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The Love Affairs Of A Bibliomaniac
E >> Eugene Field >> The Love Affairs Of A Bibliomaniac Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software
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THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC
BY EUGENE FIELD
Introduction
The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on the
delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with
bibliomania did not come impulsively to my brother. For many
years, in short during the greater part of nearly a quarter of a
century of journalistic work, he had celebrated in prose and
verse, and always in his happiest and most delightful vein, the
pleasures of book-hunting. Himself an indefatigable collector of
books, the possessor of a library as valuable as it was
interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the
cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most active
sympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as few
comparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic,
half-humorous side of that incurable mental infirmity.
The newspaper column, to which he contributed almost daily for
twelve years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at
those of his unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious,
through his instrumentality, in their devotion to old
book-shelves and auction sales. And all the time none was more
assiduous than this same good-natured cynic in running down a
musty prize, no matter what its cost or what the attending
difficulties. ``I save others, myself I cannot save,'' was his
humorous cry.
In his published writings are many evidences of my brother's
appreciation of what he has somewhere characterized the
``soothing affliction of bibliomania.'' Nothing of book-hunting
love has been more happily expressed than ``The Bibliomaniac's
Prayer,'' in which the troubled petitioner fervently asserts:
``But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee
To keep me in temptation's way,
I humbly ask that I may be
Most notably beset to-day;
Let my temptation be a book,
Which I shall purchase, hold and keep,
Whereon, when other men shall look,
They'll wail to know I got it cheap.''
And again, in ``The Bibliomaniac's Bride,'' nothing breathes
better the spirit of the incurable patient than this:
``Prose for me when I wished for prose,
Verse when to verse inclined,--
Forever bringing sweet repose
To body, heart and mind.
Oh, I should bind this priceless prize
In bindings full and fine,
And keep her where no human eyes
Should see her charms, but mine!''
In ``Dear Old London'' the poet wailed that ``a splendid Horace
cheap for cash'' laughed at his poverty, and in ``Dibdin's
Ghost'' he revelled in the delights that await the bibliomaniac
in the future state, where there is no admission to the women
folk who, ``wanting victuals, make a fuss if we buy books
instead''; while in ``Flail, Trask and Bisland'' is the very
essence of bibliomania, the unquenchable thirst for possession.
And yet, despite these self-accusations, bibliophily rather than
bibliomania would be the word to characterize his conscientious
purpose. If he purchased quaint and rare books it was to own
them to the full extent, inwardly as well as outwardly. The
mania for books kept him continually buying; the love of books
supervened to make them a part of himself and his life.
Toward the close of August of the present year my brother wrote
the first chapter of ``The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac.''
At that time he was in an exhausted physical condition and
apparently unfit for any protracted literary labor. But the
prospect of gratifying a long-cherished ambition, the delight of
beginning the story he had planned so hopefully, seemed to give
him new strength, and he threw himself into the work with an
enthusiasm that was, alas, misleading to those who had noted
fearfully his declining vigor of body. For years no literary
occupation had seemed to give him equal pleasure, and in the
discussion of the progress of his writing from day to day his eye
would brighten, all of his old animation would return, and
everything would betray the lively interest he felt in the
creature of his imagination in whom he was living over the
delights of the book-hunter's chase. It was his ardent wish that
this work, for the fulfilment of which he had been so long
preparing, should be, as he playfully expressed it, a monument of
apologetic compensation to a class of people he had so humorously
maligned, and those who knew him intimately will recognize in the
shortcomings of the bibliomaniac the humble confession of his own
weaknesses.
It is easy to understand from the very nature of the undertaking
that it was practically limitless; that a bibliomaniac of so many
years' experience could prattle on indefinitely concerning his
``love affairs,'' and at the same time be in no danger of
repetition. Indeed my brother's plans at the outset were not
definitely formed. He would say, when questioned or joked about
these amours, that he was in the easy position of Sam Weller when
he indited his famous valentine, and could ``pull up'' at any
moment. One week he would contend that a book-hunter ought to be
good for a year at least, and the next week he would argue as
strongly that it was time to send the old man into winter
quarters and go to press. But though the approach of cold
weather increased his physical indisposition, he was not the
less interested in his prescribed hours of labor, howbeit his
weakness warned him that he should say to his book, as his much-
loved Horace had written:
``Fuge quo descendere gestis:
Non erit emisso reditis tibi.''
