“Good, amiable Nodier,” are the words by which the world, apart from
scholars, characterizes Charles Nodier. He is portrayed with a flowered
vest, and a frock-coat with great lapels, finished by one of those
collars which, by an easy play upon words, are called _les cols
(l’école) des vieillards_. Nodier’s collar, which turned up slightly at
the points in a Prudhommesque manner, touched the corners of his
refined, kindly mouth; but it is difficult immediately to associate the
remembrance of certain books with this 1835 face, for time obliterates
everything.
If Nodier belonged by right of his first literary impressions to the
classical school, his liberal spirit soon identified itself with that of
the romanticists. His face, full of genial originality, bore the
characteristics of a man living between two literary epochs; but history
little by little soon effaced all these tints and shades. Nodier was
also one of those improvisators who talked their books. Contemporaries,
in reading them, seemed to hear him speak, and a little imagination
added to the surprises of these written conversations; but when the
voice ceases the charm vanishes.
It is certain that the reader of to-day is somewhat at a loss in the
company of a book of Nodier’s, and feels very much as when, in a
military panorama, he sees the wheel of a real caisson, and often a
veritable cannon and cannon-ball, which at first sight blend with the
painted canvas, until it is difficult to say where the actual ends and
the illusion begins. If we read his reminiscences and studies of his own
time in a credulous spirit, we shall constantly say, “Nodier is
mistaken; what he tells us is not only wholly improbable but impossible,
and is completely at variance with history”--until the wise reader
decides that Nodier’s entire writings should bear the title of one of
his books, “Contes et Fantaisies.”
Perhaps it would be interesting to separate the true from the false in
these works of Nodier, and to show how the thread of truth disappears
under his embroidery. In confining the investigation to this little
book, “The Bibliomaniac,” taken from “Les Contes de la Veillée,”[1] and
rejuvenated by the illustrations of Maurice Leloir, one may have the
pleasure of bringing to light, by the aid of letters and comparisons,
the best and most absorbing passion that controlled Nodier. Is it not a
summary of his passion, from the first lines? If he left the Arsenal
Library, where he had been appointed librarian at the end of the year
1823 by a bibliographical minister, M. de Corbière, it was to stroll
among the old book-dealers. If he wrote to the friend of his childhood,
who became his lifelong confidant, his fellow-countryman of
Franche-Comté, Charles Weiss, it was a litany of bibliographical
enthusiasm. Small as his means were, Nodier had the incurable mania of
book-buying. The noun and the adjective are his own words. But, he said
one day, this craze is no more vain in its final results than any other
of the illusions of life. Also, in perusing the sayings of the hero of
this story, Theodore, we feel that Nodier sympathizes with him from the
bottom of his heart. Theodore sometimes resembles him like a brother,
and we cannot help regretting that Nodier could not wholly make up his
mind to amuse himself fully at his own expense, or to take from real
life a man he knew very well, rather than treat him incidentally.
This original and true bibliomaniac, for Nodier’s Theodore is merely a
degenerate bibliophile, was celebrated at the time of the Restoration.
He was a lawyer named Boulard, who, instead of admiring an imposing row
of books in his cabinet, like his fellows, only took pleasure in
arranging them on the shelves, or in piling them up in his closets. His
library was scattered everywhere in this strange study, which overflowed
with cheap literature from auction sales. Finally, there was such an
invasion of books that Boulard, becoming the owner of the house in which
he lived, expelled all his tenants in turn, and took possession himself
of floor after floor for the storage of his books. After this he bought
six other houses which he turned into depositories for books. One day,
when Nodier asked him for a certain book, Boulard, going from one house
to another, struck the stacks, the walls, the ramparts, of books with
his cane, saying in triumphant irony, “It is either here or there.”
Boulard, growing ill, and no longer able to go out, had the books
brought to his bed. He handled them, asked their price, and held them up
with admiring affection. As his memory became more and more impaired, he
would buy the same book three or four times over. His family, worried at
his growing mania, and not desiring to oppose the fervor of his wishes,
which were turning violently to certain fixed ideas, conceived the plan
of showing him a great part of his own books, which he no longer
recognized, as if they were new acquisitions. This gave him a joyous
surprise at every moment, and Boulard, having thus delightfully reviewed
all his past life, went to sleep forever, over a book, in 1825.
The remembrance of his death doubtless inspired Nodier with the
half-sad, half-amusing ending of his Bibliomaniac. Boulard was the type
of bibliomaniac whose progressive malady would be the most interesting
to study. What was Nodier’s object, then, in searching here and there
for materials with which to sketch an imaginary figure, when the notary
was at hand? Nodier always followed the plan of taking his imagination
as a guide; but imagination has also its moods and caprices, and it is a
mistake for an author to be so fanciful that he ceases to follow the
simple and fertile lead of nature.
