Spring XI. If only...

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: X. Salad days + Age of Ryecroft

Would I live it over again, that life of the garret and the cellar? Not with the assurance of fifty years’ contentment such as I now enjoy to follow upon it! With man’s infinitely pathetic power of resignation, one sees the thing on its better side, forgets all the worst of it, makes out a case for the resolute optimist. Oh, but the waste of energy, of zeal, of youth! In another mood, I could shed tears over that spectacle of rare vitality condemned to sordid strife. The pity of it! And -- if our conscience mean anything at all -- the bitter wrong!

Without seeking for Utopia, think what a man’s youth might be. I suppose not one in every thousand uses half the possibilities of natural joy and delightful effort which lie in those years between seventeen and seven-and-twenty. All but all [?] men have to look back upon beginnings of life deformed and discoloured by necessity, accident, wantonness. If a young man avoid the grosser pitfalls, if he keep his eye fixed steadily on what is called the main chance, if, without flagrant selfishness, he prudently subdue every interest to his own (by “interest” understanding only material good), he is putting his youth to profit, he is an exemplar and a subject of pride. I doubt whether, in our civilization, any other ideal is easy of pursuit by the youngster face to face with life. It is the only course altogether safe. Yet compare it with what might be, if men respected manhood, if human reason were at the service of human happiness. Some few there are who can look back upon a boyhood of natural delights, followed by a decade or so of fine energies honourably put to use, blended therewith, perhaps, a memory of joy so exquisite that it tunes all life unto the end; they are almost as rare as poets. The vast majority think not of their youth at all, or, glancing backward, are unconscious of lost opportunity, unaware of degradation suffered. Only by contrast with this thick-witted multitude can I pride myself upon my youth of endurance and of combat. I had a goal before me, and not the goal of the average man. Even when pinched with hunger, I did not abandon my purposes, which were of the mind. But contrast that starving lad in his slum lodging with any fair conception of intelligent and zealous youth, and one feels that a dose of swift poison would have been the right remedy for such squalid ills.

Alpha.

Where I was at variance with Henry Ryecroft was that, while pursuing purposes of the mind, I never tried to live by my typewriter. The jobs I worked were numerous and only bookstore clerking had any connection to literature, but much of my time was spent in books and libraries. I began reading Hellenistic philosophy and ended up reading almost all of Classical literature (in translation). Reading Classical history, Herodotus to Livy and so on, leads one to Gibbon and from there it’s an easy jump to Henri Pirenne and then to Fernand Braudel.

I think I prefer my youth to Henry’s, but as for the waste of the opportunities of youth...

Tomorrow and her works defy;

Lay hold upon the present hour,

And snatch the pleasures passing by,

To put them out of Fortune’s power.

Nor Love nor Love’s delights disdain;

Whate’er thou gettest today is gain.

Secure those golden, early joys,

 That youth unsoured by sorrow bears,

Ere withering Time the taste destroys

 With sickness and unwieldy years.

For active sports, for pleasing rest,

This is the time to be possessed:

The best is but in season best.

-Horace

From this point of view there was a great deal of missed opportunity or potential, though I would have had to have been a different person to realize that potential. I can wish I had been the sort of person to have been “possessed” but since I am not, I don’t really regret how I did in fact spend my youth. Had I been truer to Horace, I might have missed, for lack of idle time, Braudel. I can’t consent to give up my actual past for speculative improvements.

Next: Spring XII. Books

Spring XII. Books

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: XI. If only

As often as I survey my bookshelves I am reminded of Lamb’s “ragged veterans.” Not that all my volumes came from the second-hand stall; many of them were neat enough in new covers, some were even stately in fragrant bindings, when they passed into my hands. But so often have I removed, so rough has been the treatment of my little library at each change of place, and, to tell the truth, so little care have I given to its well-being at normal times (for in all practical matters I am idle and inept), that even the comeliest of my books show the results of unfair usage. More than one has been foully injured by a great nail driven into a packing-case -- this but the extreme instance of the wrongs they have undergone. Now that I have leisure and peace of mind, I find myself growing more carefull -- an illustration of the great truth that virtue is made easy by circumstances. But I confess that, so long as a volume hold together, I am not much troubled as to its outer appearance.

I know men who say they had as lief read any book in a library copy as in one from their own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. My Gibbon, for example, my well-bound eight volume Milman edition, which I have read and read and read again for more than thirty years -- never do I open it but the scent of the noble page restores to me all the exultant happiness of that moment when I received it as a prize...

... Dozens of my books were purchased with money which ought to have been spent upon what are called the necessaries of life. Many a time I have stood before a stall, or a bookseller’s window, torn by conflict of intellectual desire and bodily need. At the very hour of dinner, when my stomach clamoured for food, I have been stopped by sight of a volume so long coveted, and marked at so advantageous a price, that I could not let it go; yet to buy it meant pangs of famine...

... I sold my first edition of Gibbon for even less than it cost me; it went with a great many other fine books in folio and quarto, which I could not drag about with me in my constant removals; the man who bought them spoke of them as “tomb-stones.” Why has Gibbon no market value? Often has my heart ached with regret for those quartos. The joy of reading the Decline and Fall in that fine type! The page was appropriate to the dignity of the subject; the mere sight of it turned one’s mind...

Alpha.

My library dominates my small apartment and, while I’ve always preferred to buy books in modest paperback editions (because I am cheap and because who knows in advance if a book is going to be special) I now own a large number of volumes in hardback editions. But I doubt that any are of the quality Gissing is describing here. At best my volumes are covered in cloth and I believe he is talking about leather. My books that have a noticeable scent are the ones I’ve dragged along for decades and have fallen victim to mildew. The smell of printing ink is heaven to me, but I’ve never noticed that smell from the page of a book I’ve purchased.

My edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (The Heritage Press with illustrations by Piranesi) happens to be one of the finest books in my collection. But the important thing for me is that this edition includes the footnotes on the outside of each page rather than in the back -- Gibbon tends to save his dry humor for the footnotes, which are particularly scathing when it comes to the Catholic Church.

I’ve read that you can open Gibbon at random and find a perfect English sentence. I’ve never tested that before but his prose style is at least as lovely as Jane Austen’s. (Why is the more recent Mr. Gissing’s prose so strange by comparison? Was this a Victorian fashion?) Here’s a random sentence from the first of my three volumes:

The Asiatic pomp, which had been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and effeminacy in the person of Constantine.

That’s rather a short one so let’s try another, this time about Julian:

The unanimous evidence of his contemporaries is confirmed by the public and private declarations of the emperor himself; and his various writings express the uniform tenor of his religious sentiments, which policy would have prompted him to dissemble rather than to affect.

But here is my favorite quote from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

In the purer ages of the [Roman] commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain.

Recently I was reading a library copy of Ram Dass’s Still Here. The book itself was interesting but not exceptional (his almost pathetic reliance on his guru seems to say more about Ram Dass’s perpetual need for solace than for the value of his guru’s teachings), but this particular edition was an absolute joy to read because of the typeface, the color of the ink and the overall design. But what pleased me about the typeface was that it was obviously a digital production. Every letter was perfect which you will never find with actual type. I somehow doubt Ryecroft/Gissing would have approved.

Last year I couldn’t leave Powell’s Books in Portland without the Everyman’s Library edition of The Magic Mountain. It’s a new translation and my old, paperback edition is getting quite ragged -- I told myself. But the truth is that the printed pages in that edition just looked lovely and I couldn’t resist. This turned out to be a wise decision as John E. Woods is kind enough to translate both the German and the French into English, something the previous translator failed to do, and a crucial passage in the book is in French.

Next: Spring XIII. Books cont.