Was it strange that his heart should relent, and that he should
write on, unwilling to give the word of dismissal to the book
whose preparation had been a work of such love and solace?
During the afternoon of Saturday, November 2, the nineteenth
instalment of ``The Love Affairs'' was written. It was the
conclusion of his literary life. The verses supposably
contributed by Judge Methuen's friend, with which the chapter
ends, were the last words written by Eugene Field. He was at
that time apparently quite as well as on any day during the fall
months, and neither he nor any member of his family had the
slightest premonition that death was hovering about the
household. The next day, though still feeling indisposed, he
was at times up and about, always cheerful and full of that
sweetness and sunshine which, in his last years, seem now to have
been the preparation for the life beyond. He spoke of the
chapter he had written the day before, and it was then that he
outlined his plan of completing the work. One chapter only
remained to be written, and it was to chronicle the death of the
old bibliomaniac, but not until he had unexpectedly fallen heir
to a very rare and almost priceless copy of Horace, which
acquisition marked the pinnacle of the book-hunter's conquest.
True to his love for the Sabine singer, the western poet
characterized the immortal odes of twenty centuries gone the
greatest happiness of bibliomania.
In the early morning of November 4 the soul of Eugene Field
passed upward. On the table, folded and sealed, were the memoirs
of the old man upon whom the sentence of death had been
pronounced. On the bed in the corner of the room, with one arm
thrown over his breast, and the smile of peace and rest on his
tranquil face, the poet lay. All around him, on the shelves and
in the cases, were the books he loved so well. Ah, who shall say
that on that morning his fancy was not verified, and that as the
gray light came reverently through the window, those cherished
volumes did not bestir themselves, awaiting the cheery voice:
``Good day to you, my sweet friends. How lovingly they beam upon
me, and how glad they are that my rest has been unbroken.''
Could they beam upon you less lovingly, great heart, in the
chamber warmed by your affection and now sanctified by death?
Were they less glad to know that the repose would be unbroken
forevermore, since it came the glorious reward, my brother, of
the friend who went gladly to it through his faith, having
striven for it through his works?
ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD
Buena Park, December, 1895.
The Chapters in this Book
MY FIRST LOVE
THE BIRTH OF A NEW PASSION
THE LUXURY OF READING IN BED
THE MANIA OF COLLECTING SEIZES ME
BALDNESS AND INTELLECTUALITY
MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA
THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FISHING
BALLADS AND THEIR MAKERS
BOOKSELLERS AND PRINTERS, OLD AND NEW
WHEN FANCHONETTE BEWITCHED ME
DIAGNOSIS OF THE BACILLUS LIBRORUM
THE PLEASURES OF EXTRA-ILLUSTRATION
ON THE ODORS WHICH MY BOOKS EXHALE
ELZEVIRS AND DIVERS OTHER MATTERS
A BOOK THAT BRINGS SOLACE AND CHEER
THE MALADY CALLED CATALOGITIS
THE NAPOLEONIC RENAISSANCE
MY WORKSHOP AND OTHERS
OUR DEBT TO MONKISH MEN
I
MY FIRST LOVE
At this moment, when I am about to begin the most important
undertaking of my life, I recall the sense of abhorrence with
which I have at different times read the confessions of men famed
for their prowess in the realm of love. These boastings have
always shocked me, for I reverence love as the noblest of the
passions, and it is impossible for me to conceive how one who has
truly fallen victim to its benign influence can ever thereafter
speak flippantly of it.
Yet there have been, and there still are, many who take a seeming
delight in telling you how many conquests they have made, and
they not infrequently have the bad taste to explain with
wearisome prolixity the ways and the means whereby those
conquests were wrought; as, forsooth, an unfeeling huntsman is
forever boasting of the game he has slaughtered and is forever
dilating upon the repulsive details of his butcheries.
I have always contended that one who is in love (and having once
been in love is to be always in love) has, actually, no
confession to make. Love is so guileless, so proper, so pure a
passion as to involve none of those things which require or which
admit of confession. He, therefore, who surmises that in this
exposition of my affaires du coeur there is to be any betrayal of
confidences, or any discussion, suggestion, or hint likely either
to shame love or its votaries or to bring a blush to the cheek of
the fastidious--he is grievously in error.
