Meanwhile, while these contests of giants rage about me, I sit rigid and stirless, benumbed, beclumpsed and dull. I dare not move nor breathe, nor lift my eye to encounter, perhaps, that roving eye which is so extreme to mark the least motion, so alert to interpret it. There is a book I should like to buy, but it is not due yet; we are only at number 532, which is called Coleoptera of the British Islands, and should I but uncross my knees, it would be mine, in five volumes, with coloured plates. They have reached twelve and sixpence. “Anyone bid fifteen?” That commanding, probing glance passes over me.
My nerves are all chain’d up in Alabaster,
And I a statue; or as Daphne was
Root-bound, that fled Apollo.
Fool, do not boast,
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my minde
With all thy charms. …
“Fifteen. I am bid fifteen” … By me? Quite possibly … no, he looks elsewhere; the Coleoptera are knocked down to a booseller on whose shelves I shall triumphantly see its five volumes, its coloured plates, reposing in unwanted redundance, because that unguarded bookseller coughed at the crucial moment.
Off they go again. “Five shillings bid. … Seven and six.” … What is this? The enquiring eye is on me; I realise that I have hiccupped. “Ten … twelve and six.” … Someone else must have hiccupped too, for the eye passes to and fro between me and another; the thing has become a rally. I have hiccupped again; that makes fifteen shillings. Seventeen and six, twenty … my colleague in distress must be cured, for he does not raise my last. “Twenty. I am bid twenty shillings.” … I shake my head, in denial of this assertion; it is useless. “Twenty shillings I am bid. … Sold for twenty shillings.” The book is mine; I look at my catalogue and see that it is a French book about Venus. … Yes, and about Eunuchs too. … Quite definitely I cannot, no, I will not take it home; I will explain to the clerk afterwards.…
The auction proceeds. Soon it will reach my book—the Bucaniers of America, 3rd edition, 1704. How greatly I desire it! Surely I can win it, seeing that, despite all my struggles not to do so, I won Venus and the Eunuchs.
“640.” It is held up before us; I see its stained title page; felix culpa, fortunate stain, that will keep it within my means. “Fifteen shillings,” says the auctioneer. My hiccup was cured, apparently, by the shock of acquiring Venus, but I flick my catalogue, meaning “Seventeen and six.” What is this? He does not see me; he looks towards some haggling bookseller who has blown his nose; he says, “seventeen and six,” but not to me. I too blow my nose; the word is now “One pound,” but it is the word of the dumb Mr. Robinson, who has tilted his bowler hat to the left. “Guinea,” I mutely cry, flapping my catalogue like a signal of distress. He will not look, he passes by; he observes Mr. Jones to scratch his cheek, and says “Twenty-five.” I am as a desperate castaway on a lone island, signalling vainly to ships that steam unheeding by, picking up other castaways from other islands, but never me. In vain I flap my catalogue, cough, clear my throat, cross and uncross my legs, jerk my chin. The Bucaniers are flung to and from between Mr. Jones and Mr. Robinson in mute, tense rally and return. “Thirty. I am bid thirty …” Mr. Jones is slackening; he performs no more little actions; he slumps in his chair; the game is to Mr. Robinson. I cannot endure it; I spring to my feet. That chaste and muted hall is rent by a cry. “Two pounds.”
The crude and raucous vocality of my bid shocks the mute multitude to surprise. The auctioneer at last looks my way; impassively he murmurs, “I am bid two pounds. Going for two pounds.” He rakes Messrs. Robinson and Jones with enquiring eyes; he decides that their gestures are those of bored negation; they have lost interest in the Bucaniers, and are thinking about something else.
“Sold for two pounds.”
The Bucaniers are mine.
But I should have said thirty-five. The Bucaniers were not mounting by ten shilling steps. The delirium of auctions turns the brain.
Booksellers’ Catalogues
How lightly, softly, insinuatingly, they arrive, flipping through the letterbox, alighting like leaves on the passage floor; green like leaves of spring, red or brown or orange like leaves of autumn, or white like drifts of snow; but each folded neatly and precisely in a wrapper of thin or stout dun-coloured paper. I will not open them; I will not slit that concealing jacket that protects me from the song of these luring sirens; like Odysseus and his sailors, I will be deaf and blind. I will cast them, as I cast without a pang all the other catalogues of merchandise that arrive in my home, unopened into the waste-paper basket.
