Title: The Book Collector
Author: Nodier, Charles
Language: English
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                          The Book Collector

                          _by Charles Nodier_


                       CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

                                 1951



[Illustration]


                               Foreword


The accompanying essay by Charles Nodier, 1780–1844, Librarian of the
Arsenal in Paris, bibliographer, bibliophile, and a literary leader of
the Romantic Movement, originally appeared in French under the title
“L’Amateur des Livres,” in _Les Français Peints par Eux-mêmes_, Paris,
1841, Vol. III, pp 201–9. It seemed to me excellent, and so agreeably
of its period, that I asked my friend Barbara Sessions to translate it,
which she has now done, as far as I know, for the first time. Together
we have edited the few parts which seemed slightly pedantic, and have
added some notes which will explain the more abstruse literary, or
bibliophilic, allusions.

Book collectors, M. Nodier to the contrary notwithstanding, are still
very much alive, and can again be found even in the harried ranks of
capitalists. But the learned French librarian was nearer right about
his own pamphlets: They have indeed faded from memory. Now I hope this
one of them may survive for a few more years, despite the ephemeral
form in which you receive it.

August 1951                                           PHILIP HOFER



[Illustration: Un Bouquiniste dans l’Ivresse....

_Rien_ n’égale ma joie ... je viens d’acheter pour cinquante écus un
Horace imprimé à Amsterdam en 1780! Cette édition est excessivement
précieuse: _à chaque page_ elle est criblée de fautes!

                              Lithograph by Honoré Daumier, (1844)]



                          The Book Collector

    “_Quiconque est loup agisse en loup,
    C’est le plus certain de beaucoup._”


I should like to warn you, from the outset, that this essay will
be as lively as a speech by Mathurin Cordier[1] or a chapter of
Despautere![2] God, Nature, and the Academy have enclosed my
imagination within these narrow boundaries, which it is no longer able
to overstep. At least you can always refrain from reading me, and in
that are more fortunate than I――who, following the dictates of a too
exigent publisher, have no choice but to write. The drawings were made,
the plates were ready; and the only thing needed to complete the issue
was a long and unprofitable text. Well, then――here it is! But you
will be disappointed if you expect to find in it one of those clever
portraits to which your favorite authors have accustomed you. If what
you are seeking is an original and telling sketch of the _bouquiniste_,
the second-hand-book addict, then you need go no further. Pause here,
and, following the modest advice of certain almanacs: “See illustration
on opposite page.”

The collector of books is a type which we would do well to define,
since everything points to his disappearance in the very near future.
The printed book has existed at the most for some four hundred years,
yet books are already accumulating in some countries in a manner that
threatens the very equilibrium of the globe. Civilization has reached
the most unexpected of its ages, the age of paper. Now that everyone
writes books, no one shows any particular eagerness to buy them.
Besides, our young authors are well on the way to building up whole
libraries for themselves out of their own works. They need only be left
to their own devices.

If we were to subdivide the species book collector into its various
classes, the top-most rank in the whole subtle and capricious family
should without doubt be given to the bibliophile.

[Illustration]

The bibliophile is a man endowed with a certain amount of intelligence
and taste, who derives pleasure from works of genius, imagination, and
feeling. He enjoys his mute conversations with great minds――unilateral
conversations which can be begun at will, dropped without discourtesy,
and resumed without insistence; and, from this love of the absent
author whose words have been made known to him through the device of
writing, he comes insensibly to love the material symbol in which those
words are clothed. His feeling for the book is like the love of one
friend for another’s portrait, or of the lover for the portrait of his
mistress; and, like the lover, he wants the loved object to look its
best. He would not be happy to leave the precious volume that has so
enthralled him clad in the drab habiliments of poverty, when it is in
his power to clothe it luxuriously in watered silk and morocco. His
library, like the gown of a favorite, is resplendent with gold lace;
and his books, by their outward look alone, are worthy――as Virgil would
have said――of the regard of consuls.

Alexander was a bibliophile. When victory put into his hands the rich
coffers of Darius, he was able to fill them with the rarest treasures
of Persia. The works of Homer were among the spoils.