Nor am I going to boast; for I have made no conquests. I am in
no sense a hero. For many, very many years I have walked in a
pleasant garden, enjoying sweet odors and soothing spectacles; no
predetermined itinerary has controlled my course; I have wandered
whither I pleased, and very many times I have strayed so far into
the tangle-wood and thickets as almost to have lost my way. And
now it is my purpose to walk that pleasant garden once more,
inviting you to bear me company and to share with me what
satisfaction may accrue from an old man's return to old-time
places and old-time loves.
As a child I was serious-minded. I cared little for those sports
which usually excite the ardor of youth. To out-of-door games
and exercises I had particular aversion. I was born in a
southern latitude, but at the age of six years I went to live
with my grandmother in New Hampshire, both my parents having
fallen victims to the cholera. This change from the balmy
temperature of the South to the rigors of the North was not
agreeable to me, and I have always held it responsible for that
delicate health which has attended me through life.
My grandmother encouraged my disinclination to play; she
recognized in me that certain seriousness of mind which I
remember to have heard her say I inherited from her, and she
determined to make of me what she had failed to make of any of
her own sons--a professional expounder of the only true faith of
Congregationalism. For this reason, and for the further reason
that at the tender age of seven years I publicly avowed my desire
to become a clergyman, an ambition wholly sincere at that time--
for these reasons was I duly installed as prime favorite in my
grandmother's affections.
As distinctly as though it were but yesterday do I recall the
time when I met my first love. It was in the front room of the
old homestead, and the day was a day in spring. The front room
answered those purposes which are served by the so-called parlor
of the present time. I remember the low ceiling, the big
fireplace, the long, broad mantelpiece, the andirons and fender
of brass, the tall clock with its jocund and roseate moon, the
bellows that was always wheezy, the wax flowers under a glass
globe in the corner, an allegorical picture of Solomon's temple,
another picture of little Samuel at prayer, the high, stiff-back
chairs, the foot-stool with its gayly embroidered top, the mirror
in its gilt-and-black frame--all these things I remember well,
and with feelings of tender reverence, and yet that day I now
recall was well-nigh threescore and ten years ago!
Best of all I remember the case in which my grandmother kept her
books, a mahogany structure, massive and dark, with doors
composed of diamond-shaped figures of glass cunningly set in a
framework of lead. I was in my seventh year then, and I had
learned to read I know not when. The back and current numbers of
the ``Well-Spring'' had fallen prey to my insatiable appetite
for literature. With the story of the small boy who stole a pin,
repented of and confessed that crime, and then became a good and
great man, I was as familiar as if I myself had invented that
ingenious and instructive tale; I could lisp the moral numbers of
Watts and the didactic hymns of Wesley, and the annual reports of
the American Tract Society had already revealed to me the sphere
of usefulness in which my grandmother hoped I would ultimately
figure with discretion and zeal. And yet my heart was free;
wholly untouched of that gentle yet deathless passion which was
to become my delight, my inspiration, and my solace, it awaited
the coming of its first love.
Upon one of those shelves yonder--it is the third shelf from the
top, fourth compartment to the right--is that old copy of the
``New England Primer,'' a curious little, thin, square book in
faded blue board covers. A good many times I have wondered
whether I ought not to have the precious little thing sumptuously
attired in the finest style known to my binder; indeed, I have
often been tempted to exchange the homely blue board covers for
flexible levant, for it occurred to me that in this way I could
testify to my regard for the treasured volume. I spoke of this
one day to my friend Judge Methuen, for I have great respect for
his judgment.
``It would be a desecration,'' said he, ``to deprive the book of
its original binding. What! Would you tear off and cast away
the covers which have felt the caressing pressure of the hands of
those whose memory you revere? The most sacred of sentiments
should forbid that act of vandalism!''
