the character of one's own book-plate. To my taste, mere coats-of-arms
with mottoes are not the best form. They simply denote ownership. They
might well answer some further purpose, as for example to typify the
peculiar tastes of the proprietor in respect to his books. A portrait of
the owner is not objectionable, indeed is quite welcome in connection with
some device or motto pertaining to books and not to mere family descent.
But why, although a collector may have a favorite author, like Hawthorne
or Thackeray, for example, should he insert his portrait in his
book-plate, as is often done? Mr. Howells would writhe in his grave if he
knew that somebody had stuck Thackeray's portrait or Scott's in "Silas
Lapham," and those Calvinists who think that the "Scarlet Letter" is
wicked, would pronounce damnation on the man who should put the gentle
Hawthorne's portrait in a religious book. To be sure, one might have a
variety of book-plates, with portraits appropriate to different kinds of
books--Napoleon's for military, Calvin for religious, Walton's for angling
and a composite portrait of Howells-James for fiction of the photographic
school; but this would involve expense and destroy the intrinsic unity
desirable in the book-plate. So let the portrait, if any, be either that
of the proprietor or a conventional image. If I were to relax and allow a
single exception it would be in favor of dear Charles Lamb's portrait in
"Fraser's," representing him as reading a book by candle light. (For the
moment this idea pleases me so much that I feel half inclined to eat all
my foregoing words on this point, and adopt it for myself. At any rate, I
hereby preempt the privilege.)
I have referred to Mr. Lang's antipathy to book-plate collectors, and
while, as I have observed, he goes to extravagant lengths in condemning
their pursuit, still it may be of interest to my readers to know just
what he says about them, and so I reproduce below a ballad on the subject,
with (the material for) which he kindly supplied me when I solicited his
mild expression of opinion on the subject:
THE SNATCHERS.
The Romans snatched the Sabine wives;
The crime had some extenuation,
For they were leading lonely lives
And driven to reckless desperation.
Lord Elgin stripped the Grecian frieze
Of all its marbles celebrated,
So our art-students now with ease
Consult the figures overrated.
Napoleon stole the southern pictures
And hung them up to grace the Louvre;
And though he could not make them fixtures,
They answered as an art-improver.
Bold men ransack an Egyptian tomb,
And with the mummies there make free;
Such intermeddling with Time's womb
May aid in archeology.
So Cruncher dug up graves in haste,
To sell the corpses to the doctors;
This trade was not against his taste,
Though Misses "flopped," and vowed it shocked hers.
The modern snatcher sponges leaves
And boards of books to crib their labels;
Most petty, trivial of thieves,
Surpassing all we read in fables.
He pastes them in a big, blank book
To show them to some rival fool,
And I pronounce him, when I look,
An almost idiotic ghoul.
X.
THE BOOK-AUCTIONEER.
There is one figure that stands in a very unpleasant relation to books.
If anybody has any curiosity to know what I consider the most undesirable
occupation of mankind, I will answer candidly--that of an auctioneer of
private libraries. It does not seem to have fallen into disrepute like
that of the headsman or hangman, and perhaps it is as unpleasantly
essential as that of the undertaker. But it generally thrives on the
unhappiness of those who are compelled to part with their books, on the
rivalries of the rich, and the strifes of the trade. It was urged
against Mr. Cleveland, on his first canvass for the Presidency, that when
he was sheriff he had hanged a murderer. For my own part, I admired him
for performing that solemn office himself rather than hiring an underling
to do it. But if he had been a book-auctioneer, I might have been
prejudiced against him.
