“West Newton, April 23, ’50.”
It is an excellent specimen of the smug self-satisfaction, the
Chadbandian cant, the affectation of altruism which marked the middle of
the nineteenth century, particularly in the regions lying about West
Newton. Cheap enough withal it seems to be, for as he could never by any
chance become “the possessor of all the autographs in the world”, his
expression of preference signifies nothing whatever. The formula is
simple enough. Select something which sounds noble and unselfish and
then say that you would rather do that thing than to have—all the
diamonds, all the pictures, all the Caxtons, all the gold mines, all the
puppy-dogs and all the tabby-cats in the universe. It is in
contemporaneous vernacular, a safe “bluff”. If he had said that he would
rather perform one useful act for his fellow men than to be the owner of
a hundred shares of Standard Oil, it would have had some meaning, for
one could then measure the precise extent of his devotion to the welfare
of mankind. One may naturally inquire, why not have all the autographs
in the world and do not one but many useful acts for one’s fellow men?
There is no inherent incompatibility between the two ideas.
It may be suggested that the subject of books about books and the
gathering of autographs are not cognate; that they have no relation to
each other; that they are illegally joined together in defiance of the
laws laid down in Day’s Praxis. I knew a dignified New England author,
lawyer and soldier who was accustomed, when assailed by a proposition to
which he did not assent, but which he was too polite to dispute, to
close discussion by the sententious remark, “That indeed”. I never fully
understood precisely what it meant, but it seemed to be conclusive for
there was no more to be said. It was like some of the cryptic utterances
of that model of concise expression, Mr. F’s aunt. But I maintain that
the man who truly covets autographs, covets books likewise for the sake
of the books themselves, irrespective of style or contents. It may be
one of Mr. Crother’s One Hundred Worst Books, but all the more precious
for that very reason. My point is easily demonstrated by a logical
device not uncommonly adopted by those who manufacture our opinions for
us in the public press. The man who—to continue the locution of Mr.
Joseph Surface—does not feel a fondness for books of the bookish sort,
derives no gratification from the ownership of autographs. I am not
referring to the pseudo-collector with his album or to the encourager of
profanity who besets the living great with requests for his signature. I
allude, sir, as General Cyrus Choke said in regard to the British lion,
to him who finds a charm in written words penned by the hand of a
warrior, a statesman, or a scholar. It is a charm that may not be
defined, for when you venture upon a definition it softly and suddenly
vanishes away like the Baker who encountered the Snark that was a Boojum
in the Carrollian fable.
I am not ashamed to acknowledge that there is something about the
exterior of books which appeals to our warmest affections. We love to
sit among them and enjoy the sight of them as many rejoice in the
prospect of lake, valley and mountain. Dear old R. Wilfer in _Our Mutual
Friend_ had one darling wish, to possess at one time a complete new
attire from boots to hat, but he never attained that glorious pinnacle.
The late Sultan of Turkey, thirty years or more ago, had an enthusiasm
for rifles, bought a lot of them at an enormous cost, and constructed
for the storage of these treasures a kind of mausoleum of rifles, a
grand edifice in which the muskets were arranged in serried ranks
radiating from a centre where, upon a throne, the potentate who called
himself Abdul Hamid Khan Sani, Sultan and Sovereign of the Ottoman
Empire, was accustomed to sit in solemn and solitary state while he
gloated over his acquisitions. In like spirit I would exult if I could
have a library room where I could see all the books at once, reviewing
the beloved brigades and cheerfully foregoing the reading of them. To
marshal the regiments of books, the well-uniformed battalions, the heavy
artillery of the folios, the light skirmishers of the duodecimos, would
bring a joy akin to that which the pompous and patriotic soldier, the
vainest of men, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, used to feel
when, sitting on his charger, he reviewed the valiant little army which
conquered Mexico over sixty years ago. This recalls to me that in the
innocent hours of childhood I supposed that the head which Salome
demanded was brought to King Herod on just such a charger as the General
bestrode according to the veracious picture which hung over the sofa in
the “back parlor”, when I also firmly believed that the baskets in which
the fragments were gathered after the miracle were the large, ordinary
baskets used in our laundry.
