The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac Part 7

An English collector found in Rice's library a set of rare volumes he had been searching for for years.

"How did you happen to get them?" he asked. "You bought them at the Spencer sale and against my bid. Do you know, I told my buyer to bid a thousand pounds for them, if necessary!"

"That was where I had the advantage of you," said Rice, quietly. "I specified no limit; I simply told my man to buy the books."

The spirit of the collector cropped out early in Rice. I remember to have heard him tell how one time, when he was a young man, he was shuffling over a lot of tracts in a bin in front of a Boston bookstall.

His eye suddenly fell upon a little pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Cow-Chace."

He picked it up and read it. It was a poem founded upon the defeat of Generals Wayne, Irving, and Proctor. The last stanza ran in this wise:

And now I've closed my epic strain, I tremble as I show it, Lest this same warrior-drover, Wayne, Should ever catch the poet.

Rice noticed that the pamphlet bore the imprint of James Rivington, New York, 1780. It occurred to him that some time this modest tract of eighteen pages might be valuable; at any rate, he paid the fifteen cents demanded for it, and at the same time he purchased for ten cents another pamphlet ent.i.tled "The American Tories, a Satire."

Twenty years later, having learned the value of these exceedingly rare tracts, Mr. Rice sent them to London and had them bound in Francis Bedford's best style--"crimson crushed levant morocco, finished to a Grolier pattern." Bedford's charges amounted to seventy-five dollars, which with the original cost of the pamphlets represented an expenditure of seventy-five dollars and twenty-five cents upon Mr.

Rice's part. At the sale of the Rice library in 1870, however, this curious, rare, and beautiful little book brought the extraordinary sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars!

The Rice library contained about five thousand volumes, and it realized at auction sale somewhat more than seventy-two thousand dollars. Rice has often told me that for a long time he could not make up his mind to part with his books; yet his health was so poor that he found it imperative to retire from business, and to devote a long period of time to travel; these were the considerations that induced him finally to part with his treasures. "I have never regretted having sold them," he said. "Two years after the sale the Chicago fire came along. Had I retained those books, every one of them would have been lost."

Mrs. Rice shared her husband's enthusiasm for books. Whenever a new invoice arrived, the two would lock themselves in their room, get down upon their knees on the floor, open the box, take out the treasures and gloat over them, together! n.o.ble lady! she was such a wife as any good man might be proud of. They were very happy in their companionship on earth, were my dear old friends. He was the first to go; their separation was short; together once more and forever they share the illimitable joys which await all lovers of good books when virtue hath mournfully writ the colophon to their human careers.

Although Mr. Rice survived the sale of his remarkable library a period of twenty-six years, he did not get together again a collection of books that he was willing to call a library. His first collection was so remarkable that he preferred to have his fame rest wholly upon it.

Perhaps he was wise; yet how few collectors there are who would have done as he did.

As for myself, I verily believe that, if by fire or by water my library should be destroyed this night, I should start in again to-morrow upon the collection of another library. Or if I did not do this, I should lay myself down to die, for how could I live without the companionships to which I have ever been accustomed, and which have grown as dear to me as life itself?

Whenever Judge Methuen is in a jocular mood and wishes to tease me, he asks me whether I have forgotten the time when I was possessed of a spirit of reform and registered a solemn vow in high heaven to buy no more books. Teasing, says Victor Hugo, is the malice of good men; Judge Methuen means no evil when he recalls that weakness--the one weakness in all my career.

No, I have not forgotten that time; I look back upon it with a shudder of horror, for wretched indeed would have been my existence had I carried into effect the project I devised at that remote period!

Dr. O'Rell has an interesting theory which you will find recorded in the published proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol.

x.x.xiv., p. 216). Or, if you cannot procure copies of that work, it may serve your purpose to know that the doctor's theory is to this effect--viz., that bibliomania does not deserve the name of bibliomania until it is exhibited in the second stage. For secondary bibliomania there is no known cure; the few cases reported as having been cured were doubtless not bibliomania at all, or, at least, were what we of the faculty call false or chicken bibliomania.

