The Book-Hunter
horror which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes into its cell.
Presentation copies by authors were among the chronic torments of his
existence. While the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself on
his liberality in making the judicious gift, the recipient was pouring
out all his sarcasm, which was not feeble or slight, on the odious
object, and wondering why an author could have entertained against him
so steady and enduring a malice as to take the trouble of writing and
printing all that rubbish with no better object than disturbing the
peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every tribute from such _dona
ferentes_ cost him much uneasiness and some want of sleep--for what
could he do with it? It was impossible to make merchandise of it, for he
was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid
exterior he had a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he had
established some limbo of his own, in which such unwelcome commodities
were subject to a kind of burial or entombment, where they remained in
existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of his household gods.
These gods were a pantheon of a lively and grotesque aspect, for he was
a hunter after other things besides books. His acquisitions included
pictures, and the various commodities which, for want of a distinctive
name, auctioneers call "miscellaneous articles of vertu." He started on
his accumulating career with some old family relics, and these, perhaps,
gave the direction to his subsequent acquisitions, for they were all,
like his books, brought together after some self-willed and peculiar law
of association that pleased himself. A bad, even an inferior, picture he
would not have--for his taste was exquisite--unless, indeed, it had some
strange history about it, adapting it to his wayward fancies, and then
he would adopt the badness as a peculiar recommendation, and point it
out with some pungent and appropriate remark to his friends. But though,
with these peculiar exceptions, his works of art were faultless, no
dealer could ever calculate on his buying a picture, however high in
artistic merit or tempting as a bargain. With his ever-accumulating
collection, in which tiny sculpture and brilliant colour predominated,
he kept a sort of fairy world around him. But each one of the mob of
curious things he preserved had some story linking it with others, or
with his peculiar fancies, and each one had its precise place in a sort
of _epos_, as certainly as each of the persons in the confusion of a
pantomime or a farce has his own position and functions.
After all, he was himself his own greatest curiosity. He had come to
manhood just after the period of gold-laced waistcoats, small-clothes,
and shoe-buckles, otherwise he would have been long a living memorial of
these now antique habits. It happened to be his lot to preserve down to
us the earliest phase of the pantaloon dynasty. So, while the rest of
the world were booted or heavy shod, his silk-stockinged feet were
thrust into pumps of early Oxford cut, and the predominant garment was
the surtout, blue in colour, and of the original make before it came to
be called a frock. Round his neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite
neckerchief (not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a great
poultice--and so he took his walks abroad, a figure which he could
himself have turned into admirable ridicule.
One of the mysteries about him was, that his clothes, though unlike any
other person's, were always old. This characteristic could not even be
accounted for by the supposition that he had laid in a sixty years'
stock in his youth, for they always appeared to have been a good deal
worn. The very umbrella was in keeping--it was of green silk, an
obsolete colour ten years ago--and the handle was of a peculiar
crosier-like formation in cast-horn, obviously not obtainable in the
market. His face was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness of youth; and,
bearing on his head a Brutus wig of the light-brown hair which had long
ago legitimately shaded his brow, when he stood still--except for his
linen, which was snowy white--one might suppose that he had been shot
and stuffed on his return home from college, and had been sprinkled with
the frowzy mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals and other
things, in which a semblance to the freshness of living nature is vainly
attempted to be preserved. So if he were motionless; but let him speak,
and the internal freshness was still there, an ever-blooming garden of
intellectual flowers. His antiquated costume was no longer grotesque--it
harmonised with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred gentleness of
manner, which he had acquired from the best sources, since he had seen
the first company in his day, whether for rank or genius. And
conversation and manner were far from exhausting his resources. He had a
wonderful pencil--it was potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the
ridiculous; but it took a wayward wilful course, like everything else
about him. He had a brilliant pen, too, when he chose to wield it; but
the idea that he should exercise any of these his gifts in common
display before the world, for any even of the higher motives that make
people desire fame and praise, would have sickened him. His faculties
were his own as much as his collection, and to be used according to his
caprice and pleasure. So fluttered through existence one who, had it
been his fate to have his own bread to make, might have been a great
man. Alas for the end! Some curious annotations are all that remain of
his literary powers--some drawings and etchings in private collections
all of his artistic. His collection, with its long train of legends and
associations, came to what he himself must have counted as dispersal. He
left it to his housekeeper, who, like a wise woman, converted it into
cash while its mysterious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a great
auction-room, its several catalogued items lay in humiliating contrast
with the decorous order in which they were wont to be arranged. _Sic
transit gloria mundi._
Let us now call up a different and a more commonplace type of the
book-hunter--it shall be Inchrule Brewer. He is guiltless of all
intermeddling with the contents of books, but in their external
attributes his learning is marvellous. He derived his nickname, from the
practice of keeping, as his inseparable pocket-companion, one of those
graduated folding measures of length which may often be seen protruding
from the moleskin pocket of the joiner. He used it at auctions and on
other appropriate occasions, to measure the different elements of a
book--the letterpress--the unprinted margin--the external expanse of the
binding; for to the perfectly scientific collector all these things are
very significant.[26] They are, in fact, on record among the craft, like
the pedigrees and physical characteristics recorded in stud-books and
short-horn books. One so accomplished in this kind of analysis could
tell at once, by this criterion, whether the treasure under the hammer
was the same that had been knocked down before at the Roxburghe
sale--the Askew, the Gordonstoun, or the Heber, perhaps--or was
veritably an impostor--or was in reality a new and previously unknown
prize well worth contending for. The minuteness and precision of his
knowledge excited wonder, and, being anomalous in the male sex even
among collectors, gave occasion to a rumour that its possessor must
veritably be an aged maiden in disguise.