Vain as he was, the old General was a good, sturdy warrior, and no one
can read his egotistical memoirs without becoming aware of the fact, in
spite of his enormous self conceit. When King Edward VII visited us as
Prince of Wales in 1860, I saw the royal youth on the parade-ground at
West Point. I remember him well, for as A. Ward observed, “I seldom
forgit a person”. But the General was the man I longed to gaze upon, and
I regret that a facetious uncle easily persuaded me that the gorgeous
drum-major who led the band was the Great Scott himself. The materiality
of this reminiscence lies in the fact that a volume of Scott’s Memoirs
is usually to be found on the library table, a model of what an
autobiography ought not to be. Soldiers in later days learned to write
the story of their battles with more good taste and modesty. Perhaps
General Benjamin F. Butler was an exception, but he was not a soldier,
and his battles were very few; and those of us who loved and honored
McClellan regret the publishing of his “Own Story”, a deed he would
never have countenanced. A man should never be judged by what he writes
to his wife.
It would not be amiss if some fair-minded and competent person would
give us a candid and impartial history of some of the men who have been
dealt with unjustly by the merciless masses in this country. McClellan
is one of these victims, although students of military affairs have
begun to comprehend the truth about him; but the great majority still
believe that he was a timid, dilatory and inefficient commander who
quarrelled with his President without a cause. General Arthur St. Clair,
of revolutionary times, was even a greater sufferer, and he has been so
long dead that his record may be judged calmly. Aaron Burr has had
several defenders, and it is now well established that whatever sins he
may have committed, treason was not one of them. Martin Van Buren,
sorely maligned by partisan historians, has been ably vindicated by
Edward Morse Shepard. James K. Polk, Chief Justice Taney, and Andrew
Johnson also deserve to be relieved from many of the aspersions which
have been plentifully bestowed upon them. Unfortunately there is a
tendency on the part of most men who undertake a work of that character
to become advocates rather than judges, and to impair the influence of
their arguments by an excess of ardor.
Most of us find that as the number of our years increases we are apt to
pass more and more of our time at the library table, within easy reach
of the shelves. I have been charged with believing that books are “the
chief things in life”; I admit that they are not and ought not to be
that, but I see no reason why we should not be allowed to enjoy them as
we would any other innocent pleasure, in due moderation. A good many
young people might as well be accused of believing that sports were the
chief things in human existence; and both in England and in this country
I apprehend that sports engross the attention of the multitude to the
exclusion of such minor things as books; but I find no fault with them
because they choose pleasures different from mine.
Youth is a pleasure in itself, but one may be allowed to have misgivings
as to whether its joys are not in some degree overrated. Certainly our
young people seem to work very hard to get their fun out of life, and
after they have had it they do not appear to be much the better for it.
We often sigh for our lost youth, and if we are lucky enough to be able
to remember so much of our Horace, we whisper to ourselves “_Eheu
fugaces_” and the rest of it, while if we were confronted by a decree
that we must go over it all again, Latin included, we would beg for
mercy, or, if we happened to be lawyers, ask for an adjournment. It is
“a wise dispensation of Providence”—if one may be permitted to refer to
the mandates of Providence in that patronizing way—that the old have
their pleasures too and that the boys and girls are not violating any
congressional or legislative provisions against trusts by having a
monopoly of enjoyment. Most of these pleasures are associated with
books. Talleyrand’s sad, wistless old age is of no moment when compared
with a sad bookless old age.
The accusation that the lover of books cares more for them than he does
about life and its varied problems, is as unjust as the complaint,
preferred—semi-jocosely, it must be owned—by that pertinacious
bibliophile, Irving Browne, that “the book-worm does not care for
nature”. He quotes the animal as saying:
“I feel no need of nature’s flowers,—
Of flowers of rhetoric I have store;
I do not miss the balmy showers—
When books are dry I o’er them pore.
No need that I should take the trouble
To go abroad to walk or ride,
For I can sit at home and double
Quite up with pain from Akenside.”
The punster is such a derelict, such a scoffed-at sinner, that he may
not be taken very seriously. Others than Browne however, have gravely
reproached the devotee of the library for his alleged lack of affection
for the outer world and its beauties. But the man who knows his Gilbert
White of Selborne, and his John Burroughs of the Hudson, cannot be
wholly outside the ranks of nature-lovers. We may be uttering a truism
when we say that as we grow older we come closer to mother earth, and as
we strike off more and more years from our calendar all the sweet things
of earth are nearer to us and the trees, the flowers, the fields, and
the wide expanse of hill, river and valley take on a new meaning. A few
days ago I “took a drive”, if one may avail of that wretched colloquial
form of words, to the hamlet of Bedminster, name suggestive of Axminster
with its carpets and Westminster with its monuments, as far as the site
of the old church which was ruthlessly and needlessly destroyed by
iconoclasts within a year or two. It was a delightful autumn drive, the
joy of it tempered by the abominable automobile which infests our New
Jersey roads with its hoots and stinks and cloudy mantle of dust: and
the bookish associations surely did not detract from the pleasure. There
is a good picture of the church in Melick’s “Story of an Old Farm”, a
book containing a mine of information about a neighborhood filled with
associations of the Revolution. When you pass by the graveyard which
still remains, you cannot help thinking of the young English officer,
wounded and captured at Princeton, who died on the journey to Morristown
and was buried in that field where his monument remains at this day.