"In false bibliomania, which," says Dr. O'Rell, "is the primary stage of the grand pa.s.sion--the vestibule to the main edifice--the usual symptoms are flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, a bounding pulse, and quick respiration. This period of exaltation is not unfrequently followed by a condition of collapse in which we find the victim pale, pulseless, and dejected. He is pursued and tormented of imaginary horrors, he reproaches himself for imaginary crimes, and he implores piteously for relief from fancied dangers. The sufferer now stands in a slippery place; unless his case is treated intelligently he will issue from that period of gloom cured of the sweetest of madnesses, and doomed to a life of singular uselessness.

"But properly treated," continues Dr. O'Rell, "and particularly if his spiritual needs be ministered to, he can be brought safely through this period of collapse into a condition of reenforced exaltation, which is the true, or secondary stage of, bibliomania, and for which there is no cure known to humanity."

I should trust Dr. O'Rell's judgment in this matter, even if I did not know from experience that it was true. For Dr. O'Rell is the most famous authority we have in bibliomania and kindred maladies. It is he (I make the information known at the risk of offending the ethics of the profession)--it is he who discovered the bacillus librorum, and, what is still more important and still more to his glory, it is he who invented that subtle lymph which is now everywhere employed by the profession as a diagnostic where the presence of the germs of bibliomania (in other words, bacilli librorum) is suspected.

I once got this learned scientist to inject a milligram of the lymph into the femoral artery of Miss Susan's cat. Within an hour the precocious beast surrept.i.tiously entered my library for the first time in her life, and ate the covers of my pet edition of Rabelais. This demonstrated to Dr. O'Rell's satisfaction the efficacy of his diagnostic, and it proved to Judge Methuen's satisfaction what the Judge has always maintained--viz., that Rabelais was an old rat.

XII

THE PLEASURES OF EXTRA-ILl.u.s.tRATION

Very many years ago we became convinced--Judge Methuen and I did--that there was nothing new in the world. I think it was while we were in London and while we were deep in the many fads of bibliomania that we arrived at this important conclusion.

We had been pursuing with enthusiasm the exciting delights of extra-ill.u.s.tration, a practice sometimes known as Grangerism; the friends of the practice call it by the former name, the enemies by the latter. We were engaged at extra-ill.u.s.trating Boswell's life of Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great lexicographer knocked down Osborne, the bookseller at Gray's Inn Gate.

Unhappily we were wholly in the dark as to what the t.i.tle of that book was, and, although we ransacked the British Museum and even appealed to the learned Frognall Dibdin, we could not get a clew to the ident.i.ty of the volume. To be wholly frank with you, I will say that both the Judge and I had wearied of the occupation; moreover, it involved great expense, since we were content with nothing but India proofs (those before letters preferred). So we were glad of this excuse for abandoning the practice.

While we were contemplating a graceful retreat the Judge happened to discover in the "Natural History" of Pliny a pa.s.sage which proved to our satisfaction that, so far from being a new or a modern thing, the extra-ill.u.s.tration of books was of exceptional antiquity. It seems that Atticus, the friend of Cicero, wrote a book on the subject of portraits and portrait-painting, in the course of which treatise he mentions that Marcus Varro "conceived the very liberal idea of inserting, by some means or another, in his numerous volumes, the portraits of several hundred individuals, as he could not bear the idea that all traces of their features should be lost or that the lapse of centuries should get the better of mankind."

"Thus," says Pliny, "was he the inventor of a benefit to his fellow-men that might have been envied by the G.o.ds themselves; for not only did he confer immortality upon the originals of these portraits, but he transmitted these portraits to all parts of the earth, so that everywhere it might be possible for them to be present, and for each to occupy his niche."

Now, Pliny is not the only one who has contributed to the immortalization of Marcus Varro. I have had among my papers for thirty years the verses which Judge Methuen dashed off (for poets invariably dash off their poetry), and they are such pleasant verses that I don't mind letting the world see them.