[Footnote 26: Of the copy of the celebrated 1635 Elzevir Caesar, in the
Imperial Library at Paris, Brunet triumphantly informs us that it is
four inches and ten-twelfths in height, and occupies the high position
of being the tallest copy of that volume in the world, since other
illustrious copies put in competition with it have been found not to
exceed four inches and eight, or, at the utmost, nine, twelfths.
"Ces details," he subjoins, "paroitront sans doute puerils a bien des
gens: mais puisque c'est la grandeur des marges de ces sorts de livres
qu'en determine la valeur, il faut bien fixer le _maximum_ de cette
grandeur, afin que les amateurs puissent apprecier les exemplaires qui
approchent plus ou moins de la mesure donnee."]
His experience, aided by a heaven-born genius tending in that direction,
rendered him the most merciless detector of sophisticated books.
Nothing, it might be supposed on first thought, can be a simpler or more
easily recognised thing than a book genuine as printed. But in the
old-book trade there are opportunities for the exercise of ingenuity
inferior only to those which render the picture-dealer's and the
horse-dealer's functions so mysteriously interesting. Sometimes entire
facsimiles are made of eminent volumes. More commonly, however, the
problem is to complete an imperfect copy. This will be most
satisfactorily accomplished, of course, if another copy can be procured
imperfect also, but not in the same parts. Great ingenuity is sometimes
shown in completing a highly esteemed edition with fragments from one
lightly esteemed. Sometimes a colophon or a decorated capital has to be
imitated, and bold operators will reprint a page or two in facsimile;
these operations, of course, involve the inlaying of paper, judiciously
staining it, and other mysteries. Paris is the great centre of this kind
of work, but it has been pretty extensively pursued in Britain; and the
manufacture of first folio Shakespeares has been nearly as staple a
trade as the getting up of genuine portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. It
will establish a broad distinction to note the fact, that whereas our
friend the Archdeacon would collect several imperfect copies of the
same book, in the hope of finding materials for one perfect one among
them, Inchrule would remorselessly spurn from him the most voluptuously
got-up specimen (to use a favourite phrase of Dibdin's) were it tainted
by the very faintest suspicion of "restoration."
Among the elements which constitute the value of a book--rarity of
course being essential--one might say he counted the binding highest. He
was not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to give the
uninitiated a conception of the importance attached to this mechanical
department of book-making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's
Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly, devoted to
bindings. There are binders who have immortalised themselves--as
Staggemier, Walther, Payne, Padaloup, Hering, De Rome, Bozerian,
Deseuille, Bradel, Faulkner, Lewis, Hayday, and Thomson. Their names may
sometimes be found on their work, not with any particularities, as if
they required to make themselves known, but with the simple brevity of
illustrious men. Thus you take up a morocco-bound work of some eminence,
on the title-page of which the author sets forth his full name and
profession, with the distinctive initials of certain learned societies
to which it is his pride to belong; but the simple and dignified
enunciation, deeply stamped in his own golden letters, "Bound by
Hayday," is all that that accomplished artist deigns to tell.
And let us, after all, acknowledge that there are few men who are
entirely above the influence of binding. No one likes sheep's clothing
for his literature, even if he should not aspire to russia or morocco.
Adam Smith, one of the least showy of men, confessed himself to be a
beau in his books. Perhaps the majority of men of letters are so to some
extent, though poets are apt to be ragamuffins. It was Thomson, I
believe, who used to cut the leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an event
in his early career may have soured him of the proprieties. It is said
that he had an uncle, a clever active mechanic, who could do many things