Melick’s book is disorderly and needs condensing and arranging, but let
no one tell me that the natural beauty of the country is lessened for me
because I study it. It is one of those most often to be found on the
library table in company with Ludwig Schumacher’s pretty story of the
“Somerset Hills”.
Many of us may recall from our own experience examples of the peace and
contentment, the grace and the dignity of book-lovers who have
understood how to combine their pleasure with the active affairs of
business. I remember affectionately one who had passed beyond the years
of what Elisha Williams called “God Almighty’s statute of limitations”,
and who went to his rest only a few months ago. Elbridge Goss, of
Melrose, was a type of a New England gentleman, a man of business as
well as a lover of literature and of historical pursuits, fond of his
books and autographs, all in a mild, modest and unobtrusive way; a
gentle, admirable man, deserving of esteem and honor. There was no
pretense about him; he had a delightful simplicity, a true catholicity
of sentiment; there was no envy, hatred or malice in his composition.
His “Life of Paul Revere” has long been known favorably, and his other
works, chiefly historical, were no less meritorious. His was a full,
useful and well rounded life, and although his name may not be recorded
among the famous, it will not be forgotten.
Some weeks before his death, he wrote to me thus: “As to your copy of
Coleridge, has it the expunged verse from ‘The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner’? The genial Longfellow once picked up his copy from his
centre-table and read it to me as follows:
‘A gust of wind sterte up behind
And whistled thro’ his bones,
Thro’ the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth
Half whistles and half groans.’
When Coleridge saw it in print, he took his pencil, crossed it off, and
wrote in the margin, ‘To be struck out. S. T. C.’ It did not appear in
subsequent editions.” Coleridge did well to erase it for it is
dangerously near to the ludicrous.
Whether the poet’s later emendations of his published verses are always
improvements is problematical. We have been surfeited of late with
examples of Tennyson’s amendments. He seems never to have been wholly
satisfied with his work. In Buxton Forman’s “Keat’s Poetry and Prose”,
one may perceive that a poet’s changes while sometimes making the lines
smoother, almost invariably weaken the effect. It is so with Byron. The
first thought and image, coming fresh from the brain, are usually more
vigorous and poetic than the sober second-thoughts, and alterations
appear to enfeeble the expression. It is Doctor Johnson’s “wit enough to
keep it sweet” and the “putrefaction” amendment all over again. That, my
friend who loves to ask “Why first editions?” is one of the reasons why.
The reference to Buxton Forman leads me to record an amusing bit of
characteristic English newspaper wisdom. Some years ago in a book about
autographs I ventured to make some remarks concerning Keats and Forman
which drew down upon me the sneers of a London journal, the purport of
which was that my observations were vulgar and peculiarly American.
After I had recovered from the exaltation of spirit arising from being
noticed at all by such an eminent authority, I permitted myself to
indulge in justifiable mirth because it happened that I had stolen those
very remarks from an old number of the London _Athenæum_ in which my
Keats letter had been copied and described: but according to the well
known custom of plagiarists, I had accidentally omitted the quotation
marks. I inferred that an English assertion becomes vulgar only when it
is repeated by a despicable Yankee. Never again will I be guilty of
petit larceny.
This matter of quotations is often a troublesome one. I am sorry now
that I left out those neat little commas. The orator has an unfair
advantage over the writer, because he is not obliged to use them, and in
common justice he should be required to give some sign that the eloquent
sentences he borrows are not his own: he might be compelled to hold up
two fingers. A good, well rounded quotation is a great help when ideas
grow so timid that they refuse to come at your call. I suppose that a
lawyer who is asked to speak before assemblages, on some legal topic,
almost always consults _Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations_, where he finds
little to aid him except that respectable old stand-by, “The seat of the
law is the bosom of God; her voice, the harmony of the world”. It sounds
well and it makes a sonorous finale, besides giving the impression that
the quoter is accustomed to occupy himself with the works of fine old
authors: although it always seemed to me that when applied to what we
call “the law” in these times, it is rather highly colored. A friend who
was an admirer of the sentiment once carefully prepared an “address” to
be delivered before the Maryland Bar Association, and had it printed in
advance, lugging in the famous lines at the close of his peroration. To
his horror, the learned President of the Association, who spoke
immediately before him, and who evidently had a _Bartlett_ of his own,
closed an admirable speech with the same old “seat” and “bosom” story.