That small, orange-red being, the colour of a street beacon, in its stout paper jacket—I gather it up to fling it into the basket. Two inches of orange-hued catalogue protrude from each end of the wrapper, closely printed; odd, how booksellers seem always short of paper, so that they have to use every inch of even the covers of their catalogues for their lists of wares. What shows on the two inches of double column visible above the wrapper is:
1063 [Utterson (E. N.)] Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry: re-published principally from Early Printed Copies, in the Black Letter, with woodcuts, 2 vols in one, 8vo, half morocco, t.e.g., uncut, 8s 6d [J.6] 1817
1065 Vergil (Polydore) English History, from an early translation, Vol. I., containing the first eight books, comprising the period prior to the Norman Conquest, edited by Sir Henry Ellis, sq. 8vo, 4s 6d [J.1] 1846
1066 Viccars (Joanne) Decapla in Psalmos, sive Commentarius ex decem Linguis MSS. et impressis Hebr. Arab., Syriac, Chald. Rabbin., Graec., Roman, Ital., Hispan.
1076 Weekly Entertainer (The); or Agreeable and Instructive Repository, containing a Collection of Select Pieces both in Prose and Verse; Curious Anecdotes, Instructive Tales and Ingenious Essays on different subjects, Vol 41-42, 2 vols in 1, 8vo, old boards, calf back (two pp. torn), 12S 6d [G.16]
Sherborne, 1803
With Index to Vol. 41. Short accounts of Ancient English Sports, Balloons, Cockfighting, Origin of War, Rebellion in Ireland, etc.
1077 –––Ditto, Vols 43-44, 2 vols in 1, 8vo, old boards, calf back (no index), 10s [G.16]
Sherborne, 1804
Late Rebellion in Ireland (continued), Origin of April Fool’sday, Trial for Bigamy, Ceylon, St. Domingo, etc.
And below the wrapper:
be another habitable World in the Moon, with a Discourse concerning the possibility of a Passage thither. Unto which is added a Discourse concerning a new Planet, tending to prove that ’tis probable our Earth is one of the Planets, 8vo, fourth edition, old calf, binding stained and wormed, 7s 6d 1684
1083. Zoology. — Moufet (Thomas). Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum. Fol. First Edition. Old Calf, badly broken, titlepage missing, £ 1 1Os 1634
1084 ––– The Silkewormes, and their flies: lively described in verse, by T. M. a Countrie Farmer. 4to. First Edition, rebound in calf. Pages stained, £ 1 5s 1599
My dear Bishop Wilkins and my dear Dr. Moufet, looking up at me from parallel columns. It is apparent that I cannot waste-paper them without a look; I have the greatest regard for them both, the insectophile French physician, and the mathematical, ingenious, speculative Bishop of Chester, who so happily pursued his mechanical, astronomical and philosophical researches throughout wars and tumults, and got so prosperously, so discreetly, through the Civil War, Commonwealth, Protectorate, and Restoration, ending a Bishop and a member of the Royal Society; who, after the Restoration, “stood up for the Church of England, but dislik’d Vehemence in little and unnecessary Things, and freely censur’d it as Fanaticism on both sides”; for, in truth, his mind was up among the moon and planets, or speculating on how men might best fly, or thinking out levers, screws, wheels, pulleys and wedges. This book here will be, of course, The Discovery of a New World in the Moon.
The wrapper is slit and cast off. One may as well mark the New World in the Moon; no harm can come of marking it. And, now that the catalogue is opened, it would be foolish not to run an eye over the rest of it,
just to see what is here. There may be another Bishop Wilkins.
There is another Bishop Wilkins—Mathematicall Magick, 1680 edition. How fortunate that I opened this catalogue, for I have been wanting a cheap Mathematicall Magick for months. And here is a modern reprint of John Maplet’s Greene Forest. As I know of no other edition since the sixteenth century, I may as well mark it, though I remember its introduction to be foolish and sentimental, and of the “quaint old Maplet” type. Better is Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth, Third Edition, review’d by the Author, broken back and damaged boards, 1697. And William Shipway’s Campanalogia; or, Universal Instruction in the Art of Ringing, in Three Parts: to which is prefixed an Account of the Origin of Bells in Churches, with the Principal Peals in England, cr. 8vo, orig. boards, nice copy, uncut, 1816. Not that I need it: quite definitely, I do not need it at all; still, I will put a tick against it, in case I wish to refer to its title again.
