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Page 44
If ever, O honest friends of mine, I should forget you or weary
of your companionship, whither would depart the memories and the
associations with which each of you is hallowed! Would ever the
modest flowers of spring-time, budding in pathways where I no
longer wander, recall to my failing sight the vernal beauty of
the Puritan maid, Captivity? In what reverie of summer-time
should I feel again the graciousness of thy presence, Yseult?
And Fanchonette--sweet, timid little Fanchonette! would ever thy
ghost come back from out those years away off yonder? Be hushed,
my Beranger, for a moment; another song hath awakened softly
responsive echoes in my heart! It is a song of Fanchonette:
In vain, in vain; we meet no more,
Nor dream what fates befall;
And long upon the stranger's shore
My voice on thee may call,
When years have clothed the line in moss
That tells thy name and days,
And withered, on thy simple cross,
The wreaths of Pere la Chaise!
XVI
THE MALADY CALLED CATALOGITIS
Judge Methuen tells me that one of the most pleasing delusions he
has experienced in his long and active career as a bibliomaniac
is that which is born of the catalogue habit. Presuming that
there are among my readers many laymen,--for I preach salvation
to the heathen,--I will explain for their information that the
catalogue habit, so called, is a practice to which the confirmed
lover of books is likely to become addicted. It is a custom of
many publishers and dealers to publish and to disseminate at
certain periods lists of their wares, in the hope of thereby
enticing readers to buy those wares.
By what means these crafty tradesmen secure the names of their
prospective victims I cannot say, but this I know full well--that
there seems not to be a book-lover on the face of the earth, I
care not how remote or how secret his habitation may be, that
these dealers do not presently find him out and overwhelm him
with their delightful temptations.
I have been told that among booksellers there exists a secret
league which provides for the interchange of confidences; so that
when a new customer enters a shop in the Fulham road or in Oxford
street or along the quays of Paris, or it matters not where (so
long as the object of his inquiry be a book), within the space of
a month that man's name and place of residence are reported to
and entered in the address list of every other bookseller in
Christendom, and forthwith and forever after the catalogues and
price-lists and bulletins of publishers and dealers in every part
of the world are pelted at him through the unerring processes of
the mails.
Judge Methuen has been a victim (a pleasant victim) to the
catalogue habit for the last forty years, and he has declared
that if all the catalogues sent to and read by him in that space
of time were gathered together in a heap they would make a pile
bigger than Pike's Peak, and a thousandfold more interesting. I
myself have been a famous reader of catalogues, and I can testify
that the habit has possessed me of remarkable delusions, the most
conspicuous of which is that which produces within me the
conviction that a book is as good as mine as soon as I have met
with its title in a catalogue, and set an X over against it in
pencil.
I recall that on one occasion I was discussing with Judge Methuen
and Dr. O'Rell the attempted escapes of Charles I. from
Carisbrooke Castle; a point of difference having arisen, I said:
``Gentlemen, I will refer to Hillier's `Narrative,' and I doubt
not that my argument will be sustained by that authority.''
It was vastly easier, however, to cite Hillier than it was to
find him. For three days I searched in my library, and tumbled
my books about in that confusion which results from undue
eagerness; 't was all in vain; neither hide nor hair of the
desired volume could I discover. It finally occurred to me that
I must have lent the book to somebody, and then again I felt sure
that it had been stolen.
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