Journeys to Bagdad | Page 7

tranquillity, for I
read from a handier, single volume. Only at cleaning times has he been
touched, and then but in the common misery with all my books.
Against this cleaning, which I take to be only a quirk of the female
brain, I have often urged that the great, round earth itself has been
subjected to only one flood, and that even that was a failure, for,
despite Noah's shrewdness at the gangway, villains still persist on it.
How then shall my books profitably endure a deluge both autumn and
spring?
Thereafter, when the tempest has spent itself and the waters have
returned from off my shelves, I'll venture in the room. There will be
something different in the sniff of the place, and it will be marvelously
picked up. Yet I can mend these faults. But it does fret me how books
will be standing on their heads. Were certain volumes only singled out
to stand upon their heads, Shaw for one, and others of our moderns, I
would suspect the housemaid of expressing in this fashion a sly and just
criticism of their inverted beliefs. I accused her on one occasion of this
subtlety, but was met by such a vacant stare that I acquitted her at once.
However, as she leaves my solidest authors also on their heads, men
beyond the peradventure of such antics, I must consider it but a part of
her carelessness, for which I have warned her twice. Were it not for her

cunning with griddlecakes, to which I am much affected, I would have
dismissed her before this.
And now this Bell, which has ridden out so many of my floods, is
proclaimed to me a villain. We had got beyond the April freshets and
there was in consequence a soapy smell about. It is clear in my mind
that a street organ had started up a gay tune and that there were sounds
of gathering feet. I was reading at the time, in the green rocker by the
lamp, a life of John Murray, by one whose name I have forgotten, when
my eyes came on the sentence that has shaken me. Bell, it said, Bell of
my own bookshelf, of all the editors of Shakespeare was the worst.
In my agitation I removed my glasses, breathed upon the lenses, and
polished them. Here was one of my familiars accused of something that
was doubtless heinous, although in what particulars I was at a loss to
know. It came on me suddenly. It was like a whispered scandal, sinister
in its lack of detail. All that I had known of Bell was that its publication
had dated from the eighteenth century. Yet its very age had seemed a
patent of respectability. If a thing does not rot and smell in a hundred
and forty years, it would seem to be safe from corruption: it were true
peacock. But here at last from Bell was an unsavory whiff. My flood
had abated only a fortnight since, and here was a stowaway escaped.
Bell was proclaimed a villain. Again had a flood proved itself a failure.
[Illustration]
Now, I feel no shame in having an outsider like Murray display to me
these hidden evils; for I owe no inquisitorial duty to my books. There
are people who will not admit a volume to their shelves until they have
thrown it open and laid its contents bare. This is the unmannerly
conduct of the customs wharf. Indeed, it is such scrutiny, doubtless,
that induces some authors to pack their ideas obscurely, thereby to
smuggle them. However, there being now a scandal on my shelves, I
must spy into it.
John Murray, wherein I had read the charge, had been such a friendly,
tea-and-gossip book, not the kind to hiss a scandal at you. It was bound
in blue cloth and was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And

this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays
open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some
books will flop a hundred pages, to make you thumb them back and
forth, though whether this be the binder's fault or a deviltry set therein
by their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind,
flopping and spry to mix you up. And in general, Shaw's humor is like
that of a shell-man at a country fair--a thimble-rigger. No matter where
you guess that he has placed the bean, you will be always wrong. Even
though you swear that you have seen him slip it under, it's but his
cunning to lead you off. But Murray was not that kind. It would stand
at