1104. Yonge (C.M.) Der Erbe von Redcliffe, aus dem Englischen … Vol. I only, Author’s Own Copy, 5s., Leipzig, 1856. Dear Heir of Redcliffe: I should like to see how your flashing eye and curling upper lip would go in German; but I will not; it would be desecration; Der Erbe shall have no tick.
Nor shall any of these modern first editions. Why does anyone prefer a first edition of a modern book to a later one? I am told that this is one of the diseases that one cannot hope to understand unless one suffers from it. It is, I presume, called protophilism, or even protomania. Sufferers from it keep, perhaps, the first white stone they see when out walking, or the newspapers for the first day of each month, or the top button off each of their coats, or the first stamp out of each stamp-book, or the programmes of the first nights of plays, or the firstlings of the infant year. Jehovah collected firstborns, alike of men, beasts, and plants, saying, “They are mine,” so the instinct has high and ancient origin.
There are a number of firstlings in this catalogue. They are pathetically cheap. Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, John Halifax, Gentleman, Jerome K. Jerome, The Way of an Eagle, and a company of others, many of them “nice copies,” and all about three shillings apiece. Does anyone buy them? I could, for my part, read lists of modern firsts for ever, and remain as full in purse as when I began; I never feel “they are mine.” I could wish that catalogues contained nothing else, and were not, instead, alive with more perilous seductions.
How these lure one down the page! We are arrived at the P’s; PEZRON (M.) The Antiquities of Nations; English by Mr. Jones, 8vo. calf, stained, 1706. PLAYS. Samuel Foote, calf gilt, cracked, label missing, 8s 6d, 1799. PLINY. Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. Trans, by Philemon Holland, very worn. … POL-WHELE (R.) The Influence of Local Attachment with respect to Home, joint cracked, 4s 6d. POPISH CRUELTY EXEMPLIFIED in the various Sufferings of Mr. Serres & several other French Gentlemen, done into English by Claud D’Assas, calf, a few leaves stained, 5s 6d, 1723. …
And so down to Zola and Zoology, the former of which seems to remain a bore, even in a catalogue, while the latter is so enticing that to read the names of its dryest manuals is a stimulant.
A stimulant: yes, the word is apt. To read these catalogues is like drinking wine in the middle of the morning; it elevates one into that state of felicitous intoxication in which one feels capable of anything. I must control myself, and not write to booksellers in haste: there must be a gap between the perusal of the catalogue and my postcard. Drinking, said Dr. Johnson, should be practised with great prudence; one must have skill in inebriation. A man without such skill will undertake anything. … I will wait until the effects are worn off, and then write a postcard sober, temperate, moderate, brief, restrained. …
But, while I wait, those more intemperate than myself will have rushed in and bought Mathematicall Magick, the New World in the Moon, the Theatre of Insects, and the Silkewormes. It is obvious that I cannot wait. Probably I should telephone. …
I need a new bookshelf. I am short of money. I could have read all these books in the British Museum; some of them even from the London Library. In short, I am sober again. But I am glad that I was drunk.
Bulls
How agreeable to watch, from the other side of the high stile, this mighty creature, this fat bull of Bashan, snorting, champing, pawing the earth, lashing the tail, breathing defiance at heaven and at me, crooning in ignoble rage (for rage is always ignoble when both causeless and ill directed). How mighty are his sinews, how stout and fierce his horns, how fiery his nostrils, how strong and huge his thews! Did he that made the lamb make him? He is a very king of cows. One sees him roaming the great prairies, lord of a herd, rounded up by cowboys with cracking whips.
That lordly Bull of mine. …
How loudly to the hills he croons,
That croon to him again!
And now here he stands, so near and yet so far, his heart hot with hate, unable to climb a stile.
But suppose that, using his horns as battering-rams, he should rush at it and break it down?
