DOWNPOURS AND PEPYS

The fine showers of the last couple of days have changed to more serious downpours. The little drummer boy in the down pipe is doing his rolls more vigorously than long. It is just as well. The garden needed a good soaking before leafing. Only a pity that the birds have had to take shelter. It is hard to sing with your mouth full of water, I suppose. The old cherry plum tree is almost in full bloom second only to the witch hazel, and the purple heartseases are all out.

THE OTHER PEPYS

Returned to The Diary of Samuel Pepys and a commentary, The Other Pepys (1992), by Vincent Brome. This 'other' side to the warm-blooded surveyor-general of the victualling office of the old English Navy seems to come as a surprise to Brome, which he then shares with his reader who is not surprised at all, I would think, even if he has read only the most heavily bowdlerized edition of the diary. It surprised me more to learn from Anthony Hobson's Great Libraries (1970) that Pepys arranged his books according to height before anything else. The book includes a couple of good photographs of his beloved library, which shows that he even added small wooden chocks to align his books. I do not go as far as that although I use the same principle purely for aesthetic reasons. Whatever other systems I use, I apply vertically. The arrangement of the books according to period practically takes care of itself this way because the size of the standard book has steadily increased during the last two hundred years, so it even makes sense to some extent. This it did not in Pepys' time, Brome would have pointed out. The old story. Hier irrt sich Goethe.

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SURFING THE LIBRARY

In my (book)case, a gradual increase of half an inch in the height of the shelves from eight inches at the top to twelve inches at the bottom is just right. The top four shelves hold the books from the 19th century and the bottom five those from the 20th century. The oldest books and the ones from this century each have a small separate bookcase, which set off the arrangement. My brick-like modern first editions of John le Carré, Forsyth and Grisham's novels actually look better standing on the shelf than they serve as reading matter. They are becoming rather cumbersome to read, I think, because of the sheer weight of the books, quite in line with the recurring theme of the insidious murder.

I much prefer books in the size of for example Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions, which easily fits in on the top shelf of the modern section next to the equally well made Oracle Night. Noted with concern that his latest novel, Brooklyn Follies, had moved towards the common publishing standards. Even his writing is moving in this direction, I think. Still, I enjoyed the tale of the lost manuscript of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as well as that of Hotel Existence. Moreover, the book exemplified the advantage of keeping up a well stocked library at home. The main character's fondness of Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno from 1923 ("a perfect book for an aging fart like me," he explains) I was able to share then and there by reading a couple of chapters in my own copy. It is a very funny book, indeed. Poor Zeno. Imagine a father on his deathbed gathering his last strength to punch his son in the mouth just before he dies.

Likewise, I was happy to find, on an upper shelf of course, Chateaubriand's Mémoires d’outre Tombe (1848), which made up for the writer's meal ticket in The Book of Illusions. His translation of these memoirs from the other side of the grave may have sounded something like this:

“Sad necessity, which has forever held its foot against my throat, has forced me to sell my Memoirs. No one can imagine what I have suffered in being obliged to pawn my tomb but I owed this last sacrifice to my solemn promises and the consistency of my conduct. [...]

I cannot know if this mixture will be pleasing or displeasing to the reader. There is nothing I can do to remedy it. It is the result of my changing fortunes, the inconsistency of my lot. Its storms have often left me with no table to write on but the rock upon which I have been shipwrecked. [...]

I am the last of ten children. Most likely, my four sisters owe their existence to my father’s hope for another living son to ensure his name. I resisted; I had contempt for life. [...]

I was almost dead when I was born into the world. Roaring waves, intensified by the blasts of a gale announcing the arrival of the autumnal equinox, drowned my screams as if Heaven had gathered these circumstances to paint a picture of my destiny.”

Chateaubriand on a rock

“The old viscount could write one hell of a good sentence,” Auster notes in an unusual show of excitement. I very much agree. My shaky translation hardly does it justice, I am sure, but I could not resist the temptation.

Surfing a library of old books can be as stimulating as surfing the Internet, I'd say, with the added advantage of being able to sense the impression of the typeface in a well prepared sheet of paper. You can actually read the title of the Memoirs with your eyes closed by only touching the letters on the title page. It caresses the eyes as you read in a way that I think makes offset printing and flat screen resolution fade in comparison.