“And you would do a very sensible thing, Mr. George Winton Wood,” returned Tom Craik approvingly. All at once he dropped his detached manner of speaking and grew eloquent. “You would be doing a very sensible thing. A man of your age can have no manner of use for all this rubbish. If you ever mean to be a collector, reserve that expensive taste for the time when you have plenty of money, but can neither eat, drink, sleep, make love nor be merry in any way—no, nor write novels either. The pleasure does not consist in possessing things, it lies in finding them, bargaining for them, fighting for them and ultimately getting them. It is the same with money, but there is more variety in collecting, to my mind, at least. It is the same with everything, money, love, politics, collecting, it is only the fighting for what you want that is agreeably exciting. It has kept me alive, with my wretched constitution, when the doctors have been thinking of sending for the person in black who carries a tape measure. I never had any ambition. I never cared for anything but the fighting. I never cared to be first, second or third. I do not believe that your ambitious man ever succeeds in life. He thinks so much about himself that he forgets what he is fighting for. You can easily make a fool of an ambitious man by offering him a bait, and you may take the thing you want while he is chasing the phantom of glory on the other side of the house. I hope you are not ambitious. You have begun as if you were not, and you have knocked all the stuffing out of the rag dolls the critics put up to frighten young authors. I have read a good deal in my day, and I have seen a good deal, and I have taken a great many things I have wanted. I know men, and I know something about books. You ought to succeed, for you go about your work as though you liked it for the sake of overcoming difficulties, for the sake of fighting your subject and getting the better of it. Stick to that principle. It prolongs life. Pick out the hardest thing there is to be done, and go at it, hammer and tongs, by hook or by crook, by fair means or foul. If you cannot do it, after all, nobody need be the wiser; if you succeed every one will cry out in admiration of your industry and genius, when you have really only been amusing yourself all the time—because nothing can be more amusing than fighting. You are quite right. Ambition is nonsense and the satisfaction of possession is bosh. The only pleasure is in doing and getting. If, in the inscrutable ways of destiny, you ever own this house, sell it, and when you are old, and crooked, and cannot write any more, and people think you are a drivelling idiot and are sitting in rows outside your door, waiting for dead men’s shoes—why then, you can prolong your life by collecting something, as I have done. The desire to get the better of a Jew dealer in a bargain for a Maestro Georgio, or the determination to find the edition which has been heard of but never seen, will make your blood circulate and your heart beat, and your brain work. I have half a mind to sell the whole thing myself for the sake of doing it all over again, and keeping somebody waiting ten years longer for the money. I might last ten years more if I could hit upon something new to collect.”
The old man ceased speaking and looked up sideways at George, with a keen smile, very unlike the expression he assumed when he meant to be agreeable. Then he relapsed into his usual way of talking, jerking out short sentences and generally omitting the subject or the verb, when he did not omit both. It is possible that he had delivered his oration for the sake of showing George that he could speak English as well as any one when he chose to do so.
“Like my little speech? Eh?” he inquired.
“I shall not forget it,” George answered. “Your ideas cannot be accused of being stale or old fashioned, whatever else may be said of them.”
“Put them into a book, will you? Well, well. Daresay printer’s ink has been wasted on worse—sometimes.”
George did not care to prolong his visit beyond the bounds of strict civility, though he had been somewhat diverted by his relation’s talk. He asked a few questions about the books and discovered that Tom Craik was by no means the unreading edition-hunter he had supposed him to be. If he had not read all the three thousand choice volumes he possessed, he had at least a very clear idea of the contents of most of them.
“Buying an author and not reading him,” he said, “is like buying a pig in a poke and then not even looking at the pig afterwards. Eh?”
“Very like,” George answered with a short laugh. Then he took his leave. The old man went with him as far as the door that led out of the room in which they had first met.
“Come again,” he said. “Rather afraid of draughts, so I leave you here. Good day to you.”
George took the thin hand that was thrust out at him and shook it with somewhat less repulsion that he had felt a quarter of an hour earlier. The sight of the books had softened his heart a little, as it often softens the enmities of literary men when they least expect it. He turned away and left the house, wondering whether, after all, old Tom Craik had not been judged more harshly than he deserved. The man of letters is slow to anger against those who show any genuine fondness for his profession.