Chapter VII How Fashion Lives
The dim haze which, in the imagination of the populace, once floated above the head of every hungry book-man, was never in those days identified with a mass of tangled, waving hair, which, aureola-like, ‘girt his occiput about,’ for he was no minor poet, with pale, eager face and love-locks everywhere, but a man, with a rugged front such as Ben Jonson wore, and a heart that beat within. The haze in which he moved was from the dust of old-world tomes; it settled on his coat, and, had he worn a bob-wig, it would have settled on that also, but, since wigs had escaped the fashion of fifty years before, it merely clung to his hair instead, and powdered it gray before its time. Half a century ago the England which for the most part was free from the shriek of the railway-whistle and the rumble of traffic harboured such men as these in their hundreds. They came from the last century, and the further their pilgrimage in this the more they haunted the rustic element in which they moved. They were, in their way, magicians, wearing the consecrated pentacles of Agrippa, ‘that man of parts, who dived into the secrets of all arts, that second Solomon, the mighty Hee, that try’de them all, and found them Vanity.’
Naturally enough, when one of these old-time bookworms left his seclusion to mix with the whirl and throng of the London thoroughfares, he was swallowed up, as though he had never been, in a huge vortex of unappreciative apathy, for the man in the street never has time to dream, and such books as he affects are ledgers. But he might have strayed into some square which the tide, ebbing westward, had left desolate, and met his counterpart sitting, as he himself did when at home, in the midst of vellum-bound classics far into the night. Indeed, when he came to London, which was but seldom, it would be to visit another bookworm, just as the stage-doorkeeper of the present day spends his evening off at the entrance to another theatre, because he cannot get away, even in spirit, from his life’s work and enterprise. Were we to look for these old book-men now, we should look in vain, for the century is fast drawing to its close, and a younger generation has occupied their seats.
The transition from the old to the new in the matter of books and all that pertains to them, has been very gradual. It commenced about fifty years ago, or a little earlier, and was due, perhaps, to the spirit of unrest fostered by an improved and quicker system of communication in a country of very small area, absolutely incapable of enlargement. We see a mighty change in everything external, and it is not surprising that our social habits should have experienced a revolution. Round goes the wheel, slowly and persistently, and we go with it, though daily custom and daily experience has a tendency to mask its motion. One day, sooner or later, we start up and look for the familiar landmarks. They are gone. New ones, not at all familiar, but still recognisable, have taken their place, and then we know that time has slipped away while we were dreaming, and that nothing can possibly be done but to take the future by the forelock, and to rush on for a brief space with the rest.
And so it is with books, and ever has been. Fifty years and more ago, time waited upon them and stood still; now they are carried along unceasingly, and have no rest. Every year the speed increases. Old companions of the shelf are whirled into space and parted for ever; the very men who buy them are changed in their aspirations, their tastes, and their desires, and in a very short time they will change again, and yet again. They are swayed and driven by Fashion, and this is how Fashion lives.
There was something about the dry-as-dust bookworm which, however consonant with antiquated modes of thought and action, was nevertheless felt to be utterly unsuitable to changed conditions. Men must and will read, and to accumulate is equally natural. A life of easy contentment engenders one mode of thought, a life of enterprise another; and the transition from the narrow limits of a prison-bound study to the open air is precisely what might have been expected to occur.
Men there were, as I have said, in plenty, who refused to quit the time-honoured traditions of their race; but on every side of them were being born lighter spirits, to whom colossal and intricate volumes were as heavy as lead. We see the changed nature of their tastes in the craving for art, and the outcome of it in scores and hundreds of miscellanies which began to be published about the year 1830, and held imperial sway on drawing-room tables for ten years or more.
Fisher’s ‘Scrap-Book,’ and numerous other artistically got up volumes full of excerpts and elegant extracts, illustrated by some of the first engravers of the time, were extremely fashionable in those days, and for light and casual reading very probably supplied all that was necessary. The poets, from the Earl of Surrey onward, were served up in dainty plats, and the best prose authors were disembowelled with remarkable skill. The ingenious Martin Tupper, observing this transformation scene, brought joy into many households by laying down, in the form of explicit statements, matters of theological controversy which had in their day fed the Smithfield fires till they roared and blazed like those of Moloch.
These books were for the cultured, to whom the random books of Pierce Egan and William Combe were positively distasteful, and who, having neither the time nor the inclination to bury themselves deeply in classic lore, eagerly welcomed anything which appealed to their better selves and, at the same time, did not too severely tax their brains. The very style and nature of the books which were published at this period show as conclusively as anything can do the great change which was gradually creeping over the public mind.
Smollett and Swift were becoming coarse, and Hogarth, in his realm of art, was already much worse. Mrs. Radcliffe and the Rev. Mr. Maturin stalked like a couple of terrifying ghosts hung about with chains, wailing their lost home. They invariably spoke of haunted caverns, and the wind rumbling itself to sleep in the recesses of ruined chimneys. Their novels were the delight of these same dry-as-dusts, to whom the new age had said farewell, but who, in their impenetrable fastnesses, still revelled, though in numbers yearly decreasing, in ‘The Raven,’ with its soul-quaking refrain, in the ‘Castle of Otranto,’ and ‘The Bravo of Venice.’ Things of graver mood they could not find had they searched the entire catalogue of English literature, from the metrical poems of Cædmon, chanted to the winds of Whitby, down to the newest poem or novel.
