omen collect all sorts of
things except books. To them the book-sense seems to be denied, and it is difficult for them to appreciate its existence in men. To be sure, there have been a few celebrated book-collectors among the fair sex, but they have usually been rather reprehensible ladies, like Diane de Poictiers and Madame Pompadour. Probably Aspasia was a collector of MSS. Lady Jane Grey seems to have been a virtuous exception, and she was cruelly “cropped.” I am told that there are a few women now-a-days who collect books, and only a few weeks ago a lady read, before a woman’s club in Chicago, a paper on the Collection and Adornment of Books, for which occasion a fair member of the club solicited me to write her something appropriate to read, which of course I was glad to do. But this was in Chicago, where the women go in for culture. In thirty years’ haunting of the book-shops and print-shops of New York, I have never seen a woman catching a cold in her head by turning over the large prints, nor soiling her dainty gloves by handling the dirty old books. Women have been depicted in literature in many different occupations, situations and pleasures, but in all the literature that I have read I can recall only one instance in which she is imagined a book-buyer. This is in “The Sentimental Journey,” and in celebrating the unique instance let me rise to a nobler strain and sing a song of
THE SENTIMENTAL CHAMBERMAID.
hen you’re in Paris, do not fail
To seek the Quai de Conti,
Where in the roguish Parson’s tale,
Upon the river front he
Bespoke the pretty chambermaid
Too innocent to be afraid.
On this book-seller’s mouldy stall,
Crammed full of volumes musty,
I made a bibliophilic call
And saw, in garments rusty,
The ancient vender, queer to view,
In breeches, buckles, and a queue.
And while to find that famous book,
“Les Egaremens du Cœur,”
I dilligently undertook,
I suddenly met her;
She held a small green satin purse,
And spite of Time looked none the worse.
I told her she was known to Fame
Through ministerial Mentor,
And though I had not heard her name,
That this should not prevent her
From listening to the homage due
To one to Sentiment so true.
She blushed; I bowed in courtly fashion;
In pockets of my trousers
Then sought a crown to vouch my passion,
Without intent to rouse hers;
But I had left my purse ’twould seem—
And then I woke—’twas but a dream!
The heart will wander, never doubt,
Though waking faith it keep;
That is exceptionally stout
Which strays but in its sleep;
And hearts must always turn to her
Who loved, “Les Egaremens du Cœur.”
M. Uzanne, in “The Book-Hunter in Paris,” avers that “the woman of fashion never goes book-hunting,” and he puts the aphorism in italics. He also says that the occasional woman at the book-stalls, “if by chance she wants a book, tries to bargain for it as if it were a lobster or a fowl.” Also that the book-stall keepers are always watchful of the woman with an ulster, a water-proof, or a muff. These garments are not always impervious to books, it seems.