Not so ignoble and inhuman perhaps as that of the slave-seller, still the
business must breed a sort of callousness which is abhorrent to the genial
Book-Worm. How I hate the glib rattle of his tongue, the mouldiness of his
jests and the transparency of his puffery! I should think he would hate
himself. It must be worse than acting Hamlet or Humpty Dumpty a hundred
consecutive nights. Dante had no punishment for the Book-Worm in hell,
if I remember right, but if he deserved any pitiless reprobation, it would
be found in compelling him to cry off books to all eternity. Grant that
the auctioneer is a person of sensibility and acquainted with good books,
then his calling must give him many a pang as he observes the ignorance
and carelessness of his audience. It is better and more fitting that he
should know little of his wares. He ought to be well paid for his work,
and he is--no man gets so much for mere talk except the lawyer, and
perhaps not even he. I do not so much complain of his favoritism. When
there is something especially desirable going, I frequently fail to catch
his eye, and my rival gets the prize. But in this he is no worse than
the Speaker. On the other hand he sometimes loads me up with a thing that
I do not want, and in possession of which I would be unwilling to be found
dead, pretending that I winked at him--a species of imposition which it is
impolitic to resent for fear of being entirely ignored. These
discretionary favors are regarded as a practical joke and must not be
declined. But what I do complain of is his commercial stolidity,
surpassing that of Charles Surface when he sold the portraits of his
ancestors. The "bete noir" of the book trade is
THE STOLID AUCTIONEER.
Let not a sad ghost
From the scribbling host
Revisit this workaday sphere;
He'll find in the sequel
All talents are equal
When they come to the auctioneer.
Not a whit cares he
What the book may be,
Whether missal with glorious show,
A folio Shakespeare,
Or an Elzevir,
Or a Tupper, or E. P. Roe.
Without any qualms
He knocks down the Psalms,
Or the chaste Imitatio,
And takes the same pains
To enhance his gains
With a ribald Boccaccio.
He rattles them off,
Not stopping to cough,
He shows no distinction of person;
One minute's enough
For similar stuff
Like Shelley and Ossian Macpherson.
A Paradise Lost
Is had for less cost
Than a bulky "fifteener" in Greek,
And Addison's prose
Quite frequently goes
For a tenth of a worthless "unique."
This formula stale
Of his will avail
For an epitaph meet for his rank,
When dropping his gavel
He falls in the gravel,
"Do I hear nothing more?--gone--to--?
I speak feelingly, but I think it is pardonable. I once went through an
auction sale of my own books, and while I lost money on volumes on which I
had bestowed much thought, labor and expense, I made a profit on Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall" in tree-calf. I do not complain of the loss; what I was
mortified by was the profit. But the auctioneer was not at all abashed; in
fact he seemed rather pleased, and apparently regarded it as a feather in
his cap. I have always suspected that the shameless purchaser was Silas
Wegg.
XI.
THE BOOKSELLER.
Considering his importance in modern civilization, it is singular that so
little has been recorded of the Bookseller in literature. Shakespeare has
a great deal to say of books of various kinds, but not a word, I believe,
of the Bookseller. It is true that Ursa Major gave a mitigated growl of
applause to the booksellers, if I recollect my Boswell right, and he
condescended to write a life of Cave, but bookseller in his view meant
publisher. It is true that Charles Knight wrote a book entitled "Shadows
of the Old Booksellers," but here too the characters were mainly
publishers, and his account of them is indeed shadowy. The chief thing
that I recall about any of the booksellers thus celebrated is that Tom
Davies had "a pretty wife," which is probably the reason why Doctor
Johnson thought Tom would better have stuck to the stage. So far as I
know, the most vivid pen-pictures of booksellers are those depicting the
humble members of the craft, the curb-stone venders. They are much more
picturesque than their more affluent brethren who are used to the luxury
of a roof.
Rummaging over the contents of an old stall, at a half book, half old
iron shop in Ninety-four alley, leading from Wardour street to Soho,
yesterday, I lit upon a ragged duodecimo, which has been the strange
delight of my infancy; the price demanded was sixpence, which the
owner (a little squab duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with
the assurance that his own mother should not have it for a farthing
less. On my demurring to this extraordinary assertion, the dirty
little vender reinforced his assertion with a sort of oath, which
seemed more than the occasion demanded. "And now," said he, "I have
put my soul to it." Pressed by so solemn an asseveration, I could no
longer resist a demand which seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon
a level with his nearest relations; and depositing a tester, I bore
away the battered prize in triumph.
--Essays of Elia.
Monsieur Uzanne, who has treated of the elegancies of the Fan, the Muff,
and the Umbrella, has more recently given the world a quite unique series
of studies among the bookstalls and the quays of Paris--"The Book Hunter
in Paris"--and this too one finds more entertaining than any account of
Quaritch's or Putnam's shop would be.
