The Book-Hunter at Home. P. B. M. Allan
with him, but asked what was the proposed name.
'Turchetil,' said he; 'they were all called that for generations. But of course the name wasn't Brown then, Le Brun was the family name in the twelfth century.'
'A fine lofty name,' replied his friend, 'but wouldn't Turchetil Brown sound rather funny nowadays?'
'I don't see why,' said he stiffly; 'they're both good old names.'
The bookman assented, though inwardly he could not but agree with Mrs. Brown. Turchetil Le Brun was one thing, and Turchetil Brown quite another. Perhaps, however, a compromise might be reached.
'Is there no other ancient name in your family that would do?' he suggested.
'Yes,' said the genealogist, 'there are two others, but not so good as Turchetil. They are Baldric and Bigod … '
Truly the study of genealogy has its disadvantages. There must have been great bitterness in the Brown household before its mistress obtained her own way, and even more in the heart of our poor friend as he stood at the font and heard his firstborn son irrevocably named—George.
Another friend and brother collector with whom our book-hunter sometimes passes an evening is a medical man of no small talent. But attached as he is to his profession, archæology is for ever striving with medicine for the first place in his affections, and his knowledge of herbals and the literature of alchemy is immense. His collection of works dealing with these subjects is well known to the booksellers, and the book-hunter sometimes receives a line from him asking him to pay a visit for the purpose of examining some recently acquired treasure.
Of late his hobby has taken a curious turn. A chance conversation induced him to inquire into the death of Queen Anne. He professed to discover, in the accounts of her demise, certain symptoms which indicated a different disease from that usually assigned to her. So now he must needs hold an inquest upon the death of each one of our sovereigns, from the time of King William the Conqueror. He is exceedingly enthusiastic about it, and is preparing a paper to read before the local antiquarian society. In this he hopes to prove conclusively the impossibility of lampreys having had any share in the death of Henry the First, which was clearly due to appendicitis.
Sometimes when the book-hunter visited his medical friend he would find another collector there already, deep in bookish or scientific talk. Like the doctor, the biologist was a specialist in books no less than in science, and his hobby comprised a field till recent times untilled. Keen though he was in his pursuit, it was the sea that claimed his every day of leisure. An active mind, eager in the elucidation of the more abstruse problems of physiology, yet his alert bearing, his quickness of movement and springy step, spoke more of the quarterdeck than the laboratory. Denied the sea as a profession, his heart was for ever in ships; and when at length preferment took him inland to one of the ancient seats of learning, the ordered training of his mind turned his hobby towards the history and evolution of all craft that sail upon the waters.
He is a great authority upon all matters pertaining to the rigging of mediæval ships. The history of their hulls he leaves to the attention of the important societies of nautical research. But on the evolution of the sky-topsail or fore-top-gallant-backstays his word carries much weight. He will travel a hundred miles in a week-end to see an illumination or carving of a ship, and his vacations he spends touring France and Flanders in search of stained glass windows that may throw some light upon his hobby. His collection of seals incised with ancient ships is a fine one, and the proceedings of more than one society are the richer for his researches.
Not long ago I came across another example of the manifold uses to which a private library can be put. A friend had given me a letter of introduction to a collector with whom he desired me to become acquainted. I was given to understand that the fellow-spirit was an exceedingly well-read man, and something of a wanderer.
'He's a great traveller,' said my friend with a laugh, 'there's hardly a country in the world that he has not visited.'
'What an interesting man he must be,' I replied, 'but why do you laugh?'
'Oh, you'll see all right presently,' said he; 'but go and spend an evening with him; you will certainly be entertained—provided you are sympathetic and content to let him do all the talking.'
So a few days later I called at the house of the traveller. He welcomed me in his study, a fine large room yet possessed of that cosiness imparted by the presence of many books. The walls were entirely covered with bookcases to a height of about eight feet; and these contained, he told me, about three thousand volumes. At the end of this long room was a wide bay window, and here was placed a comfortable easy chair with twin oak tables, very strong and low, at either arm. Close at hand were a revolving bookcase and a stand containing five or six japanned cylinders about three feet long, and some six inches across, such as are used to contain nautical charts.
'You are fond of travel, are you not?' I remarked, as soon as I was settled. 'Jones told me that there are few countries with which you are unacquainted.'
'That is so,' he replied; 'travel has always been my passion from my youth up, and of all the volumes which you see around you, there are scarcely a hundred that do not treat of some foreign country or voyage.'
'How interesting,' I replied; 'it is a wise old dictum that there is nothing like travel to broaden one's mind. Unless we acquaint ourselves with the opinions held by men of other nations, men whose everyday life differs so widely from our own, who see things consequently from a different standpoint, how can we expect to regard any subject from all its various aspects, which is essential if we are to pronounce an opinion which——'
'Quite so,' he interrupted, eyeing me suspiciously, and obviously fearing from my verbiage that he was about to be beset by a bore. (To tell the truth, I was rather glad of his interruption, for the sentence was beginning to get out of hand.) 'As you say, there's nothing like travel to broaden the mind. Why,' he went on hurriedly, 'before I was eighteen I had been up Aconcagua with Conway.'
'Really?' I said, trying to associate the two with a country and a date. (Of course I knew where Aconcagua was—it was one of the most familiar names in my geography, only for the moment memory was a little refractory. Obviously it was a mountain, because he spoke of having been 'up' it. The name had a Spanish ending—of course! now I knew.) 'A wonderful country, Mexico,' I went on.
'Mexico?' said he; 'yes, I know Mexico too. Been right through it, from Chihuahua to Tehuentepec and Campeachy.' (This was unfortunate, but apparently he didn't notice the mistake, for he went on at once.) 'But as I was saying, I'd been up Aconcagua before I left school.'
'Good gracious,' I replied, amazed at his intrepidity, 'that must have been an experience!'
'Rather,' said he: 'Haven't you read Conway's book? Published in '02, I think.' He strode across the room and brought back a volume. 'Yes, 1902: capital book; well worth reading. But Mexico,' he continued, without giving me time to display the knowledge that I suddenly recollected as I turned the pages of the book, 'Ah! there's a country for you! How I enjoyed my first visit! Ever been there?'
'Alas! no,' I replied; 'but one of my fondest dreams has been to visit the ancient cities of the new world.' (I thought that was rather nicely put.)
'Charnay,' he said; 'you know Charnay, then? It was he who took me there first. Early 'eighties, I think.' He pulled out another volume and turned to the title-page. 'Here we are, "The Ancient Cities of the New World," '87. My copy is only the translation, published two years after the original appeared.'
This puzzled me rather. If he had been eighteen in 1902, he must have been a mere babe in 1885.
'Rather young, were you not, when you were there?' I ventured.
'Young? Why?' he replied.
'Oh, only because you said that you were eighteen when you ascended Aconcagua in 1902, so I thought that you must have been rather young when you were in Mexico in 1885.'
He stood still and stared at me, a puzzled look on his face.
'Good gracious,' he said, 'didn't