Chapter VIII The Rules of the Chase
There was a time, and that not so very many years ago, when old books were, if only you got out of the central mart, difficult to procure, and by no means easy to store. They were frequently in folio, huge ponderous works which, unless they were of the very best, challenged the courage of all but veterans, as they looked down from their dark corners. There was no escaping them, no getting away from their costly presence, and no reading them either without sitting at a table; for ‘literary machines’ were not then invented, and no one seemed to care about lingering with arched back over a fire, with sixty or eighty pounds weight of paper on his knees. Such a discipline would have been valuable, no doubt, but learning grew lazy when it left the monasteries, and a table became a virtual necessity for most folk. After a time folios were turned into octavos, and the price cheapened. The ‘extraneous Tegg,’ as Carlyle calls the well-known bookseller, and our friends Cooke, Walker, Bell, and many more, commenced to cut the throat of the trade, and to ruin the honest author, by printing favourite books at such a very cheap rate that the public soon became totally demoralized. Cooke made an enormous fortune—for a book-seller—and died amid the plaudits of the mob and the curses of his competitors, for he had out-Heroded Herod in prostituting ‘Tom Jones,’ a thing deemed impossible, by publishing the text in numbers, verbatim et literatim, at a scandalously cheap price. Then he approached other ‘British novelists’ in turn, and went through the entire pantheon, winding up with a series of sacred classics. Cooke was a man of immense resource, and no scruples; he got the author out of the way (I don’t say he murdered him), sold up his rivals, and positively lived to an advanced age—three crimes which procured him hosts of enemies, but nevertheless altered the whole system of publishing, and solved for ever the problem whether it is better or worse for the producer to sell fifty articles at a penny each, or a single one of the same kind for four and two.
Now, Cooke’s procedure, and that of the other booksellers who were wise enough to follow his lead, not only had great influence in moulding the character of the bibliophiles of that day, but is directly responsible even now for many of those rules and regulations which their descendants are sticklers in the preservation of. A folio had always been bound in a manner suitable to its bulk, and in such a way as to render a new binding unnecessary for a very long time, and there was, consequently, little or no necessity for rules of any kind for its preservation. When the folio was hoisted to its place, there it would stop, or, if taken down, it would be with a considerable amount of caution.
Not so Cooke’s cheap and easily handled productions. They were light and airy, and bound in millboard, which, after a moderate use, never failed to come to pieces. As a matter of fact, nearly all Cooke’s books met with on the stalls to-day show unmistakable evidence of honest handling. They are thumbed, perhaps torn, and always very feeble in the cover. Should it have been worth anyone’s while to rebind one of these cheap little volumes, we may be sure that it will show a stout leather cover, and be scrupulously cut down to the headlines for the sake of the shavings. This cropping of margins was no crime then, because there was no rule to the contrary, and Cooke turned out his books in such numbers that they were really of very trifling value at any time. Before his day, it was a common practice for the publishers themselves to have their books bound in leather, and for the binders to cut as much of the margins away as they decently could.
For instance, let us revert to ‘Tom Jones,’ one of the first books experimented upon by the first of really cheap publishers. When this novel came out, in 1749, it made its appearance in six small volumes bound uniformly in leather, with edges more or less cropped. This cropping process seems to have pleased Fielding immensely, or at any rate there is no doubt in the world that he preferred to see his handiwork issued in the way common to folios, rather than in boards with ragged edges, for a sample set of volumes was done up in the latter style and rejected.
We think him foolish, because not very long ago the sample set was discovered in an old farmhouse, and, after changing hands once or twice, packed off to the auction-rooms, where it realized the handsome sum of £69. A little bit of paper made an immense difference in this case, for its presence was in conformity with an imperative rule that has grown up since Fielding’s day, and which lays it down that never—no, never—must a book be denuded of its margins if you wish to make the most of it. Whatever its quality, do not deprive it of the minutest fraction of its legitimate area of paper. Of course, this drastic regulation came into force when books began to be generally published, not in folio or quarto, but in a smaller and more handy size.
