In his display room, to which this rotund spider lured me, I examined, enraptured, sets of all the leading de luxe writers. There was Pepys with pasted labels, Smollett and Fielding with special illustrations, twelve volumes of the World's Best Oratory, a bobtailed set of Stevenson, the inevitable Plutarch in fool morocco that was very like shellacked paper, and many more. But the magnum opus of them all was a green buckram affair in thirty tall tomes calling itself "The Bibliophile Library of Literature, Art and Rare Manuscripts". To emphasize the word Art in the title there was, as an adjunct, a three-foot portfolio of reproductions from paintings. Here was something that cast Hawthorne and Irving into the shade. It was world-wide, wonderful. (Later I came to know it as the "Hash"!)
As in a trance, I said yes to the "Bibliophile Library," to the Great Orations, to the much-shorter R. L. S. Later I took on a few more.
My finances grew groggy. Indeed, Europe's difficulties over paying her war indebtedness are as naught in comparison. Then at last the miracle happened: the book concern mislaid their record of my indiscretions—and all scowls ceased.
For three years. Then rediscovery. Collectors, collectors, collectors—not the sort that A. Edward Newton writes about. They came faster than I could insult them. Litigation. Cash compromise. Formal return of books.
Such is the story of "My Life With Great Authors; or, The Horrors of Dunning Street".
But I shall not allow it to "take its place among the successful biographies and intimate journals of the season". Distinctly not. It is for the élite alone. It is to be published on sugar-cured oilskin, the edition to be limited to two numbered copies—one for me and one for the ashcan.