The new school called the old ‘unhealthy,’ that being a not inapt adjective with which to express the absence of brightness and chic, qualities which came, as everything else comes, when called for, and which were embodied to a nicety in ‘Sketches by “Boz,”’ ‘The Pickwick Papers,’ and later on in ‘The Yellowplush Correspondence,’ and ‘The Paris Sketch-Book.’ The new poetry was represented by Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, and many more, and essays of better, or, at any rate, more taking, style than those of the Rev. Vicessimus Knox, were published every day, and what is more to the point, extensively read and hoarded.
Collections which had their beginnings in materials such as these authors afforded were, and necessarily must be, totally different in every possible way from those of the prior century; this we find to be the case on looking at the catalogues of sales by auction which were issued under the new régime. Fashion had indeed changed, and at this particular period Hakluyt and Coryat, to say nothing of curious authors like Brathwaite and Seller, were comparatively neglected. They have recovered themselves since, because a revulsion of feeling has taken place in their favour, and many of the old books which were of immense importance sixty or seventy years ago are, after suffering a period of neglect, once more in vogue, and can hardly be met with when sought after, so great is the demand for them. That is the case now, but there is a wide intervening period which needs to be analyzed.
In my opinion, Dickens among novelists, and Tennyson among poets, had the greatest amount of influence upon modern collectors as a body. The former was the more powerful at first, since he had the good fortune to meet with extremely talented artists like George Cruikshank, Hablot Browne, Seymour and Leech, to illustrate his works. Cruikshank was fresh from the glories of ‘Life in London,’ and ‘The Life of Napoleon,’ which had between them carried his name far and wide, and Browne hit off the meaning of the author in such a marvellous way, that he may almost be said to have discovered him. Seymour’s opportunities were few, as his seven etchings for the ‘Pickwick Papers’ were all he ever accomplished for Dickens; but these were, in their way, masterly, and no doubt contributed greatly to the success of the earlier parts in which they appeared.
Slowly but surely the collectors began to turn their thoughts to the new author and the artists who were assisting him, and to accumulate the numbers in which it was the fashion to issue illustrated novels at that time. We often see them now, almost as clean and fresh as when they were first published, showing conclusively that every care has been bestowed upon them. In later days, up to within a year or two in fact, there was a great rush for any books or parts by popular authors containing first-rate illustrations. There is a demand for them now, but only when their condition is immaculate, for fashion has recently changed in a marked degree, owing, perhaps, to the number of rich collectors, who would have these things at any price, and, of course, had their way to the exclusion of the vast majority who were not sufficiently well off to compete with them. And this fashion was the parent, not of another fashion, but of a craze, which raged for two years or more.
The years 1893 and 1894 I take to be those in which people, despairing of obtaining their heart’s desire, turned their attention to what were known ‘Limited Editions,’ and raged furiously. Nothing but a thorough grasp of the state of the book-market at the time, and a deep insight into human nature, could have hit upon the ‘Limited Edition’ as a stop-gap, and those who invented it are entitled to every credit for their enterprise. The apology for the life of the ‘Limited Edition’ brought to its logical conclusion was this: Times have changed, and, moreover, more people buy books than formerly, whether to read or to store. With the readers we have nothing to do, except incidentally; but so far as the collectors are concerned, it is obvious that only about one out of every ten can afford to pay the extremely high prices demanded for most of the first editions of the authors of repute which they affect.
Now comes the point, and upon this the whole argument succeeds or fails. Do they want these coveted books to read or to accumulate? If they wish to read them they can do so at any time, for there are more editions than one in the majority of instances, and the demand for the later and cheaper ones is of a different character altogether; ergo, they really want them, though they would perhaps be highly indignant if we said so, to possess and not necessarily to read. Let us, therefore, make new books in the image of the old, decorating them artistically, and printing them in the best possible style. Let us cut down the edition to a very small number of copies, in order to keep it out of the hands of all but just enough buyers to make the venture pay well, and we ought to succeed in establishing a furore that will continue precisely as long as the strenuous efforts to obtain time-tried poems and essays remain futile by reason of their cost.
The venture was purposely confined to poems and essays, because literary wares of this kind good enough for the purpose could be bought for next to nothing. A novel, in order to compete on this particular ground with the older works of Ainsworth, Thackeray, and the rest, would be costly to buy in manuscript, and difficult as well as expensive to produce; and, moreover, novels never pay unless they are sold in large quantities. This argument was sound throughout, and, moreover, a fresh departure of some kind was inevitable, if only to stem the tide that flowed so aggressively in favour of the rich. The venture succeeded, for almost on the instant the collector, casting a lingering look behind on the expensive works for which he craved, turned away from them, and welcomed the ‘dainty volumes of delicious verse’ which came tumbling down in almost endless variety. There was a scramble for them which continued exactly as long as had been predicted, namely, until the prices of once coveted books began to fall, and then the ‘Limited Editions’ fell too, and the craze was over, for the present at least.
