The London Library Magazine - Issue 1 - Autumn 2008

EDITORIAL LETTER

‘ Dear Editor, I am using this privileged position to write your first Reader’s Letter. Congratulations on the first issue. I very much like the mix and the room you give your writers; it looks terrific, and I’m looking forward to Issue 2.

’

TOM STOPPARD

FROM THE LIBRARIAN

It is my great pleasure to introduce the first issue of the London Library Magazine. The decision to produce a magazine has come from a desire to provide something that members will enjoy and at the same time to reduce the cost to the Library of our regular newsletters. For, surprising though it seems, developing our newsletters into a magazine that generates advertising revenue immediately saves us money on our mailings, and indeed has the potential to become a source of valuable extra income for the Library. I’d like to thank all those who have helped make this first issue possible.

Cover Image: T.S. Eliot and Valerie Eliot, 1957, by Angus McBean. © Harvard Theatre Collection.

In future issues the magazine will continue to carry news about the Library and its progress, and it will explore some of our lesser-known collections as well as subjects we hope will be of general interest. This issue focuses in part on T.S. Eliot who, as you will read in Rupert Walters’ article, is receiving some welcome reappraisal, not least because the second volume of his letters (co-edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton) is due to be released early in 2009 by Faber. With regard to Library news, may I please draw your attention to page 34? Here you will find details of Phase 2 of our redevelopment plans and some fascinating images of how the Art Room and new Periodical browsing areas will look; these spaces are due to be ready for members by the end of 2009. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank again all who have supported this work financially; without you these marvellous improvements would only be aspirations.

Inez T.P.A. Lynn Librarian

Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Burlington Press Ltd. Published 2 October 2008 © 2008 The London Library. The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.

Editorial Publishers Jane Grylls and Kim Jenner Editor Mary Scott Design and Production Catherine Cartwright Proofreader and Researcher Emma Hughes Picture Research Bee Emmott

Editorial Committee David Breuer Miranda Lewis Harry Mount Peter Parker Christopher Phipps Erica Wagner

Advertising Bookings and General Enquiries: Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658 Georgina Ripley 020 7300 5751 Development Office, The London Library Lottie Cole 020 7766 4716 Aimée Heuzenroeder 020 7766 4734 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 7

Over My Shoulder The London Library Magazine looks over the shoulder of Jacob Simon, Chief Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, as he discusses researching his latest project and the unexpected joys of chance encounters of books and people at the Library

What are you working on at the moment? My current project is an online directory of British picture restorers, covering three centuries up to 1950, which will join existing directories of picture framemakers and artists’ suppliers on the Gallery website. But at short notice I may need to research a potential auction-room acquisition, requiring my best efforts to become an instant authority on almost any famous British person from the last five hundred years. What is your typical day? How do you fit in researching your project? Wednesdays are meeting days at the National Portrait Gallery, and every other week curators meet to make decisions about new portrait acquisitions and commissions. I try to set one day aside for research in the face of relentless pressures relating to the collections and the galleries, fundraising and staffing, and many other activities. Otherwise, I tend to focus on research in the evenings, visiting the Library on the way home. Do you study at the London Library, or do you take the books home or to the office? If it’s more than a passing reference, I’ll take a book home or to the Portrait Gallery. What is your routine when you visit the Library? When I reach the Library, if I’m not

Jacob Simon in the National Portrait Gallery

returning loans, I head straight for the delights of the new books or to the Library catalogue. From the entrance hall I have a pretty standard route: the Art Room, the lift up to Biography or Bibliography, then down the various stairs to the Reading Room or to Periodicals, or the basement. Which books are you using for your research? Are you using the London Library’s books or facilities? The great attraction of the London Library is not so much its books, which I can find elsewhere, but the ease of using them. So if I’m researching an obscure paper restorer and framemaker, Nigel Henley, younger brother of the better-known poet and editor, Walter Ernest Henley, I can immediately follow up a reference in the recent Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by moving along the shelves to the Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, and then follow up a further reference by moving down a floor or across the building, a most productive way of working. What’s your impression of the Library and its services? I see the London Library as an oasis of calm and security in the middle of the frantic activity of London. Summer is better than winter, when I find the Library overheated (especially the stately Gents toilet tucked in beneath the staircase). The Reading Room might be renamed the Sleeping Room, as far as I’m concerned;

it’s the one place I daren’t read books. The Library seems closer to home now that so much of the catalogue is online, a marvellous development and the single greatest improvement since I became a member forty years ago. Easier to find the books and less need to trouble the everhelpful staff.

‘ I see the London

Library as an oasis of calm and security in the middle of the frantic activity of London

’

What for you is the essence of the Library? I’ve always been impressed by the London Library’s sense of history. Thomas Carlyle founded the Library in the early 1840s and went on to help establish the National Portrait Gallery, where his bust is in pride of place over the front door. Wyndham Lewis was a member of the Library and we are showing a marvellous exhibition of his portraits until 19 October. I can’t but help feel part of a diffuse process giving birth to the next generation of books when I visit the Library. And it’s also a great place for chance meetings and a quick conversation with other historians and curators. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11

READING LIST

BEHIND THE

BOOK

Sara Wheeler, whose books include the best-selling Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (1998), chooses ten titles that she has particularly relished in researching her new work

The author in the Arctic, August 2008Photograph courtesy NOAA Central Library

Notes from the Cryosphere: Arctic Stories is the provisional title, at any rate, of my next publication. It’s a personal book on the Arctic that will be published by Jonathan Cape whenever I finish it, and I’m currently migrating between the High Arctic and the stacks, researching. Æ Arctic Wilderness by Robert Marshall (Berkeley 1956). T. Alaska. The poet of Alaska’s Brooks Range. Mushing his team of huskies by winter starlight, Marshall writes lyrically of ‘the unreality of a freshness beyond experience’ . I was in the Brooks recently, and it hasn’t changed – Marshall’s descriptive genius took wing for me all over again. Æ Salamina by Rockwell Kent (London 1936). T. Greenland. I found this in Topography quite by chance. It turns out that the modernist giant fetched up in Greenland for a couple of years in the thirties, at the height of his fame. He went to paint, in flight from what he called

An illustration from Rockwell Kent’s Salamina (1936). Courtesy of Rockwell Kent.

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‘the chaos of America’. Salamina was his kifak (housekeeper/lover). A deeply loving portrait of a parsed landscape and what Kent calls its ‘thinglessness’. The woodcuts are heavenly, too. Æ Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape by Barry Lopez (London 1986). T. Arctic & Antarctic. The Ur-text of polar literature. Lopez conjures the icy wastes and their emotional topography like no one else. Æ People of the Deer by Farley Mowat (London 1952). T. Eskimos. A lament for the caribou people of the Canadian Barrenlands, and a song to Mowat’s ‘intangible longing for the Arctic’. A modern classic. Æ Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia by Piers Vitebsky (London 2005). T. Siberia. An anthropologist’s story of the Eveny, a Siberian people still living – just – in intense partnership with their reindeer. Once nomadic, the Eveny have weathered Soviet collectivisation and God knows what else, battling it out in the harshest environment on earth. Vitebsky has been on the job for twenty years. Æ The Arctic: A History by Richard Vaughan (Stroud 1994). T. Arctic & Antarctic. Comprehensive, clearly written, well sourced – what more do you want? Æ We Die Alone by David Howarth (London 1955). H. European War II.

An epic story of resistance and betrayal on the Arctic coast of Norway in the Second War. Brilliant beyond belief. Should be a film! Æ My Life as an Explorer by Roald Amundsen (London 1927). Biog. Amundsen. It’s hard to leave him out – the old Norski soldier (not literally) who did so much, in such style, at both ends of the earth. Embittered, yes; but a genuine hero. Æ Silent Snow. The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic by Marla Cone (New York 2005). T. Arctic & Antarctic. A detailed study by an experienced American environmental journalist walking in the footsteps of Rachel Carson. Cone uncovers a catastrophic tale of bioaccumulation and biomagnification in the food chain, which has led to indigenous peoples in the High Arctic being among the most contaminated people on the planet. A group of Greenlanders even qualify as nuclear waste. A shocker. Æ Victor Hugo by Graham Robb (London 1997). Biog. Hugo. Ha! Ha! A jewel of a polar digression lies deeply buried in the pages of this tremendous biography. Only for the sharpeyed – but it’s a fabulous book anyway. Titles in print are available at a 10% discount through the London Review Bookshop or online at lrbshop.co.uk See advertisement on page 6.