I must bear witness to the honesty and liberality of booksellers. When one
considers the hundreds of catalogues from which he has ordered books at a
venture, even from across the ocean, and how seldom he has been misled or
disappointed in the result, one cannot subscribe to a belief in the dogma
of total depravity. I remember some of my booksellers with positive
affection. They were such self-denying men to consent to part with their
treasures at any price. And as a rule they are far more careless than
ordinary merchants about getting or securing their pay. To be sure it is
rather ignoble for the painter of a picture, or the chiseller of a statue,
or the vender of a fine book, to affect the acuteness of tradesmen in the
matter of compensation. The excellent bookseller takes it for granted, if
he stoops to think about it, that if a man orders a Caxton or a Grolier he
will pay for it, at his convenience. It was this unthinking liberality
which led a New York bookseller to give credit to a distinguished
person--afterwards a candidate for the Presidency--to a considerable
amount, and to let the account stand until it was outlawed, and his
sensibilities were greviously shocked, when being compelled to sue for his
due, his debtor pleaded the statute of limitations! His faith was not
restored even when the acute buyer left a great sum of money by his will
to found a public library, and the legacy failed through informality.
I have only one complaint to make against booksellers. They should teach
their clerks to recognize The Book-Worm at a glance. It is very
annoying, when I go browsing around a book-shop, to have an attendant come
up and ask me, who have bought books for thirty years, if he can "show me
anything"--just as if I wanted to see anything in particular--or if
"anybody is waiting on me"--when all I desire is to be let alone. Some
booksellers, I am convinced, have this art of recognition, for they let me
alone, and I make it a rule always to buy something of them, but never
when their employees are so annoyingly attentive. I do not object to being
watched; it is only the implication that I need any assistance that
offends me. It is easy to recognize the Book-Worm at a glance by the care
with which he handles the rare books and the indifference with which he
passes the standard authors in holiday bindings.
Once I had a bookseller who had a talent for drawing, which he used to
exercise occasionally on the exterior of an express package of books. One
of these wrappings I have preserved, exhibiting a pen-and-ink drawing of a
war-ship firing a big gun at a few small birds. Perhaps this was
satirically intended to denote the pains and time he had expended on so
small a sale. But I will now immortalize him.
The most striking picture of a bookseller that I recall in all literature
is one drawn by M. Uzanne, in the charming book mentioned above, which I
will endeavor to transmute and transmit under the title of
THE PROPHETIC BOOK.
"La Croix," said the Emperor, "cease to beguile;
These bookstalls must go from my bridges and quays;
No longer shall tradesmen my city defile
With mouldering hideous scarecrows like these."
While walking that night with the bibliophile,
On the Quai Malaquais by the Rue de Saints Peres,
The Emperor saw, with satirical smile,
Enkindling his stove, in the chill evening air,
With leaves which he tore from a tome by his side,
A bookseller ancient, with tremulous hands;
And laying aside his imperial pride,
"What book are you burning?" the Emperor demands.
For answer Pere Foy handed over the book,
And there as the headlines saluted his glance,
Napoleon read, with a stupefied look,
"Account of the Conquests and Victories of France."
The dreamer imperial swallowed his ire;
Pere Foy still remained at his musty old stand,
Till France was environed by sword and by fire,
And Germans like locusts devoured the land.
Doubtless the occupation of bookseller is generally regarded as a very
pleasant as well as a refined one. But there is another side, in the
estimation of a true Book-Worm, and it is not agreeable to him to
contemplate the life of
THE BOOK-SELLER.
He stands surrounded by rare tomes
Which find with him their transient homes,
He knows their fragrant covers;
He keeps them but a week or two,
Surrenders then their charming view
To bibliomaniac lovers.
An enviable man, you say,
To own such wares if but a day,
And handle, see and smell;
But all the time his spirit shrinks,
As wandering through his shop he thinks
He only keeps to sell.
The man who buys from him retains
His purchase long as life remains,
And then he doesn't mind
If his unbookish eager heirs,
Administering his affairs,
Shall throw them to the wind.
Or if in life he sells, in sooth,
'Tis parting with a single tooth,
A momentary pain;
Booksellers, like Sir Walter's Jew,
Must this keen suffering renew,
Again and yet again.