Bibliophiles today are vanishing along with kings. In the past, the
kings themselves were bibliophiles, and it is to their enlightened
munificence that we owe the copying of so many manuscripts of
inestimable value. Alcuin was the Gruthuyse[3] of Charlemagne, just as
Gruthuyse was the Alcuin of the Dukes of Burgundy. The salamanders of
François I^{er} will become as widely known through his beautiful books
as through his architectural monuments. His son, Henri II, entrusted
the secret of his love cipher to the magnificent bindings in his
library, just as he did to the sumptuous decoration of his palaces. The
volumes once owned by Anne d’Autriche[4] still delight the connoisseur
by their chaste and noble elegance.

Great lords and statesmen echoed the taste of their sovereigns, and
there were as many rich libraries as there were families with shields
and escutcheons. Almost down to our own day, the houses of Guise,
d’Urfé, de Thou, Richelieu, Mazarin, Bignon, Molé, Pasquier, Séguier,
Colbert, Lamoignon, d’Estrées, d’Aumont, de la Vallière, rivalled one
another in their treasures of learned and serviceable books. I have
named but a few of these noble bibliophiles, quite at random, in order
to spare myself the tedious task of naming them all. To compile future
additions to this list will be a less embarrassing task to those who
come after us!

Even more remarkable――finance itself once showed a love for books.
How it has since changed! King François I^{er’s} treasurer, Grolier,
alone, did more for the progress of typography and binding than will
ever be accomplished by all our paltry medals and our grudging literary
budgets. A mere dealer in wood, M. Girardot de Préfond[5], bolstered
his slightly insecure claim to nobility by using his money in the
same worthy fashion, thus earning at least the immortality of the
bibliographies and catalogues. Our bankers of today show no signs of
envying him.

Alas, the bibliophile is no longer to be found in the upper classes of
our _progressive_ society (I ask your pardon for the adjective, but it
will have to stand, by your leave, along with the verb _to progress_);
the bibliophile of the present day is the scholar, the man of letters,
the artist, the small independent proprietor or the man of moderate
fortune, who finds in dealing with books some relief from the boredom
and insipidity of dealing with other men, and who is, to some extent,
consoled for the deceptive nature of the other affections by a taste
which, though perhaps misplaced, is at least innocent. But such a man
will never amass important collections; it is, alas, the exception if
his acquisitions are still there to meet his dying gaze or to be left
as a modest legacy to his children. I know one bibliophile of this sort
(and could tell you his name if I chose) who has spent fifty years
of his hardworking life in building up a library, and in selling his
library in order to live. There is a bibliophile for you, and I warn
you that he is one of the last of the species. Today, it is love of
money that prevails; books no longer offer the slightest interest.

The opposite of the bibliophile is the bibliophobe. Our great gentlemen
of the political and banking worlds, our great statesmen, our great
men of letters, are for the most part bibliophobes. For this imposing
aristocracy which our happy advances in civilization have brought to
the fore, education and human enlightenment in general date at the most
from Voltaire. In their eyes, Voltaire is a myth which sums up the
discovery of letters by Trismegistus and the invention of printing by
Gutenberg. Since everything is to be found in Voltaire, the bibliophobe
would have no more hesitation than Omar in burning the library of
Alexandria. Not that the bibliophobe reads Voltaire! He takes pains
not to read him; but he is grateful to have Voltaire to turn to as
a specious pretext for his disdain for books. For the bibliophobe,
anything that is no longer “current” is already waste paper; he lets
nothing accumulate on his neglected shelves but moistening sheets and
spotting pages――until such time as he unloads the whole mass of damp
rags,――sterile tribute from some famished muse or other,――into the
hands of the passing rubbish-collector, who pays less for them than
their value by weight. The bibliophobe, in other words, accepts the
homage of a book and then sells it. It goes without saying that he does
not read it, and never pays for it.

