Uncut

I RECALL a time of leisurely youth in which this word had for me a charm which, I dare say, it preserves to this day for some people, even among my contemporaries. I was then beginning to get together a library in a small way, and had a dream, which I thank Heaven was never realized, of becoming a bibliophile. How I used to pore over the catalogues of dealers in old books, and what a delicious flavor I discerned in such items as “London, 1726, square 8vo, tree-calf, rough edges, uncut;” or “London, Pickering, 1848, 2 vols., 12mo, cloth, uncut.” The words tickle my nostrils even now, with a delightful musty, dusty, leathery aroma, — all but the last of them, and that — I sneeze at. I never got to buying one of those virgin volumes, but I used to imagine the delights of possession. To sit upon velvet, dressed in one’s best, and with a mellow ivory blade delicately part those hitherto untroubled leaves, — would n’t that be a bully thing to do, though ? I fancy I should hardly, when the time came, have had the heart for it; why destroy what one values ? and what other people value ? Our ancient virgin would, after all, have been chiefly cherished as a commodity, destined presently to be passed on, in all her wintry bloom, to the next bidder.

Such reflections may seem to betray a jaded sensibility; and I must own to having been thrown into such everyday relations with, books as to rob them of a little of the glamour which, to a fresher contact, invests even their superficies. To see an old book that is uncut, nowadays, simply means to me that it has lived in vain, and ought to be rather ashamed of itself. Instead of being a person, it has been all these years no better than a dumb object; and its chances of becoming articulate grow every day beautifully less.

Why, indeed, should it have been put upon the world under such disadvantage ? Who has reaped the benefit ? What is this luxurious process of cutting leaves that people babble of? I greatly doubt if people who read much find it anything but a nuisance: certainly I do not. Yes, I am for the idle mode of reading, too; that is precisely why I have no use for cutting leaves. Why should I do work that the publisher ought to have had done for me ? I confess that a new novel uncut fills me with rage. Mary, where under the canopy is that paper-cutter? What, — saw it upstairs ? Hm! I should think those children might be taught.

. . . Give me a hairpin, or the poker, or something! Then follows the momentary familiar struggle of mind as to whether it is less of an anguish to spend fifteen or twenty minutes rending the book open from cover to cover, — opening, as it were, your barrel of oysters to spare the oysterman, — or to make a series of annoying interruptions of the business, cutting as you read. There have been moments when I have used the bare forefinger, with a, kind of savage joy in the havoc I was making. Why should a man go out for a quiet spin, and find himself a party in an obstacle race ?

As for uncut periodicals, I do not know that (my grandfather having died of apoplexy at my age) I ought to trust myself to speak of them. In contemplating this wanton imposition, one perceives that there is something to be said, after all, for an uncut book. To put printed matter between covers is to make a sort of bid for permanent notice; and not to cut the leaves is to profess an insolent but not altogether preposterous faith in the volume’s ability to bide its time. But what of these brisk, news-dealing weeklies, these monthlies, though graver, with their inevitable bustling about the timely and the ephemeral ? Qua periodicals, they are deciduous. They are, or shold be, built for those who run to read. How should persons to whom reading is, in some sense, one of the chief businesses of life, sit fumbling over them with a foolish instrument, getting at their contents by dint of a dull form of manual labor ? A magazine ought to be, first of all, accessible. People ought to be able to steal something from it in reading-rooms and on bookstalls, pausing on one leg in midcareer, gripping a phrase from an essay, snatching the flavor of a leading article, seeing how the new serial opens. For such readers, you say, the author does not write, nor the publisher put forth. They labor for the man who buys the book or magazine, goes home with it, and contentedly places it on the library table or shelf — uncut. They labor for that man’s wife, who loves now and then, by means of armchair, open fire, footstool, cushions, magazine, and papercutter, to live up to her conception of a person reading. Well, I don’t know that much of anything can be said for the other type of reader; he would be a more graceful spectacle, even to himself, if he were less eager, less impatient, less inclined to work on one leg. But of such is the kingdom of letters.