Words which have been used to describe a famous man of this century I will venture to apply in part to the Bibliotaph. ‘He was a kind of gigantic and Olympian school-boy, … loving-hearted, bountiful, wholesome and sterling to the heart’s core.’
LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH
The Bibliotaph’s major passion was for collecting books; but he had a minor passion, the bare mention of which caused people to lift their eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shameless, a persistent, and a successful hunter of autographs. His desire was for the signatures of living men of letters, though an occasional dead author would be allowed a place in the collection, provided he had not been dead too long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph coveted the ‘hand of write’ of the man who was now more or less conspicuously in the public eye. This autograph must be written in a representative work of the author in question. The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the street to secure a line from Ben Jonson’s pen, but he mourned because the autograph of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor likely to be. His conception of happiness was this: to own a copy of the first edition of Alice in Wonderland, upon the fly-leaf of which Lewis Carroll had written his name, together with the statement that he had done so at the Bibliotaph’s request, and because that eminent collector could not be made happy in any other Way.
The Bibliotaph liked the autograph of the modern man of letters because it was modern, and because there was a reasonable hope of its being genuine. He loved genuineness. Everything about himself was exactly what it pretended to be. From his soul to his clothing he was honest. And his love for the genuine was only surpassed in degree by his contempt for the spurious. I remember that some one gave him a bit of silverware, a toilet article, perhaps, which he next day threw out of a car window, because he had discovered that it was not sterling. He scouted the suggestion that possibly the giver may not have known. Such ignorance was inexcusable, he said. ‘The likelier interpretation was that the gift was symbolical of the giver.’ The act seemed brutal, and the comment thereon even more so. But to realize the atmosphere, the setting of the incident, one must imagine the Bibliotaph’s round and comfortable figure, his humorous look, and the air of genial placidity with which he would do and say a thing like this. It was as impossible to be angry with him in behalf of the unfortunate giver of cheap silver as to take offense at a tree or mountain. And it was useless to argue the matter—nay it was folly, for he would immediately become polysyllabic and talk one down.
It was this desire for genuine things which made him entirely suspicious of autographs which had been bought and sold. He had no faith in them, and he would weaken your faith, supposing you were a collector of such things. Offer him an autograph of our first president and he would reply, ‘I don’t believe that it’s genuine; and if it were I shouldn’t care for it; I never had the honor of General Washington’s acquaintance.’ The inference was that one could have a personal relation with a living great man, and the chances were largely in favor of getting an autograph that was not an object of suspicion.
Few collectors in this line have been as happy as the Bibliotaph. The problem was easily mastered with respect to the majority of authors. As a rule an author is not unwilling to give such additional pleasure to a reader of his book as may consist in writing his name in the reader’s copy. It is conceivable that the author may be bored by too many requests of this nature, but he might be bored to an even greater degree if no one cared enough for him to ask for his autograph. Some writers resisted a little, and it was beautiful to see the Bibliotaph bring them to terms. He was a highwayman of the Tom Faggus type, just so adroit, and courteous, and daring. He was perhaps at his best in cases where he had actually to hold up his victim; one may imagine the scene,—the author resisting, the Bibliotaph determined and having the masterful air of an expert who had handled just such cases before.
A humble satellite who disapproved of these proceedings read aloud to the Bibliotaph that scorching little essay entitled Involuntary Bailees, written by perhaps the wittiest living English essayist. An involuntary bailee—as the essayist explains—is a person to whom people (generally unknown to him) send things which he does not wish to receive, but which they are anxious to have returned. If a man insists upon lending you a book, you become an involuntary bailee. You don’t wish to read the book, but you have it in your possession. It has come to you by post, let us suppose, ‘and to pack it up and send it back again requires a piece of string, energy, brown paper, and stamps enough to defray the postage.’ And it is a question whether a casual acquaintance ‘has any right thus to make demands on a man’s energy, money, time, brown paper, string, and other capital and commodities.’ There are other ways of making a man an involuntary bailee. You may ask him to pass judgment on your poetry, or to use his influence to get your tragedy produced, or to do any one of a half hundred things which he doesn’t want to do and which you have no business to ask him to do. The essayist makes no mention of the particular form of sin which the Bibliotaph practiced, but he would probably admit that malediction was the only proper treatment for the idler who bothers respectable authors by asking them to write their names in his copies of their books. For to what greater extent could one trespass upon an author’s patience, energy, brown paper, string, and commodities generally? It was amusing to watch the Bibliotaph as he listened to this arraignment of his favorite pursuit. The writer of the essay admits that there may be extenuating circumstances. If the autograph collector comes bearing gifts one may smile upon his suit. If for example he accompanies his request for an autograph with ‘several brace of grouse, or a salmon of noble proportions, or rare old books bound by Derome, or a service of Worcester china with the square mark,’ he may hope for success. The essayist opines that such gifts ‘will not be returned by a celebrity who respects himself.’ ‘They bless him who gives and him who takes much more than tons of manuscript poetry, and thousands of entreaties for an autograph.’
A superficial examination of the Bibliotaph’s collection revealed the fact that he had either used necromancy or given many gifts. The reader may imagine some such conversation between the great collector and one of his dazzled visitors:—
‘Pray, how did you come by this?’