WOMEN AS COLLECTORS.
Women collect all sorts of things except books. To them the book-sense seems to be denied, and it is difficult for them to appreciate its existence in men. To be sure, there have been a few celebrated book-collectors among the fair sex, but they have usually been rather reprehensible ladies, like Diane de Poictiers and Madame Pompadour. Probably Aspasia was a collector of MSS. Lady Jane Grey seems to have been a virtuous exception, and she was cruelly “cropped.” I am told that there are a few women now-a-days who collect books, and only a few weeks ago a lady read, before a woman’s club in Chicago, a paper on the Collection and Adornment of Books, for which occasion a fair member of the club solicited me to write her something appropriate to read, which of course I was glad to do. But this was in Chicago, where the women go in for culture. In thirty years’ haunting of the book-shops and print-shops of New York, I have never seen a woman catching a cold in her head by turning over the large prints, nor soiling her dainty gloves by handling the dirty old books. Women have been depicted in literature in many different occupations, situations and pleasures, but in all the literature that I have read I can recall only one instance in which she is imagined a book-buyer. This is in “The Sentimental Journey,” and in celebrating the unique instance let me rise to a nobler strain and sing a song of
THE SENTIMENTAL CHAMBERMAID.
When you’re in Paris, do not fail
To seek the Quai de Conti,
Where in the roguish Parson’s tale,
Upon the river front he
Bespoke the pretty chambermaid
Too innocent to be afraid.
On this book-seller’s mouldy stall,
Crammed full of volumes musty,
I made a bibliophilic call
And saw, in garments rusty,
The ancient vender, queer to view,
In breeches, buckles, and a queue.
And while to find that famous book,
“Les Egaremens du Coeur,”
I dilligently undertook,
I suddenly met her;
She held a small green satin purse,
And spite of Time looked none the worse.
I told her she was known to Fame
Through ministerial Mentor,
And though I had not heard her name,
That this should not prevent her
From listening to the homage due
To one to Sentiment so true.
She blushed; I bowed in courtly fashion;
In pockets of my trousers
Then sought a crown to vouch my passion,
Without intent to rouse hers;
But I had left my purse ’twould seem—
And then I woke—’twas but a dream!
The heart will wander, never doubt,
Though waking faith it keep;
That is exceptionally stout
Which strays but in its sleep;
And hearts must always turn to her
Who loved, “Les Egaremens du Coeur.”
M. Uzanne, in “The Book-Hunter in Paris,” avers that “the woman of fashion never goes book-hunting,” and he puts the aphorism in italics. He also says that the occasional woman at the book-stalls, “if by chance she wants a book, tries to bargain for it as if it were a lobster or a fowl.” Also that the book-stall keepers are always watchful of the woman with an ulster, a water-proof, or a muff. These garments are not always impervious to books, it seems.
The imitative efforts of women at “extra-illustrating” are usually limited to buying a set of photographs at Rome and sticking them into the cracks of “The Marble Faun,” and giving it away to a friend as a marked favor Poor Hawthorne! he would wriggle in his grave if he could see his fair admirers doing this. Mr. Blades certainly ought to have included women among the enemies of books. They generally regard the husband’s or father’s expenditure on books as so much spoil of their gowns and jewels. We book-men are up to all the tricks of getting the books into the house without their knowing it What joy and glee when we successfully smuggle in a parcel from the express, right under our wife’s nose, while she is busy talking scandal to another woman in the drawing-room! The good creatures make us positively dishonest and endanger our eternal welfare. How we “hustle around” in their absence, when the embargo is temporarily raised; and when the new purchases are detected, how we pretend that they are old, and wonder that they have not seen them before, and rattle away in a fevered, embarrassed manner about the scarcity and value of the surreptitious purchases, and how meanly conscious we are all the time that the pretense is unavailing and the fair despots see right through us God has given them an instinct that is more than a match for our acknowledged superior intellect. And the good wife smiles quietly but satirically, and says, in the form in that case made and provided, “My dear, you’ll certainly ruin yourself buying books!” with a sigh that agitates a very costly diamond necklace reposing on her shapely bosom; or she archly shakes at us a warning finger all aglow with ruby and sapphire, which she has bought on installments out of the house allowance. Fortunate for us if the library is not condemned to be cleaned twice a year. These beloved objects ought to deny themselves a ring, or a horse, or a gown, or a ball now and then, to atone for their mankind’s debauchery in books; but do they? They ought to encourage the Bibliomania, for it keeps their husbands out of mischief, away from “that horrid club,” and safe at home of evenings. The Book-Worm is always a blameless being. He never has to hie to Canada as a refuge. He is “absolutely pure,” like all the baking powders
The gentle Addison, in “The Spectator,” thus described a woman’s library: “The very sound of a lady’s library gave me a great curiosity to see it; and as it was some time before the lady came to me, I had an opportunity of turning over a great many of her books, which were ranged together in a very beautiful order. At the end of the folios (which were finely bound and gilt) were great jars of china placed one above another in a very noble piece of architecture. The quartos were separated from the octavos by a pile of smaller vessels, which rose in a delightful pyramid The octavos were bounded by tea-dishes of all shapes, colors, and sizes, which were so disposed on a wooden frame that they looked like one continued pillar indented with the finest strokes of sculpture, and stained with the greatest variety of dyes. That part of the library which was designed for the reception of plays and pamphlets, and other loose papers, was inclosed in a kind of square, consisting of one of the prettiest grotesque works that I ever saw, and made up of scaramouches, lions, mandarins, monkeys, trees, shells, and a thousand other odd figures in china ware. In the midst of the room was a little Japan table with a quire of gilt paper upon it, and on the paper a silver snuff-box made in shape of a little book. I found there were several other counterfeit books upon the upper shelves, which were carved in wood, and served only to fill up the number, like fagots in the muster of a regiment. I was wonderfully pleased with such a mixed kind of furniture as seemed very suitable both to the lady and the scholar, and did not know at first whether I should fancy myself in a grotto or in a library” If so great a favorite with the fair sex could say such satirical things of them, I may be permitted to have my own idea of
A WOMAN’S IDEA OF A LIBRARY.
