Parnassus on Wheels

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Published in 1917, Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels introduces us to an earlier literary version of Charlie and Rose from C.S. Forester’s The African Queen.  And Morley’s story is every bit as engaging.

Roger Mifflin is a traveling purveyor of books wandering the countryside in the mid-1910s. And as he does the book’s characters, Professor Mifflin will capture your imagination with his wagon named Parnassus, an old horse named Pegasus, and his dog Bock.

The heart of the story, though, is Helen McGill, a middle-aged spinster who impulsively purchases the Professor’s wagon—complete with the books, horse, and dog—and leaves her tedious life behind.  You’ll find Helen as endearing as the Professor.

The narrative is written in the first person from Helen’s perspective.  You get the benefit not only of the imaginative discussions about books and life between Helen and the Professor, but also her reaction as she deals with her new life.

The two are involved in one adventure after another, eventually falling in love.  That’s not a spoiler, by the way.  At the book’s beginning, Morley refers to Helen as Mrs. Roger Mifflin.  But it’s fun watching it happen.

This is a short novel, and it’s an easy read. You may not be ready for it to finish, but take heart.  Morley followed it with a sequel released in 1919 called The Haunted Bookshop.  With that to look forward to, you will relish your time with Parnassus on Wheels.

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Quotes

From Roger Mifflin’s business card: Worthy friends, my wain doth hold Many a book, both new and old; Books, the truest friends of man, Fill this rolling caravan. Books to satisfy all uses, Golden lyrics of the Muses, Books on cookery and farming, Novels passionate and charming, Every kind for every need So that he who buys may read. What librarian can surpass us?

There are three ingredients in the good life:  learning, earning, and yearning.  A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too:  yearning to know the unknowable.

…what is a good book?  I don’t mean books like Henry James’s (…It always seemed to me that he had a kind of rush of words and never stopped to sort them out properly).  A good book ought to have something simple about it.  And, like Eve, it ought to come from somewhere near the third rib:  there ought to be a heart beating in it.  A story that’s all forehead doesn’t amount to much.

An adventure that had started as a mere lark or whim had now become for me the very gist of life itself.  I was fanciful, I guess, and as romantic as a young hen, but by the bones of George Eliot, I’m sorry for the woman that never has a chance to be fanciful.

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