THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC

BY EUGENE FIELD

Introduction

The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on the
delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with
bibliomania did not come impulsively to my brother.  For many
years, in short during the greater part of nearly a quarter of a
century of journalistic work, he had celebrated in prose and
verse, and always in his happiest and most delightful vein, the
pleasures of book-hunting.  Himself an indefatigable collector of
books, the possessor of a library as valuable as it was
interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the
cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most active
sympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as few
comparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic,
half-humorous side of that incurable mental infirmity.

The newspaper column, to which he contributed almost daily for
twelve years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at
those of his unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious,
through his instrumentality, in their devotion to old
book-shelves and auction sales.  And all the time none was more
assiduous than this same good- natured cynic in running down a
musty prize, no matter what its cost or what the attending
difficulties.  ``I save others, myself I cannot save,'' was his
humorous cry.

In his published writings are many evidences of my brother's
appreciation of what he has somewhere characterized the
``soothing affliction of bibliomania.''  Nothing of book-hunting
love has been more happily expressed than ``The Bibliomaniac's
Prayer,'' in which the troubled petitioner fervently asserts:

``But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee  
To keep me in temptation's way,  
I humbly ask that I may be  
Most notably beset to-day;  
Let my temptation be a book,  
Which I shall purchase, hold and keep,  
Whereon, when other men shall look,  
They'll wail to know I got it cheap.'' 

And again, in ``The Bibliomaniac's Bride,'' nothing breathes
better the spirit of the incurable patient than this:
 
``Prose for me when I wished for prose,  
Verse when to verse inclined,--  
Forever bringing sweet repose  
To body, heart and mind.  
Oh, I should bind this priceless prize  
In bindings full and fine,  
And keep her where no human eyes 
Should see her charms, but mine!''

In ``Dear Old London'' the poet wailed that ``a splendid Horace
cheap for cash'' laughed at his poverty, and in ``Dibdin's
Ghost'' he revelled in the delights that await the bibliomaniac
in the future state, where there is no admission to the women
folk who, ``wanting victuals, make a fuss if we buy books
instead''; while in ``Flail, Trask and Bisland'' is the very
essence of bibliomania, the unquenchable thirst for possession. 
And yet, despite these self-accusations, bibliophily rather than
bibliomania would be the word to characterize his conscientious
purpose.  If he purchased quaint and rare books it was to own
them to the  full extent, inwardly as well as outwardly.  The
mania for books kept him continually buying; the love of books
supervened to make them a part of himself and his life.

Toward the close of August of the present year my brother wrote
the first chapter of   ``The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac.'' 
At that time he was in an exhausted physical condition and
apparently unfit for any protracted literary labor.  But the
prospect of gratifying a long-cherished ambition, the delight of
beginning the story he had planned so hopefully, seemed to give
him new strength, and he threw himself into the work with an
enthusiasm that was, alas, misleading to those who had noted
fearfully his declining vigor of body.  For years no literary
occupation had seemed to give him equal pleasure, and in the
discussion of the progress of his writing from day to day his eye
would brighten, all of his old animation would return, and
everything would betray the lively interest he felt in the
creature of his imagination in whom he was living over the
delights of the book-hunter's chase.  It was his ardent wish that
this work, for the  fulfilment of which he had been so long
preparing, should be, as he playfully expressed it, a monument of
apologetic compensation to a class of people he had so humorously
maligned, and those who knew him intimately will recognize in the
shortcomings of the bibliomaniac the humble confession of his own
weaknesses.

It is easy to understand from the very nature of the undertaking
that it was practically limitless; that a bibliomaniac of so many
years' experience could prattle on indefinitely concerning his
``love affairs,'' and at the same time be in no danger of
repetition.  Indeed my brother's plans at the outset were not
definitely formed.  He would say, when questioned or joked about
these amours, that he was in the easy position of Sam Weller when
he indited his famous valentine, and could ``pull up'' at any
moment.  One week he would contend that a book-hunter ought to be
good for a year at least, and the next week he would argue as
strongly that it was time to send the old man into winter
quarters and go to press.  But though the approach of cold
weather  increased his physical indisposition, he was not the
less interested in his prescribed hours of labor, howbeit his
weakness warned him that he should say to his book, as his much-
loved Horace had written:

                  ``Fuge quo descendere gestis:           
            Non erit emisso reditis tibi.''