T.S. ELIOT With the Donmar Warehouse’s Eliot Festival approaching, and a number of new Eliot publications to be released, Rupert Walters delves into the writer’s absorbing and often amusing correspondence with the Library and offers a timely examination of his work and reputation

T

.S. Eliot first joined the London Library in October 1918 and was its President from 1952 to 1965. Sadly, as far as Eliot scholars are concerned, there is no record of his borrowing (unlike at the Houghton Library in Harvard, where Lyndall Gordon has uncovered fascinating records of his 1908 to 1914 reading, particularly in mysticism). What the Library does have is a file of letters from 1935 until his death in 1965, mainly from his time as President. They cover a whole range of subjects, many administrative, such as the discussions regarding various applications for membership and financial assistance: 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

‘I have not the slightest recollection of ever meeting or having had any communication with John MacCaig Thorburn … but in any case I could not possibly vouch for the validity or justification of anybody’s work in a field such as Astrological Problematic. ’ Or, regarding the poet George Barker, Eliot agrees that the Carlyle Trust should assist by subsidising his subscription fee, but that ‘he ought to be asked to pay at least a guinea a year’ . From 9 August 1961, Eliot helpfully responds to a recruitment drive by recommending some possible new members: ‘I should like to suggest among other friends Mr Laurens Van Der Post,

of 13 Cadogan Street, SW3, and Mr Christopher Fry of 37 Blomfield Road, W9. I do not know whether these two are already members of the London Library or not: the same applies to the following names of friends or acquaintances which have occurred to me: The Earl of Longford, Lord Reith, Mr Stephen Spender, Sir Charles P. Snow, Mrs Guy Wyndham and Mr T.S. Matthews. ’ There’s much coming and going on the fixing of dates for the AGM, financial crises, the donation of various books from his library: ‘If you felt justified in accepting any of these, the space on my shelves would be very welcome. ’ In T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (2000),

T.S. Eliot, 1938, by Wyndham Lewis. Durban Municipal Art Gallery, © The Estate of Mrs G.A. Wyndham Lewis: The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust

‘ “The London Library,

for a private library, is surprisingly good; its terms are generous and its manners gracious; but if one wishes to pursue any subject very far, it is, naturally, not inexhaustible”

’

Lyndall Gordon describes his published letters as ‘absorbing, discreetly candid, playful and stern by turns ’ . The earliest letter in the Library correspondence, from 3 July 1935, captures some of this: My dear Sir, Your assistant has so long addressed me as ‘T. Steoms Eliot’ that I hesitate to introduce any change. But this designation does give me pain, as my middle name is STEARNS (or STERNE); and I should be grateful if she would in future address me simply, as I subscribe myself, as Your obedient servant, T.S. Eliot

In a letter to the Editor of The Athenaeum, in which he compares the British Library and the London Library, we can identify Eliot’s needs more clearly. Referring first to the British Library, he writes: ‘At present the Library can only be used by those whose occupation or lack of occupation permits them to pass their days there. The research of the professional scholar, the curiosity of the affluent, the affliction of the dotard, the idleness of the pauper – these may all be gratified or solaced in the Library: it can also provide a degree of warmth for the homeless. ’ Whereas, ‘The London Library, for a private library, is surprisingly good; its terms are generous and its manners

gracious; but if one wishes to pursue any subject very far, it is, naturally, not inexhaustible’ (Oct. 1919, The Letters of T.S. Eliot, ed. Valerie Eliot, 1988, pp.341–2). For Eliot, as his inaugural address as President in 1952 makes clear, the appeal of the Library was its accessibility: ‘I could go there at my leisure, after lunch on Saturday, rummage the stacks, and emerge with nine or ten volumes to take home with me. Without the London Library, many of my early essays could never have been written. ’ For the Library’s appeal of 1961 Eliot donated for auction a handwritten copy of The Waste Land, now at the University of Texas. The auction took place at Christie’s, London, in June. The Waste Land sold for £2,800 (Rupert Hart-Davies reported that ‘The audience clapped and the old boy beamed modestly’), an E.M. Forster manuscript of A Passage to India went for £6,500 and a wine cooler donated by the Queen Mother went for £30. In total the sale raised £25,632. Eliot had apparently copied out the poem while on holiday in Morocco. Interestingly his copy contains an extra line, which may suggest that it was written from memory; alternatively it may merely confirm Peter Ackroyd’s observation about the ‘peculiarly eccentric nature of Eliot’s texts, which vary from edition to edition’ . (It was not until the summer of 1968 that Valerie Eliot was told about the THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15

p

Right Eliot and Virginia Woolf, date and photographer unknown. Far Right Eliot’s letter to the Library, 3 July 1935.

existence of the much longer original draft of the poem, with Ezra Pound’s now famous annotations.) The extra line is in parenthesis: And we shall play a game of chess (The ivory men make company between us) Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. It has now been twenty years since the publication of the first volume of Eliot’s letters, which took us from 1898 to 1922. The revised first volume of letters, along with the second volume, co-edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, are due out in 2009, part of what will be a bumper crop of Eliot publications, including new editions of his works. There is to be a new complete edition of the poems, edited by Christopher Ricks, to include the early Inventions

‘

of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917; and even volume one of the complete prose (2009), bringing together all Eliot’s essays, reviews and articles, of which only around eighty have been published out of a staggering total of eight hundred. And, at the end of 2008, the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden is holding an Eliot Festival, including a production of The Family Reunion and readings of other plays and poems. Eliot’s output was prodigious and his commitments many, which perhaps gives some justification to his initial reluctance to take on the job of President when he was first approached by the Library. ‘I regard the position … as one of some responsibility, as well as high distinction. It is therefore, one which, I confess, I should have preferred to escape’ (29 November 1951). Harold Nicolson, missing the seriousness of the man, thought he

“ I could go there at my leisure, after lunch on Saturday, rummage the stacks, and emerge with nine or ten volumes to take home with me. Without the London Library, many of my early essays could never have been written.”

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‘sounded ungracious’. But his concerns about the responsibility were right for someone as diligent and hard-working as Eliot, despite the typically relaxed impression he gives in his apologies for absence to one of the AGMs. Referring to the President’s role, he writes: ‘In the course of the year he presents himself once, for inspection by the Members, and then is laid away, like a state coach, against the next great occasion.’ In September 1960 he apologises for missing the AGM, continuing that ‘it resulted in my receiving many inquiries about the pneumonia which Harold Nicolson attributed to me’. To which the Library replies, ‘It was Harold Nicolson’s own idea that you had pneumonia and nothing would deflect him from it’. In the world of poetry, publishing and criticism, Eliot did indeed have an enormous reputation both during his life and after. And in the last twenty years, it has been inevitable that this apparently inviolable position would come under attack. At a time when biography and biographical approaches dominate in the field of literary criticism, one reason for this attack stems from his determination never to have a biography written. Add to that a reputation for secrecy – instanced in the letters, nearly a thousand of them, locked away in Princeton until October 2019, and many others burned – and you can hear the rumblings. There has also been real animosity and bitterness in some of these disputes. At times they remind me of Kissinger’s

T.S. ELIOT

‘ “When we first hear The

Waste Land, we may not know what the poems mean, but we may sense that they mean something terribly important, that they speak to us on a personal level”

’

famous answer when the question was raised as to why intrigues in academia are so bitter: ‘Because the stakes are so low’; although at other times it really does feel like a battle for possession of the poet’s soul. As Ron Schuchard says in his excellent critical study Eliot’s Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art (1999): ‘We are told that his voice is in reality misogynistic, homoerotic, elitist, racist, fascist, absolutist, orthodox … until we are intimidated into believing that the voice that we must have misheard was not a voice we wanted to hear at all. ’ He points out the danger of forgetting that ‘when we first read Eliot as students, when we first hear Prufrock or The Waste Land or “Little Gidding” , we may not know what the poems mean, but we may sense that they mean something terribly important, that they speak to us on a personal level and touch a substratum of ourselves that we may not have visited before’ . My own experience of first studying The Waste Land was that I, along with my contemporaries, neither knew nor cared about Eliot’s life. What did take our breath away was the poetry, with its extraordinary clarity of images and the power of phrasing, which seemed to speak directly to us. Benjamin Britten said in his last years that Eliot was the only writer he could read – and I know precisely why. The exciting thing about all these new editions seems to me that they return us to the work. To paraphrase Edward Lobb, any analysis of the poetry – whether philosophical, psychological or biographical – unless it is subordinated to

the examination of the poetic context, ends by being almost comically reductive. I hope that my forthcoming documentary on Eliot will capture some of that. And it will start with a class of teenagers reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock for the first time. There’s a Borges short story (it was ‘the beauty’ of Eliot’s poetry that moved Borges) – Everything and Nothing (1980) – in which Shakespeare finds himself facing God, and says: ‘“I who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone.”’ From out of the whirlwind the voice of God replies: ‘“I, too, am not I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare, dreamed your own work, and among the forms of my dream are you, who like me are many, yet no one. ”’ Perhaps Eliot was also many but wanted to be no one. Although maybe Pound was right, and ‘The more we know of Eliot, the better’ . In response to some greetings in 1958 on his seventieth birthday, Eliot hoped that ‘the London Library will long outlive its President – in fact that its future may be endless’ . Maybe now it will be, not least due to the recent generosity of Valerie Eliot and the Old Possum Trust. And the rest of us will do well to follow Pound’s tribute on his death: ‘His was the true Dantescan voice – not honoured enough, and deserving more than I ever gave him. Who is there now for me to share a joke with? … Am I to write “about” the poet Thomas Stearns Eliot? Or my friend “the Possum”? Let him rest in peace. I can only repeat with the urgency of 50 years ago: READ HIM. ’

Naming Ceremony for T.S. Eliot House The official naming of T.S. Eliot House took place on the evening of 11 June this year, with a drinks party in Mason’s Yard. Guest of honour was Mrs Valerie Eliot, who joined more than 100 guests in touring the new building and celebrating this permanent reminder of her late husband’s contribution to the London Library and to the literary world. Stephen Page, Chief Executive of Faber and Faber, spoke of Mrs Eliot’s happiness that so appropriate a memorial to her late husband could be established through the Library’s redevelopment. A highlight of the evening was provided by actress Fiona Shaw, who has been acclaimed for her performances of ‘The Waste Land’ as a one-person show. Her beautiful readings of two Eliot poems, ‘Portrait of a Lady’ and ‘A Dedication to My Wife’, which was written for Valerie herself, were a moving tribute to Eliot’s poetic power, and an apt feature of an evening dedicated to his memory. Mrs Valerie Eliot enjoys the official naming of T.S. Eliot House. Jason Hurst © London Library

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17

THE STATE OF

FICTION D.J. TAYLOR

T

Cover of the New Review, summer 1978.

