Hi sunt Magistri qui nos instruunt, sine virgis et ferulis, sine
cholorâ, sine pecuniâ. Si accedis, non dormiunt; si inquiris, non se
abscondunt; non obmurmurant, si oberres; cachinos nesciunt, si
ignores.—RICHARD DE BURY.
Pour peu qu’il soit tenu loin du chaud et du frais,
Qu’on y porte une main blanche et respectueuse,
Que le lecteur soit calme et la lectrice heureuse ...
Un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais.
JULES JANIN.
I HAVE two chairs for my reading—a stiff one for books I _have_ to read;
a luxurious one for books I like to read. My luxurious chair is of
dark-green leather, a seat to sink into, modeled after the easy
arm-chair of the Eversley Rectory, known from its seductive properties
as “Sleepy Hollow.” When I find a volume more than usually delightsome,
I call in an extra chair for a foot-rest, so the body may possess the
same ease as the mind. And yet the delight a volume affords depends
largely upon the mood in which the leaves are turned, and the printer
who has turned the leaves.
A fondness for reading the old book catalogues is apt to prove not only
an expensive luxury, but consumes a great deal of time. For no catalogue
may be hastily skimmed through. The least attractive list, composed
largely, it may be, of works on theology, mineralogy, theosophy, or
jurisprudence, may contain the precise book you are searching for. The
most attractive lists must naturally be perused carefully. In fact,
reading catalogues is like reading books—even with attentive reading one
is liable to skip a title, or, at least, overlook its real significance,
just as one may not always grasp the true meanings of an author upon
first perusal. Then, one subject or one title leads to another, and the
catalogue must be reread. Even when you have made out your list, it
occurs to you that half or three quarters of the lot you have selected
will undoubtedly be “sold”; and having left out a number you really
desire, you go over the catalogue still more carefully a third time for
“substitutes.” Not only this, but the catalogue differs from a book in
that it can not wait or be put off. It must be studied immediately it is
received; or some one else gets the advantage, as some one else living
nearer by generally does.
If the business you have on hand prevents your devoting the necessary
time to the catalogue or catalogues, you are haunted with the feeling
that it contains a prize, and that you may not catch the first mail.
Indeed, should any of the lists contain, at anything like a reasonable
figure, that scarce old Herbal, an ancient angling tome, or a certain
edition of Les Caractères, which you have long been searching for, you
ought to telegraph for it without a moment’s delay. You know Smith will
read his list the minute he receives it. He is already far richer in La
Bruyères than you are, and never ceases collecting them. And although he
already has the edition you desire, it is ten to one if he sees it
offered at a bargain in fine antique binding he will duplicate it. There
is no such contingency as his skipping it. He never skips—he secures and
exults. His library shelves groan with La Bruyères. Were he rich he
might be forgiven; but all his prizes have been hooked by careful
angling, and are a triumph to his skill and monumental industry.
Charles Asselineau, in the unique little volume L’Enfer du Bibliophile,
draws a sharp line between the true book-hunter, who makes use of his
own knowledge, patience, and industry, and the hunter by proxy, who bags
his spoils through cunning other than his own-“the rich and lazy amateur
who only hunts by procuration and trusts to the care of an accomplished
professional to whom he gives _carte blanche_, and who despises him—ay,
who despises him, as the game-keeper and poacher always despise the
indolent and unskillful master who triumphs through their skill.” The
opening sentence of the volume is worthy of Sterne: “_Oui ... l’enfer!_
is it not there that one must arrive sooner or later, in this life or in
the other; oh all of you who have placed your joys in voluptuousness
unknown to the vulgar?”
On the other hand, you have the alternative of neglecting your business
and attending to the catalogues. In any case, the book catalogue is an
attraction and a bane. If you are niggardly and only order a volume or
two, you are generally disappointed; if you are in a liberal mood, and
order a number, thinking you will only obtain a few, you are likely to
get a lot of books that will deprive you of getting others you really
require. Then the works one continually sees that one can not afford,
the columns of temptations all crying, “Farewell! thou art too dear for
my possessing”—the Paris catalogues in particular, so rich in their
_embarras de richesses_. There is a stanza of Clough’s that may be cited
as pertinent to book-hunting:
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
And how one ought never to think of one’s self,
How pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking,
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!
How pleasant it is to have money!
Possibly the old book catalogues are sent as a lesson in self-control,
and to teach one to endure disappointment as patiently as human nature
will allow.