I never think or speak of the ``New England Primer'' that I do
not recall Captivity Waite, for it was Captivity who introduced
me to the Primer that day in the springtime of sixty-three years
ago. She was of my age, a bright, pretty girl--a very pretty, an
exceptionally pretty girl, as girls go. We belonged to the same
Sunday-school class. I remember that upon this particular day
she brought me a russet apple. It was she who discovered the
Primer in the mahogany case, and what was not our joy as we
turned over the tiny pages together and feasted our eyes upon the
vivid pictures and perused the absorbingly interesting text!
What wonder that together we wept tears of sympathy at the
harrowing recital of the fate of John Rogers!
Even at this remote date I cannot recall that experience with
Captivity, involving as it did the wood-cut representing the
unfortunate Rogers standing in an impossible bonfire and being
consumed thereby in the presence of his wife and their numerous
progeny, strung along in a pitiful line across the picture for
artistic effect--even now, I say, I cannot contemplate that
experience and that wood-cut without feeling lumpy in my throat
and moist about my eyes.
How lasting are the impressions made upon the youthful mind!
Through the many busy years that have elapsed since first I
tasted the thrilling sweets of that miniature Primer I have not
forgotten that ``young Obadias, David, Josias, all were pious'';
that ``Zaccheus he did climb the Tree our Lord to see''; and that
``Vashti for Pride was set aside''; and still with many a
sympathetic shudder and tingle do I recall Captivity's
overpowering sense of horror, and mine, as we lingered long over
the portraitures of Timothy flying from Sin, of Xerxes laid out
in funeral garb, and of proud Korah's troop partly submerged.
My Book and Heart
Must never part.
So runs one of the couplets in this little Primer-book, and right
truly can I say that from the springtime day sixty-odd years ago,
when first my heart went out in love to this little book, no
change of scene or of custom no allurement of fashion, no demand
of mature years, has abated that love. And herein is exemplified
the advantage which the love of books has over the other kinds of
love. Women are by nature fickle, and so are men; their
friendships are liable to dissipation at the merest provocation
or the slightest pretext.
Not so, however, with books, for books cannot change. A thousand
years hence they are what you find them to-day, speaking the same
words, holding forth the same cheer, the same promise, the same
comfort; always constant, laughing with those who laugh and
weeping with those who weep.
Captivity Waite was an exception to the rule governing her sex.
In all candor I must say that she approached closely to a
realization of the ideals of a book--a sixteenmo, if you please,
fair to look upon, of clear, clean type, well ordered and well
edited, amply margined, neatly bound; a human book whose text, as
represented by her disposition and her mind, corresponded
felicitously with the comeliness of her exterior. This child was
the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Waite, whose family
was carried off by Indians in 1677. Benjamin followed the party
to Canada, and after many months of search found and ransomed the
captives.
The historian has properly said that the names of Benjamin Waite
and his companion in their perilous journey through the
wilderness to Canada should ``be memorable in all the sad or
happy homes of this Connecticut valley forever.'' The child who
was my friend in youth, and to whom I may allude occasionally
hereafter in my narrative, bore the name of one of the survivors
of this Indian outrage, a name to be revered as a remembrancer of
sacrifice and heroism.
II
THE BIRTH OF A NEW PASSION
When I was thirteen years old I went to visit my Uncle Cephas.
My grandmother would not have parted with me even for that
fortnight had she not actually been compelled to. It happened
that she was called to a meeting of the American Tract Society,
and it was her intention to pay a visit to her cousin, Royall
Eastman, after she had discharged the first and imperative duty
she owed the society. Mrs. Deacon Ranney was to have taken me
and provided for my temporal and spiritual wants during
grandmother's absence, but at the last moment the deacon came
down with one of his spells of quinsy, and no other alternative
remained but to pack me off to Nashua, where my Uncle Cephas
lived.
This involved considerable expense, for the stage fare was three
shillings each way: it came particularly hard on grandmother,
inasmuch as she had just paid her road tax and had not yet
received her semi-annual dividends on her Fitchburg Railway
stock. Indifferent, however, to every sense of extravagance and
to all other considerations except those of personal pride, I
rode away atop of the stage-coach, full of exultation. As we
rattled past the Waite house I waved my cap to Captivity and
indulged in the pleasing hope that she would be lonesome without
me. Much of the satisfaction of going away arises from the
thought that those you leave behind are likely to be wretchedly
miserable during your absence.