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hirty years ago this summer the New Review devoted nearly sixty closely printed pages of its quarterly number to a symposium on what, even then, was becoming an ancient chestnut: ‘The State of Fiction. ’ Here nearly eighty novelists, critics and attendant scene-swellers, beginning with Amis, Kingsley, and ending with Wilson, Angus, dilated on what they thought of the previous decade’s crop of (mostly) Anglo-American novels and what they anticipated from the decade to come. The replies, whether brisk and dismissive, or rambling and effusive, are still horribly revealing. Prophetic notes are struck from one paragraph to the next. A young Ian McEwan hazards that ‘the best fiction of the next ten years will be generated by the women’s movement and its peripheries’ . An even younger Martin Amis supposes that if he tries very hard he can conceive of ‘a novel that is as tricksy, as alienated and as writerly as those of, say, Robbe-Grillet while also providing the staid satisfactions of pace, plot and humour with which we associate, say, Jane Austen’ . There are carefully hedged bets: Malcolm Bradbury, for example, commends his elevenstrong tipster’s list with the sign-off ‘I think they are all important writers’ . But generally speaking the tone, particularly among the senior men present, is one of unrelieved gloom. William Cooper diagnoses an unmendable fracture in the relationship between novelists and their public, a ‘rather shallow, relatively harmless anarchy: any writer being allowed to say anything; nobody listening’ . Angus Wilson’s conclusion is even starker: ‘I do not know how the serious novel will survive. ’ The ‘serious novel’ has been borne away to its terminal hospice so many times in the past half-century by gangs of exultant critics that these consultants’ reports no longer have the menace they once possessed. Seen in the round, the animal whose coming extinction Angus Wilson so miserably predicted has survived rather better than he or many of his colleagues had any right to expect, even if, in doing so, it has had to reinvent and extend itself in ways that would have had previous generations of ‘serious novelists’ gnashing their teeth in fury.

From far left: Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1954), 1961 edition; Christine Brooke-Rose’s Amalgamemnon (1984), 2004 edition; and Martin Amis’s Money (1984). Below: Angus Wilson’s Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956), 2005 edition.

Perhaps, in the end, Wilson’s anxieties are personal rather than collective, born of a suspicion that the kind of serious novel he himself specialised in – extravagant, multi-toned, wellnigh hectically engaged with a series of fine moral questions – was reaching the end of its natural span. Curiously, the effect of reading the New Review’s symposium with the benefit of hindsight is rather like coming across a survey of British poetry written in 1929: W.H. Auden’s shadow looms over the horizon, but all the symposiasts can talk about is Walter de la Mare and John Drinkwater. Only half a decade on from this succession of jeremiads, after all, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981)

‘

The “serious novel” has been borne away to its terminal hospice so many times in the past half-century by gangs of exultant critics that these consultants’ reports no longer have the menace they once possessed

’

had won the Booker Prize, Graham Swift’s Waterland (1983) and Martin Amis’s Money (1984) were crowding out the bookshop shelves, and an effervescing wave of new fictional talent was making some of its 1970s predecessors look very dim indeed. This, of course, is a chronological accident. Much less accidental – for it underlies practically every contribution filed – is the separation of the New Review’s task force into two diametrically opposed critical shapes. These – to borrow the language of midtwentieth-century historiography – might be called the Whig theory of the novel, and the Tory theory. The Whig theory of the novel, as adumbrated by, say, Malcolm Bradbury, maintains that the novel, like a political system, is always ‘developing’

towards some dimly perceived optimum state (presumably a better understanding of human beings and their relation to the society they inhabit). The Tory view, which most serious critics are understandably chary of upholding in public, is that this optimum state was reached a century and a half ago in the age of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, when a combination of social, commercial and aesthetic factors offered a working environment whose exact circumstances – whatever the lustre of individual talents – can never be reproduced. Orthodox readings of post-war British literary history nearly always mark the 1950s down as a Tory, or rather sub-Tory, decade: a time of retreats to the provincial margin (William Cooper), to the mock-Augustan picaresque (John Wain), to early twentieth-century popularisers such as H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, to a succession of bygone exemplars who, in the words of Cooper – no theorist – dealt with ‘man in society’ as well as the modernist’s flagbearer, ‘man alone’ . Close inspection suggests the 1950s to be a much less sedate and reactionary decade than it was painted – some of Lucky Jim’s wordplay, for instance, is almost Joycean in its attack – but the battle lines between what looked like tradition and what fancied itself as innovation had been sharply drawn up. If it was an age of eye-catching slogans, mostly from American campus-theoreticians (John Hawkes, for example, who famously declared that plot was the enemy of the novel), THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19

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The publishing process grows ever more narrowly reactive, intent on the big splash and the bold gesture A.S. Byatt’s Still Life (1985), 1995 edition

then it was also an age which acknowledged that some of the physical realities of the mid-twentieth century could not be accommodated by traditional means. Eva Figes’ claim, from 1978, that the English social realist tradition could not contain ‘the horrors of my lifetime’ , could have been made at any time over the preceding twenty years. The thesis of Angus Wilson’s 1961 Northcliffe lectures, as his biographer Margaret Drabble notes, was that ‘the provincial English novel of manners was inadequate to the violent age of Buchenwald’ . Occasionally these arguments about the form post-war fiction ought to take (opposed, that is, to the form post-war fiction seemed to be taking) spilled out into fiction itself. A.S. Byatt’s Still Life (1985), set mostly in Eden-era Cambridge, features an émigré don named Raphael Faber, all of whose male relatives have perished in the concentration camps, who hates D.H. Lawrence and declares that ‘Art surely can’t any longer be thought of as inventing people and giving them names and social backgrounds 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

’

and assembling descriptions of clothes and houses and money and pictures. All that is over. ’ It may well have been over. On the other hand, nobody had convinced the majority of practising novelists or their readerships. The belief that a shift-change in the twentiethcentury novel’s perception of reality was either achievable, or desirable, was one of the great delusions of the post-war avantgarde. Most of what later got marked down as ‘post-modernism’ was predicated on it. The response of those 1960s and 1970s writers with any awareness of the wider debates booming away in the background took a variety of forms: the continuing attempts to satirise a society ever more resistant to satire of a Kingsley Amis; the heightened social realism of an Angus Wilson; the dense group mythologisings of an Iris Murdoch; the soft academicism of a John Fowles; and at the most rawly committed end of the spectrum an out-and-out experimentalism designed to change the novel’s dominating forms for good. The experimental phase in British fiction – represented by such novelists as Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose and Alan Burns – lasted for perhaps fifteen years, and failed entirely. There were several reasons for this abject inability to sell copies of its books or to change the prejudices of its readers. One was a concentration on technical refinement for technical refinement’s sake, set against which an ‘ordinary’ novel by a Drabble or a Francis King always seemed more plausible and convincing (as F.R. Leavis once put it, comparing Joyce and Shakespeare, Joyce wrote to extend his technique, Shakespeare wrote out of a pressure of something to be conveyed). Another was the refusal of most of those involved to offer very much more than a series of private ciphers: ‘Anyone would think I was writing for the public’ , ran the self-condemning sticker attached to the wall above B.S. Johnson’s desk. The third was a dislike, often amounting to outright detestation, of most of the elements – plot, pace, narrative edge – that cause readers to pick up novels in the first place. The new wave of early 1980s British novelists knew that this particular game was up. B.S. Johnson had wanted to outwit reality by offering projections of his own life, on the grounds that fiction was cognate with the verb ‘to feign’ and therefore suspect, a stance that depending on your point of view is either extraordinarily sophisticated or downright obtuse. The Crick family’s response in Waterland is yet more elemental: ‘telling stories. ’ If there is a message for novelists in the chaos of the

