IN WHICH NARCISSUS OPENS HIS 'GLADSTONE'
Though it was so long since we had met--is not three years indeed 'so
long' in youth?--we had hardly to wait for our second glass to be again
_en rapport_. Few men grow so rapidly as Narcissus did in those young
days, but fewer still can look back on old enthusiasms and superannuated
ideals with a tenderness so delicately considerate. Most men hasten to
witness their present altitude by kicking away the old ladders on the
first opportunity; like vulgar lovers, they seek to flatter to-day at
the expense of yesterday. But Narcissus was of another fibre; he could
as soon have insulted the memory of his first love.
So, before long, we had passed together into a sweet necropolis of
dreams, whither, if the Reader care, I will soon take him by the hand.
But just now I would have him concern himself with the afternoon of
which I write, in that sad tense, the past present. Indeed, we did not
ourselves tarry long among the shades, for we were young, and youth has
little use for the preterite; its verbs are wont to have but two tenses.
We soon came up to the surface in one, with eyes turned instinctively on
the other.
Narcissus' bag seemed, somehow, a symbol; and I had caught sight of a
binding or two as it lay open in Tithefields that made me curious to see
it open again. He was only beginning to collect when we had parted at
school, if 'collect' is not too sacred a word: beginning to _buy_ more
truly expresses that first glutting of the bookish hunger, which, like
the natural appetite, never passes in some beyond the primary
utilitarian stage of 'eating to live,' otherwise 'buying to read.' Three
years, however, works miracles of refinement in any hunger that is at
all capable of culture; and it was evident, when Narcissus did open his
'Gladstone,' that it had taken him by no means so long to attain that
sublimation of taste which may be expressed as 'reading to buy.' Each
volume had that air--of breeding, one might almost say--by which one can
always know a genuine _bouquin_ at a glance; an alluvial richness of
bloom, coming upon one like an aromatic fragrance in so many old things,
in old lawns, in old flowers, old wines, and many another delicious
simile. One could not but feel that each had turned its golden brown,
just as an apple reddens--as, indeed, it had.
I do not propose to solemnly enumerate and laboriously describe these
good things, because I hardly think they would serve to distinguish
Narcissus, except in respect of luck, from other bookmen in the first
furor of bookish enthusiasm. They were such volumes as Mr. Pendennis ran
up accounts for at Oxford. Narcissus had many other points in common
with that gentleman. Such volumes as, morning after morning, sadden
one's breakfast-table in that Tantalus _menu_, the catalogue. Black
letter, early printed, first editions Elizabethan and Victorian, every
poor fly ambered in large paper, etc. etc.; in short, he ran through the
gamut of that craze which takes its turn in due time with marbles,
peg-tops, beetles, and foreign stamps--with probably the two exceptions
of Bewick, for whom he could never batter up an enthusiasm, and
'facetiae.' These latter needed too much camphor, he used to say.
His two most cherished possessions were a fine copy of the _Stultitiae
Laus_, printed by Froben, which had once been given by William Burton,
the historian, to his brother Robert, when the latter was a youngster of
twenty; and a first edition of one of Walton's lives, 'a presentation
copy from the author.' The former was rich with the autographs and
marginalia of both brothers, and on the latter a friend of his has
already hung a tale, which may or may not be known to the Reader. In the
reverent handling of these treasures, two questions inevitably forced
themselves upon me: where the d----l Narcissus, an apprentice, with an
allowance that would hardly keep most of us in tobacco, had found the
money for such indulgences; and how he could find in his heart to sell
them again so soon. A sorrowful interjection, as he closed his bag,
explained all:--
'Yes!' he sighed, 'they have cost me thirty pounds, and guess how much I
have been offered for them?'
I suggested ten.
'Five,' groaned my poor friend. 'I tried several to get that. "H'm,"
says each one, indifferently turning the most precious in his hand,
"this would hardly be any use to me; and this I might have to keep
months before I could sell. That I could make you an offer for; what
have you thought of for it?" With a great tugging at your heart, and
well-nigh in tears, you name the absurdest minimum. You had given five;
you halve it--surely you can get that! But "O no! I can give nothing
like that figure. In that case it is no use to talk of it." In despair
you cry, "Well, what will you offer?" with a choking voice. "Fifteen
shillings would be about my figure for it," answers the fiend,
relentless as a machine--and so on.'