Collectors, whether of books or anything else, are content at first with a little. Their requirements are indeed boundless, so far as number is concerned; but they have not yet become solicitous of technical or minute distinctions. A book is a book, and a coin is a coin, and they are satisfied without it, provided it is substantially the same as some other copy of the same edition, or some other coin struck from the same die, which they happen to have. After a while, however, a very natural desire to excel produces its inevitable result, and all sorts of arbitrary variations are catalogued and insisted upon by those who have plenty of money, and at the same time pride themselves on their discrimination and taste. Thus it is that a comparatively scarce book, this first edition of ‘Tom Jones,’ for instance, may become excessively scarce under exceptional circumstances. True, the collector who is a terrible stickler for detail may, and probably will, be charged sooner or later with being a fool for his pains; but that penalty he is content to accept, happy in the consciousness, that, when everything is said and done, he has chosen the better part, which in all these cases consists in leaving well alone.
Not long ago a London newspaper, which ought to have known better, was very angry with a collector of the circumspect school because he had boasted that all the books in his library were ‘uncut.’ ‘This shows,’ said the sage who wrote the article, ‘that he has a hundred or more books which he has never read, and, what is worse, has no intention of reading.’ He thought that ‘uncut’ meant ‘not cut open,’ and perhaps thinks so still, for it was worth no one’s while to teach him his business, and so the matter dropped.
The cropping of books has, indeed, become as iniquitous as the old Star Chamber practice of cropping of ears, or perhaps even more so, for some at least of the delinquents who appeared to the usual Writ of Rebellion, which it was the practice of that tribunal to issue from time to time, richly deserved all they got. The proper way to deal with a book is to burn it if it be wicked, and if not, to leave it alone; though, if this fact had always been recognised, there would have been no scope for us in the matter of broad expanse of margin, since what everybody has no one craves for.
Fine bindings are a law unto themselves, and require separate consideration; but there is a matter connected with bindings generally, or, rather, with the advisability of binding at all, which has created a considerable amount of scandal in times past. Let us take that scarce book, ‘The English Dance of Death,’ which William Combe wrote in the safe seclusion of the King’s Bench Prison. It appeared originally in 1815 in parts, each with its wrapper, and afterwards was bound up in two volumes, whereupon it at once lost, according to present-day ideas on the subject, five-sixths of its value.
The ‘Tale of Two Cities’ when in the original eight parts is worth three times as much, at least, as when in the publisher’s cloth binding, and nearly all Thackeray’s more important works are subject to a very considerable reduction under identical circumstances. Curiously enough, the rule is imperative in certain specific instances, while in others it has no application at all. The question whether to apply it or not depends on the character of the book. We should insist upon the parts being left unbound in the case of ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ but not in that of Trusler’s 1833 edition of ‘Hogarth Moralized,’ for here the twenty-six parts are a positive nuisance unless they are bound. Trusler’s melancholy production is not much good, bound or unbound, but it will serve as an illustration, and certain it is that the cost of binding will have to be taken into consideration when estimating the worth of the numbers, in case anyone thrusts them upon a long-suffering purchaser, and will not be denied.
‘Fools you are!’ says Sir Ensor Doone, under other circumstances, and ‘Idiots!’ adds the man in the street when he reads that somebody has paid a large sum for ‘Ask Mamma’ in the ‘original thirteen parts,’ when he could, had he been so minded, have got the entire book, nicely bound, for a fourth of the money—plates, text, and all. This is the cry whenever a sum which appears exorbitant on the face of it is paid for anything.