THE STATE OF FICTION

past half-century it is that no one ever got anywhere by ignoring narrative, however inadequate that narrative might seem to the job in hand. As to what may happen to fiction in the next couple of decades, it will almost certainly be dominated – to a degree that the novelist of the 1950s would have thought positively alarming – by the economic conditions in which novels are produced. When pressed, Zeitgeist-hungry theorists of the Eagleton/Baudrillard school usually maintain that writers are really only symptoms of the wider socio-aesthetic climate, that David Mitchell, say, writes a novel like Cloud Atlas (2004) because he lives in a post-modern world. It would be perfectly possible, consequently, to argue that the decisive influence on twenty-first-century fiction will be globalisation and diaspora: certainly most of the new writing coming out of America – see the recent Granta ‘Best of’ showcase – tends to be migrants’ testimonies. On the other hand, as most practising novelists will tell you, the real factors governing the way in which serious fiction gets written are, on the one hand, the increasing commercialisation of the publishing process, and, on the other, the nature of people who write novels. The former grows ever more narrowly reactive, intent on the big splash and the bold gesture, with no time at all for the quiet ‘mid-list’ novel that bulked out library shelves twenty years ago. As to the people writing it, they tend increasingly to be creative-writing graduates, 1,200 of whom, according to a calculation in the TLS, are currently at work on their first novels. The fashionable young English novelist occupies an odd position in regard to his or her trade: academically switched on, reared in a university, up

to all the latest intellectual dodges, but darkly aware that any kind of long-term career will require a beady eye to be kept on commercial realities. In his recent survey The Novel Now (2006), Richard Bradford has even come up with a name for this new breed of writer – the Monica Ali/ Zadie Smith/ David Mitchell kind – the ‘domesticated post-modernist’ , instinctively attuned to the wiles of bygone experiment (altered states, unreliable narrators and so on), but sufficiently in thrall to the idea of conventional storytelling to emerge with the reader, and the Waterstone’s buyer, on his or her side. If the aesthetic tendencies of the post-war novel have another legacy, it is the terrific air of self-consciousness that continues to afflict fiction on both sides of the Atlantic. Just as when the smoke finally rises from the battlefield of a Martin Amis novel all that remains is the spectacle of Amis writing, so in A.S. Byatt’s fiction the pretence that one is reading a plausible account of humanity in action is periodically edged aside by the rather less allowable sight of A.S. Byatt thinking. Among senior American novelists, this tendency is almost endemic. In his instructive primer How Fiction Works (2008), James Wood quotes with keen enthusiasm Saul Bellow’s description of a river as ‘crimped, green, blackish, glassy’ . But this is not really a description of a river: it is merely Saul Bellow showing us all how good a writer he is, impressing the reader with his literariness at the expense of the story he tells. With any luck, the first casualty of the next ten years of novel-writing will be literariness. The old style ‘literary novel’ , in any case, is very nearly dead, snuffed out of existence by poor sales, media indifference and reading groups desperate to ‘identify’ with the characters of their chosen books. Even more so than the fiction of the past fifty years, the novel of the future will be governed by book-trade economics. If that sounds an unusually depressing prospect then, to go back to the Tory theory of fiction, it has brought us Vanity Fair and Dombey and Son as well as the works of Katie Price and Miss Kerry Katona. Titles in print are available at a 10% discount through the London Review Bookshop or online at lrbshop.co.uk See advertisement on page 6. Above David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004). From far left: B.S. Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own DoubleEntry (1973), 1984 edition; John Fowles’ The Magus (1966); and Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea (1978).

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21

HIDDEN CORNERS

A HORTICULTURAL

Ramble in the London Library

Peter Parker

O

Above ‘An arrangement of Singapore garden flowers exhibited by Mrs J.B. Pickering in 1953’, from R.E. Holttum’s Gardening in the Lowlands of Malaya (1953). Opposite Frontispiece of Sir John Hill’s The British Herbal (1756). 22 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

ne of the pleasures and privileges of belonging to the London Library is wandering through its labyrinthine book-stacks with no particular aim in mind. Anyone who wants to find a particular one of the million or so books or 2,500 periodicals can do so easily enough in the catalogue; but serendipitous browsing is what many members find particularly rewarding. The experience is not unlike strolling round someone’s garden, stooping occasionally to inspect a plant you hadn’t expected to see. One of the best places to do this is in the capacious Science and Miscellaneous section, that glorious omnium gatherum subdivided into such widely divergent subjects as Conjuring and Colour-Blindness, Domestic Servants and Duelling, Gas and Geodesy, Human Sacrifice and Hypnotism, Laughter and Lotteries, Pain and Poultry, Sewage Disposal and Somnambulism, or Vinegar and Vivisection. It is here that the majority of the Library’s books about plants and gardening can be found. Two large sections labelled Gardens and Botany are supplemented by smaller ones on Trees, Herbs, Ferns, Orchids, Flower Arranging and Flower Lore.

The best-known writers are well represented, with substantial runs of J.C. and Jane Loudon, William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll, V. Sackville-West, Graham Stuart Thomas, et al. But almost better are those forgotten or unexpected volumes that loll nonchalantly against the bigger names in the stacks. Since books are arranged alphabetically by author, the eye of anyone scanning the shelves for, say, Russell Page’s The Education of a Gardener (1962) might be caught by its neighbour, Minnie Palliser’s A Cabbage for a Year (1934). Gardening Humour is always a rather doubtful category, and some seventy years on Mrs Palliser (who also wrote the ominously titled Gardener’s Frenzy) doesn’t raise too many smiles. Unlikely ever to be reprinted as a Virago Classic (or indeed on any other publisher’s list), this book nevertheless has a certain period interest. Indeed, the Library’s policy of never discarding volumes once they have been acquired means that however out of date a book may become, it remains in the stacks. The advantage of this is obvious. F.A. Allerton’s Chrysanthemums for the Amateur and Market Grower (1949), with black-andwhite plates illustrating not only the plants themselves but lumbering early

cultivators (‘The Rototiller’), is unlikely to be consulted by anyone who wants up-to-the-minute information, but it provides a fascinating window into the gardening tastes and practices of an earlier generation. Similar books may be found on dahlias, roses, irises, dianthus, campanula,

larkspur, phlox, the tuberous begonia, and other plants, not to mention greenhouses, window-boxes, tools and implements, horticultural methods, pests and diseases. C.M. Buckton’s Town and Country Window Gardening (1879), for example, reprints a series of sixteen lectures ‘given

out of school hours to pupil-teachers and children attending the Leeds Board Schools’ , while The Fungal Diseases of the Common Larch (1919) was donated to the Library in 1920 by the then Lord Curzon, presumably after he had sorted out the conifers at Kedlestone. As well as an excellent selection of books on garden history, there are practical books on horticulture in almost any climate you care to mention: not only general titles such as Mrs Philip Martineau’s Gardening in Sunny Lands, with an introduction by Edith Wharton (1924), but even such geographically precise ones as Gardening in the Lowlands of Malaya, published in 1953, just as the sun was setting on that particular imperial outpost. The British Empire was also undoubtedly responsible for many of the flora shelved under Botany. Lt. Col. Heber Drury, perhaps in his retirement from imperial service, found time to compile a three-volume HandBook of the Indian Flora (1864–9), though this was presumably swiftly surpassed by J.D. Hooker’s seven-volume Flora of British India (1872–97). Later in the century another seven volumes were devoted to a Flora Capensis, covering ‘the Cape Colony, Caffraria, and Port Natal’ (1894–1900), completed as the Boer War fatally undermined Britain’s assumptions of imperial supremacy. Several books still bear the elegant signatures of their original owners (‘C. Pearl, Ootacamund’), and in some cases the dust of the cities in which they were published seems still to adhere to them: Major R.H. Beddome’s Flora Sylvatica for Southern India (1869) somehow exudes the atmosphere of the printers’ works in Madras from which it was issued in four quarto volumes. The Library’s floras not only cover an area far larger than the pink bits on the old maps, but are often written in languages other than English. It was evidently felt that a Flore Générale de l’Indo-Chine in seven volumes (1907–51), or even ten volumes comprising a Flora der Gefürsten Grafschaft Tirol, des Landes Vorarlberg und die Fürstenhumes Liechtenstein (1900–13), would become well-thumbed additions to the Library’s stock, while a three-volume Vilda Växter i Norden (1938–9) highlights the flattering assumption by generations of Librarians THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23

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Far left ‘Beta hybrida (The Mangel Wurzel)’, from l’Abbé de Commerell’s instructive pamphlet (1787). Left ’Strelitzia reginæ, the Canna-Leafed Strelitzia’, from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (1787). Below Prize-winning Victorian arrangements from C.M. Buckton’s Town and Country Window Gardening (1879).

that the membership is comfortably polyglot. As E.M. Forster remarked of Charles Hagberg Wright, Librarian from 1893 to 1940: ‘He was free from the insularity that has such a numbing effect on the collecting of books, and it is largely thanks to him that one feels the Library to be not English but civilized. ’ A similarly rich collection of very rare or valuable titles designated ‘not for circulation’ may be read under supervision in the Reading Room. These include, as one would expect, original or early editions of some of the world’s most famous gardening books – John Gerard’s Herball (1636), John Parkinson’s Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1656) and Theatrum Botanicum (1640), John Evelyn’s Silva (1812) and Kalendarium Hortense (1691), Thomas Fairchild’s The City Gardener (1722), Carl Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum (1764), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Letters on the Elements of Botany (1785), William Cobbett’s The 24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

English Gardener (1833) – but also some unexpected rarities. So, alongside John Abercombie’s Every Man His Own Gardener (1767) and The Gardener’s Pocket Dictionary (1786) is his 54-page booklet on The Garden Mushroom: it’s [sic] nature and cultivation. A treatise, exhibiting full and plain directions, for producing this desireable plant in perfection and plenty, according to the true successful practice of the London gardeners (1779). It is bound up with several others pamphlets on similar topics, including An Account of the Culture and Uses of the Mangel Wurzel, or Root of Scarcity (1787), translated from the French of l’Abbé de Commerell. One of the earliest books is the anonymous Herbarium imagines vivae (1538), a slim volume consisting solely of woodcuts of various plants with their Latin and German names appended. A little later come the first English edition of Rembert Dodoens’ A Niewe Herball (1578,

thus predating the first edition of Gerard’s Herball by nineteen years); The Garden of Health, conteyning the virtues &c. of simples and plants &c. Gathered by long experience and industries of William Langham (1579); and two books by Thomas Hill, who wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Didymus Mountaine’: The Gardener’s Labyrinth (1586), largely derived from the works of ‘ancient authors’ such as ‘Plinie’ but full of practical advice (one chapter suggests why dung is best not spread on the beds nearest the house); and The Profitable Arte of Gardening (1593). Later practical guidance is offered by Leonard Meager, a seventeenth-century writer about whom little is known but whose wonderful The English Gardener (1670) was very popular in its day, running to eleven editions. Meager provides a stupendous catalogue of fruits (including Musk Violet peaches and Ladies-buttock pears) grown by his friend Leonard Garrle, who ran a famous nursery in London’s East

hidden corners

‘

Serendipitous browsing is not unlike strolling round someone’s garden, stooping occasionally to inspect a plant you hadn’t expected to see