My Uncle Cephas lived in a house so very different from my
grandmother's that it took me some time to get used to the place.
Uncle Cephas was a lawyer, and his style of living was not at all
like grandmother's; he was to have been a minister, but at twelve
years of age he attended the county fair, and that incident
seemed to change the whole bent of his life. At twenty-one he
married Samantha Talbott, and that was another blow to
grandmother, who always declared that the Talbotts were a
shiftless lot. However, I was agreeably impressed with Uncle
Cephas and Aunt 'Manthy, for they welcomed me very cordially and
turned me over to my little cousins, Mary and Henry, and bade us
three make merry to the best of our ability. These first
favorable impressions of my uncle's family were confirmed when I
discovered that for supper we had hot biscuit and dried beef
warmed up in cream gravy, a diet which, with all due respect to
grandmother, I considered much more desirable than dry bread and
dried-apple sauce.
Aha, old Crusoe! I see thee now in yonder case smiling out upon
me as cheerily as thou didst smile those many years ago when to a
little boy thou broughtest the message of Romance! And I do love
thee still, and I shall always love thee, not only for thy
benefaction in those ancient days, but also for the light and the
cheer which thy genius brings to all ages and conditions of
humanity.
My Uncle Cephas's library was stored with a large variety of
pleasing literature. I did not observe a glut of theological
publications, and I will admit that I felt somewhat aggrieved
personally when, in answer to my inquiry, I was told that there
was no ``New England Primer'' in the collection. But this
feeling was soon dissipated by the absorbing interest I took in
De Foe's masterpiece, a work unparalleled in the realm of
fiction.
I shall not say that ``Robinson Crusoe'' supplanted the Primer in
my affections; this would not be true. I prefer to say what is
the truth; it was my second love. Here again we behold another
advantage which the lover of books has over the lover of women.
If he be a genuine lover he can and should love any number of
books, and this polybibliophily is not to the disparagement of
any one of that number. But it is held by the expounders of our
civil and our moral laws that he who loveth one woman to the
exclusion of all other women speaketh by that action the best and
highest praise both of his own sex and of hers.
I thank God continually that it hath been my lot in life to found
an empire in my heart--no cramped and wizened borough wherein
one jealous mistress hath exercised her petty tyranny, but an
expansive and ever-widening continent divided and subdivided into
dominions, jurisdictions, caliphates, chiefdoms, seneschalships,
and prefectures, wherein tetrarchs, burgraves, maharajahs,
palatines, seigniors, caziques, nabobs, emirs, nizams, and nawabs
hold sway, each over his special and particular realm, and all
bound together in harmonious cooperation by the conciliating
spirit of polybibliophily!
Let me not be misunderstood; for I am not a woman-hater. I do
not regret the acquaintances--nay, the friendships--I have formed
with individuals of the other sex. As a philosopher it has
behooved me to study womankind, else I should not have
appreciated the worth of these other better loves. Moreover, I
take pleasure in my age in associating this precious volume or
that with one woman or another whose friendship came into my life
at the time when I was reading and loved that book.
The other day I found my nephew William swinging in the hammock
on the porch with his girl friend Celia; I saw that the young
people were reading Ovid. ``My children,'' said I, ``count this
day a happy one. In the years of after life neither of you will
speak or think of Ovid and his tender verses without recalling at
the same moment how of a gracious afternoon in distant time you
sat side by side contemplating the ineffably precious promises of
maturity and love.''
I am not sure that I do not approve that article in Judge
Methuen's creed which insists that in this life of ours woman
serves a probationary period for sins of omission or of
commission in a previous existence, and that woman's next step
upward toward the final eternity of bliss is a period of longer
or of shorter duration, in which her soul enters into a book to
be petted, fondled, beloved and cherished by some good man--like
the Judge, or like myself, for that matter.
This theory is not an unpleasant one; I regard it as much more
acceptable than those so-called scientific demonstrations which
would make us suppose that we are descended from tree-climbing
and bug-eating simians. However, it is far from my purpose to
enter upon any argument of these questions at this time, for
Judge Methuen himself is going to write a book upon the subject,
and the edition is to be limited to two numbered and signed
copies upon Japanese vellum, of which I am to have one and the
Judge the other.
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