A short time ago £445 was obtained for a fiddle by Stradivari; £798 for an imperfect silver cup made by Jacob Frolich, master of Nuremberg in 1555; and £246 odd for a rose-point flounce of Venetian lace three yards long. Nothing was said about the enormity of these sums, but let a fiftieth part of the smallest amount be realized at any time for a book ‘in parts,’ and there is a chorus of disapprobation, for which, however, it must be confessed, there is just a modicum of warrant.
It is really not at all easy to see why a series of numbers, liable at any moment to injury, and always inconvenient to handle, should, the quality of the plates, if there are any, and other accessories being equal, be so greatly preferred to a volume bound in a proper manner. Perhaps it is a matter of sentiment, perhaps of pure scarcity, or perhaps the bonâ-fide book-collector likes to give himself as much trouble as he possibly can, by way of purifying his life and chastening his soul. However this may be, there is no question that some books are thought more highly of when in sections, and that the public in their blindness fail to see the reason why.
Well, there is, at any rate, much less reason, one would think, in paying £246 for a lace flounce wherewith to minister to the vanity of some middle-aged dame than there is for incurring a fractional obligation for classic works, which will outlast us by many a day, even though they may have the fortune to be uncut and in parts as issued. And besides, O shade of Mr. Burgess! did you not ignore in your lifetime the rule that it were best to let well alone, and were not the consequences terrible in the extreme?1
Whether any regulations are really necessary for the proper preservation of books old or new let the bibliophiles determine; but so long as they exist it is folly to ignore them. Nay, further, to be as far upon the safe side as possible, we must prefer to buy our books with due regard to those rules and orders which our progenitors have in their wisdom drawn up, selecting the very best copies we can afford to pay or obtain credit for, and even going to the length of investing in ‘parts’ which shall not shame us, or cause us loss when the inevitable hour of parting arrives.
The cardinal rule of the game is triple-headed, and it is this: Buy the best you can, spend what you find convenient without stint, and, above all, keep to the track you have mapped out for yourself and have so far followed. Then will it be well with you now and hereafter in all things bookish. Act the contrary throughout, and every stiver you spend will swell the total of your confusion; drop by drop the clepsydra of your fortunes will run out to your bane.
But the rules which hem in the book-buyer, and direct his course, are not solely confined to technical points and details such as those mentioned. On the contrary, they are equally stringent in many other respects, and in particular as to the description of book to buy, its condition, and so on; for it is taken for granted that no man, or at least no bookman worthy the name, would purchase a bad or inferior edition when he could get a better, or a volume that was imperfect or had been shamefully used by a succession of careless owners. Between the quality of one edition and another there is often an immense difference, as all the world knows, or ought to know. That edition of ‘“Paradise Lost,” a Poem in twelve books, the author John Milton, Printed for the Proprietors and sold by all the Booksellers,’ no date, but about 1780, is one of the very worst that any misguided man ever picked up from a street stall. The mistakes, not merely in punctuation, but in spelling, are too gross and scandalous for mention; entire lines are not infrequently missing, and whole sentences often perverted. Contrast this with any copy of the first edition, no matter which title-page may have heralded it into the world, and we have a different book entirely. The rule says that, though an ordinary copy of the first edition may be three thousand times as valuable in money as this gutter abortion, you must nevertheless not be attracted by the latter because it is cheap—no, not even though you should think it good enough for everyday use.