’

End, ‘between Spittle-Fields and WhiteChapell’ . Rather more is known about Richard Bradley, FRS, whose Monthly Register of Experiments and Observations in Husbandry and Gardening (1722–3) kept his fellow gardeners up to speed with new developments, including the production of fruit out of season and ‘Transplanting Forrest-Trees and FruitTrees of any Bigness, in the Summer Season, so that Gentlemen may make compleat Plantations in a few Days, as effectually as if they had been growing for many years’ . When not devoting his time to instant gardening of a sort that has now become all too familiar from the television, Bradley was busy describing a greenhouse designed by ‘Seignior Galilei of Florence’ (illustrated with fold-out diagrams) or writing letters to a Mr Trowel (surely a pseudonym?) of the Middle Temple about ‘a Method of Breaking Tulips, or making the Plain Flowers become Strip’d’ . Later periodicals include Paxton’s Flower Garden (revised edition, 1882), the intention of which was ‘to supply, in monthly parts, as full an account of all the new and remarkable plants being introduced into cultivation as is necessary to the horticulturist’ , and incomplete but nevertheless hugely useful runs of such periodicals as The Botanical Register (1815–47) and Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (1787 to the present day). An extensive collection of herbals includes William Coles’ Adam in Eden, or,

Pages from Richard Bradley’s Monthly Register of Experiments and Observations in Husbandry and Gardening (1722–3).

Nature’s Paradise (1657), John Pechey’s The Compleat Herbal of Physical Plants (1694), William Salmon’s The Botanologia (1710), and The British Herbal (1756) by the staggeringly prolific Sir John Hill, who managed to combine the careers of physician, journalist, actor and writer. The British Herbal has an elaborate frontispiece depicting a winged and well-developed young man, naked except for some artfully concealing drapery, surrounded by genuflecting and giftbearing ethnic representatives. He holds

up a scroll with the book’s title inscribed on it before an awed group of shadowy figures, and the immodest caption reads: ‘The Genius of Health recieving [sic] the tributes of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and delivering them to the British Reader. ’ Delivered to readers whatever their nationality, the gardening books in the London Library provide enlightenment on everything from history and taxonomy to The Future of the DatePalm in India and ‘The spirituall use of an orchard’ .  THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25

Dickens

and

Paul Johnson explores the relationship between the two great nineteenth-century writers, and considers Dickens’s debt to Carlyle and the London Library

B

ooks are the red corpuscles that race through the veins of the creative process in writing. The key word is circulate. Books that are written, printed, bought and then remain on shelves serve no purpose other than decoration. They must be read, then recommended, given, borrowed, mentioned in conversation, then print, seen on friends’ tables, picked up and browsed through, become the common coin exchanged at parties, and thus made to proliferate and circulate faster. The circulation of books is the prime organic force in the functioning of the literary body. They accumulate as blood-banks in the private houses of individuals, and more professionally in libraries.

And the efficiency of their circulation depends on private generosity and public professionalism. An example of this process is provided by the relationship between Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, especially in their handling of the events in France between 1789 and 1795, which bore exotic fruit in Carlyle’s history, The French Revolution (1837), and Dickens’s novel about those times, A Tale of Two Cities (1859). Carlyle, whose three major historical works explored new territory, always complained about the difficulty of getting hold of books, and their poor quality. He was at work on The French Revolution for much of the 1830s, before the founding of the London Library in 1841, and it was this experience that impelled him to take a leading role in its creation. He disliked using the British Museum library, which then as now would not allow books to be borrowed, and eventually quarrelled with its great librarian, Antonio Panizzi. But he was compelled to use it for his research. Then he had two strokes of

‘ 26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

luck. First, on his Scottish sojourns he made friends with Godolphin Hunter Arundell, whose house at Barjang had a fine library, which he was able to use and borrow from. Second, he discovered that John Stuart Mill had once thought of writing a history of the French Revolution himself, and had amassed a library of source books for this purpose. Mill lent him the lot: an ‘entire cart-load’ of them was delivered to Carlyle’s house in Chelsea, and later Mill presented him with a copy of the multi-volume Biographie universelle. Carlyle wrote: ‘I will, as I have long done, account you my BookProvider.’ Mill is held to be a notorious figure in Carlyle’s life because, entrusted with the sole, handwritten manuscript of The French Revolution, he left it lying around, and a housemaid burned it as wastepaper. Carlyle had the heartbreaking task of writing the whole thing again. And then later Mill, the epitome of liberal orthodoxy, quarrelled irrevocably with Carlyle over The Latter-day Pamphlets. But without Mill’s help it is doubtful if Carlyle could have written The French Revolution,

Dickens was exactly the sort of novelist Carlyle liked, a creator of amazingly outsize characters and a writer who could evoke “my Scotch chuckle”

’

Carlyle the book that made him famous and even gave him a measure of financial security. Among its most enthusiastic readers was the young Charles Dickens. Carlyle met him in March 1840, and described him thus: ‘a fine little fellow … clear blue intelligent eyes, eyebrows which he arches amazingly, large, protrusive rather loose mouth – a face of the most extreme mobility, which he shuttles about, eyebrows, eyes and mouth and all, in a very singular manner while speaking … a quiet shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems to guess pretty well what he is, and what others are. ’ Dickens was exactly the sort of novelist Carlyle liked, a creator of amazingly outsize characters and a writer who could evoke ‘my Scotch chuckle’ . When he heard Dickens give a public reading of the Trial Scene from The Pickwick Papers, he laughed throughout ‘until he fairly exhausted himself’ , and had to go backstage in the interval to get a calming brandy-and-water. Afterwards he said: ‘Charley, you carry a whole company of actors under your hat. ’ Equally, Carlyle was the kind of historian Dickens liked, one who could bring people to life, both in the mass – a striking characteristic of The French Revolution – and as fearsome, powerful and noble individuals. He called it ‘a wonderful book’ and J.A. Froude, Carlyle’s biographer, says Dickens carried a copy of it in his pocket at the time

of its publication in 1837. He re-read bits of it often and knew passages by heart. A photograph survives showing him reading it on the lawn of Gad’s Hill Place, his country house in Higham, Kent. Dickens often thought of using the Revolution as a setting for a novel. But it was not until he fell in love with the actress Ellen Ternan, and began a secret liaison with her, that he saw a way of presenting her as the heroine, Lucy Manette, and the idea of A Tale of Two Cities was born. He wrote it in a frenzy: ‘Throughout its execution, ’ he said, ‘it has had complete possession of me; I have so far verified what is done and suffered in these pages as that I have certainly done and suffered it all myself. ’ The process of verification was made possible with Carlyle’s help. At Dickens’s request he compiled a list of the books the novelist would need to get the background right. It was now the late 1850s, and the London Library was not only in flourishing existence but expanding rapidly. Its records show that the large numb er of books Carlyle recommended were sent round to Dickens’s house in ‘two cart-loads’ . Dickens made good use of them, not only in writing his novel but in defending his factual references to events from subsequent critics, as his letters show. There are passages in A Tale of Two Cities that reflect Carlyle’s sense of history and how it operates, and even the visual language. The

Opposite Charles Dickens, c.1849, from a daguerreotype by J.J.E. Mayall. Above Engraving of Thomas Carlyle, 1899, by Thomas Johnson (from a photograph taken in 1874 by John Patrick, Edinburgh).

two books form two magic islands in the great ocean of nineteenth-century English literature, between which the London Library provides the bridge. Carlyle has a moving description of dining with Dickens in his last year, when he was obviously ailing and over-exerting himself. But, Carlyle added, ‘any attempt to stay him … in work he has undertaken was as idle as stretching one’s hands to a river and bidding it cease to flow … the river must go on, heaving with a restless knowledge of its approach towards the sea’ . THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27

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DICKENS AND CARLYLE

CARLYLE, DICKENS AND THE LONDON LIBRARY Pictured below are the London Library’s copies of three books on the French Revolution, which date from the time that carlyle sent round ‘two cart-loads’ on the subject to Dickens’s house to aid his research on A Tale of Two Cities (they may therefore have been the actual copies lent to Dickens), as well as the first appearance of the novel in serialisation form, a review and a late nineteenth-century edition.

Jacques-Antoine Dulaure’s Esquisses historiques des principaux événemens de la révolution française (1823).

James Mackintosh’s Vindiciae Gallicae (1791). The ‘date of issue’ label shows that this is still being borrowed regularly today.

The issue from 1859 of the weekly journal All the Year Round, in which A Tale of Two Cities first appeared in serial form.