MARCUS VARRO

Marcus Varro went up and down The places where old books were sold; He ransacked all the shops in town For pictures new and pictures old.

He gave the folk of earth no peace; Snooping around by day and night, He plied the trade in Rome and Greece Of an insatiate Grangerite.

"Pictures!" was evermore his cry-- "Pictures of old or recent date,"

And pictures only would he buy Wherewith to "extra-ill.u.s.trate."

Full many a tome of ancient type And many a ma.n.u.script he took, For nary purpose but to swipe Their pictures for some other book.

While Marcus Varro plied his fad There was not in the shops of Greece A book or pamphlet to be had That was not minus frontispiece.

Nor did he hesitate to ply His baleful practices at home; It was not possible to buy A perfect book in all of Rome!

What must the other folk have done-- Who, glancing o'er the books they bought, Came soon and suddenly upon The vandalism Varro wrought!

How must their cheeks have flamed with red-- How did their hearts with choler beat!

We can imagine what they said-- We can imagine, not repeat!

Where are the books that Varro made-- The pride of dilettante Rome-- With divers portraitures inlaid Swiped from so many another tome?

The worms devoured them long ago-- O wretched worms! ye should have fed Not on the books "extended" so, But on old Varro's flesh instead!

Alas, that Marcus Varro lives And is a potent factor yet!

Alas, that still his practice gives Good men occasion for regret!

To yonder bookstall, pri'thee, go, And by the "missing" prints and plates And frontispieces you shall know He lives, and "extra-ill.u.s.trates"!

In justice to the Judge and to myself I should say that neither of us wholly approves the sentiment which the poem I have quoted implies. We regard Grangerism as one of the unfortunate stages in bibliomania; it is a period which seldom covers more than five years, although Dr.

O'Rell has met with one case in his practice that has lasted ten years and still gives no symptom of abating in virulence.

Humanity invariably condones the pranks of youth on the broad and charitable grounds that "boys will be boys"; so we bibliomaniacs are p.r.o.ne to wink at the follies of the Grangerite, for we know that he will know better by and by and will heartily repent of the mischief he has done. We know the power of books so well that we know that no man can have to do with books that presently he does not love them. He may at first endure them; then he may come only to pity them; anon, as surely as the morrow's sun riseth, he shall embrace and love those precious things.

So we say that we would put no curb upon any man, it being better that many books should be destroyed, if ultimately by that destruction a penitent and loyal soul be added to the roster of bibliomaniacs.

There is more joy over one Grangerite that repenteth than over ninety and nine just men that need no repentance.

And we have a similar feeling toward such of our number as for the nonce become imbued with a pa.s.sion for any of the other little fads which bibliomaniac flesh is heir to. All the soldiers in an army cannot be foot, or horse, or captains, or majors, or generals, or artillery, or ensigns, or drummers, or buglers. Each one has his place to fill and his part to do, and the consequence is a concinnate whole.

Bibliomania is beautiful as an entirety, as a symmetrical blending of a mult.i.tude of component parts, and he is indeed disloyal to the cause who, through envy or shortsightedness or ignorance, argues to the discredit of angling, or Napoleonana, or balladry, or Indians, or Burns, or Americana, or any other branch or phase of bibliomania; for each of these things accomplishes a n.o.ble purpose in that each contributes to the glory of the great common cause of bibliomania, which is indeed the summum bonum of human life.

I have heard many decried who indulged their fancy for bookplates, as if, forsooth, if a man loved his books, he should not lavish upon them testimonials of his affection! Who that loves his wife should hesitate to buy adornments for her person? I favor everything that tends to prove that the human heart is swayed by the tenderer emotions.

Grat.i.tude is surely one of the n.o.blest emotions of which humanity is capable, and he is indeed unworthy of our respect who would forbid humanity's expressing in every dignified and reverential manner its grat.i.tude for the benefits conferred by the companionship of books.

As for myself, I urge upon all lovers of books to provide themselves with bookplates. Whenever I see a book that bears its owner's plate I feel myself obligated to treat that book with special consideration.