Naturally enough there are free-lances among book-men, people who are a law unto themselves, and insist upon doing precisely as they like, but it will be noticed that they very rarely fly in the face of any rule in important cases. Your free-lance has the courage of the Seven Champions of Christendom when face to face with Stackhouse’s ‘History of the Bible,’ but let him, for example, come across ‘Tamerlaine, and other Poems, By a Bostonian;’ not Herne Shepherd’s London reprint, but the original tract which Calvin F. S. Thomas printed at Boston in 1827. Let us suppose also that it is in its original tea-tinted paper covers, just as Edgar Allen Poe sent it forth into the world. What would our free-lance do? Have it rebound in defiance of the rule? Hardly, for if he did he would reduce the importance of his exceptionally fortunate find, and therefore its value, to such a considerable extent that even he would hesitate long before committing himself to an act that could never be recalled. Moreover, he would have direct evidence with regard to a copy of this very Pamphlet before his eyes, for a collector once really did pick one up for a few pence. In the first place, let it be stated that only three copies of ‘Tamerlaine’ can now be traced. One is in the British Museum, which acquired it from the late Mr. Henry Stevens for one shilling. A second was found on a stall in America for the equivalent of something less, and it is this latter copy which furnishes the evidence referred to. The fortunate finder sent it to Messrs. C. F. Libbie and Co., the auctioneers of Boston, who sold it by auction in 1893 for the equivalent of £370 to the agents of Mr. George F. Maxwell, of New York, who had the pamphlet rebound in magnificent style by Lortic Fils, at a cost of several hundred dollars. Moreover, the covers were bound in, and the edges left untrimmed. No expense was spared; everything was done in proper order according to rule of thumb. Yet in April, 1895, when Mr. Maxwell’s valuable library was sold by the same auctioneers, this copy of ‘Tamerlaine,’ vastly improved as one might think, dropped to £290, showing a clear loss of £80, irrespective altogether of the amount paid for binding, auctioneers’ commission, and so on.
It may, of course, be said that it is a common thing for the same book to bring different amounts at different times, even when the sales take place within a few months of each other. A bookseller, dissatisfied with the amount bid for some scarce work he has put on the market, will frequently buy it in and offer it again later on with satisfactory results.
But ‘Tamerlaine’ is an altogether exceptional piece, and, moreover, where were the gentlemen who respectively bid £360 and £365 on the occasion when Mr. Maxwell secured it for a slightly larger sum? Wherever they were, they seem to have been fully alive to the fact that ‘Tamerlaine’ was not as it was when Poe sent it out for review ever so many years ago. ‘Ah, broken is the golden bowl,’ and it is to be feared by that talented binder, Lortic Fils. If ever I find ‘Tamerlaine,’ I shall keep every binder at arm’s length, and not be tempted to paint the lily—no, not even though Derome himself should rise from the dead and offer to array it gratuitously in morocco, tooled to a heavenly pattern, and powdered all over with the fleurs-de-lys of imperial France. In this spirit let us reproduce the title-page of ‘Tamerlaine,’ as a Frontispiece to this Romance, so that we shall know it on the instant if the gods should only guide our feet to where a fourth copy lies hidden away. Then let us remember the rule to let well alone, and be thankful, for it is a rule of gold, the first and foremost of them all.
Never to outrage sentiment, always to identify one’s self with the author as far as possible, is to respect both the living and the dead, and to make life comparatively easy, even though its path be strewn with flints and cobble-stones. May the person who has the maximum of respect for the private life and character of one of the greatest of modern poets eventually acquire the shabby copy of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ which the luckless half-immortal thrust into his pocket as the Don Juan was sent to the bottom of the Gulf of Genoa. It will come with a train of associations that will on the instant forbid the elimination of a single stain, or the slightest repair of its sea-swept cover.
The book-hunter who has the feelings and aspirations of an ancient race properly diffused through his system would almost give his head for a relic such as this, for his passion is not to be stifled. He likes to think that the books he reads and handles have a pedigree, that they come to him laden with the fears and aspirations of the past, that they are ghost-haunted, and that they who wrote them, though dead, yet speak, not as man to man, but as soul to soul.
Notes
1 The library of the late Mr. Frederick Burgess was sold by Messrs. Sotheby on May 31 and three subsequent days, 1894. It consisted almost entirely of then ‘Fashionable’ books, illustrated by Cruikshank and other talented artists. Parts had been bound up, original cloth covers removed, and expensive bindings substituted, not merely in a few instances, but as a general rule. The collection, though an excellent one of its kind, was disposed of at an enormous sacrifice.