The 1859 volume of the Saturday Review; the 17 December issue includes a review of the novel.

28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

William smyth’s Lectures on the French Revolution (1840). This was a standard text on the subject in the nineteenth century.

A standard late nineteenth-century edition of A Tale of Two Cities, which reproduces Phiz’s original illustrations.

GOTHIC LANGUAGE RUSKIN, CARLYLE & THE MORALITY OF EXUBERANCE ANNUAL Lecture 12.06.08 SIMON SCHAMA There are I suppose plenty of reasons NOT to read Carlyle or Ruskin today. It probably doesn’t help that Carlyle’s biggest fan in the twentieth century was Hitler, who may have read Shooting Niagara and shared repellent views on race. Ruskin is a byword for hilarity about sex, and preciousness. But when I nonetheless assign both of them to students at Columbia, what they gag on right away is the language. In a course on what I loosely call Earth Writing, I gave them the page on Slaty Crystalline in Volume Four of Ruskin’s Modern Painters, and they probably hadn’t expected to read this: ‘We yield ourselves to the impression of their eternal, unconquerable stubbornness of strength, their mass seems the least yielding, least to be softened or in anywise dealt with by external force of all early substance. And behold as we look farther into it, it is all touched and troubled like waves by a summer breeze, rippled far more delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; THEY only undulate along their surfaces, – this rock trembles through its every fibre like the chords of an Eolian harp – like the stillest air of spring with the echoes of a child’s voice. Into the heart of all those great mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering of their substance. ’ Or how about Carlyle in the introduction to Cromwell, attacking Dryasdust antiquarianism: ‘Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Confusion piled on confusion to your utmost horizon’s edge: obscure, in lurid twilight as of the shadow of Death; trackless, without index idea, without finger-post, or mark of any human foregoer, where your human footstep, if you are still human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt solitude, peopled only by somnambulant Pedants, Dilettants, and doleful creatures, by Phantasms, errors, inconceivabilities, by Nightmares, pasteboard Norroys, griffins, wiverns, and chimeras dire!’ ‘What the hell is that?’ is pretty much the usual response. Tortured prose? Bad poetry? But it was precisely this determination to abolish the boundaries between the two genres, to make what we might call poetic non-fiction; a form of writing that paid attention to cadence, almost to meter; to the soundsuggestiveness of words, imbued with cumulative force if necessary at the expense of credible syntax – that Carlyle most liked in his young admirer’s work; what he praised as Ruskin’s ‘melody of utterance’ . What bound them together as a ‘minority of two’ was their impatience with the narrow decorum of conventional prose writing. Such writing – very often the writing of their critics – amounted to an embalming of subject matter; a film laid over the raw vitality of the subject matter, whether it was history, landscape or painting. Both Ruskin (the young Ruskin at any rate) and Carlyle struggled with what we might call a problem of translation: how to catch and fix that subject matter without rendering it inert? To put it another way, the writing rules of the Johnsonian eighteenth century had been above all committed to limpid clarity, transparency and harmony; the world made safe as knowledge. Beauty and grace of understanding came through harmonious perception, so that one held an object or phenomenon up to the pellucid light of reason. But distance was not the aim of Ruskin and Carlyle. What was commonly taken to be vision and understanding they believed was – a word they both liked – ‘owlish’; a form of blindness. Though they revered the masters who had ventured afresh with language – Wordsworth and Coleridge above all, and with some reservations Hazlitt – they still felt that none of the available conventions could do this work of drawing the reader into uncomfortable proximity; that the act of reading itself (and reading out loud) could drag the reader into physical immediacy, narrow the gap in translation between lived experience and recorded prose; none would be able to burn away the cataract. So fire is of course Carlyle’s natural element of what he thinks is a resurrection of the freedom of English prose. And when you read The French Revolution you smell smoke. Images of fire – bituminous, carboniferous – lick through its pages. Sometimes its very words seem printed in hot soot; the world consumed by the revolution, as Carlyle writes, is ‘black ashes’ . Mirabeau is a ‘fiery fuliginous mass which could not be choked or smothered but would fill all France with smoke. And now it has got air, it will burn its whole smoke substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flames. ’ Paris doesn’t 30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

just fall to the revolution in July 1789; it burns: ‘Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard rooms are burnt, Invalids mess rooms … straw is burnt three cartloads of it hauled thither, go up in white smoke; almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that Elie with singed eyebrows had to drag back one cart. ’ An entire chapter is – for no reason the subsequent narrative clarifies – called ‘Flame-Pictures’ . Revolutionary events do not just happen, they ignite, and in a great climactic passage just before the onset of the Terror France itself becomes a ‘kindled Fireship’ . The Girondins and the Jacobins? ‘Here lay the bitumen stratum, there the brimstone one; so ran the vein of gunpowder of nitre, terebinth and foul grease. ’ Carlyle loved it when metaphors turned material, so naturally he was among the massive crowd (which included Ruskin’s hero Turner) watching the Houses of Parliament burn down the evening and night of 16 October 1834. It was about a month after Carlyle had begun work on The French Revolution, and on that particular day he’d been working in the British Museum, returning home to Cheyne Row with his usual ‘museum headache’ . Looking from his back windows he noticed the angry red glow, opened them, inhaled the acrid smoke and hurried off as fast as he could to join the crowds on the Embankments. Though he heard some of the spectators complain that ‘it didn’t make a good fire’ , it was certainly hot enough for Carlyle’s – as for Turner’s – imagination to see the incineration as a cleansing of the fetid sty of corruption, from which phoenix-like some purer form of British constitution would surely arise. It seems likely, then, that he transferred the ‘flame-picture’ he had directly witnessed to the conflagration of the French monarchy. But even had Parliament not burned, The French Revolution would have been a work of spontaneous literary combustion, because of course, it did. Behind all of Carlyle’s obsession with flames lay the nightmare vision of his own manuscript being consumed by them, literally. On the evening of 6 March 1835, John Stuart Mill, friend and kindly, if frequently baffled, review editor, paid an unannounced late visit to Cheyne Row, along with his beloved Harriet Taylor, and stood distraught on the doorstep, barely able to get any words out. This was entirely understandable, since what he had to say was that the only manuscript of Volume One of The French Revolution (up to the Flight from Varennes) had been accidentally destroyed by a maidservant at his or (it wasn’t clear) Mrs Taylor’s house. After a night of great anguish Carlyle resolved to persevere, accept Mill’s offer of money to sustain him through the unexpected additional time needed to complete the work, and to confront the Sisyphean task of going back to the beginning to start again. By the end of the summer he’d finished, went to see his family in Scotland, watched the flame-tail of Halley’s Comet and sent the manuscript to Mill (who’d kept his distance from Cheyne Row for some time) to read. Mill would indeed read it and praise the ‘prose-poem’ to the skies, both to Carlyle and in print when he reviewed its publication in 1837. How much this was an act of reparation or the truthful candid judgement of friend and editor, neither of them would ever be able to tell. But for both of them the saga of destruction in the flame, and rebirth as Word-Phoenix, had a very particular significance. While we will never know what the first manuscript of Volume One was like, it seems unlikely that the book as written was some sort of pale ghost of its original, for it spoke with unrepentant literary aggression against the conventions, even Romantic conventions, of the day: the weird sublimity, the drug-rush hyperbole, the manifold transgressions against grammar, syntax, word order, the confrontational lapel-grabbing relationship with the reader (‘O beloved brother blockhead’), the ecstatic ejaculations and fulminations, the wild and wandering digressions; all of which had already made Carlyle unsellably notorious or at the very least an acquired taste. How about this for the procession of the Estates General: ‘Yes in that silent marching mass there lies Futurity enough. No symbolic Ark like the old Hebrews do these men bear: yet with them too is a Covenant; they too preside over a new Era in the History of Men. The whole Future is over there, and Destiny dim-brooding over it, in the hearts and unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to think they have it in them, yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye above can read it – as it shall unfold itself in fire and thunder, in siege and field artillery, in the rustling of battle banners, the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, in the shriek of strangled nations!’ What he was aiming at, he made clear to Mill, was to abolish the distinction between prose and poetry, because in the first place poetry was the only reality, and in the second place the matter of history was too profound, too cosmically grand, to be left to the closed aridities of prose conventions. The ‘right history of the French Revolution’ , he wrote to Mill in 1833, would be ‘the grand poem of our times’ , and the ‘man who could write the Truth of that were worth all other writers and singers’ . Mill warned Carlyle that if he persisted he would face a rough ride, for ‘the prejudices of our utilitarians are at least as strong against some of your writings as those of any other person whatever’ . But Carlyle protested that this was the only way he knew and the only way he wished to impart, enact history. He knew he would offend