There was nothing to be done but to pour it forth again upon the heads
of those helpless Marylanders, on whom it must have had a “punch
brothers” effect; but that man will never trot out the “harmony” yarn
again unless he is sure that he is to have the first chance at it.
Mr. James Ford Rhodes in an entertaining paper about Edward Gibbon,
expresses his belief that the historian of Rome’s decline and fall
thought with Thucydides “My history is an everlasting possession, not a
prize composition which is heard and forgotten”. It is not a
particularly novel observation, but a faded pamphlet lying before me is
a reminder of the fact that “prize compositions”, “prize poems”, and
“poems on occasions” are always much the same as they were in the time
of Thucydides, feeble things, and the wonder is why men go on
encouraging them and why sane people continue to produce them, unless
there is a fond hope that some of them may turn out to be as good as
“The Builders” of Henry Van Dyke or the great Commemoration Ode of James
Russell Lowell. Even the devoted worshipers of the Autocrat must admit
that as his college class drew nearer to the front rank of the Alumni
processions, his reunion-verses grew quite tiresome; but no one could go
on for some seventy years writing anniversary stanzas on the same theme
without degenerating into the commonplace. The pamphlet is a little one
of thirteen pages, entitled “Pompeii, A Poem which obtained the
Chancellor’s Medal at the Cambridge Commencement, July, 1819; by Thomas
Babington Macaulay, of Trinity College.” It was of this juvenile poem
that the boyish author wrote to his father on February 5, 1819: “I have
not, of course, had time to examine with attention all your criticism on
‘Pompeii’. I certainly am much obliged to you for withdrawing so much
time from more important business to correct my expressions. Most of the
remarks which I have examined are perfectly just; but as to the more
momentous charge, the want of a moral, I think it might be a sufficient
defence that, if a subject is given which admits of none, the man who
writes without a moral is scarcely censurable.”[1] Poets, whether young
or old, seldom take kindly to criticism of their lines, but one cannot
help feeling some sympathy with the youthful Thomas in his gentle
rebellion against the unpoetic demand of his somewhat priggish parent
for a “moral”, although the subject of “Pompeii” ought to be far more
fruitful of “morals” than that which ten years later was inflicted upon
Tennyson, whose “Timbuctoo” carried off the prize in 1829. The
Laureate’s successful “piece” is less impressive than Thackeray’s biting
burlesque—not of Tennyson but of everything produced on that absurd
theme—beginning something like this:
“In Africa—a quarter of the world—
Men’s skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled,
And somewhere there, unknown to public view,
A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.”
Tennyson competed because his father wished him to, and “in place of
preparing a new poem he furbished up an old one written in blank verse
instead of the orthodox heroic couplet and sent it in.”[2] Milnes wrote
at the time, “Tennyson’s poem has made quite a sensation; it is
certainly equal to most parts of Milton!” The future Lord Houghton was a
cheerful, genial person, if he _was_ guilty of the most abominable
handwriting I ever encountered, for the celebrated scrawls of James
Payn, Charles Darwin and Horace Greeley are copperplate script in
comparison; and Milnes was only twenty then. I knew quite a number of
Tennysons and Miltons, of the mute, inglorious sort, when I was enjoying
the enthusiasms of that period of life, under the shadow of the
Princeton elms; but somehow their chariots have all been transformed
into motor-cars, although they have avoided the fate of Phaëthon, that
mythological prototype of a chauffeur.
“Pompeii”, naturally enough, is a fair example of the stilted verse
which a bright lad might well have written in 1819. He tells us, among
other interesting details, how
“In vain Vesuvius groans with wrath supprest,
And mutter’d thunder in his burning breast,
Long since the Eagle from that flaming peak
Hath soar’d with screams a safer nest to seek.
Aw’d by th’ infernal beacon’s fitful glare
The howling fox hath left his wonted lair;
Nor dares the browzing goat in vent’rous leap
To spring, as erst, from dizzy steep to steep;”
the moral, which father Zachary failed to detect, being that these
intelligent brutes had much more foresight than mere Man, and had wisely
decided that a volcano in eruption was “no place for them”.