And so we need not envy him
Who sells us books, for stark and grim
Remains this torture deep.
This Universalistic hell--
Throughout this life he's bound to sell;
He has, but cannot keep.
XII.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARIAN.
There is one species of the Book-Worm which is more pitiable than the
Bookseller, and that is the Public Librarian, especially of a circulating
library. He is condemned to live among great collections of books and
exhibit them to the curious public, and to be debarred from any
proprietorship in them, even temporary. But the greater part this does not
grieve a true Book-Worm, for he would scorn ownership of a vast majority
of the books which he shows, but on the comparatively rare occasions when
he is called on to produce a real book (in the sense of Bibliomania), he
must be saddened by the reflection that it is not his own, and that the
inspection of it is demanded of him as a matter of right. I have often
observed the ill concealed reluctance with which the librarian complies
with such a request; how he looks at the demandant with a degree of
surprise, and then produces the key of the repository where the treasure
is kept under guard, and heaving a sigh delivers the volume with a
grudging hand. It was this characteristic which led me in my youth, before
I had been inducted into the delights of Bibliomania and had learned to
appreciate the feelings of a librarian, to define him as one who
conceives it to be his duty to prevent the public from seeing the books. I
owe a good old librarian an apology for having said this of him, and
hereby offer my excuses to one whose honorable name is recorded in the
Book of Life. Much is to be forgiven to the man who loves books, and yet
is doomed to deal out books that perish in the using, which no human being
would ever read a second time nor "be found dead with." These are the true
tests of a good book, especially the last. Shelley died with a little
AEschylus on his person, which the cruel waves spared, and when Tennyson
fell asleep it was with a Shakespeare, open at "Cymbeline." One may be
excused for reading a good deal that he never would re-read, but not for
owning it, nor for owning a good deal which he would feel ashamed to have
for his last earthly companion. But now for my tribute to
THE PUBLIC LIBRARIAN.
His books extend on every side,
And up and down the vistas wide
His eye can take them in;
He does not love these books at all,
Their usefulness in big and small
He counts as but a sin.
And all day long he stands to serve
The public with an aching nerve;
He views them with disdain--
The student with his huge round glasses,
The maiden fresh from high school classes,
With apathetic brain;
The sentimental woman lorn,
The farmer recent from his corn,
The boy who thirsts for fun,
The graybeard with a patent-right,
The pedagogue of school at night,
The fiction-gulping one.
They ask for histories, reports,
Accounts of turf and prize-ring sports,
The census of the nation;
Philosophy and science too,
The fresh romances not a few,
Also "Degeneration."
"They call these books!" he said, and throws
Them down in careless heaps and rows
Before the ticket-holder;
He'd like to cast them at his head,
He wishes they might strike him dead,
And with the reader moulder.
But now as for the shrine of saint
He seeks a spot whence sweet and faint
A leathery smell exudes,
And there behind the gilded wires
For some loved rarity inquires
Which common gaze eludes.
He wishes Omar would return
That vulgar mob of books to burn,
While he, like Virgil's hero,
Would shoulder off this precious case
To some secluded private place
With temperature at zero.
And there in that Seraglio
Of books not kept for public show,
He'd feast his glowing eyes,
Forgetting that these beauties rare,
Morocco-clad and passing fair,
Are but the Sultan's prize.
But then a tantalizing sense
Invades expectancy intense,
And with extorted moan,
"Unhappy man!" he sighs, "condemned
To show such treasure and to lend--
I keep, but cannot own!"
XIII.
DOES BOOK COLLECTING PAY.
We now come to the sordid but serious consideration whether books are a
"good investment" in the financial sense. The mind of every true
Book-Worm should revolt from this question, for none except a bookseller
is pardonable for buying books with the design of selling them.