I do not care so much for books,
But Libraries are all the style,
With fine “editions de luxe”
One’s formal callers to beguile;
With neat dwarf cases round the walls,
And china teapots on the top,
The empty shelves concealed by falls
Of India silk that graceful drop.
A few rare etchings greet the view,
Like “Harmony” and “Harvest Moon;”
An artist’s proof on satin too
By what’s-his-name is quite a boon.
My print called “Jupiter and Jo”
Is very rarely seen, but then
Another copy I can show
Inscribed with “Jupiter and 10.”
A fisher boy in marble stoops
On pedestal in window placed,
And one of Rogers’ lovely groups
Is through the long lace curtains traced.
And then I make a painting lean
Upon a white and gilded easel,
Illustrating that famous scene
Of Joseph Andrews and Lady Teazle.
Of course my shelves the works reveal
Of Plutarch, Rollin, and of Tupper,
While Bowdler’s Shakespeare and “Lucille”
Quite soothe one’s spirits after supper.
And when I visited dear Rome
I bought a lot of photographs,
And had them mounted here at home,
And though my dreadful husband laughs,
I’ve put them in “The Marble Faun,”
And envious women vainly seek
At Scribner’s shop, from early dawn,
To find a volume so unique.
And monthly here, in deep surmise,
Minerva’s bust above us frowning,
A club of women analyze
The works of Ibsen and of Browning.
In the charming romance, “Realmah,” the noble African prince prescribes monogamy to his subjects, but he allows himself three wives; one is a State wife, to sit by his side on the throne, help him receive embassadors, and preside at court dinners; another a household wife, to rule the kitchen and the homely affairs of the palace; the third is a love-wife, to be cherished in his heart and bear him children. Why would it not be fair to the Book-Worm to concede him a Book-wife, who should understand and sympathize with him in his eccentricity, and who should care more for rare and beautiful books than for diamonds, laces, Easter bonnets and ten-button gloves?
In regard to women’s book-clubs, a recent writer, Mr. Edward Sanford Martin, in “Windfalls of Observation,” observes: “If a man wants to read a book he buys it, and if he likes it he buys six more copies and gives (not all the same day, of course) to six women whose intelligence he respects. But if a club of fifteen girls determine to read a book, do they buy fifteen copies? No. Do they buy five copies? No. Do they buy—No, they don’t buy at all; they borrow a copy. It doesn’t lie in womankind to spend money for books unless they are meant to be a gift for some man.” Mr. Martin is a little too hard here, for I have been told of such clubs which sometimes bought one copy. To be sure they always bully the bookseller into letting them have it at cost on account of the probable benefit to his trade. But it is true that no normally organized woman will forego a dollar’s worth of ribbon or gloves for a dollar’s worth of book I have sometimes read aloud to a number of women while they were sewing, but I do it no more, for just as I got to a point where you ought to be able to hear a pin drop, I always have heard some woman whisper, “Lend me your eighty cotton.” A story was told me of the first meeting of a Browning Club in a large city in Ohio. My informant was a young lady from the East, who was present, and my readers can safely rely on the correctness of the narration. The club was composed of young ladies from sixteen to twenty-five years of age, all of the “first families.” It was thought best to take an easy poem for the first meeting, and so one of them read aloud, “The Last Ride Together” After the reading there was a moment’s silence, and then one observed that she would like to know whether they took that ride on horseback or in a “buggy.” Another silence, and then an artless young bud ventured the remark that she thought it must have been in a buggy, because if it was on horseback he could not have got his arm around her. I once thought of sending this anecdote to Mr. Browning, but was warned that he was destitute of the sense of humor, especially at his own expense, and so desisted
“Ah, that our wives could only see
How well the money is invested
In these old books, which seem to be
By them, alas! so much detested.”
But the wives are not always unwise in their opposition to their husband’s book-buying. There is nothing more pitiful than to see the widow of a poor clergyman or lawyer trying to sell his library, and to witness her disappointment at the shrinkage of value which she had been taught and accustomed to regard as so great. A woman who has a true and wise sympathy with her husband’s book-buying is an adored object. I recollect one such, who at her own suggestion gave up the largest and best room in her house to her husband’s books, and received her callers and guests in a smaller one—she also received her husband’s blessing.