Poor as prize poems may be as poetry, some famous men have not disdained
to enter into the competitions. Lord Selborne’s effort gained for him
the Newdigate prize in 1832, and was deemed worthy of publication in
_Blackwood_. The list of prize winners in the two great Universities
might well be worth studying, even if the poetry came from the machine
and not from inspiration. Byron’s Address on the opening of the new
Drury Lane has not survived, but the “Rejected Addresses”, spontaneous
and _hors concours_, will never be wholly forgotten. Indeed a grave
personage is recorded as saying of them that he did not understand why
they should have been rejected, as some of them were very good.
A book-lover may think that he has an affection for all books, but he
surely must draw the line at law-books, books of theology and medical
treatises. So many people who have a notion that a book is valuable to a
collector merely because it is old, will insist on bringing to me, in
the kindness of their hearts, ancient theological tomes, for example,
which are in fact less desirable than old Directories and not for a
moment to be compared with old Almanacs. I have a friend who is enamored
of school-books and books on mathematics; a mania that has method in it
and I can understand the merit of it better than I can the pursuit of
first editions of Trollope. He has a remarkable collection and has
printed a catalogue in two volumes, not only complete in all details but
a handsome specimen of book-making. He showed me a copy once, and in a
moment of hallucination I thought that he was going to give it to me,
but he carried it away. I am not sure that I would be interested in the
collection, and he cares as little for my autographs as I do for his
arithmetics. I was silly enough to speak of my hobby while he was
fussing with his catalogue and I saw his eyes assume that far-away look
which meant that he heard me and that was all. When any one with feigned
interest says, “I would like so much to see your autographs”, I smile
inwardly, if such a feat is possible, and I know that it is only one of
those polite fictions which go so far towards making life pleasant. Very
few people, especially those with a pet hobby of their own, care a straw
about other people’s collections, except perhaps in the matter of
paintings, which, to use an abominable but familiar phrase, is
“altogether a different proposition”. The other man’s collection seldom
assumes importance until the auctioneer falls heir to it. For collectors
seldom have much sympathy with collectors who occupy different fields
from theirs: indeed I have found more true sympathy between collectors
and non-collectors. Steele in one of the numbers of the _Tatler_ deals
with the mania of collecting and makes much poor fun of one Nicholas
Gimcrack, an entomologist, who spent a fortune in accumulating insects;
but entomologists have their uses and perhaps Gimcrack, if such a person
ever lived, might have retorted that his spiders were as well worth
having as Sir Richard’s unparalleled collection of unpaid bills. There
are useful features of postage-stamp collecting; there are attractions
about the hoards of numismatists; one can see why even game-chickens may
be profitably “collected”; but I fancy that the hobby of a lady of my
acquaintance—the collecting of pianos—might be attended with
inconveniences. I fear that the hapless being who confesses that he is
an autograph collector receives the most general condemnation. I once
had a notion of bringing together what might be called the by-products
of autograph-collecting,—a collection of all the ill-natured and abusive
things ever written or printed about autograph collectors from the
beginning of the world to the present day, but it would probably fill a
book as big as my Boydell Shakespeare, which is so unwieldy that I have
had serious thoughts of hiring the tower of the Metropolitan Life
Building to hold it. Yet how kind some of our busiest and greatest men
have been to the wretches who “write for autographs”; the record of
their long-suffering patience would fill another large volume.
There are other manifestations of the autograph fever almost as
troublesome as the familiar prayer for the signature of the person
addressed; there is, for example, the begging of autographs of other
people which the victim is supposed to possess. Hawthorne, when applied
to in this manner, became quite fierce and intimated with some vigor
that the letters of his friends were valuable to him and not to be
parted with. The venerable Bishop White was more gentle, when beset by
that pioneer of American collectors, Doctor William B. Sprague. There is
a pleasant, old-fashioned dignity about the Bishop’s letter which tempts
me to reproduce it from the original now lying on the library table. It
is a model, and if I ever wrote to men soliciting gifts of that
order—which heaven forbid!—it is just the sort of reply that I would
like to receive. The Bishop’s portraits always make me think of what
Aldrich said of Wordsworth—that he gave him the impression of wanting
milk: with his benign placidity it is no wonder that he lived until his
eighty-ninth year.
“Philad^a, Feb. 12, 1823.