Nodier could have chosen still another original, the Dutch baron
Westreeven van Tiellandt. This extraordinary person kept his library
under triple lock for forty years. One day, however, in an access of
good feeling, he said to two of his best friends: “You have often
expressed a desire to see my books. I want to oblige you both, but you
must submit to certain conditions: before entering my library you must
each put on a dressing-gown which I have expressly prepared, because
your clothes might be saturated with a smell which is bad for books; and
you must wear the slippers that I have provided, because your shoes
might be full of dangerous dust.” The baron, however, invariably found
an excuse for postponing the visit to his library, and died without
having kept his promise. As the baron survived Nodier some years, this
last feature could not have been portrayed with its attendant moral. The
“Bulletin du Bibliophile,” which owed its existence in part to Nodier,
took upon itself the baron’s funeral oration and reproduced his will. In
leaving his library to the city of The Hague, the baron stipulated that
it should be open only on the first and third Thursdays of each month,
and only to people who had been provided the preceding day with cards of
admission. “Never,” he said, “under any pretext, shall the books or
manuscripts be taken outside the reading-room.” No further purchases
were to be made, except to complete the collections which he had himself
begun--he whose restless and jealous spirit wished to hover around his
books.
Avarice, either in the Latin sense of the word or in its more modern
meaning, is the agony of a man who is made to tremble by every trifle
when he contemplates his possessions. Some of these bibliomaniacs are
like very rich people, of whom it is said, “They leave a great fortune.”
The verb “to leave” has here rather an ironical meaning. It is as much
as saying that they have amassed wealth without having been themselves
the gainers thereby.
The book-collector belongs to a race of refined egotists. He knows and
tastes the subtle, intense joy which comes from the sight and possession
of a fine book. Even before opening it, he handles it caressingly,
touching its pages lightly as he would the wings of a butterfly.
In order not to stray too far from the pictures of other days which
Nodier evoked, let us look at the charming type of a book-collector who
was worthy of the name: Silvestre de Sacy. During the eighteen years of
the reign of Louis Philippe, Sacy might have been seen lounging along
the quays, on his way to the Palais Bourbon, where he followed the
parliamentary debates in his journalistic vocation, carrying almost
always a selection of Madame de Sévigné’s letters in his hand. When he
returned home it was to take Montaigne, Bossuet, or some other classic,
clothed in bindings worthy of them, from a shelf close at hand. By this
daily reading he added to his mixture of Christianity and philosophy;
but as he cared only for the best editions, he was afraid of rich men,
and regarded them as the absorbers of fine books. _Multi vocati, pauci
lecti_,--many are called, but few read,--was what D’Argenson had
already proposed as an inscription for the library of a _fermier
général_.[2] Sacy, when he dreamed, on the eve of a book sale, of this
or that volume which he coveted, and which he feared he might not be
able to hold successfully against the fancy or caprice of some
financier, would have palpitation of the heart. Prévost-Paradol wrote of
him: “This Christian, whom some would like to call austere, if the word
austerity could cover so much forbearance and perfect gentleness, became
a sort of epicure in all that concerned his reading.”
The love of books was such a part of his life that when some one asked
for his autograph, to add to one of his lithographic portraits,--a
picture in which he lives again, peaceful, mischievous, and benevolent,
all at the same time, like a citizen of the true, liberal, and literary
race,--he could not refrain from declaring, in a half page which is
reproduced in facsimile, that of all passions that of the book-collector
is ever the best. Even though his eyes suffered severely from fatigue,
it did not discourage his ardent affection for his books. Has he not
said in one of those confidences in which lies the charm of his
criticisms, “If I become blind I think I shall still take pleasure in
holding a beautiful book in my hand. I shall at least feel the softness
of its binding, and imagine that I can see it: I have seen so many!”
“O my beloved books,” he wrote in connection with the dispersion of a
library, “some day you will also be exhibited in an auction-room, when
you will pass into other hands, owners perhaps less worthy of you than
your present master. Yet these books that I have selected, one by one,
are truly mine, collected by the sweat of my brow; and I love them so,
that it seems to me they have become a part of my very soul by such a
long and precious intercourse.”
There speaks the bibliophile, who loves books as they ought to be loved,
who lives with them, asks their advice, and cherishes and protects them
against their numerous enemies. An English typographer[3] thus
enumerates the enemies of books: “Fire, water, gas, heat, dust, neglect,
ignorance, rats, mice, and finally bookbinders,”--adding the last with
the sudden anger of a man who has suffered by having some fine book
hopelessly cut down. He might have mentioned an enemy still more
dangerous, the most difficult of all to vanquish--an enemy of every day
and hour, ever present, and ready alike for open warfare or for
subterfuge: woman.
