Books and Bookmen Part 6

Blinton did not care for folk lore (very bad men never do), but he had to act as he was told.

Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire the 'Ethics' of Aristotle, in the agreeable versions of Williams and Chase. Next he secured 'Strathmore,' 'Chandos,' 'Under Two Flags,'

and 'Two Little Wooden Shoes,' and several dozens more of Ouida's novels. The next stall was entirely filled with school-books, old geographies, Livys, Delectuses, Arnold's 'Greek Exercises,'

Ollendorffs, and what not.

"Buy them all," hissed the fiend. He seized whole boxes and piled them on Blinton's head.

He tied up Ouida's novels, in two parcels, with string, and fastened each to one of the b.u.t.tons above the tails of Blinton's coat.

"You are tired?" asked the tormentor. "Never mind, these books will soon be off your hands."

So speaking, the Stranger, with amazing speed, hurried Blinton back through Holywell Street, along the Strand, and up to Piccadilly, stopping at last at the door of Blinton's famous and very expensive binder.

The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of Blinton's treasures. Then the miserable Blinton found himself, as it were automatically and without any exercise of his will, speaking thus:-

"Here are some things I have picked up,--extremely rare,--and you will oblige me by binding them in your best manner, regardless of expense. Morocco, of course; crushed levant morocco, double, every book of them, pet.i.ts fers, my crest and coat of arms, plenty of gilding. Spare no cost. Don't keep me waiting, as you generally do;" for indeed book-binders are the most dilatory of the human species.

Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary questions, Blinton's tormentor had hurried that amateur out of the room.

"Come on to the sale," he cried.

"What sale?" said Blinton.

"Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a lucky day."

"But I have forgotten my catalogue."

"Where is it?"

"In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side of the ebony book-case at home."

The stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated itself till the hand disappeared from view round the corner. In a moment the hand returned with the catalogue. The pair sped on to Messrs.

Sotheby's auction-rooms in Wellington Street. Every one knows the appearance of a great book-sale. The long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles from a little distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort of excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct himself. If he bids in his own person some bookseller will outbid him, partly because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows little about books, and suspects that the amateur may, in this case, know more. Besides, professionals always dislike amateurs, and, in this game, they have a very great advantage. Blinton knew all this, and was in the habit of giving his commissions to a broker. But now he felt (and very naturally) as if a demon had entered into him. 'Tirante il Bianco Valorosissimo Cavaliere' was being competed for, an excessively rare romance of chivalry, in magnificent red Venetian morocco, from Canevari's library. The book is one of the rarest of the Venetian Press, and beautifully adorned with Canevari's device,--a simple and elegant affair in gold and colours. "Apollo is driving his chariot across the green waves towards the rock, on which winged Pegasus is pawing the ground," though why this action of a horse should be called "pawing" (the animal notoriously not possessing paws) it is hard to say. Round this graceful design is the inscription [Greek text] (straight not crooked). In his ordinary mood Blinton could only have admired 'Tirante il Bianco' from a distance. But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into the lists, and challenged the great Mr. -, the Napoleon of bookselling. The price had already reached five hundred pounds.

"Six hundred," cried Blinton.

"Guineas," said the great Mr. -.

"Seven hundred," screamed Blinton.

"Guineas," replied the other.

This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. -- struck his flag, with a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said "Six thousand." The cheers of the audience rewarded the largest bid ever made for any book. As if he had not done enough, the Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend with Mr. -- for every expensive work that appeared. The audience naturally fancied that Blinton was in the earlier stage of softening of the brain, when a man conceives himself to have inherited boundless wealth, and is determined to live up to it. The hammer fell for the last time. Blinton owed some fifty thousand pounds, and exclaimed audibly, as the influence of the fiend died out, "I am a ruined man."

"Then your books must be sold," cried the Stranger, and, leaping on a chair, he addressed the audience:-

"Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton's sale, which will immediately take place. The collection contains some very remarkable early English poets, many first editions of the French cla.s.sics, most of the rarer Aldines, and a singular a.s.sortment of Americana."

