Never lend books, for no one ever returns them: the only books I have in my library are books that other folk have lent me.
—Anatole France
Of all the terrifying circumstances to which one's home is vulnerable, nothing equals that of a guest who stares straight at one's bookshelves. It is not the judgmental possibility that is frightening: the fact that one's sense of discrimination is exposed by his books. Indeed, most people would much prefer to see the guest first scan, then peer and turn away in boredom or disapproval. Alas, too often the eyes, dark with calculation, shift from title to title as from girl to girl in an overheated dance hall. Nor is that the worst. It is when those eyes stop moving that the heart too stops. The guest's body twitches; his hand floats up to where his eyes have led it. There is nothing to be done. You freeze. He smiles. You hear the question even as it forms:"Would you mind if I borrowed this book?"
(Mind? Why should I mind? The fact that I came upon that book in a Paris bookstall in April 1959—the 13th I believe it was, the afternoon, it was drizzling—that I found it after searching all Europe and North America for a copy; that it is dog-eared at passages that mean more to my life than my heartbeat; that the mere touch of its pages recalls to me in a Proustian shower my first love, my best dreams. Should I mind that you seek to take all that away? That I will undoubtedly never get it back? Then even if you actually return it to me one day, I will be wizened, you cavalier, and the book spoiled utterly by your mishandling? Mind?)
"Not at all. Hope you enjoy it."
"Thanks. I'll bring it back next week."
"No rush. Take your time. [Liar.]"
Not that there is any known way to avoid these exchanges. One has books; one has friends; they are bound to meet. Charles Lamb, who rarely railed, waxed livid on the subject: "Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes." But how are such people to be put off, since they are often we, and the non-return of borrowed books is a custom as old as books themselves? ("Say, Gutenberg, what's this? And may I borrow it?") It is said that Charles I clutched a Bible as he mounted the scaffold. One shudders to imagine the last earthly question he heard.
Still, this custom confutes nature. In every other such situation, the borrower becomes a slave to the lender, the social weight of the debt so altering the balance of a relationship that a temporary acquisition turns into a permanent loss. This is certainly true with money. Yet it is not at all true with books. For some reason a book borrower feels that a book, once taken, is his own. This removes both memory and guilt from the transaction. Making matters worse, the lender believes it too. To keep up appearances, he may solemnly extract an oath that the book be brought back as soon as possible; the borrower answering with matching solemnity that the Lord might seize his eyes were he to do otherwise. But it is all a play. Once gone, the book is gone forever. The lender, fearing rudeness, never asks for it again. The borrower never stoops to raise the subject.