Was it strange that his heart should relent, and that he should
write on, unwilling to give the word of dismissal to the book
whose preparation had been a work of such love and solace?

During the afternoon of Saturday, November 2, the nineteenth
instalment of ``The Love Affairs'' was written.  It was the
conclusion of his literary life.  The verses supposably
contributed by Judge Methuen's friend, with which the chapter
ends, were the last words written by Eugene Field.  He was at
that time apparently quite as well as on any day during the fall
months, and neither he nor any member of his family had the
slightest premonition that death was hovering about the
household.  The next day, though still feeling indisposed, he 
was at times up and about, always cheerful and full of that
sweetness and sunshine which, in his last years, seem now to have
been the preparation for the life beyond.  He spoke of the
chapter he had written the day before, and it was then that he
outlined his plan of completing the work.  One chapter only
remained to be written, and it was to chronicle the death of the
old bibliomaniac, but not until he had unexpectedly fallen heir
to a very rare and almost priceless copy of Horace, which
acquisition marked the pinnacle of the book-hunter's conquest. 
True to his love for the Sabine singer, the western poet
characterized the immortal odes of twenty centuries gone the
greatest happiness of bibliomania.

In the early morning of November 4 the soul of Eugene Field
passed upward.  On the table, folded and sealed, were the memoirs
of the old man upon whom the sentence of death had been
pronounced.  On the bed in the corner of the room, with one arm
thrown over his breast, and the smile of peace and rest on his
tranquil face, the poet lay.  All around him, on the shelves  and
in the cases, were the books he loved so well.  Ah, who shall say
that on that morning his fancy was not verified, and that as the
gray light came reverently through the window, those cherished
volumes did not bestir themselves, awaiting the cheery voice: 
``Good day to you, my sweet friends.  How lovingly they beam upon
me, and how glad they are that my rest has been unbroken.''

Could they beam upon you less lovingly, great heart, in the
chamber warmed by your affection and now sanctified by death? 
Were they less glad to know that the repose would be unbroken
forevermore, since it came the glorious reward, my brother, of
the friend who went gladly to it through his faith, having
striven for it through his works?                          

                    ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD      
Buena Park, December, 1895.

 The Chapters in this Book

MY FIRST LOVE 
THE BIRTH OF A NEW PASSION 
THE LUXURY OF READING IN BED 
THE MANIA OF COLLECTING SEIZES ME 
BALDNESS AND INTELLECTUALITY 
MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA 
THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FISHING 
BALLADS AND THEIR MAKERS 
BOOKSELLERS AND PRINTERS, OLD AND NEW 
WHEN FANCHONETTE BEWITCHED ME 
DIAGNOSIS OF THE BACILLUS LIBRORUM 
THE PLEASURES OF EXTRA-ILLUSTRATION 
ON THE ODORS WHICH MY BOOKS EXHALE 
ELZEVIRS AND DIVERS OTHER MATTERS 
A BOOK THAT BRINGS SOLACE AND CHEER 
THE MALADY CALLED CATALOGITIS 
THE NAPOLEONIC RENAISSANCE 
MY WORKSHOP AND OTHERS 
OUR DEBT TO MONKISH MEN

I

MY FIRST LOVE

At this moment, when I am about to begin the most important
undertaking of my life, I recall the sense of abhorrence with
which I have at different times read the confessions of men famed
for their prowess in the realm of love.  These boastings have
always shocked me, for I reverence love as the noblest of the
passions, and it is impossible for me to conceive how one who has
truly fallen victim to its benign influence can ever thereafter
speak flippantly of it.

Yet there have been, and there still are, many who take a seeming