In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room were filled with Blinton's books, all tied up in big lots of some thirty volumes each. His early Molieres were fastened to old French dictionaries and school-books. His Shakespeare quartos were in the same lot with tattered railway novels. His copy (almost unique) of Richard Barnfield's much too 'Affectionate Shepheard' was coupled with odd volumes of 'Chips from a German Workshop' and a cheap, imperfect example of 'Tom Brown's School-Days.' Hookes's 'Amanda' was at the bottom of a lot of American devotional works, where it kept company with an Elzevir Tacitus and the Aldine 'Hypnerotomachia.' The auctioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the whole affair was a "knock-out." His most treasured spoils were parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an awful thing to be present at one's own sale. No man would bid above a few s.h.i.+llings.

Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. At last his 'Adonais,' uncut, bound by Lortic, went, in company with some old 'Bradshaws,' the 'Court Guide' of 1881, and an odd volume of the 'Sunday at Home,'

for sixpence. The Stranger smiled a smile of peculiar malignity.

Blinton leaped up to protest; the room seemed to shake around him, but words would not come to his lips.

Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp shook his shoulder,--

"Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying!"

He was in his own arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep after dinner, and Mrs. Blinton was doing her best to arouse him from his awful vision. Beside him lay 'L'Enfer du Bibliophile, vu et decrit par Charles a.s.selineau.' (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX.)

If this were an ordinary tract, I should have to tell how Blinton's eyes were opened, how he gave up book-collecting, and took to gardening, or politics, or something of that sort. But truth compels me to admit that Blinton's repentance had vanished by the end of the week, when he was discovered marking M. Claudin's catalogue, surrept.i.tiously, before breakfast. Thus, indeed, end all our remorses. "Lancelot falls to his own love again," as in the romance. Much, and justly, as theologians decry a death-bed repentance, it is, perhaps, the only repentance that we do not repent of. All others leave us ready, when occasion comes, to fall to our old love again; and may that love never be worse than the taste for old books! Once a collector, always a collector. Moi qui parle, I have sinned, and struggled, and fallen. I have thrown catalogues, unopened, into the waste-paper basket. I have withheld my feet from the paths that lead to Sotheby's and to Puttick's. I have crossed the street to avoid a book-stall. In fact, like the prophet Nicholas, "I have been known to be steady for weeks at a time." And then the fatal moment of temptation has arrived, and I have succ.u.mbed to the soft seductions of Eisen, or Cochin, or an old book on Angling. Probably Grolier was thinking of such weaknesses when he chose his devices Tanquam Ventus, and quisque suos patimur Manes. Like the wind we are blown about, and, like the people in the AEneid, we are obliged to suffer the consequences of our own extravagance.

BALLADE OF THE UNATTAINABLE

The Books I cannot hope to buy, Their phantoms round me waltz and wheel, They pa.s.s before the dreaming eye, Ere Sleep the dreaming eye can seal.

A kind of literary reel They dance; how fair the bindings s.h.i.+ne!

Prose cannot tell them what I feel,-- The Books that never can be mine!

There frisk Editions rare and shy, Morocco clad from head to heel; Shakspearian quartos; Comedy As first she flashed from Richard Steele; And quaint De Foe on Mrs. Veal; And, lord of landing net and line, Old Izaak with his fis.h.i.+ng creel,-- The Books that never can be mine!

Incunables! for you I sigh, Black letter, at thy founts I kneel, Old tales of Perrault's nursery, For you I'd go without a meal!

For Books wherein did Aldus deal And rare Galliot du Pre I pine.

The watches of the night reveal The Books that never can be mine!

ENVOY.

Prince, bear a hopeless Bard's appeal; Reverse the rules of Mine and Thine; Make it legitimate to steal The Books that never can be mine!

