A Passion for Books Page 7

  Then came the preparatory school and the college days, when the boy looked forward to his vacations and spent them with me in single-minded enjoyment that warmed my heart like old wine. By means of constant talks and much reading of good books, I labored patiently to develop his mind and at the same time to keep his tastes simple and unspoiled. In this manner he came to be a curious mixture of the shrewd man of the world and the joyous, carefree boy. In judgment and in mental grasp he was like a man of thirty before he was eighteen, yet at the same time he was the spontaneous, fun-loving boy whose greatest charm lay in the fact that he was wholly unconscious of his many gifts. He drew love from all he met, and he gave out affection as unconsciously as a flower yields its perfume.

  In college he tided scores of boys over financial straits; his room at Stanford University was open house for the waifs and strays who had no abiding-place. In fact, so generous was his hospitality that the manager of the college dormitory warned him one day in sarcastic vein that the renting of a room for a term did not include the privilege of taking in lodgers. His friends were of all classes. He never joined a Greek letter fraternity because he did not like a certain clannishness that marked the members; but among fraternity men as well as among Barbarians he counted his close associates by the score. He finished his college course amid trying circumstances, as he was called upon to voice the opinion of the great body of students in regard to an unjust ruling of the faculty that involved the suspension of many of the best students of the college. And through arbitrary action of the college authorities his degree was withheld for six months, although he had passed all his examinations and had had no warnings of any condemnation of his independent and manly course as an editor of the student paper. Few boys of his age have ever shown more courage and tact than he exhibited during that trying time, when a single violent editorial from his pen would have resulted in the walking out of more than half of the university students.

  Then came his short business life, full of eager, enthusiastic work for the former college associate who had offered him a position on the Board of Fire Underwriters. Even in this role he did not work so much for himself as to “make good” and thus justify the confidence of the dear friend who stood sponsor for him. Among athletes of the Olympic Club he numbered many warm friends; hundreds of young men in the professional and business life greeted him by the nickname “Mike,” which clung to him from his early freshman days at Stanford. The workers and the idlers, the studious and the joy-chasers, all gave him the welcome hand, for his smile and his gay speech were the password to all hearts. And yet so unspoiled was he that he would leave all the gaiety and excitement of club life to spend hours with me, taking keen zest in rallying me if depressed or in sharing my delight in a good play, a fine concert, a fierce boxing bout, or a spirited field day. Our tastes were of wide range, for we enjoyed with equal relish Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, led by the composer himself, or a championship prizefight; Margaret Anglin’s somber but appealing Antigone or a funny “stunt” at the Orpheum.

  Harold’s full young life was also strongly colored by his close newspaper associations. The newspaper life, like the theatrical, puts its stamp on those who love it, and Harold loved it as the child who has been cradled in the wings loves the stage and its folk. Ever since he wore knickerbockers he was a familiar figure in the Chronicle editorial rooms. He knew the work of all departments of the paper, and he was a keen critic of that work. He would have made a success in this field, but he felt the work was too exacting and the reward too small for the confinement, the isolation, and the nervous strain. After the fire he rendered good service when competent men were scarce, and in the sporting columns his work was always valued, because he was an expert in many kinds of sport and he was scrupulously fair and never lost his head in any excitement. The news of his death caused as deep sorrow in the Chronicle office as would the passing away of one of the oldest men on the force.

  Now that this perennial spirit of youth is gone out of my life, the beauty of it stands revealed more clearly. Gone forever are the dear, the fond-remembered holidays, when the long summer days were far too short for the pleasure that we crowded into them. Gone are the winter walks in the teeth of the blustering ocean breezes, when we “took the wind into our pulses” and strode like Berserkers along the gray dunes, tasting the rarest spirit of life in the open air. Gone, clean gone, those happy days, leaving only the precious memory that wets my eyes that are not used to tears.

  And so, in this roundabout way, I come back to my literary shelves, to urge upon you who are wrapped warm in domestic life and love to provide against the time when you may be cut off in a day from the companionship that makes life precious. Take heed and guard against the hour that may find you forlorn and unprotected against death’s malignant hand. Cultivate the great worthies of literature, even if this means the neglect of the latest magazine or of the newest sensational romance. Be content to confess ignorance of the ephemeral books that will be forgotten in a single half year, so that you may spend your leisure hours in genial converse with the great writers of all time. Dr. Eliot of Harvard recently aroused much discussion of his “five feet of books.” Personally, I would willingly dispense with two-thirds of the books he regards as indispensable. But the vital thing is that you have your own favorites—books that are real and genuine, each one brimful of the inspiration of a great soul. Keep these books on a shelf convenient for use, and read them again and again until you have saturated your mind with their wisdom and their beauty. So may you come into the true Kingdom of Culture, whose gates never swing open to the pedant or the bigot. So may you be armed against the worst blows that fate can deal you in this world.