Booksellers are a necessary evil, as purveyors for the Book-Worm. I
regard them as the old woman regarded the thirty-nine articles of faith;
when inquired of by her bishop what she thought of them, she said, "I
don't know as I've anything against them." So I don't know that I have
anything against booksellers, although I must concede that they generally
have something against me. As no well regulated man ever grudges expense
on the house that forms his home, or on its adornment, and rarely cares or
even reflects whether he can get his money back, so it is with the true
bibliomaniac. He never intends to part with his books any more than with
his homestead. Then again the use and enjoyment of books ought to count
for something like interest on the capital invested. Many times, directly
or indirectly, the use of a library is worth even more than the interest
on the outlay. It is singular how expenditure in books is regarded as an
extravagance by the business world. One may spend the price of a fine
library in fast or showy horses, or in travel, or in gluttony, or in stock
speculations eventuating on the wrong side of his ledger, and the
money-grubbing community think none the worse of him. But let him expend
annually a few thousands in books, and these sons of Mammon pull long
faces, wag their shallow heads, and sneeringly observe, "screw loose
somewhere," "never get half what he has paid for them," "too much of a
Book-Worm to be a sharp business man." A man who boldly bets on stocks in
Wall Street is a gallant fellow, forsooth, and excites the admiration of
the business community (especially of those who thrive on his losses) even
when he "comes out at the little end of the horn." As Ruskin observes, we
frequently hear of a bibliomaniac, never of a horse-maniac. It is said
there is a private stable in Syracuse, New York, which has cost several
hundred thousand dollars. The owner is regarded as perfectly sane and the
building is viewed with great pride by the public, but if the owner had
expended as much on a private library his neighbors would have thought him
a lunatic. If a man in business wants to excite the suspicion of the sleek
gentlemen who sit around the discount board with him, or yell like
lunatics at the stock exchange with him, or talk with him about the tariff
or free silver, or any other subject on which no two men ever agree unless
it is for their interest, let it leak out that he has put a few thousand
dollars into a Mazarine Bible, or a Caxton, or a first folio Shakespeare
or some other rare book. No matter if he can afford it, most of his
associates regard him as they do a Bedlamite who goes about collecting
straws. Fortunate is he if his wife does not privately call on the family
attorney and advise with him about putting a committee over the poor man.
But if we must regard book-buying in a money sense, and were to admit that
books never sell for as much as they cost, it is no worse in respect to
books than in respect to any other species of personal property. What
chattel is there for which the buyer can get as much as he paid, even the
next day? When it is proposed to transform the seller himself into the
buyer of the same article, we find that the bull of yesterday is converted
into the bear of to-day. Circumstances alter cases. I have bought a good
many books and "objects of bigotry and virtue," and have sold some, and
the nearest I ever came to getting as much as I paid was in the case of a
rare print, the seller of which, after the lapse of several years,
solicited me to let him have it again, at exactly what I paid for it, in
order that he might sell it to some one else at an advance. I declined his
offer with profuse thanks, and keep the picture as a curiosity.
So I should say, as a rule, that books are not a good financial investment
in the business sense, and speaking of most books and most buyers. Give
a man the same experience in buying books that renders him expert in
buying other personal property, the mere gross objects of trade, and let
him set out with the purpose of accumulating a library that shall be a
remunerative financial investment, and he may succeed, indeed, has often
succeeded, certainly to the extent of getting back his outlay with
interest, and sometimes making a handsome profit. But this needs
experience. Just as one must build at least two houses before he can
exactly suit himself, so he must collect two libraries before he can get
one that will prove a fair investment in the vulgar sense of trade.
I dare say that one will frequently pay more for a fine microscope or
telescope than he can ever obtain for it if he desires or is pressed to
sell it, but who would or should stop to think of that? The power of
prying into the mysteries of the earth and the wonders of the heavens
should raise one's thoughts above such petty considerations. So it should
be in buying that which enables one to converse with Shakespeare or Milton
or scan the works of Raphael or Durer. When the pioneer on the western
plains purchases an expensive rifle he does not inquire whether he can
sell it for what it costs; his purpose is to defend his house against
Indians and other wild beasts. So the true book-buyer buys books to fight
weariness, disgust, sorrow and despair; to loose himself from the world
and forget time and all its limitations and besetments. In this view they
never cost too much. And so when asked if book-collecting pays, I retort
by asking, does piety pay? "Honesty is the best policy" is the meanest of
maxims. Honesty ought to be a principle and not a policy; and
book-collecting ought to be a means of education, refinement and
enjoyment, and not a mode of financial investment.
XIV.
THE BOOK-WORM'S FAULTS.