As often as I survey my bookshelves I am reminded of Lamb's "ragged
veterans." Not that all my volumes came from the second-hand stall; many
of them were neat enough in new covers, some were even stately in
fragrant bindings, when they passed into my hands. But so often have I
removed, so rough has been the treatment of my little library at each
change of place, and, to tell the truth, so little care have I given to
its well-being at normal times (for in all practical matters I am idle
and inept), that even the comeliest of my books show the results of
unfair usage. More than one has been foully injured by a great nail
driven into a packing-case--this but the extreme instance of the wrongs
they have undergone. Now that I have leisure and peace of mind, I find
myself growing more careful--an illustration of the great truth that
virtue is made easy by circumstance. But I confess that, so long as a
volume hold together, I am not much troubled as to its outer appearance.
I know men who say they had as lief read any book in a library copy as in
one from their own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For one thing,
I know every book of mine by its _scent_, and I have but to put my nose
between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. My Gibbon, for
example, my well-bound eight-volume Milman edition, which I have read and
read and read again for more than thirty years--never do I open it but
the scent of the noble page restores to me all the exultant happiness of
that moment when I received it as a prize. Or my Shakespeare, the great
Cambridge Shakespeare--it has an odour which carries me yet further back
in life; for these volumes belonged to my father, and before I was old
enough to read them with understanding, it was often permitted me, as a
treat, to take down one of them from the bookcase, and reverently to turn
the leaves. The volumes smell exactly as they did in that old time, and
what a strange tenderness comes upon me when I hold one of them in hand.
For that reason I do not often read Shakespeare in this edition. My eyes
being good as ever, I take the Globe volume, which I bought in days when
such a purchase was something more than an extravagance; wherefore I
regard the book with that peculiar affection which results from
sacrifice.
Sacrifice--in no drawing-room sense of the word. Dozens of my books were
purchased with money which ought to have been spent upon what are called
the necessaries of life. Many a time I have stood before a stall, or a
bookseller's window, torn by conflict of intellectual desire and bodily
need. At the very hour of dinner, when my stomach clamoured for food, I
have been stopped by sight of a volume so long coveted, and marked at so
advantageous a price, that I _could_ not let it go; yet to buy it meant
pangs of famine. My Heyne's _Tibullus_ was grasped at such a moment. It
lay on the stall of the old book-shop in Goodge Street--a stall where now
and then one found an excellent thing among quantities of rubbish.
Sixpence was the price--sixpence! At that time I used to eat my mid-day
meal (of course my dinner) at a coffee-shop in Oxford Street, one of the
real old coffee-shops, such as now, I suppose, can hardly be found.
Sixpence was all I had--yes, all I had in the world; it would purchase a
plate of meat and vegetables. But I did not dare to hope that the
_Tibullus_ would wait until the morrow, when a certain small sum fell due
to me. I paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in my pocket, eyeing
the stall, two appetites at combat within me. The book was bought and I
went home with it, and as I made a dinner of bread and butter I gloated
over the pages.
In this _Tibullus_ I found pencilled on the last page: "Perlegi, Oct. 4,
1792." Who was that possessor of the book, nearly a hundred years ago?
There was no other inscription. I like to imagine some poor scholar,
poor and eager as I myself, who bought the volume with drops of his
blood, and enjoyed the reading of it even as I did. How much _that_ was
I could not easily say. Gentle-hearted Tibullus!--of whom there remains
to us a poet's portrait more delightful, I think, than anything of the
kind in Roman literature.
An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres,
Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est?
So with many another book on the thronged shelves. To take them down is
to recall, how vividly, a struggle and a triumph. In those days money
represented nothing to me, nothing I cared to think about, but the
acquisition of books. There were books of which I had passionate need,
books more necessary to me than bodily nourishment. I could see them, of
course, at the British Museum, but that was not at all the same thing as
having and holding them, my own property, on my own shelf. Now and then
I have bought a volume of the raggedest and wretchedest aspect,
dishonoured with foolish scribbling, torn, blotted--no matter, I liked
better to read out of that than out of a copy that was not mine. But I
was guilty at times of mere self-indulgence; a book tempted me, a book
which was not one of those for which I really craved, a luxury which
prudence might bid me forego. As, for instance, my _Jung-Stilling_. It
caught my eye in Holywell Street; the name was familiar to me in
_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, and curiosity grew as I glanced over the pages.
But that day I resisted; in truth, I could not afford the eighteen-pence,
which means that just then I was poor indeed. Twice again did I pass,
each time assuring myself that _Jung-Stilling_ had found no purchaser.
There came a day when I was in funds. I see myself hastening to Holywell
Street (in those days my habitual pace was five miles an hour), I see the
little grey old man with whom I transacted my business--what was his
name?--the bookseller who had been, I believe, a Catholic priest, and
still had a certain priestly dignity about him. He took the volume,
opened it, mused for a moment, then, with a glance at me, said, as if
thinking aloud: "Yes, I wish I had time to read it."
Sometimes I added the labour of a porter to my fasting endured for the
sake of books. At the little shop near Portland Road Station I came upon
a first edition of Gibbon, the price an absurdity--I think it was a
shilling a volume. To possess those clean-paged quartos I would have
sold my coat. As it happened, I had not money enough with me, but
sufficient at home. I was living at Islington. Having spoken with the
bookseller, I walked home, took the cash, walked back again, and--carried
the tomes from the west end of Euston Road to a street in Islington far
beyond the _Angel_. I did it in two journeys--this being the only time
in my life when I thought of Gibbon in avoirdupois. Twice--three times,
reckoning the walk for the money--did I descend Euston Road and climb
Pentonville on that occasion. Of the season and the weather I have no
recollection; my joy in the purchase I had made drove out every other
thought. Except, indeed, of the weight. I had infinite energy, but not
much muscular strength, and the end of the last journey saw me upon a
chair, perspiring, flaccid, aching--exultant!
The well-to-do person would hear this story with astonishment. Why did I
not get the bookseller to send me the volumes? Or, if I could not wait,
was there no omnibus along that London highway? How could I make the
well-to-do person understand that I did not feel able to afford, that
day, one penny more than I had spent on the book? No, no, such labour-
saving expenditure did not come within my scope; whatever I enjoyed I
earned it, literally, by the sweat of my brow. In those days I hardly
knew what it was to travel by omnibus. I have walked London streets for
twelve and fifteen hours together without ever a thought of saving my
legs, or my time, by paying for waftage. Being poor as poor can be,
there were certain things I had to renounce, and this was one of them.
Years after, I sold my first edition of Gibbon for even less than it cost
me; it went with a great many other fine books in folio and quarto, which
I could not drag about with me in my constant removals; the man who
bought them spoke of them as "tomb-stones." Why has Gibbon no market
value? Often has my heart ached with regret for those quartos. The joy
of reading the Decline and Fall in that fine type! The page was
appropriate to the dignity of the subject; the mere sight of it tuned
one's mind. I suppose I could easily get another copy now; but it would
not be to me what that other was, with its memory of dust and toil.