  Who turns in time of affliction to the magazines or to those books of clever short stories which so amuse us when the mind is at peace and all goes well? No literary skill can bind up the brokenhearted; no beauty of phrase satisfy the soul that is torn by grief. No, when our house is in mourning, we turn to the Bible first—that font of wisdom and comfort which never fails him who comes to it with clean hands and a contrite heart. It is the medicine of life. And after it come the great books written by those who have walked through the Valley of the Shadow, yet have come out sweet and wholesome, with words of wisdom and counsel for the afflicted. One book through which beats the great heart of a man who suffered yet grew strong under the lash of fate is worth more than a thousand books that teach no real lesson of life, that are as broken cisterns holding no water, when the soul is athirst and cries out for refreshment.

  This personal heart-to-heart talk with you, my patient readers of many years, is the first in which I have indulged since the great fire swept away all my precious books—the hoarded treasures of forty years. Against my will it has been forced from me, for I am like a sorely wounded animal and would fain nurse my pain alone. It is written in the first bitterness of a crushing sorrow; but it is also written in the spirit of hope and confidence—the spirit which I hope will strengthen me to spend time and effort in helping to make life easier for some poor boys in memory of the one dearest boy who has gone before me into that “undiscovered country,” where I hope someday to meet him, with the old bright smile on his face and the old firm grip of the hand that always meant love and tenderness and steadfast loyalty.

  Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.

  —ABRAHAM COWLEY

  Among men of New England strain like myself it is easy to labor long hours, to endure nervous strain, to sacrifice comfort and ease for the sake of their dear ones; but men of Puritan strain, with natures as hard as the flinty granite of their hillsides, cannot tell their loved ones how dear they are to them, until Death lays his grim hand upon the shoulder of the beloved one and closes his ears forever to the words of passionate love that now come pouring in a flood from our trembling lips.

  SAN FRANCISCO, OCTOBER 9, 1910

  The Collector

  BY SUSAN SONTAG

  Susan Sontag’s 1992 n
ovel, The Volcano Lover, is based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his wife, Emma, and Lord Nelson. Sir William was a collector of paintings, but Sontag’s comments on the collector’s obsessionare equally applicable to those who collect books.

  That tremor when you spot it. But you don’t say anything. You don’t want to make the present owner aware of its value to you; you don’t want to drive up the price, or make him decide not to sell at all. So you keep cool, you examine something else, you move on or you go out, saying you’ll be back. You perform a whole theatre of being a little interested, but not immoderately; intrigued, yes, even tempted; but not seduced, bewitched. Not ready to pay even more than is being asked, because you must have it. So the collector is a dissembler, someone whose joys are never unalloyed with anxiety. Because there is always more. Or something better.

  You must have it because it is one step toward an ideal completing of your collection. But this ideal completion for which every collector hungers is a delusive goal. A complete set of something is not the completeness the collector craves. The entire production of some notable dead painter could conceivably, improbably, end up in someone’s palace or cellar or yacht. (Every last canvas? Could you, imperious acquirer, be sure there was not one more?) But even if you could be sure that you had every last item, the satisfaction of having it all would eventually, inevitably, decay. A complete collection is a dead collection. It has no posterity. After having built it, you would love it less each year. Before long, you would want to sell or donate it, and embark on a new chase.

  The great collections are vast, not complete. Incomplete: motivated by the desire for completeness. There is always one more. And even if you have everything—whatever that might be—then you will perhaps want a better copy (version, edition) of what you have; or with mass-produced objects (pottery, books, artifacts), simply an extra copy, in case the one you possess is lost or stolen or broken or damaged. A backup copy. A shadow collection. A great private collection is a material concentrate that continually stimulates, that overexcites. Not only because it can always be added to, but because it is already too much. The collector’s need is precisely for excess, for surfeit, for profusion. It’s too much—and it’s just enough for me. Someone who hesitates, who asks, Do I need this? Is this really necessary? is not a collector. A collection is always more than is necessary.

  Without disparaging the other forms of collecting, I confess a conviction that the human impulse to collect reaches one of its highest levels in the domain of books.

  —THEODORE C. BLEGEN

  Bibliomania

  BY GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Gustave Flaubert’s “Bibliomania” was written in 1836, when he was fourteen years old, and became his first published work when it appeared the following year in Le Colibri, a small literary magazine published in Rouen. It is a slightly fictionalized version of the true story of Don Vincente, a Spanish monk who was, literally, willing to kill to possess a book he wanted for his collection. It still stands as a classic example of bibliophiliataken to extremes.

  There once lived in a narrow and sunless street of Barcelona, one of those men with a pale face, dull and sunken eye, one of those satanic and bizarre beings such as Hoffmann dug up in his dreams.

  He was Giacomo the bookseller.

  Though but thirty years of age, he passed already for old and worn out. His figure was tall, but bent like that of an old man. His hair was long, but white. His hands were strong and sinewy, but dried up and covered with wrinkles. His costume was miserable and ragged. He had an awkward and embarrassed air; his face was pale, sad, ugly, and even insignificant. People rarely saw him in the streets, except on the days when they sold rare and curious books at auction. Then he was no longer the same indolent and ridiculous man; his eyes were animated, he ran, walked, stamped his feet; he had difficulty in moderating his joy, his uneasiness, his anguish, and his grief. He came home panting, gasping, out of breath; he took the cherished book, devoured it with his eyes, and looked at it and loved it as a miser does his treasure, a father his daughter, a king his crown.