Not the least interesting volume of my library is my herbarium. Still
every pressed flower retains much of its original color, reviving the
scene of many a pleasant ramble. Commencing with the first cluster of
spring beauty and white shad-blow spray, and ending with the last purple
aster and blue gentian of autumn, it is thus a sentient floral
calendar—a fragrant anthology of the seasons. It is one of my
pleasantest volumes for winter reading, every flower of which is a
chapter written by Nature herself. This involucre of white dogwood, for
instance, becomes a vernal landscape riotous with bloom, while these
feathery mespilus blossoms bring up the April hillsides sprinkled with
hepaticas and violets. This bunch of trilliums recalls a distant
beechwood in early May carpeted with the snowy triangular flowers and
misty with the beech’s unfurling leaves.
And this pink lady’s-slipper!
Once more I trace the sinuous curves of the Wiscoy and am lulled by the
drowsy murmur of the stream. How cool the water swirls beneath the
overarching hemlocks, and how it is churned into foam in the deep, dark
pool at the tail of the rapid, where I know the big trout I hooked and
lost the previous year is waiting for another taste of my “cochybondu”!
It is just at the base of the steep shaded hillside where the sun never
penetrates. If my trout chooses to display his rubies and chrysoberyls
he must thread his way up the current or float down to the meadow far
below. When I have hooked and basketed him, another big fellow will
occupy his place in the same deep, dark pool.
It is the choice spot of the stream within a reach of half a mile, and
invariably holds the strongest fish and most accomplished taker of
_ephemeræ_. His pannier must needs be large, so many flies and midges
and worms and bugs and beetles drift past his lair, and are sucked in by
the eddy into his awaiting maw. The sudden dive of a water-rat proclaims
a rival angler, who may also have his eye on my trout, and bring him to
bag, perchance, if I miss him to-day.
An aroma of mint, mingled with the fragrance of wild flowers and ferns,
follows me along the banks; and there, in the swamp where the partridge
drums, my pink lady’s-slipper gleams. The twisting roots of the hemlock
plunge deep into the pool; and with a slap of his red tail the big trout
rises just beyond them in the foam-flecks of the eddy, precisely where
he rose the previous year. How the water growls round the bank it has
mined, and chafes and scolds at the obtruding prongs! And how
picturesquely, too, the old hemlock leans over the stream, shading the
trout for the last time! Another athlete and trained fly-catcher must
lead the somersault acts hereafter; for a day at least the small fry may
rest secure. But, alas! with a sudden rush, my trout has wound the
leader fast around the hemlock’s roots, as he has wound so many leaders
before; and, with a farewell flash of his encarmined sides, I seem to
hear his parting message: “_Multæ lapsæ inter truttam et bascaudem
sunt!_” The pressed flower remains to remind me of the struggle and my
June holiday.
Looking now at the pink lady’s-slipper from the Wiscoy woods, I am glad,
after all, I did not take my trout, however great a triumph his capture
might have afforded me at the time. For, if the water-rat has not caught
him meanwhile—and the maxim the trout flung at me virtually precludes
this possibility—he is undoubtedly still swimming in his favorite pool.
Granting I had caught him and that a fish of equal size had taken his
place, it would yet be another trout, not _my_ trout which I hooked and
lost. The stream flows more musically and more limpid to me knowing he
is still stemming the current, and that he regained his freedom.
This spike of cardinal flowers carries me a hundred miles away; and once
more am I drifting down the Oswego River on a hazy autumnal afternoon,
indifferent whether the great green bass rise or not, so golden is the
September day. It is enough to be idling beneath the roar of the rapid,
to mark the different hues of the water, the play of the slanting
sunbeams, the undulations of the wooded shores. Surely the landscape
needs no more. Ah, yes! just that bit of color skirting a still bayou,
the flame of cardinal flowers and their reflected images below. What an
illustrated volume! the imperial folio of the seasons! And what a
succession of illuminated pages it discloses from the rubric and the
preface until the last leaf is turned! every subject indexed and paged
by the grand author, Nature; its types as fresh as if they had only run
through one, instead of thousands of editions.
In dreams do I behold in all the great libraries the procession of the
books that nightly emerge from the seclusion of their shelves—countless
flowers from the Muse’s hill and garlands from the meadows of the
classics. At a signal from the most antiquated tome, I see a sudden
movement among their ranks, and hear a rustling of innumerable leaves,
as the souls of the immortals are quickened into life, and the spirits
of old authors assemble for converse. Platoons of majestic folios, some
in calf, some in sheep, and some in stamped pigskin appear, columns of
venerable and vellumed quartos, tiers of tall octavos, troops of lovely
Elzevirs, Aldines, and sedate black-letter editions file by with
measured tread. Volumes black with age move with step as elastic as
those clothed in more modern garb. Indeed, old and young seem to be
indiscriminately mingled, without regard to costume or richness of
attire. Only, I observe that the procession is composed solely of the
dead.
