Isaac's eyes and forehead trafficked grossly with the world, while the
rest of his face preserved the stern reticences and sanctities of the
spirit. Isaac was a Wesleyan; and his dress (soft black felt hat,
smooth black frock-coat, narrow tie, black but clerical) almost
suggested that he was a minister of that persuasion. His lips were
hidden under an iron grey moustache, the short grizzled beard was
smoothed forward and fined to a point by the perpetual caress of a
meditative hand. Such was Isaac.
Impossible to deny a certain genius to the man who had raised that
mighty pile, the Gin Palace of Art. Those stately premises, with their
clustering lights, their carpeted floors, their polished fittings,
were very different from the dark little house in Paternoster Row
where Keith first saw what light there was to be seen. When Isaac grew
great and moved further west, the little shop was kept on and devoted
to the sale of Bibles, hymn-books and Nonconformist literature. For
Isaac, life was a compromise between the pious Wesleyan he was and the
successful tradesman he aspired to be. There were, in fact, two
Rickman's: Rickman's in the City and Rickman's in the Strand.
Rickman's in the Strand bore on its fore-front most unmistakeably the
seal of the world; Rickman's in the City was sealed with the Lord's
seal.
So that now there was not a single need of the great book-buying,
book-loving Public that Rickman's did not provide for and represent.
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