One would have thought that the direct result of this procedure would have been a fresh rush to former fields, but the fact is otherwise. Original editions of the works of older poets and essayists of the highest repute are still as costly as ever, but the general ruck have fallen in the market, and remain fallen to this present day. More than that, the ‘Limited Edition’ brought within reasonable access innumerable better books, now become cheaper, provided they are not in the very finest condition.
Just at the moment there is no great ‘boom’ observable in the English market, no great craze for books of a certain special kind, though some, as usual, are sought for unceasingly, as, for example, many of those older works of English literature which were seen in such profusion in the collection of Mr. Charles B. Foote, dispersed in New York at the beginning of 1895.
Whatever hard things may be said of collectors, however much they may be likened to literary jackdaws, or to what extent their tastes may be criticised and compared with those of other people, they have a virtue—and a great one—one undisputed virtue, which, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins. This cardinal virtue is, that now, as in past times, their primary aim is to appraise literature at its true worth, and to make that the raison d’être of their enterprise. The inevitable red herring may lead them, for the moment, away from the pleasant places they have made their home, but it has never yet prevented their return.
And this home is among time-tried and intrinsically valuable books, and not among those which are temporarily in vogue. It is a home which existed in Greece, and in Rome, and all through the so-called Dark Ages, during the Renaissance, and down the centuries which succeeded right to this present year of grace—a home furnished with genius and perfumed with sentiment. Look there at Paul Lacroix snatching from a Paris stall the very copy of ‘Le Tartuffe’ which had belonged to King Louis XIV., and later on sheltering not merely the great Pixérécourt founder of the Société des Bibliophiles Français, but his whole library as well, until such time as his creditors had drawn off their legions and departed. Sentiment, as well as a passion for literature, was at the bottom of these acts, for that very copy of ‘Le Tartuffe’ had been in Molière’s coat-pocket, and Pixérécourt had a tale to tell of every scholarly volume he possessed. You cannot manufacture genuine sentiment, nor is the quality to be evolved from anything except genius.
Accordingly, we find that every book which excites the cupidity of the true bibliophile derives its magic power primarily from within, and that this power is often materially increased by reason of extraneous considerations. The instances in which external matters have at any time been capable of investing an inferior book with a halo of importance or romance are so extremely rare that they might almost be counted on the fingers. A mere fleeting craze cannot do it, and it is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that a scarce book would be sought for, and prized when found, merely because it is scarce, and for no other reason. As every book-collector is aware, there are hundreds and thousands of volumes lying neglected on the book-stalls to-day which would never be there if this were not so. Some are scarce in the sense of being difficult to meet with when wanted, but, if that be their only merit, it has never yet been acknowledged.
But fashion, though it can never make a bad book good, has the power to subordinate one good book to another, notwithstanding, and to play shuttlecock with the names of authors and printers alike. It was fashion in excelsis which lived with the Elzevirs when men were saying to one another, ‘I have all the poets they ever printed. I have ten examples of every volume, and all have red letters, and are of the right date.’ It was fashion, too, which assessed the value of Longpierre’s copy of Montaigne’s ‘Essais’ (1659), with the buffalo’s head on the preface and at the commencement of each chapter, at 5,100 francs, and only the other day (March 20, 1896) flung away a fine tall copy, bound by Bozerian, for the paltry sum of £6 15s.
The same capricious mistress assessed Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana,’ 1626, at a comparatively low rate—£3 3s., if the late Mr. Henry Stevens is to be believed, and no one had a greater knowledge of such books than he—in 1858, notwithstanding the fact that it must be credited to Shakespeare’s library, as the ‘still vex’d Bermoothes,’ and his knowledge of the breaking of the sea on the rugged rocks by which the Bermuda Islands are surrounded, sufficiently demonstrate. Thirty years ago Smith’s ‘Generall Historie of Virginia,’ published for M. Sparkes in 1625, could have been got for a twentieth part of the sum that would be asked for it now, and this too is by Fashion’s decree.
But in these and any number of typical instances there is no change in the estimation in which good literature is held; no lifting a book from an abyss of mediocrity and placing it on a pinnacle of fame. Fashion may swing men’s minds to this or to that, and so indirectly and for the time being cause those ups and downs in the book-market which are the despair of everyone who has endeavoured to account for them, but further than this she cannot go.
And therefore, when I said that book-men are swayed by fashion, I meant that their tastes and inclinations are capricious, and not that they would, even if they could, enter upon the task of passing judgment upon the verdict of the world. Fashion may and does make rules which cannot be broken with impunity, so far as the pocket is concerned; it may even create an extraordinary and exceptional interest in one author to-day, and abandon him to-morrow, and do many other wonderful things to cause our unsympathetic neighbours to blaspheme; but the romance of book-collecting would be no romance were it stolidly kept at one dead level of insensibility. To employ a homely illustration—Fashion may decorate a house, it can neither build one nor raze one to the ground.