales counter and the century-old hardback book, the name has become attached to the WWII statesman rather than the American author of fiction.
It wasn’t the first time The Inside of the Cup has been returned to the shelf, the victim of mistaken identity and an honest bookseller.
One of these days… someone will come along and appreciate the nice old book for what it is and allow me bag it up for the $7 price. Until then, I’m doing my part to publicize our own (once) famous Winston Churchill.
The (literal) Inside of the Cup held coffee this chilly day, and we’ll be pouring it again tomorrow, serving up hot soup, stew, and sandwiches at lunchtime – come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow, OK!