My Workshop and Others

I'

XVIII

MY WORKSHOP AND OTHERS

The women-folk are few up there,
For 't were not fair, you know,

That they our heavenly bliss should share
Who vex us here below!

The few are those who have been kind

To husbands such as we:

They knew our fads and did n't minâ—
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.

T has never been explained to my satis

faction why women, as a class, are the enemies of books, and are particularly hostile to bibliomania. The exceptions met with now and then simply prove the rule. Judge Methuen declares that bibliophobia is but one phase of jealousy; that one's wife hates one's books because she fears that her husband is in love, or is going to be in love, with those companions of his student

hours. If, instead of being folios, quartos, octavos, and the like, the Judge's books were buxom, blithe maidens, his wife could hardly be more jealous of the Judge's attentions to them than she is under existing circumstances. On one occasion, having found the Judge on two successive afternoons sitting alone in the library with Pliny in his lap, this spirited lady snatched the insidious volume from her husband's embraces and locked it up in one of the kitchen pantries; nor did she release the object of her displeasure until the Judge had promised solemnly to be more circumspect in the future, and had further mollified his wife's anger by bringing home a new silk dress and a bonnet of exceptional loveliness.

Other instances of a similar character have demonstrated that Mrs. Methuen regards with implacable antipathy the volumes upon which my learned and ingenious friend would fain lavish the superabundance of his affection. Many years ago the Judge was compelled to resort to every kind of artifice in order to sneak new books into his house, and had he not been imbued with the true

afflatus of bibliomania he would long ago have broken down under the heartless tyranny of his vindictive spouse.

When I look around me and survey the persecution to which book-lovers are subjected by their wives, I thank the goddess Fortune that she has cast my lot among the celibates; indeed, it is still one of the few serious questions I have not yet solved, viz. : whether a man can at the same time be true to a wife and to bibliomania. Both are exacting mistresses, and neither will tolerate a rival.

Dr. O'Rell has a theory that the trouble with most wives is that they are not caught young enough; he quotes Dr. Johnson's sage remark to the effect that "much can be made of a Scotchman if caught young," and he asserts that this is equally true of woman. Mrs. O'Rell was a mere girl when she wedded with the doctor, and the result of thirty years' experience and training is that this model woman sympathizes with her excellent husband's tastes, and actually has a feeling of contempt for other wives who have never heard of Father Prout and