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31

ANNUAL LECTURE every convention of literary decency, but in the spirit of the Romantics he revered, like Schiller, Jean Paul Richter, and Schlegel, unruly authenticity was everything. He told himself that ‘if the things come out from the right place I say to myself it will go to the right place. It is a simple plan this but a desperate one. ’ In the end Mill accepted Carlyle’s reinvention of historical voice to the extent of using, in his enthusiastic review of The French Revolution, precisely the term ‘epic prose poem’ that had made him scratch his head in the first place. But other guardians of the way history – and prose writing more generally – ought to be written, like John Sterling, remained decidedly unentranced, considering Carlyle’s style ‘positively barbarous’ . To Carlyle, the most natural diction was Scripture, and the first true history the Bible of the Authorised Version. He felt that scripture, with all its exclamatory thunderings, exordia, calls to judgement, and high prophetic passion, somehow had a more archaic and therefore more instinctively direct connection to that which it narrated, than the decorously Augustan forms in which most contemporary historical writing seemed pickled. Then Carlyle read Homer, and his convictions about the polite artificiality of most eighteenth-century history only strengthened. For Carlyle, it would be writers who abandoned themselves more freely to the flux of history and its ungovernable commotions, and somehow fought their way to a style that represented that inchoate turbulence, who would more easily bring their readers to see great historical men and moments in the light of the cosmic aeons. In 1830, two years after Thomas de Quincey had pronounced the art of rhetoric in English prose writing dead, Carlyle published the first of two essays on history, setting out what might, what should be expected of it. Above all, he attacked the mechanical unreality of most historical language. He was of course proposing a titanic ambition: to reinvent history entirely. The first obligations were physical immediacy and heightened intensity. Everything in the repertoire of the senses that could be used – sound, smell, colour – needed to be deployed to communicate. The tense has to be present. ‘See Camille Desmoulins from the Café de Foy rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming in each hand a pistol. He springs to a table. ’ What Carlyle has done here – and in all his historical writing – is to replace what he takes to be the falsely contrived persona of the dispassionately Olympian narrator with the impassioned oracular poet-bard, a modern Herodotus or Livy – a persona unembarrassed to become part of the action himself. Carlyle described The French Revolution as a revolution of a book, ‘born out of blackness and sorrow’ , soot-soiled and scarred in its making. Its immensity, its broken diction, its whirling, violent, convulsive quality, was consciously meant to trample on the literary complacencies, but also of course to present the writer as in some sort of psychological and emotional kinship with his subject. That journey from exterior surfaces and commonplace responses towards something more impalpable bonded Carlyle not just to the German Romantics, but to American transcendentalists like Emerson, with whom Carlyle became an improbably close friend and correspondent. The most eloquent tribute to this unlikely kinship, the sense that Carlyle had freed them from deference to English politeness, came from Henry David Thoreau, who actually read the Complete Works to that date while living in his sylvan hermitage on Walden Pond between 1845 and 1847. Emerson had given Thoreau the books and had told him how badly received many of them had been, Sartor Resartus above all. Thoreau wrote that he knew very well the kind of ‘aged and critical eye’ that could not make head or tail of Carlyle’s style, which to them seems ‘to abound only in obstinate mannerisms, germanisms and whimsical ravings of all kinds. We hardly know an old man to whom these volumes are not hopelessly sealed. ’ But Thoreau took Carlyle’s language as being as natural as the rough New England countryside to which he compared it. (It was, he implied, the only thing worthwhile to have come out of England since Wordsworth and Coleridge). What Thoreau found deeply moving, so American in Carlyle, was his populist enlargement of the literary voice to cover a whole world of sound: ‘He can reduce to writing most things – gestures, winks, nods, significant looks, patois, brogue, accent, pantomime and how much that had passed for silence before does he represent by written words. ’ The way, then, that Carlyle talked to Britain, was to summon the past to upbraid the present for its vain, shallow sense of time; to attack the vainglorious quality of its self-admiration. In this he was kin to the Calvinist preacher, but even closer perhaps to his cynosure Oliver Cromwell, in whom he also detected a prophetic rather than purely political power. It’s been said of Carlyle that his voice was Pauline; but that’s perhaps to make that voice too ascetic. Proselytising he certainly was, for what was at stake for him was the fate of the most aggressively materialist culture the world had yet seen. To introduce in the midst of all that beehive-like industry at least one great work that stung and bit and kicked and shrieked was all he aimed at.

This is an abridged version of the lecture, held at the Royal Geographical Society. 32 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

34

MEMBERS’ News p Library Redevelopment: Phase 2

The official naming of T.S. Eliot House, now transformed from its former incarnation as an office building into a space designed for Library purpose, coincides with the beginning of Phase 2 of the Development Project, which will focus on refurbishing parts of the St James’s Square site as well as its integration with T.S. Eliot House. While T.S. Eliot House can currently only be accessed via a small door on the second floor (Fiction), the completion of Phase 2 will see the two sites integrated completely across five levels, giving members keenly anticipated access to our beautiful new building. A raft of other improvements will also be achieved, including:

• The restoration and extension of the Art Room, giving the

Library’s impressive Art collection a home worthy of its subject matter. The 1970s mezzanine floor will be removed and the room itself redesigned to restore the natural light and graceful, double-height proportions of its original 1930s construction

• 1.25km of new shelving, bringing vital new space for the growth of the book and periodical collections

• 27 new readers’ desks at various locations throughout the Library • A new reading area for the basement periodicals collection,

making full use of the building’s central lightwell, which will also be remodelled

• A redesigned Times Room, creating an environment far better suited to this unique element of the Library’s holdings

• Significantly improved access to many parts of the Library,

including a new lift and new, more accessible lavatory facilities

Top The light, spacious Art Room as it will appear after its restoration and extension. Above The Art Room in its original, 1930s state.

34 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

The initial part of Phase 2 has already begun: July–December 2008 is the period allocated for enabling works, with the substantial work commencing early in 2009 and continuing throughout the year. Though Eliot House won’t be open to members until the completion of Phase 2, it will be an invaluable part of the redevelopment of the St James’s Square site, allowing sections of the collection to be relocated while work is carried out. Our focus is very much on keeping reader disruption to a minimum during this period, and we feel sure that the outcome will be worth every bit of the planning and effort required, bringing sensitive changes to a much-loved building. If you have any questions about Phase 2 or any other aspect of the redevelopment, please don’t hesitate to drop into the Development Office (off the lift lobby, adjacent to the Reading Room) to speak to Lottie, Aimée, Fiona or Helen.

Above The redeveloped basement will feature a much-needed area in which members can work and consult periodicals. Right A twilight view of the T.S. Eliot House façade, Mason’s Yard.

THEIR LOSS, OUR GAIN ... The Library has reaped the benefit this year of policy changes in both the academic and public library sectors. A chance meeting at a library conference between the Deputy Librarian and a Librarian from the University of Sussex resulted in our taking our pick (at no charge except transportation) from the splendid Slavonic literature collections, built up at Sussex but no longer needed there since the closure of the University’s Russian department. We have acquired around 800 volumes (not yet all catalogued), including some multi-volume sets of major authors, to help us fill gaps in our own incomplete sets, some periodicals and reference works, and some major historical series, such as Letopisi I khroniki. Equally useful to us has been the acquisition of around 200 older fiction titles from Tower Hamlets Libraries. The

public library service used to pride itself on its national ‘Joint Fiction Reserve’, whereby each library authority in the UK was assigned certain letters of the alphabet and was expected to keep a copy of each fiction title by authors with surnames in its alphabetical section, so that there was always a copy of an older title available to satisfy a reader’s request via the inter-regional lending service. As these reserves are now being dispersed – and in Tower Hamlets’ case they cover authors with surnames St- to Th-, books by authors such as Rex Stout, G.B. Stern, Rosemary Sutcliffe, J.I.M. Stewart and Julian Symons are finding a happy home on the London Library’s shelves. We are also in the process of replacing some older French and German literature, and are adding about 150 Portuguese works to our existing holdings. These too are from Tower Hamlets Libraries’ dispersed stock.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 35

p

Gift of furniture from the Royal Society of Chemistry The Library’s 2008 Spring Newsletter highlighted the fact that, in response to very high levels of use of the Reading Room, an additional, temporary Reading Room has been established in the former Cataloguing Room on the ground floor. The space has proved to be extremely popular with members, ensuring that congestion in the North Bay is kept to a minimum and offering a different, slightly more open environment in which to work with good light, wireless internet access and laptop power-supply points. No sooner had we established the ‘Lower North Bay’ than we received word of a wonderful offer from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), which was refitting its own library and looking for a worthy home for some of its desks and chairs. We accepted their offer with alacrity, and our temporary Reading Room now has much more permanent-looking furniture, which fits beautifully with the Library’s surroundings. Some six desks and twenty-eight chairs were sourced from the RSC’s Burlington House headquarters, proving to be remarkably well suited to the space and to our members’ working needs. A future phase of the Library’s redevelopment will see a second Reading Room built to replace this interim arrangement, but for now, thanks to the RSC, we have a very handsome, well-equipped room to augment other reader spaces within the Desks and chairs from the RSC look quite at home in our Lower North Bay. Library.