About ten years ago a foreigner, a man of genius, was overtaken in a
Paris café where he had just finished lunching by one of those absurd
predicaments in which the profoundly absorbed thinker all too often
finds himself. He had forgotten his purse, and was helplessly searching
his portfolio for a pound note which might accidentally have strayed
there, when his eyes fell, among his papers, on the address of a
certain millionaire who lived nearby. He wrote a card to this respected
_nouveau riche_, requesting an hour’s loan of twenty francs, dispatched
a waiter with his note, and after a certain interval received as his
only reply a _no_ as inflexible as that of Richelieu to Maynard![6]
Providentially, a friend appeared and helped him out of his difficulty.
Up to this point, the story is in no way out of the ordinary, and
hardly merits being told――but it is not yet finished. The man of genius
attained fame (something which does occasionally happen to genius)
and then died (something which happens sooner or later to everyone).
The fame of his works penetrated even the halls of the Bank, and the
price paid for his autographs, though not quoted on the Bourse, made
something of a sensation in the sales. I myself saw this noble appeal
to French urbanity bring 150 francs at an auction sale where our
bibliophobe, the man of wealth, had entered it in the hope of catching
some collector’s fancy, and I have no doubt that this small capital has
by now been tripled in hands so discreet and knowing. All of which goes
to show that a favor withheld is no more lost than one that is granted!

There is one type of bibliophobe, however, whom I can pardon for
his brutish antipathy toward books. This is the good, sensible man
of little cultivation, who feels a horror for books because of the
ways in which they are misused and the harm which they do. Such was
the attitude of my old companion in misfortune, the Commandeur de
Valais, who said to me, gently turning in his hand the sole volume that
remained of my library (it was, alas, a Plato!): “Away with it, in the
name of God! It is rascals like this who prepared the Revolution.” “For
my part,” he added, twisting somewhat coquettishly his gray moustache,
“Heaven can witness that I have never read a single one of them!”

The distinguishing marks of the bibliophile are the taste, the delicate
and resourceful tact, which he applies to everything, and which
contribute an inexpressible charm to life. One might even be so bold
as to warrant that the bibliophile is to all intents and purposes a
happy man, or at least that he knows how happiness can be achieved.
That good and learned book-lover, Urbain Chevreau,[7] has given us
a marvelous description of this kind of happiness, as he himself
experienced it. You will agree with me, if you will listen to his words
for a moment instead of to mine: “I never know boredom,” he writes, “in
my solitude, where I am surrounded by a large and well chosen library.
Speaking in general terms, all the Greek and Latin authors are to be
found there, whatever their profession: orators, poets, sophists,
rhetoricians, philosophers, historians, geographers, chronologists,
the Church Fathers, the theologians, and the councils. Antiquarian
writings are there too, and all sorts of curious tales; many Italians,
a few Spaniards, and modern authors of established reputation. I have
paintings and prints; outside, a garden full of flowers and fruit
trees; and, in one of the rooms, a group of house-musicians who, by
their warblings and chirpings, never fail to wake me in the morning
and to entertain me at my meals. The house is new and well-built, the
air is wholesome, and――to make sure that I do my duty――there are three
churches just outside my doors.”

If Urbain Chevreau had lived in the time of Sulla, I wonder whether
the Roman Senate would still have dared to proclaim Sulla the happiest
man on earth; yet, on second thought, I am inclined to think that it
would――for in all probability the Senate would never have known that
a person like Urbain Chevreau existed. You will have noted, in fact,
that this worthy man――the object and model of my favorite studies and
the delight of my happiest hours of reading, _praesidium et dulce decus
meum_――has, in the charming picture he has given us of his so enviable
existence, either forgotten to mention, or himself failed to realize,
the rarest and most precious ingredient of his happiness. _Chevreau was
happy because he knew how to be satisfied with what he had, and to do
without fame and glory._ He was so completely forgotten in his own time
that, although he was a superb scholar, he was never made a member of
the Academy! Still, envy and hatred passed him by, just as did acclaim,
leaving him to die among his books and his flowers in the eighty-eighth
year of his age. May the earth rest lightly on this most lovable and
erudite of bibliophiles――according to the now consecrated words on his
tomb.

But what has become of his books――those books so well chosen by
Urbain Chevreau and so well kept, of which there has been no mention
in any recent catalogue? Here is a question of vital importance,
pressing, insistent; a question which will be of great concern to
society once society has dropped its absorption in the absurd nonsense
of humanitarian philosophy and bad politics with which it is now
infatuated!

