It will never be clear to the lay mind why the book-buyer buys books.
That it is not to read them is certain: the closest inspection always
fails to find him thus engaged. He will talk about them—all night if
you let him—wave his hand to them, shake his fist at them, shed tears
over them (in the small hours of the morning); but he will not read
them. Yet it would be rash to infer that he buys his books without a
remote intention of ever reading them. Most book lovers start with the
honest resolution that some day they will “shut down on” this fatal
practice. Then they purpose to themselves to enter into their charmed
circle, and close the gates of Paradise behind them. Then will they
read out of nothing but first editions; every day shall be a debauch in
large paper and tall copies; and crushed morocco shall be familiar to
their touch as buckram. Meanwhile, though, books continue to flaunt
their venal charms; it would be cowardice to shun the fray. In fine,
one buys and continues to buy; and the promised Sabbath never comes.
The process of the purchase is always much the same, therein resembling
the familiar but inferior passion of love. There is the first sight of
the Object, accompanied of a catching of the breath, a trembling in the
limbs, loss of appetite, ungovernable desire, and a habit of melancholy
in secret places. But once possessed, once toyed with amorously for an
hour or two, the Object (as in the inferior passion aforesaid) takes
its destined place on the shelf—where it stays. And this saith the
scoffer, is all; but even he does not fail to remark with a certain awe
that the owner goeth thereafter as one possessing a happy secret and
radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he is insufferably conceited, and
his conceit waxeth as his coat, now condemned to a fresh term of
servitude, groweth shabbier. And shabby though his coat may be, yet
will he never stoop to renew its pristine youth and gloss by the price
of any book. No man—no human, masculine, natural man—ever sells a book.
Men have been known in moments of thoughtlessness, or compelled by
temporary necessity, to rob, to equivocate, to do murder, to commit
what they should not, to “wince and relent and refrain” from what they
should: these things, howbeit regrettable, are common to humanity, and
may happen to any of us. But amateur bookselling is foul and unnatural;
and it is noteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity,
contains no distinctive name for the crime. Fortunately it is hardly
known to exist: the face of the public being set against it as a
flint—and the trade giving such wretched prices.
In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by the
reflection that this particular purchase will be a good investment,
sordidly considered: that you are not squandering income but sinking
capital. But you know all the time that you are lying. Once possessed,
books develop a personality: they take on a touch of warm human life
that links them in a manner with our kith and kin. _Non angli sed
Angeli_ was the comment of a missionary (old style) on the small human
duodecimos exposed for sale in the Roman market-place; and many a
buyer, when some fair-haired little chattel passed into his possession,
must have felt that here was something vendible no more. So of these
you may well affirm _Non libri sed liberi;_ children now, adopted into
the circle, they shall be trafficked in never again.
There is one exception which has sadly to be made—one class of men, of
whom I would fain, if possible, have avoided mention, who are strangers
to any such scruples. These be Executors—a word to be strongly accented
on the penultimate; for, indeed, they are the common headsmen of
collections, and most of all do whet their bloody edge for harmless
books. Hoary, famous old collections, budding young collections, fair
virgin collections of a single author—all go down before the executor’s
remorseless axe. He careth not and he spareth not. “The iniquity of
oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy,” and it is chiefly by the hand
of the executor that she doth love to scatter it. May oblivion be his
portion for ever!
Of a truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few. One of the most
insidious, because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, is
the bookbinder. Not in that he bindeth books—for the fair binding is
the final crown and flower of painful achievement—but because he
bindeth not: because the weary weeks lapse by and turn to months, and
the months to years, and still the binder bindeth not: and the heart
grows sick with hope deferred. Each morn the maiden binds her hair,
each spring the honeysuckle binds the cottage-porch, each autumn the
harvester binds his sheaves, each winter the iron frost binds lake and
stream, and still the bookbinder he bindeth not. Then a secret voice
whispereth: “Arise, be a man, and slay him! Take him grossly, full of
bread, with all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May; At gaming,
swearing, or about some act That hath no relish of salvation in it!”
But when the deed is done, and the floor strewn with fragments of
binder—still the books remain unbound. You have made all that horrid
mess for nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden over again. As a
general rule, the man in the habit of murdering bookbinders, though he
performs a distinct service to society, only wastes his own time and
takes no personal advantage.
And even supposing that after many days your books return to you in
leathern surcoats bravely tricked with gold, you have scarce yet
weathered the Cape and sailed into halcyon seas. For these books—well,
you kept them many weeks before binding them, that the oleaginous
printer’s-ink might fully dry before the necessary hammering; you
forbore to open the pages, that the autocratic binder might refold the
sheets if he pleased; and now that all is over—_consummatum est_—still
you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of a quiet mind. For these purple
emperors are not to be read in bed, nor during meals, nor on the grass
with a pipe on Sundays; and these brief periods are all the whirling
times allow you for solid serious reading. Still, after all, you have
them; you can at least pulverise your friends with the sight; and what
have they to show against them? Probably some miserable score or so of
half-bindings, such as lead you scornfully to quote the hackneyed
couplet concerning the poor Indian whose untutored mind clothes him
before but leaves him bare behind. Let us thank the gods that such
things are: that to some of us they give not poverty nor riches but a
few good books in whole bindings. Dowered with these and (if it be
vouchsafed) a cup of Burgundy that is sound even if it be not old, we
can leave to others the foaming grape of Eastern France that was
vintaged in ’74, and with it the whole range of shilling shockers,—the
Barmecidal feast of the purposeful novelist—yea, even the countless
series that tell of Eminent Women and Successful Men.