THE BOOK-BILLS OF NARCISSUS
AN ACCOUNT RENDERED BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY ROBERT FOWLER
1895
TABLE OF CHAPTERS
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. STILL INTRODUCTORY, BUT THIS TIME
OF A GREATER THAN THE WRITER
III. IN WHICH NARCISSUS OPENS HIS 'GLADSTONE'
IV. ACCOUNTS RENDERED
V. AN IDYLL OF ALICE SUNSHINE, WHICH
REALLY BELONGS TO THE LAST CHAPTER
VI. THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS
VII. THE CHILDREN OF APOLLO
VIII. GEORGE MUNCASTER
IX. THAT THIRTEENTH MAID
X. 'IN VISHNU-LAND WHAT AVATAR?'
TO MILDRED
Always thy book, too late acknowledged thine,
Now when thine eyes no earthly page may read;
Blinded with death, or blinded with the shine
Of love's own lore celestial. Small need,
Forsooth, for thee to read my earthly line,
That on immortal flowers of fancy feed;
What should my angel do to stoop to mine,
Flowers of decay of no immortal seed.
Yet, love, if in thy lofty dwelling-place,
Higher than notes of any soaring bird,
Beyond the beam of any solar light,
A song of earth may scale the awful height,
And at thy heavenly window find thy face--
know my voice shall never fall unheard.
_December 6th,_ 1894.
NOTE.--_This third edition has been revised, and Chapter V. is entirely
new_.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY--A WORD OF WISDOM, FOUND WRITTEN, LIKE THE MOST ANCIENT, ON
LEATHER
'Ah! old men's boots don't go there, sir!' said the bootmaker to me one
day, as he pointed to the toes of a pair I had just brought him for
mending. It was a significant observation, I thought; and as I went on
my way home, writing another such chronicle with every springing step,
it filled me with much reflection--largely of the nature of platitude, I
have little doubt: such reflection, Reader, as is even already, I doubt
less, rippling the surface of your mind with ever-widening circles. Yes!
you sigh with an air, it is in the unconscious autobiographies we are
every moment writing--not those we publish in two volumes and a
supplement--where the truth about us is hid. Truly it is a thought that
has 'thrilled dead bosoms,' I agree, but why be afraid of it for that,
Reader? Truth is not become a platitude only in our day. 'The Preacher'
knew it for such some considerable time ago, and yet he did not fear to
'write and set in order many proverbs.'
You have kept a diary for how many years? Thirty? dear me! But have you
kept your wine-bills? If you ever engage me to write that life, which,
of course, must some day be written--I wouldn't write it myself--don't
trouble about your diary. Lend me your private ledger. 'There the action
lies in his true nature.'
Yet I should hardly, perhaps, have evoked this particular corollary from
that man of leather's observation, if I had not chanced one evening to
come across those old book-bills of my friend Narcissus, about which I
have undertaken to write here, and been struck--well-nigh awe-struck--by
the wonderful manner in which there lay revealed in them the story of
the years over which they ran. To a stranger, I am sure, they would be
full of meaning; but to me, who lived so near him through so much of the
time, how truly pregnant does each briefest entry seem.
To Messrs. Oldbuck and Sons they, alas! often came to be but so many
accounts rendered; to you, being a philosopher, they would, as I have
said, mean more; but to me they mean all that great sunrise, the youth
of Narcissus.
Many modern poets, still young enough, are fond of telling us where
their youth lies buried. That of Narcissus--would ye know--rests among
these old accounts. Lo! I would perform an incantation. I throw these
old leaves into the _elixir vitae_ of sweet memory, as Dr. Heidegger
that old rose into his wonderful crystal water. Have I power to make
Narcissus' rose to bloom again, so that you may know something of the
beauty it wore for us? I wonder. I would I had. I must try.