The bibliophile knows how to select books; the bibliomaniac hoards
and amasses them. The bibliophile puts a book in its right place
on the shelf, after having explored it with all the resources of
sense and imagination; the bibliomaniac stacks his books in piles
without ever looking at them. The bibliophile appreciates the book;
the bibliomaniac weighs or measures it. The bibliophile works with a
magnifying glass, the bibliomaniac with a measuring-stick. Some who are
known to me compute the growth of their libraries in square metres.
The harmless, deliciously enjoyable fever of the bibliophile becomes,
in the bibliomaniac, an acute malady bordering on delirium. Once it
has reached that fatal stage of paroxysm it loses all contact with the
intelligence and resembles any other mania. I do not know whether or
not the phrenologists, who have discovered so many absurdities, have as
yet localized the collector’s instinct――developed to such a high degree
in some poor devils of my acquaintance――within the box of bone which
houses our poor brain. Long ago in my youth I knew a man who collected
corks of historic or anecdotal interest, and kept them arranged in
orderly rows in his immense garret, each with its instructive label
indicating on what more or less solemn occasion it had been originally
drawn from the bottle. One label, for instance, read: “M. Le Maire,
_Champagne mousseux_ of first quality: Birth of His Majesty, the King
of Rome.”――The skull of the bibliomaniac must have approximately the
same protuberances.

Only a step separates the sublime from the ridiculous; only a _crise_,
the bibliophile from the bibliomaniac. The one often turns into the
other through mental deterioration or increase of fortune――two grave
afflictions to which the best of men are subject, though the first
is far more common than the second. My dear and honored master, M.
Boulard,[8] was once a scrupulous and fastidious bibliophile, before
he amassed in his six-story house 600,000 volumes of every possible
format, piled like the stones in Cyclopean walls! I remember that I
was going about with him one day among these insecure obelisks (which
had not been stabilized by our modern architectural science), when
I chanced to ask with some curiosity after a certain item――a unique
copy――which I had let go to him in a celebrated sale. M. Boulard looked
at me fixedly, with that gracious and humorous air of good-fellowship
which was characteristic of him, and, rapping with his gold-headed
cane on one of the huge stacks (_rudis indigestaque moles_), then on a
second and third, said, “It’s there――or there――or there.” I shuddered
to think that the unfortunate booklet might perhaps have disappeared
for all time beneath 18,000 folios; but my concern did not make me
forget my own safety. The gigantic stacks, their uncertain equilibrium
shaken by the tappings of M. Boulard’s cane, were swaying threateningly
on their bases, the summits vibrating like the pinnacles of a Gothic
cathedral at the sound of the bells or the impact of a storm. Dragging
M. Boulard with me, I fled before Ossa could collapse upon Pelion. Even
today, when I think how near I came to receiving the whole series of
the Bollandist[9] publications on my head from a height of twenty feet,
I cannot recall the danger I was in without pious horror. It would be
an abuse of the word to apply the name “library” to menacing mountains
of books which have to be attacked with a miner’s pick and held in
place by stanchions!

The bibliophile ought not to be confused with the _bouquiniste_,
the second-hand-book addict, of whom I shall now have something to
say, although the bibliophile is by no means too proud to visit the
second-hand book-stalls from time to time. He knows that more than
one pearl has been cast before swine, and more than one literary
treasure found in vulgar wrappings. Unfortunately, luck of this sort
is extremely rare. As for the bibliomaniac, he never looks over
second-hand books, since to do so would again introduce the element of
choice. The bibliomaniac cannot choose; he buys.