I notice, moreover, that it is only the books of real merit or great
renown that are called to take part in the pageant; and that the
participants vary with each succeeding night, appearing entirely without
regard to chronological order, though all the beautiful world of
_belles-lettres_, philosophy, and science that has charmed and
instructed mankind throughout the ages, forms the processional. Thus a
copy of Plato and a first folio of Shakespeare pass by, side by side,
followed by The Canterbury Tales and the Faerie Queen, hand in hand. Or
is it Goethe’s Faust and Plutarch’s Lives? It is sometimes difficult to
catch the titles, so numerous are the volumes that take part. As the eye
becomes accustomed to the dimness, the titles are more easily traced,
and I distinctly recognize Horace and Virgil, Milton and Keats, Herrick
and Hood, Montaigne and Pascal, Lamb, Thackeray, Cervantes, Molière,
Theocritus, Dante, Schiller, Balzac, Dumas the Elder, Pope, Burns,
Goldsmith, Addison, Hawthorne, Bulwer, Dickens, Irving—until the eye is
dazed at the multitudinous names. Night after night the procession forms
and the participants vary—there are so many volumes to take part, so
many that may not be overlooked. Richard Jefferies, his beautiful
thoughts scarcely dry on the page, I note has just been called forth
from the shelves, and Thoreau has already marched with Walton and
Gilbert White.
Although not assisting in the pageant itself, there are, I perceive,
numerous volumes that, nevertheless, appear to be in communication with
such of their companions as have responded to the signal. Beckoning
glances from those below are answered every now and then by faint
responses from the volumes above, their leaves as yet unfoxed by Time.
Of these latter there are many, and I soon perceive that they bear the
names of living authors of note who must wait until their earthly life
is spent ere they too may answer the roll-call and take rank with the
immortals. How, apparently without volition of their own, as if touched
by an unseen hand, the leaves of In Memoriam rustle and the pages of The
Autocrat flutter!
The only participants I see that seem to be out of place assemble once a
year in solemn conclave, conversing, it is true, but wearing a dejected
look. Countless volumes, these, principally first and rare editions,
many bound in lovely leathers, exquisitely gilded, lettered, and tooled,
bearing innumerable stamps and monograms, coats-of-arms, and ancient
book-plates. Many of them I recognize as having seen before in high
spirits, discoursing with their companions during the hour of the
nightly pageants. This yearly and unusually large gathering,
characterized by its extreme gravity, puzzled me at first, until I
discovered it was composed of the ghosts of borrowed books, unhappy in
their covers, lamenting the loss of their former possessors who had once
cherished them so fondly. I see, too, Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone,
Brantôme’s Dames Galantes, Balzac’s Physiologie du Mariage, La
Fontaine’s Contes with the Eisen, De Hooge, and Fragonard plates, and in
yonder soiled, foul-smelling tome I perceive the smutty old satirist and
Doctor-Franciscan Rabelais. Why he should be called out at all, seems a
mystery, his pitch is so defiling, and his boluses are so nauseating.
Some participants there are which at first baffled my comprehension.
These, though perfectly composed themselves and mingling freely with
their fellows, nevertheless appear to excite an inordinate curiosity
among their companions which is never gratified. The titles they bear
are plainly discernible; but only when the march becomes sufficiently
animated to cause a violent fluttering of the leaves can I catch a
glimpse of the author’s name on the title-page. Then I discover these
numerous tomes invariably reveal the name of a most voluminous and
versatile author, whose personality it is impossible to fathom, an
author writing with equal facility in all languages and on all topics,
in poetry and in prose, persistently preserving his _incognito_ under
the name of “Anon.”
I see, also, participating in the pageant semi-annually, and on these
occasions directing, as it were, the imposing march of the volumes,
numerous men of middle and advanced age that seem to exhale an odor of
musty tomes. Occasionally these pause in their march before some one of
the shelves to take down a volume which I have not before seen in the
procession, handling it with reverential care, as if conscious of the
gems it enshrined. Sometimes it is a volume by a living author of note;
again it is an encyclopædia or concordance, or a special number of some
dusty periodical that has long lain unopened. On inquiry of my
informant, I learned that this human element consists of the painstaking
custodians who had the volumes in keeping, the scholarly and
unappreciated librarians who devoted so much labor to the cataloguing
and classification of their charges.
Abruptly close the clasps of the most venerable tome. Again I hear the
rustling of pages and folding of covers, as each volume returns to its
accustomed place and once more sinks into hallowed slumber. The
librarian of one of the great libraries where the nightly pageant forms
scouted the idea of his charges leaving their retreats. “Would I not
hear them?—besides the dust remains undisturbed!” he replied. But a dead
author makes no noise and leaves no tell-tale traces when he quits his
tenement of print. Books, so eminently human, in the natural course of
things must have their ghosts. Of course, the librarian’s candle would
dissipate them, as mists are dispersed by the sun.
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