LADY BOOK-LOVERS

The biographer of Mrs. Aphra Behn refutes the vulgar error that "a Dutchman cannot love." Whether or not a lady can love books is a question that may not be so readily settled. Mr. Ernest Quentin Bauchart has contributed to the discussion of this problem by publis.h.i.+ng a bibliography, in two quarto volumes, of books which have been in the libraries of famous beauties of old, queens and princesses of France. There can be no doubt that these ladies were possessors of exquisite printed books and ma.n.u.scripts wonderfully bound, but it remains uncertain whether the owners, as a rule, were bibliophiles; whether their hearts were with their treasures.

Incredible as it may seem to us now, literature was highly respected in the past, and was even fas.h.i.+onable. Poets were in favour at court, and Fas.h.i.+on decided that the great must possess books, and not only books, but books produced in the utmost perfection of art, and bound with all the skill at the disposal of Clovis Eve, and Padeloup, and Duseuil. Therefore, as Fas.h.i.+on gave her commands, we cannot hastily affirm that the ladies who obeyed were really book- lovers. In our more polite age, Fas.h.i.+on has decreed that ladies shall smoke, and bet, and romp, but it would be premature to a.s.sert that all ladies who do their duty in these matters are born romps, or have an unaffected liking for cigarettes. History, however, maintains that many of the renowned dames whose books are now the most treasured of literary relics were actually inclined to study as well as to pleasure, like Marguerite de Valois and the Comtesse de Verrue, and even Madame de Pompadour. Probably books and arts were more to this lady's liking than the diversions by which she beguiled the tedium of Louis XV.; and many a time she would rather have been quiet with her plays and novels than engaged in conscientiously conducted but distasteful revels.

Like a true Frenchman, M. Bauchart has only written about French lady book-lovers, or about women who, like Mary Stuart, were more than half French. Nor would it be easy for an English author to name, outside the ranks of crowned heads, like Elizabeth, any Englishwomen of distinction who had a pa.s.sion for the material side of literature, for binding, and first editions, and large paper, and engravings in early "states." The practical s.e.x, when studious, is like the same s.e.x when fond of equestrian exercise. "A lady says, 'My heyes, he's an 'orse, and he must go,'" according to Leech's groom. In the same way, a studious girl or matron says, "This is a book," and reads it, if read she does, without caring about the date, or the state, or the publisher's name, or even very often about the author's. I remember, before the publication of a novel now celebrated, seeing a privately printed vellum-bound copy on large paper in the hands of a literary lady. She was holding it over the fire, and had already made the vellum covers curl wide open like the sh.e.l.ls of an afflicted oyster.

When I asked what the volume was, she explained that "It is a book which a poor man has written, and he's had it printed to see whether some one won't be kind enough to publish it." I ventured, perhaps pedantically, to point out that the poor man could not be so very poor, or he would not have made so costly an experiment on Dutch paper. But the lady said she did not know how that might be, and she went on toasting the experiment. In all this there is a fine contempt for everything but the spiritual aspect of literature; there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and display of morocco and red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of men. Where ladies have caught "the Bibliomania," I fancy they have taken this pretty fever from the other s.e.x. But it must be owned that the books they have possessed, being rarer and more romantic, are even more highly prized by amateurs than examples from the libraries of Grolier, and Longepierre, and D'Hoym. M. Bauchart's book is a complete guide to the collector of these expensive relics. He begins his dream of fair women who have owned books with the pearl of the Valois, Marguerite d'Angouleme, the sister of Francis I. The remains of her library are chiefly devotional ma.n.u.scripts. Indeed, it is to be noted that all these ladies, however frivolous, possessed the most devout and pious books, and whole collections of prayers copied out by the pen, and decorated with miniatures.

Marguerite's library was bound in morocco, stamped with a crowned M in interlacs sown with daisies, or, at least, with conventional flowers which may have been meant for daisies. If one could choose, perhaps the most desirable of the specimens extant is 'Le Premier Livre du Prince des Poetes, Homere,' in Salel's translation. For this translation Ronsard writes a prologue, addressed to the manes of Salel, in which he complains that he is ridiculed for his poetry.

He draws a characteristic picture of Homer and Salel in Elysium, among the learned lovers:

qui parmi les fleurs devisent Au giron de leur dame.