The true second-hand-book addict is usually an old man living on his
small independent income, a retired professor, or a man of letters who
has outlived his vogue, but who still keeps his taste for books without
having managed to retain enough money to buy them. It is this last
type who is constantly in search of that _rara avis_, the second-hand
book of great value, which chance may capriciously have hidden away
in some dusty old shop――like an unmounted diamond which the common
eye would take for a piece of glass, and only the knowing gaze of the
lapidary recognizes for what it is. Have you heard of that copy of the
_Imitation of Christ_ for which Rousseau asked his friend Monsieur
Dupeyrou in 1765, that he annotated and inscribed with his own name,
and one page of which holds the impression of a dried myrtle――the
original, authentic flower which Rousseau plucked that same year under
the thickets of the Charmettes? M. de Latour is the owner of this
jewel of modest mien which is worth more than its weight in gold; it
cost him 75 centimes. There is a prize for you! Still, I am not sure
that I would not be equally glad to own the volume of _Théagènes et
Cariclée_[10] which Racine laughingly turned over to his professor with
the words: “You can burn that; I know it by heart.” If that pretty
little book is now no longer on the _quais_, with its elegant signature
and the Greek notes in miniature characters which would identify it
among a thousand others, I can guarantee that it once sojourned there.
And what would you say to a copy of the original edition of the _Pedant
joué_ of Cyrano, in which the two famous scenes[11] are enclosed in
large brackets, with this brief note by Molière jotted in the margin:
“This belongs to me”? Such are the joys, and for the most part, it
must be confessed, the marvelous illusions of the second-hand book.
The learned M. Barbier,[12] who published so many excellent notes on
the subject of anonymous writings (and who also left much unsaid),
promised to issue a special bibliography listing the precious books
found on the Paris _quais_ over a period of forty years. If this
manuscript of his were lost, it would be a misfortune for the world
of letters――but above all for the devotee of second-hand books, that
skilled and adroit literary alchemist who is never without his dream of
the philosopher’s stone, and who even finds chips of it from time to
time, without showing any particular concern for having them mounted
in the rich setting of _de luxe_ bindings. The _bouquiniste_ has the
life-long conviction of owning something that no one else owns, and
would shrug his shoulders patronizingly before the coffers of the
Grand Mogul himself; but he has compelling reasons for not decking out
his treasures in a meaningless display of luxury, though he disguises
his real motives under a thoroughly specious excuse. “The livery of
age,” he says, “adds as much to the look of early printing as patina
does to bronze. The bibliophile who sends his books to be bound by
Bauzonnet[13] is no better than the numismatist who has his medals
gilded. Leave brass its verdigris, and the old book its worn leather.”
The truth behind all this is that Bauzonnet’s bindings are expensive,
while the _bouquiniste_ is far from rich. We agree that cosmetics are
a near sacrilege when applied to beauty, and that books should not
be abandoned to the dangers of restoration except as a last resort;
but rest assured that fine array harms a book no more than it harms a
beautiful woman!

[Illustration]

The term _bouquiniste_ is one of those words of double meaning which
unfortunately abound in all languages. It is applied both to the
_amateur_ in search of old books and to the poor open-air merchant
who sells them. In times past the dealer in second-hand books lacked
neither a certain standing nor prospects for the future. He was
occasionally known to make his way up from a modest side-walk stall, or
a chilly push-cart to the dignity of a real shop measuring all of six
meters square. A case in point was that of Passard, recollections of
whom may still linger in the Rue du Coq. And who could forget Passard,
with his close-cropped hair, his short trumpet-shaped queue, and his
ill-matched eyes――the large eye tawny and prominent, the small eye
blue and deep-set――which a whim of Nature had given him to bring his
physical appearance into line with the eccentric originality of his
character? When Passard, the right corner of his mouth raised in a
slight sardonic twitch, was in the mood for talking; when his little
blue eye began to sparkle with a malicious gleam which never appeared
in the large, lifeless eye; then you might expect to see unrolled
before you the whole chronicle of literary and political scandal of
forty eventful years. Passard, who had once peddled his way from
the Passage des Capucines to the Louvre and from the Louvre to the
Institut, his portable book-shelf under his arm, had seen, known, and
despised everything from his exalted station as _bouquiniste_!