Candlemas
The parroco came before each Candlemas Day to bless the house. He would walk about it, sprinkling holy water, and he would bring each year a tall and lovely candle of entwined and multi coloured wax, which he had blessed. We had, too, a number of little candles, made of long spirals of coloured wax twisted close and coiled up like a snake, to be uncoiled as they burned down. They were red and green and yellow and blue, and of great beauty. We took them out with us for our Candlemas picnic, which consisted of oranges, a few preserved fruits, dates and prunes, and fragments of rolls. This feast we took with us along the Savona or the Genoa road, or along the river, or up the hill path behind the house, that climbed, stony and steep, past the carob-tree to our rock houses. Arrived at these craggy piles and promontories, we sat down, lit our coloured candles, and stood them on stones. Rearing slim necks to heaven, they burned, frail and flickering golden buds, while we gnawed bread, sucked oranges, kept the exquisiteness of preserved fruits and French plums for the last bonne bouche, and, having finished all, but being still loth to cease, plucked myrtle berries and so prolonged the feast. Some of these were black and plump, almost sweet, others immature and sharp. At any stage, they were better than juniper berries, which dried the mouth.
Thus we kept Candlemas, looking over a wide blue bay through a pink shimmer of almond blossom, while the town below made festa, and a procession wound, harshly chanting, through the deep and narrow streets to Santa Caterina’s pink church at the hill’s foot. In the still and resinous air our candle-flames burned like little tulips, the flower elongating as the stem dwindled. Thrifty, we would not unwind all the coils and burn them out. The feast done, we extinguished the tapers and put them by for future use. The Candlemas festa thus kept with pious rites, the rock houses became castles to be besieged.
But we had an annual Candlemas difference of opinion with our father, for we thought Candlemas should be a holiday from lessons. Not so he; and he won. So Candlemas Day was wasted until the afternoon.
Canoeing
A Great curve of smooth blue Mediterranean spreads between my frail bark and the distant line of shore. I slip down an azure orange, a swelling and limpid mountainside; I perceive about me what one has always heard, that the earth is indeed a ball. I can still just, when I turn my head and look, spy the bay, the shore, the town, the church towers, the house on the shore to the bay’s east, nestling beneath and in front of a jagged line of piney, terraced hills and of the wild running steeps of higher Apennines behind these. But a few minutes, a few strokes of the paddle, and all but the hills will be sunk, vanished, drowned below the rim of the round world.
I turn again and look: the town, the shore, are gone; I am alone with a blue horizon ahead (beyond lies Corsica, but I shall not see that island), the mountain rim of the bay behind, a long jut of soft indigo grey (Savona) thrusting out into western sea and sky, the further and fainter blue point of Genoa lying twenty miles east, bounding the great bay, and beyond that Spezia, pale and shimmeri
ng as fairyland, for there, so one has been told, are marble mountains.
On the ocean’s rim flies a far ship with spread sails, like a gull. I am alone; I navigate uncharted seas, where the known stars are laid asleep in Tethys’ lap; where neither birds can instruct to any near shore, nor any birds in the main Ocean to be seen; where without the compass all things are out of compass, and nothing but miracle or chance can save or serve. I am of the great company of hazardous mariners who brave the deep; I am Captain Cook, Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, Raleigh, Drake; I am Jack, Ralph and Peterkin exploring round their Coral Island; I am an officer of the Royal Navy, sent out on a lone mission to spy out slavers, pirates, French or Spanish men-of-war; or I seek treasure left absent-mindedly on a small island long since, and the secret chart, yellow with age, without which I can never arrive there, lies folded against my breast.
I am the first that ever burst into this silent sea. Perils beleaguer me on every side. There a sharp fin pierces the smooth surface like a sail; a white belly gleams as a giant shark turns on its back. He rushes on me through the deep, with open jaws: one lurch of his body beneath my canoe, and it and I would be hurled out of the water, and down again into that ravening mouth. Only one thing to do—the trick learned of the Coral Islanders: I wait until the monster is close, wait until he turns on his back, then, with a mighty thrust, insert the end of the paddle between his jaws. He threshes about in the water; the canoe is swirled round, as I cling fast to the paddle: but before long he chokes and sinks down into the deep, a corpse, fortunately spewing forth the paddle before doing so. I am saved; but I believe that his widow and little ones, his infuriate and formidable bereaved (sharks being very family fish), are not far distant, and may at any moment apprehend the situation and give chase. It behoves me to be wary.
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