  This man had never spoken to anyone, unless it were to the bouquinistes and to the second-hand dealers. He was taciturn and a dreamer, sombre and sad. He had but one idea, but one love, but one passion: books. And this love, this passion, burned within him, used up his days, devoured his existence.

  Often, in the night, the neighbours saw through the windows of the bookshop a light which wavered, then advanced, retreated, mounted, then sometimes went out. Then they heard a knocking at their door and it was Giacomo coming to relight his candle, which a gust of wind had blown out.

  These feverish and burning nights he passed among his books. He ran through the storerooms, he ran through the galleries of his library with ecstasy and delight. Then he stopped, his hair in disorder, his eyes fixed and sparkling. His hands, warm and damp, trembled on touching the wood of the shelves.

  He took a book, turned over the leaves, felt the paper, examined the gilding, the cover, the letters, the ink, the folds, and the arrangement of drawings for the word Finis. Then he changed its place, put it on a higher shelf, and remained for entire hours looking at its tide and form.

  He went next to the manuscripts, for they were his cherished children. He took one of them, the oldest, the most used, the dirtiest; he looked at its parchment with love and happiness; he smelt its holy and venerable dust; then his nostrils filled with joy and pride, and a smile came upon his lips.

  Oh! he was happy, this man, happy in the midst of all that learning of which he scarcely understood the moral import and the literary value. He was happy, seated among all these books, letting his eyes roam over the lettered backs, the worn pages, the yellowed parchment. He loved knowledge as a blind man loves the day. No! it was not learning that he loved; it was its expression. He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odour, its form, its tide. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust, dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight. It was this pretty word Finis, surrounded with two cupids, carried on a ribbon, supporting themselves on a fountain engraved on a tomb or reposing in a basket of flowers between the roses, the golden apples, and the blue bouquets.

  This passion had entirely absorbed him. He scarcely ate, he no longer slept, but he dreamed whole days and nights of his fixed idea: books. He dreamed of all that a royal library should have of the divine, the sublime, and the beautiful, and he dreamed of making for himself as big a library as that of the King. How freely he breathed, how proud and strong he felt, when he cast his eye into the immense galleries where the view was lost in books! He raised his head? Books! He lowered it? Books! To the right, to the left, still more books!

  In Barcelona he passed for a strange and infernal man, for a savant or a sorcerer.

  Yet he scarcely knew how to read.

  Nobody dared speak to him, so severe and pale was his face. He had a wicked and treacherous air, and yet he never touched a child to hurt it. It is true that he never gave anything to charity.

  He saved all his money, all his goods, all his emotions, for books. He had been a monk, and for books he had abandoned God. Later he sacrificed for them that which men hold dearest after their God: money. Then he gave to books that which people treasure next to money: his soul.

  For some time now his vigils were longer; people saw still later in the night his lamp which burned on his books, meaning that he had a new treasure, a manuscript.

  One morning, there came into his shop a young student of Salamanca. He seemed to be rich, for two footmen held his mule at Giacomo’s door. He had a toque of red velvet, and rings shone on his fingers.

  He did not have, however, that air of sufficiency and of nullity usual with people who have bedecked valets, fine clothes, and an empty head. No, this man was a savant, but a rich savant. That is to say a man who, at Paris, wr
ites on a mahogany desk, has books gilded on the edges, embroidered slippers, a dressing gown, Chinese curiosities, a gilt clock, a cat that sleeps on a rug, and two or three women who make him read his verses, his prose, and his tales, who say to him: “You have ability,” and who find him only a fop.

  The manners of this gentleman were polished. On entering, he saluted the bookseller, made a profound bow, and said to him in affable tone:

  “Do you not have here some manuscripts?”

  The bookseller became embarrassed and replied stammering:

  “Why, sir, who told you that?”

  “Nobody, but I imagine it.”

  And he put down on the desk of the bookseller a purse full of gold, which he made resound, smiling as does everyone who touches gold of which he is the owner.

  “Sir,” replied Giacomo, “it is true that I have some, but I do not sell them. I keep them.”

  “And why? What do you do with them?”

  “Why, my lord?” And he became red with anger. “You ask what I do with them? Oh, no, you do not know what a manuscript is!”

  “Pardon, Master Giacomo, I am posted on it and to give you the proof of it I will tell you that you have here the Chronicle of Turkey!”

  “I? Oh, they have deceived you, my lord!”

  “No, Giacomo,” replied the gentleman. “Reassure yourself, I do not at all want to rob you, but to buy it from you.”

  “Never!”

  “Oh, you will sell it to me,” replied the scholar, “for you have it here. It was sold at Ricciami’s the day of his death.”

  “Well, then, yes, sir, I have it. It is my treasure: it is my life. Oh! you will not snatch it from me! Listen! I am going to confide a secret in you: Baptisto, you know Baptisto, the bookseller, my rival and my enemy, who lives in the Palace Square? Well, then, he does not have it, not he, but I do have it!”