A recent cleaning of someone else’s basement yielded me an unexpected treasure – a copy of a classic, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s an old volume with more than one story to tell, and a boon to a book lover.
This copy is mouse-eaten in one corner and frayed in another. The top of its olive-coloured cloth outer skin is faded by sun or more likely by water, since many of the pages are water-stained.
If its pages were once white, they are white no more. A shade of coffee best describes them now.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
They have the musty smell of all old tomes, a combination of dust, mould and faded memory.
The tale of Jekyll and Hyde was first published in late 1886 or early 1887. Hurst and Co. of New York, publishers of my newfound old copy, did not include a copyright date.
Although I doubt it came off the press in the 19th century, it’s kind of fun to imagine so – and to picture other readers who have thumbed the same pages. Such is one joy of old books.
There are clues that this volume isn’t a product of modern times. For one thing, the page numbers aren’t consecutive – or on every page. At the back, it has advertising – and what ads they are, with eloquent verbiage to encourage the purchase of still other books about self-improvement. I guess that proves the enduring popularity of the how-to type of book.
Here is a partial ad for The American Book of Genteel Behaviour:
“A perusal of this work will enable everyone to rub off the rough husks of ill breeding and neglected education, and substitute for them gentlemanly ease and graceful, lady-like deportment, (as the case may be), so that their presence will be sought for, and they will not only learn that great art of being thoroughly at home in all societies, but will have the rarer gift of making everybody around them feel easy, contented and happy.”
I wonder if a mere book can deliver on those promises? If so, I’d venture to say most of us know a few rough-husked individuals here in modern times who could benefit from such a volume.
Present company excepted, of course.
Here’s another carefully worded ad for a book entitled Dressing with Taste, Elegance and Economy:
“For those to whom Nature has been sparing in its gifts, suggestions are here offered that will enable them to overcome these defects …”
Nature may be sparing, but I’m glad for the bounty of treasures from the basement.
