Have you ever come out of the thick,
smoky atmosphere of the town into the fragrant, gracious
atmosphere of a library? If you have, you know
how grateful the change is, and you will agree with
me when I say that nothing else is so quieting to
the nerves, so conducive to physical health, and so
quick to restore a lively flow of the spirits.
Lafcadio Hearn once wrote a treatise
upon perfumes, an ingenious and scholarly performance;
he limited the edition to fifty copies and published
it privately so the book is rarely met with.
Curiously enough, however, this author had nothing
to say in the book about the smells of books, which
I regard as a most unpardonable error, unless, properly
estimating the subject to be worthy of a separate
treatise, he has postponed its consideration and treatment
to a time when he can devote the requisite study and
care to it.
We have it upon the authority of William
Blades that books breathe; however, the testimony
of experts is not needed upon this point, for if anybody
be sceptical, all he has to do to convince himself
is to open a door of a bookcase at any time and his
olfactories will be greeted by an outrush of odors
that will prove to him beyond all doubt that books
do actually consume air and exhale perfumes.
Visitors to the British Museum complain
not unfrequently that they are overcome by the closeness
of the atmosphere in that place, and what is known
as the British Museum headache has come to be recognized
by the medical profession in London as a specific
ailment due to the absence of oxygen in the atmosphere,
which condition is caused by the multitude of books,
each one of which, by that breathing process peculiar
to books, consumes several thousand cubic feet of
air every twenty-four hours.
Professor Huxley wondered for a long
time why the atmosphere of the British Museum should
be poisonous while other libraries were free from
the poison; a series of experiments convinced him that
the presence of poison in the atmosphere was due to
the number of profane books in the Museum. He
recommended that these poison-engendering volumes be
treated once every six months with a bath of cedria,
which, as I understand, is a solution of the juices
of the cedar tree; this, he said, would purge the
mischievous volumes temporarily of their evil propensities
and abilities.
I do not know whether this remedy
is effective, but I remember to have read in Pliny
that cedria was used by the ancients to render
their manuscripts imperishable. When Cneius
Terentius went digging in his estate in the Janiculum
he came upon a coffer which contained not only the
remains of Numa, the old Roman king, but also the manuscripts
of the famous laws which Numa compiled. The king
was in some such condition as you might suppose him
to be after having been buried several centuries,
but the manuscripts were as fresh as new, and their
being so is said to have been due to the fact that
before their burial they were rubbed with citrus leaves.
These so-called books of Numa would
perhaps have been preserved unto this day but for
the fanaticism of the people who exhumed and read
them; they were promptly burned by Quintus Petilius,
the praetor, because (as Cassius Hemina
explains) they treated of philosophical subjects,
or because, as Livy testifies, their doctrines were
inimical to the religion then existing.
As I have had little to do with profane
literature, I know nothing of the habits of such books
as Professor Huxley has prescribed an antidote against.
Of such books as I have gathered about me and made
my constant companions I can say truthfully that a
more delectable-flavored lot it were impossible to
find. As I walk amongst them, touching first
this one and then that, and regarding all with glances
of affectionate approval, I fancy that I am walking
in a splendid garden, full of charming vistas, wherein
parterre after parterre of beautiful flowers is unfolded
to my enraptured vision; and surely there never were
other odors so delightful as the odors which my books
exhale!
My garden aboundeth in pleasant nooks
And fragrance
is over it all;
For sweet is the smell of my old, old
books
In their places
against the wall.
Here is a folio that’s grim with
age
And yellow and
green with mould;
There’s the breath of the sea on
every page
And the hint of
a stanch ship’s hold.
And here is a treasure from France la
belle
Exhaleth a faint
perfume
Of wedded lily and asphodel
In a garden of
song abloom.
And this wee little book of Puritan mien
And rude, conspicuous
print
Hath the Yankee flavor of wintergreen,
Or, may be, of
peppermint.
In Walton the brooks a-babbling tell
Where the cheery
daisy grows,
And where in meadow or woodland dwell
The buttercup
and the rose.
But best beloved of books, I ween,
Are those which
one perceives
Are hallowed by ashes dropped between
The yellow, well-thumbed
leaves.
For it’s here a laugh and it’s
there a tear,
Till the treasured
book is read;
And the ashes betwixt the pages here
Tell us of one
long dead.
But the gracious presence reappears
As we read the
book again,
And the fragrance of precious, distant
years
Filleth the hearts
of men
Come, pluck with me in my garden nooks
The posies that
bloom for all;
Oh, sweet is the smell of my old, old
books
In their places
against the wall!
Better than flowers are they, these
books of mine! For what are the seasons to them?
Neither can the drought of summer nor the asperity
of winter wither or change them. At all times
and under all circumstances they are the same radiant,
fragrant, hopeful, helpful! There is no charm
which they do not possess, no beauty that is not theirs.
What wonder is it that from time immemorial
humanity has craved the boon of carrying to the grave
some book particularly beloved in life? Even
Numa Pompilius provided that his books should share
his tomb with him. Twenty-four of these precious
volumes were consigned with him to the grave.
When Gabriel Rossetti’s wife died, the poet
cast into her open grave the unfinished volume of
his poems, that being the last and most precious tribute
he could pay to her cherished memory.
History records instance after instance
of the consolation dying men have received from the
perusal of books, and many a one has made his end
holding in his hands a particularly beloved volume.
The reverence which even unlearned men have for books
appeals in these splendid libraries which are erected
now and again with funds provided by the wills of
the illiterate. How dreadful must be the last
moments of that person who has steadfastly refused
to share the companionship and acknowledge the saving
grace of books!
Such, indeed, is my regard for these
friendships that it is with misery that I contemplate
the probability of separation from them by and by.
I have given my friends to understand that when I am
done with earth certain of my books shall be buried
with me. The list of these books will be found
in the left-hand upper drawer of the old mahogany
secretary in the front spare room.
When I am done,
I’d have no son
Pounce on these treasures like a vulture;
Nay, give them half
My epitaph
And let them share in my sepulture.
Then when the crack
Of doom rolls back
The marble and the earth that hide me,
I’ll smuggle home
Each precious tome
Without a fear a wife shall chide me.
The dread of being separated by death
from the objects of one’s love has pursued humanity
from the beginning. The Hindoos used to have
a selfish fashion of requiring their widows to be
entombed alive with their corpses. The North
American Indian insists that his horse, his bow and
arrows, his spear, and his other cherished trinkets
shall share his grave with him.
My sister, Miss Susan, has provided
that after her demise a number of her most prized
curios shall be buried with her. The list, as
I recall it, includes a mahogany four-post bedstead,
an Empire dresser, a brass warming-pan, a pair of
brass andirons, a Louis Quinze table, a Mayflower
teapot, a Tomb of Washington platter, a pewter tankard,
a pair of her grandmother’s candlesticks, a
Paul Revere lantern, a tall Dutch clock, a complete
suit of armor purchased in Rome, and a collection
of Japanese bric-a-brac presented to Miss Susan
by a returned missionary.
I do not see what Miss Susan can possibly
do with all this trumpery in the hereafter, but, if
I survive her, I shall certainly insist upon a compliance
with her wishes, even though it involve the erection
of a tumulus as prodigious as the pyramid of Cheops.