With a few rare and conspicuous exceptions, women are anti-bibliophiles
or book-haters. A book in their eyes is merely a newspaper: they crease
and crumple it as they turn its leaves. Lacking a paper-knife to cut the
edges, they use a card, a pin, or even a hair-pin. If a rare book is
under discussion, they appear more interested in the smallest trifle
than in all the first editions that exist. They prefer a scrap of ribbon
to the most exquisite binding. If you take from its shrine a miniature
volume, unique enough to make a book-lover turn pale with delight, do
not trust it to a woman, for in opening it she will split its back. The
best of husbands may give the key of his safe to his wife, but he must
not give her, even for one moment, the key of his library. A woman
should never be left alone with a book, and such in fact should be the
rule with all married book-lovers.
Nodier said that, after woman, books are the most delightful things in
the world. Why do not women comprehend this, and increase their
influence by their appreciation of books?
Following the bibliomaniac who hoards, and the bibliophile who collects,
according to the very correct terms of Nodier, come the amateurs of the
old book-cult. Nodier and Sacy give them the incorrect title of
_bouquiniste_ (dealer in old books), when their knowledge as
Academicians should have made them use the word _bouquineur_ (old-book
hunter) in order to avoid confusion. To their ears _bouquiniste_
evidently had a pleasing sound. How Sacy despised the collector of
dirty, damaged books, which were fit only to be sent to a book-hospital,
supposing such a place to exist!
“I know him!” cried Sacy in a rage,--“this amateur who buys books for
three or five cents, or in a moment of folly even paying as much as six
cents. In other things he is a man of wit and taste, a polite man and a
good companion, whose only depravity is concerning books.”
If you have the curiosity to learn the identity of this charming man
with the single unpardonable fault, it can be found in a little book of
memoirs by Étienne Delécluze, an editor of the “Journal des Débats.” He
says that nothing was more amusing than the quarrels which arose between
Sacy and Saint-Marc Girardin on the subject of books--the one being
unable to find either text or binding of sufficient beauty to express
the admiration inspired by the writings of Cicero and Molière, Fénelon
and Montaigne; the other careless about the exterior condition of a
book, but eager to know its contents. These two charming minds have
created laughter more than once when, in answer to the tantalizing tone
in which Saint-Marc uttered the word _bibliophile_ (collector of best
editions), Sacy would reply with humorous gaiety, “You are only a
_bouquiniste_” (old-book dealer).
While these figures float and vanish, between the lines of the
bibliomaniac appears the figure of a philosophic _bouquineur_, who comes
closer to us, and who has often been seen by the frequenters of the
quays. It is Xavier Marmier. He walked from box to box with short steps,
his only journeys then being among the trays of the book-dealers--this
man who in former times had been such a great traveller. A little broken
by his eighty years, and his lower lip drooping, his expression at the
same time was kindly and intelligent, bearing the marks both of easy
skepticism and extreme good will. He would turn the books over, ask the
price, and slip two or three volumes into the deep pockets of his blue
coat.
One day he said to me, with an air of triumph, “I have just bought the
first edition of one of my own books. This fact of its being the first
edition, however, does not add much to the value of the book; but these
‘Lettres sur le Nord’ have shivered so long in the box, and have spent
so many weeks in the same place, that I took pity on them.”
Then Marmier told me with provincial gaiety that the seller--a gamin
who, strangely enough, did not know him--had asked him two francs for
the copy.
“Two francs!” exclaimed Marmier.
“Yes, sir; that is what it is worth. It is by Marmier.”
“Hum! hum! I know that it is by Marmier, but that does not make it worth
two francs.”
“But, sir, he is an Academician.”
“]Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, sir; it says so on the cover.”
“But has he not been dead a long time?”
“That I do not know, but it is possible that he has.”
“See here,” said Marmier, “dead or alive he is not worth more than
thirty sous.”
“Well, then, you may have it.”
And Marmier, very happy, took the book, intending to give it to some old
friend, “who perhaps will not sell it before to-morrow,” he said.
Dear, good man, who from searching in many boxes had found true
wisdom--not to be deceived, and to be lenient. “Ah! book-hunting is the
best passion that I can wish you,” he said, the last time that I saw
him, when he was weak, and walked with difficulty, but looked calmly
into the face of death.
Bouquinistes, bibliophiles, and bibliomaniacs all live happily because
of this passion, and bless it. Charles Nodier knew its delightful
anxieties so well that, a few hours before he died, his last thought--so
his daughter Madame Mennessier-Nodier writes, in the book that she has
affectionately consecrated to him--was to dictate an account of a few
trifling debts that he owed his binders and the booksellers.