I have cited this obscure book-seller whom no biographer will
ever celebrate――Passard, the Brutus, the Cassius, the last of the
_bouquinistes_. Now I move on. The present-day keeper of a book-stall
on the bridges, the _quais_, the boulevards――poor, anomalous, battered
creature, who picks up only half a living from his unwanted stock――is
a mere shadow of the _bouquiniste_; for the _bouquiniste_ is dead.
It is a great social catastrophe, his disappearance, but one of the
inevitable consequences of progress. A harmless and innocent by-product
of the superabundance of good literature, he could not, in the nature
of things, survive its decline. In that age of ignorance from which we
have now had the good fortune to emerge, the publisher was, in general,
a man capable of appreciating the books he published; he printed
them on good solid paper, supple and resonant, and, when they were
sufficiently important, had them bound in sound moisture-proof leather,
well-glued and stoutly sewn. If by chance the volume found its way to
the second-hand book-stall, that did not spell its ruin. Whether of
sheep-skin, calf, or parchment, the binding――blanched and hardened in
the sun; moistened, stretched, and softened by passing showers――still
afforded lasting protection to the visions of the philosopher or the
dreams of the poet. The progressive publisher of today knows that
the fame of his books, after the brief baptism of advertising, will
vanish in three days along with the _feuilleton_. He puts a yellow
or green paper jacket over his ink-spotted pages, and abandons the
whole absorbent rag to the mercy of the elements. A month later, the
wretched volume is lying on the stall-keeper’s shelves, a prey to a
brisk morning rain. It drinks in the moisture, loses its shape, becomes
mottled here and there with brown spots, gradually reverting to the
pulp from which it came; with little more preparation it is ready to
be stamped into cardboard. Such is the life-cycle of the book in _our_
progressive times!

The _bouquiniste_ of other days, presiding over his noble and venerable
volumes, has nothing in common with the pitiable vendor of damp paper
who offers for sale the mildewed rags which are the remains of the
new books. The _bouquiniste_, I tell you, is no more――and as for the
brochures which have replaced his _bouquins_, they will have faded
from memory in twenty years. I should know, since I am responsible for
some thirty of them.

And do me the favor of telling me, if you can, what will be left of
these books of mine in twenty years?

Paris, 1840 or 1841

                                                      CH. NODIER


           _No book is completed until_ Error _has crept in
                     & affixed his sly Imprimatur_



                                 NOTES


[1] Mathurin Cordier, ca. 1480–1564, French educator and austere author
of numerous works for children of a moralizing nature. Calvin was among
his pupils in Paris.

[2] Jan van Pauteren, ca. 1460–1524, Flemish writer whose latin
grammar, however popular in its own day, was widely attacked in later
times for its obscurity.

[3] Louis van der Aa, called Louis de Bruges, Seigneur de la Gruthuyse,
ca. 1425–1492, a learned nobleman of Flanders who, commissioning some
of the finest manuscripts which have come down to us, set an example
for Charles the Bold of Burgundy.

[4] Anne of Austria, 1602–66, daughter of Philip III of Spain, wife of
Louis XIII of France, a great book collector.

[5] Paul Girardot de Préfond, eighteenth-century French collector,
whose fine books are now scattered in many libraries.

[6] François Maynard, 1582–1646, a French author, who, having vainly
sought favor, loudly lamented his fate from the scene of his retirement
in Toulouse.

[7] Urbain Chevreau, seventeenth-century French writer of some
reputation in his own time, and a very discriminating bibliophile.

[8] Antoine-Marie-Henri Boulard, 1754–1825, avid collector who lived in
Paris.

[9] The Bollandists are Belgian Jesuits who published the voluminous
and weighty _Acta Sanctorum_ legends of saints, arranged according to
the days of the calendar.

[10] Paris, 1613 or 1623, an adaptation in verse from the _Historia
Ethiopica_ of Heliodorus.

[11] Two scenes of Cyrano used by Molière in the _Fourberies de
Scapin_, Paris, 1671.

[12] Antoine-Aléxandre Barbier, 1765–1825, bibliophile, and author of a
_Dictionnaire des Anonymes_.

[13] Antoine Bauzonnet, Paris bookbinder of the mid-nineteenth century.


         _750 Copies printed by the Crimson Printing Company_

            _Reproductions by the Meriden Gravure Company_


       *       *       *       *       *


Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_), superscripts
  by an initial caret and the superscripted characters surrounded by
  braces (I^{er}).

――Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.



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