Books and Bookmen [32]
'L'Histoire de Melusine,' of Melusine, the twy-formed fairy, and
ancestress of the house of Lusignan. The Comtesse de Verrue, one of
the few women who have really understood book-collecting, {16} was
born January 18, 1670, and died November 18, 1736. She was the
daughter of Charles de Luynes and of his second wife, Anne de Rohan.
When only thirteen she married the Comte de Verrue, who somewhat
injudiciously presented her, a fleur de quinze ans, as Ronsard says,
at the court of Victor Amadeus of Savoy. It is thought that the
countess was less cruel than the fleur Angevine of Ronsard. For
some reason the young matron fled from the court of Turin and
returned to Paris, where she built a magnificent hotel, and received
the most distinguished company. According to her biographer, the
countess loved science and art jusqu'au delire, and she collected
the furniture of the period, without neglecting the blue china of
the glowing Orient. In ebony bookcases she possessed about eighteen
thousand volumes, bound by the greatest artists of the day.
"Without care for the present, without fear of the future, doing
good, pursuing the beautiful, protecting the arts, with a tender
heart and open hand, the countess passed through life, calm, happy,
beloved, and admired." She left an epitaph on herself, thus rudely
translated:-
Here lies, in sleep secure,
A dame inclined to mirth,
Who, by way of making sure,
Chose her Paradise on earth.
During the Revolution, to like well-bound books was as much as to
proclaim one an aristocrat. Condorcet might have escaped the
scaffold if he had only thrown away the neat little Horace from the
royal press, which betrayed him for no true Republican, but an
educated man. The great libraries from the chateaux of the nobles
were scattered among all the book-stalls. True sons of freedom tore
off the bindings, with their gilded crests and scutcheons. One
revolutionary writer declared, and perhaps he was not far wrong,
that the art of binding was the worst enemy of reading. He always
began his studies by breaking the backs of the volumes he was about
to attack. The art of bookbinding in these sad years took flight to
England, and was kept alive by artists robust rather than refined,
like Thompson and Roger Payne. These were evil days, when the
binder had to cut the aristocratic coat of arms out of a book cover,
and glue in a gilt cap of liberty, as in a volume in an Oxford
amateur's collection.
When Napoleon became Emperor, he strove in vain to make the troubled
and feverish years of his power produce a literature. He himself
was one of the most voracious readers of novels that ever lived. He
was always asking for the newest of the new, and unfortunately even
the new romances of his period were hopelessly bad. Barbier, his
librarian, had orders to send parcels of fresh fiction to his
majesty wherever he might happen to be, and great loads of novels
followed Napoleon to Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia. The conqueror
was very hard to please. He read in his travelling carriage, and
after skimming a few pages would throw a volume that bored him out
of the window into the highway. He might have been tracked by his
trail of romances, as was Hop-o'-my-Thumb, in the fairy tale, by the
white stones he dropped behind him. Poor Barbier, who ministered to
a passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day, was at his
wit's end. He tried to foist on the Emperor the romances of the
year before last; but these Napoleon had generally read, and he
refused, with imperial scorn, to look at them again. He ordered a
travelling library of three thousand volumes to be made for him, but
it was proved that the task could not be accomplished in less than
six years. The expense, if only fifty copies of each example had
been printed, would have amounted to more than six million francs.
A Roman emperor would not have allowed these considerations to stand
in his way; but Napoleon, after all, was a modern. He contented
himself with a selection of
ancestress of the house of Lusignan. The Comtesse de Verrue, one of
the few women who have really understood book-collecting, {16} was
born January 18, 1670, and died November 18, 1736. She was the
daughter of Charles de Luynes and of his second wife, Anne de Rohan.
When only thirteen she married the Comte de Verrue, who somewhat
injudiciously presented her, a fleur de quinze ans, as Ronsard says,
at the court of Victor Amadeus of Savoy. It is thought that the
countess was less cruel than the fleur Angevine of Ronsard. For
some reason the young matron fled from the court of Turin and
returned to Paris, where she built a magnificent hotel, and received
the most distinguished company. According to her biographer, the
countess loved science and art jusqu'au delire, and she collected
the furniture of the period, without neglecting the blue china of
the glowing Orient. In ebony bookcases she possessed about eighteen
thousand volumes, bound by the greatest artists of the day.
"Without care for the present, without fear of the future, doing
good, pursuing the beautiful, protecting the arts, with a tender
heart and open hand, the countess passed through life, calm, happy,
beloved, and admired." She left an epitaph on herself, thus rudely
translated:-
Here lies, in sleep secure,
A dame inclined to mirth,
Who, by way of making sure,
Chose her Paradise on earth.
During the Revolution, to like well-bound books was as much as to
proclaim one an aristocrat. Condorcet might have escaped the
scaffold if he had only thrown away the neat little Horace from the
royal press, which betrayed him for no true Republican, but an
educated man. The great libraries from the chateaux of the nobles
were scattered among all the book-stalls. True sons of freedom tore
off the bindings, with their gilded crests and scutcheons. One
revolutionary writer declared, and perhaps he was not far wrong,
that the art of binding was the worst enemy of reading. He always
began his studies by breaking the backs of the volumes he was about
to attack. The art of bookbinding in these sad years took flight to
England, and was kept alive by artists robust rather than refined,
like Thompson and Roger Payne. These were evil days, when the
binder had to cut the aristocratic coat of arms out of a book cover,
and glue in a gilt cap of liberty, as in a volume in an Oxford
amateur's collection.
When Napoleon became Emperor, he strove in vain to make the troubled
and feverish years of his power produce a literature. He himself
was one of the most voracious readers of novels that ever lived. He
was always asking for the newest of the new, and unfortunately even
the new romances of his period were hopelessly bad. Barbier, his
librarian, had orders to send parcels of fresh fiction to his
majesty wherever he might happen to be, and great loads of novels
followed Napoleon to Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia. The conqueror
was very hard to please. He read in his travelling carriage, and
after skimming a few pages would throw a volume that bored him out
of the window into the highway. He might have been tracked by his
trail of romances, as was Hop-o'-my-Thumb, in the fairy tale, by the
white stones he dropped behind him. Poor Barbier, who ministered to
a passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day, was at his
wit's end. He tried to foist on the Emperor the romances of the
year before last; but these Napoleon had generally read, and he
refused, with imperial scorn, to look at them again. He ordered a
travelling library of three thousand volumes to be made for him, but
it was proved that the task could not be accomplished in less than
six years. The expense, if only fifty copies of each example had
been printed, would have amounted to more than six million francs.
A Roman emperor would not have allowed these considerations to stand
in his way; but Napoleon, after all, was a modern. He contented
himself with a selection of