'I tried pawning them at first,' he continued, 'because there was hope
of getting them back some time that way; but, trudging from shop to
shop, with many prayers, "a sovereign for the lot" was all I could get.
Worse than dress-clothes!' concluded the frank creature.
For Narcissus to be in debt was nothing new: he had always been so at
school, and probably always will be. Had you reproached him with it in
those young self-conscious days of glorious absurdity, he would probably
have retorted, with a toss of his vain young head:--
'Well, and so was Shelley!'
I ventured to enquire the present difficulty that compelled him to make
sacrifice of things so dear.
'Why, to pay for them, of course,' was the answer.
And so I first became initiated into the mad method by which Narcissus
had such a library about him at twenty-one. From some unexplained
reason, largely, I have little doubt, on account of the charm of his
manners, he had the easy credit of those respectable booksellers to whom
reference has been made above. No extravagance seemed to shake their
confidence. I remember calling upon them with him one day some months
following that afternoon--for the madness, as usual, would have its
time, and no sufferings seemed to teach him prudence--and he took me up
to a certain 'fine set' that he had actually resisted, he said, for a
fortnight. Alas! I knew what that meant. Yes, he must have it; it was
just the thing to help him with a something he was writing--'not to
read, you know, but to make an atmosphere,' etc. So he used to talk; and
the odd thing was, that we always took the wildness seriously; he seemed
to make us see just what he wanted. 'I say, John,' was the next I heard,
at the other end of the shop, 'will you kindly send me round that set
of' so-and-so, 'and charge it to my account?' 'John,' the son of old
Oldbuck, and for a short time a sort of friend of Narcissus, would
answer, 'Certainly,' with a voice of the most cheerful trust; and yet,
when we had gone, it was indeed no less a sum than £10, 10s. which he
added to the left-hand side of Mr. N.'s account.
Do not mistake this for a certain vulgar quality, with a vulgar little
name of five letters. No one could have less of that than Narcissus. He
was often, on the contrary, quite painfully diffident. No, it was not
'cheek,' Reader; it was a kind of irrational innocence. I don't think it
ever occurred to him, till the bills came in at the half-years, what
'charge it to my account' really meant. Perhaps it was because, poor
lad, he had so small a practical acquaintance with it, that he knew so
little the value of money. But how he suffered when those accounts did
come in! Of course, there was nothing to be done but to apply to some
long-suffering friend; denials of lunch and threadbare coats but nibbled
at the amount--especially as a fast to-day often found revulsion in a
festival to-morrow. To save was not in Narcissus.
I promised to digress, Reader, and I have kept my word. Now to return to
that afternoon again. It so chanced that on that day in the year I
happened to have in my pocket--what you might meet me every day in five
years without finding there--a ten-pound note. It was for this I felt
after we had been musing awhile--Narcissus, probably, on everything
else in the world except his debts--and it was with this I awoke him
from his reverie. He looked at his hand, and then at me, in
bewilderment. Poor fellow, how he wanted to keep it, yet how he tried to
look as if he couldn't think of doing so. He couldn't help his joy
shining through.
'But I want you to take it,' I said; 'believe me, I have no immediate
need of it, and you can pay me at your leisure.' Ten pounds towards the
keep of a poet once in a lifetime is, after all, but little interest on
the gold he brings us. At last I 'prevailed,' shall I say? but on no
account without the solemnity of an IOU and a fixed date for repayment,
on which matter poor N. was always extremely emphatic. Alas! Mr. George
Meredith has already told us how this passionate anxiety to be bound by
the heaven above, the earth, and the waters under the earth, is the most
fatal symptom by which to know the confirmed in this kind. Captain
Costigan had it, it may be remembered; and the same solicitude, the same
tearful gratitude, I know, accompanied every such transaction of my
poor Narcissus.
Whether it was as apparent on the due date, or whether of that ten
pounds I have ever looked upon the like again, is surely no affair of
the Reader's; but, lest he should do my friend an injustice, I had
better say--I haven't.