The Book Fund: Update Since its launch only a few months ago, the Library’s newest fundraising initiative, The Book Fund, has got off to an exciting start. Books are at the heart of everything the Library does and is, and expanding our collections with relevant, up-to-date volumes is crucial if we are to meet readers’ needs into the future. Every year we acquire around 8,000 new books; together with periodical subscriptions and the cost of electronic resources, this brings the value of our annual Acquisitions expenditure to approximately £400,000. Generous support and discounts that we already receive from publishers, booksellers, authors and book donors bring that figure down to around £260,000, but it is still a vast amount of money for the Library to find each year. The Book Fund is dedicated to raising the money needed for new books and periodicals, with the hope that it will one day extend to some of our cataloguing and conservation costs also. The Book Fund’s official launch took place at a Reading Room dinner on 15 May, hosted by our President, Sir Tom Stoppard, and attended by many of the leading figures of the literary world: writers, agents, publishers and patrons. The result of the dinner was that our long list of existing supporters was significantly expanded, with the publishers Penguin, Portobello, Faber and Ridinghouse all signing up to send the Library their books for free; treating us, essentially, as the sixth Copyright Library. We hope that their exemplary leadership will be emulated by other publishers in the very near future. Another significant gift has been the offer of £25,000 to spend on acquisitions from Borders, thanks to the company’s Chairman, Luke Johnson. This donation is further augmented by the cash pledges of many members who have responded to the Book Fund article in this year’s Spring Newsletter, asking to ‘adopt’ a subject area or choosing to contribute to the general cost of buying new books. All Book Fund donors will be acknowledged inside the volumes they have helped us to buy, and a list of donors will be printed in various Book Fund updates throughout the year. To add your name to that eminent list, or simply to find out more about ways to help the Book Fund, please contact Aimée Heuzenroeder on 020 7766 4734 (aimee.heuzenroeder@londonlibrary.co.uk), or visit londonlibrary.co.uk/support

The TIMES COLLECTION Tucked away in the Library’s basement in St James’s Square is one of our more unusual holdings, and a particularly fascinating part of our collections. The shelves of The Times Room – soon to be completely refurbished as part of Phase 2 of the Library’s redevelopment (see above) – contain massive bound volumes in which are gathered every edition of The Times between the years 1813 and 2000. Unlike microfilm records, these hard copies allow one to leaf through the newspapers as they appeared at the time of their publication, noting the placement of articles, and the advertisements surrounding them, in situ. They make for fascinating reading, and have long been utilised and enjoyed by researchers and common readers alike. 36 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

This much-prized resource is now augmented by the Library’s subscriptions to The Times and Sunday Times online archive, bringing every issue from 1785 to the present day within reach of Library members. The online archive can be accessed within the Library or from home, via the Electronic Resources section of the Library website (The Times and Sunday Times archives are both shown in the Popular Electronic Resources section on the right-hand side of the initial Electronic Library screen.) Regular users of The Times Collection can look forward to it being housed in a more inspiring setting in 2009. In the meantime, for those who haven’t yet dipped into this historical treasure trove, two centuries worth of daily news awaits exploration in St James’s Square and online.

MEMBERS’ NEWS

THE OPPENHEIMER

DONATION The family of the South African benefactor and bibliophile Harry Oppenheimer donates a generous sum and important publications from the Brenthurst Library Justin Cartwright The Library has received a gracious donation from the Oppenheimer family, in memory of Harry Oppenheimer (1908– 2000), who was both an avid bibliophile and the founder of the Brenthurst Library and Press, which are remarkable both for the breadth of their collection of Africana and for the lavish editions of history and natural history that they have produced over the years. My most treasured books from the Brenthurst Press are the two-volume edition of The Siege of Mafeking, and a lavishly illustrated collection from their holdings of François Levaillant’s Birds of Africa. When it was suggested to Harry Oppenheimer that the Brenthurst Library should acquire two more, original, volumes of Levaillant’s work with a view to producing a ‘bird book’, Oppenheimer was, according to Mary Slack, his daughter, hesitant. He did not want to publish a book purely of illustrations. It was always his intention that the Brenthurst Press’s output should carry academic weight. Harry Oppenheimer was a remarkable man. His instinct, I think, was to collect documents, letters, diaries, works on natural history, research papers, maps, antiquarian and rare books, photographs, artworks and essays, which would help South Africa to understand itself. He saw, I believe, that a society like this was by its nature relatively thin on reflection and research, and that the richness of any society depends to some extent on its records; he wanted to make a substantial contribution in the field that interested him most, which was books and printed matter, and he did it through the Brenthurst Library and Press. It is going to be to the London Library’s great advantage that it will receive from Brenthurst a substantial selection of their publications. This will be of value to students of South Africa in particular and of the African continent in general, not only in the obvious ways, but in something which I think of as even more important, that is, the opportunity to look closely at the small and the large things which make up a country’s history and culture. The Brenthurst Library has been of profound importance in this task. Mary Slack emailed me recently to tell me that her memories of her father included the fact that ‘Every morning he would have breakfast in his room and would devote at least half an hour to reading then, usually rereading actually, often Shakespeare. He didn’t often read novels, but biographies, history and sometimes crime, though seldom. He spent a lot of time in his special room at the Library looking at his first editions, handling them and rereading. He would say that, after he was dead, we, his family,

Books were a lifelong passion for Harry Oppenheimer, pictured here with some of his treasured volumes.

would see row upon row of old books and he greatly feared that we would consign them to a jumble sale! … I think that he just loved books, the content of those he admired and the binding of his grand ones and never could understand how businessmen never found time to read anything except annual reports.’ Harry Oppenheimer was a cultured man. He acquired his love of books from his father, Ernest, the founder of the great mining enterprise that started with diamonds in Kimberley and went on to become by far the most important and influential conglomerate in South Africa. Even as he laboured in the diamond fields, Ernest had started collecting historical papers and documents, and in the 1930s he moved his collection of Africana to Johannesburg to found what was to become the Brenthurst Library. On his father’s death, Harry Oppenheimer took over as Chairman of the companies his father had founded, which by now were a vast concern, but throughout his career he was deeply immersed – as Mary’s memoir illustrates – in books. He commissioned a wonderful new building for the Library and founded the Brenthurst Press: each volume of the press is based on some collection in the Library. And now the Oppenheimer family and the London Library will commemorate Harry Oppenheimer and his love of books. I find Mary’s memoir of her father touching, because I find it impossible not to warm to someone who loves books; as a nineteenthcentury American poet wrote, ‘books are the bees which carry the quickening knowledge from one mind to another’. That of itself would be a worthy tribute to Harry Oppenheimer, and that is why the Oppenheimer donation to our beloved Library is so apposite.

THE LONDON REVIEW BOOKSHOP The London Review Bookshop opened in the heart of Bloomsbury in May 2003 and has since established itself as one of London’s best-loved bookstores. With subjects ranging from travel writing to classical studies, as well as modern firsts, second-hand books and exclusive limited editions, its extensive selection of titles is astonishing for a relatively small shop. We are pleased to be able to join them in this and future issues of the magazine to offer all readers a 10% discount on purchases through the shop and the website. See advertisement on page 6. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 37

38

Order FOrM

CHRISTMAS CARD 2008 our Christmas card offers an excellent opportunity for members to help make the Library more widely known and to generate much-needed income.

This year’s card is inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Journey of the Magi’. It is finely printed in full colour on highquality card at a standard size (184mm x 121mm), making it economical to post. The cards are available in packs of 5, together with high-quality peel-and-seal envelopes. The price is £5.00 per pack, including VAT, postage and handling. (The cards will also be on sale in the Library at £4.00 per pack including VAT.) please return this form to: The London Library Christmas Card Orders 14 St James’s Square London SW1Y 4LG

MERCHANDISE enjoy these fine-quality and useful items while demonstrating your support for the Library’s development project. all items are available from the issue desk, or you can use the order form below. Library Book by Tony McIntyre £10.00 An architectural journey through the first 165 years of The London Library. Written by architect, author and Library Trustee Tony McIntyre, the book is illustrated by remarkable images of the building now and in the past.

pack of 5 Note Cards £4.00 Illustrations by Hugo Butterworth. Card measures 10 x 21cm.

messaGe inside Card reads:

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

pack of 5 pencils £3.25 Featuring quotes by 5 distinguished past Library members: Benjamin Disraeli, G.B. Shaw, Somerset Maugham, T.S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell.

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED GIVING A

p GIFT MEMBERSHIP?

Book Bag £10.00 100% cotton canvas, in black, with London Library printed in two colours, on both sides. Bag measures W48 x H38cm.

For more information contact bridie macmahon in the membership office: 020 7766 4720

✁

Order FOrM pLease send me:

yoUr name (BLOCK CAPITALS PLEASE)

pack(s) of Christmas Cards, at £5.00 per pack: £ pack(s) of Note Cards, at £4.00 per pack:

£

pack(s) of Pencils, at £3.25 per pack:

£

Book Bag(s), at £10.00 each:

£

copy(ies) of Library Book, at £10.00 each:

£

postage & handling

£

address

postCode

2.50

(not applicable to Christmas card-only orders)

TOTaL:

p

£

Please make your cheque payable to The London Library

38 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

All proceeds will go towards The London Library’s Development Project. Charity registration number 312175 VAT registration number GB 239 6572 28

Please return this form and payment to: the London Library 14 st James’s square London sW1y 4LG

38

ORDER FORM

CHRISTMAS CARD 2008 Our Christmas card offers an excellent opportunity for members to help make the Library more widely known and to generate much-needed income.

This year’s card is inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Journey of the Magi’. It is finely printed in full colour on highquality card at a standard size (184mm x 121mm), making it economical to post. The cards are available in packs of 5, together with high-quality peel-and-seal envelopes. The price is £5.00 per pack, including VAT, postage and handling. (The cards will also be on sale in the Library at £4.00 per pack including VAT.) Please return this form to: The London Library Christmas Card Orders 14 St James’s Square London SW1Y 4LG

MERCHANDISE Enjoy these fine-quality and useful items while demonstrating your support for the Library’s Development Project. All items are available from the Issue Desk, or you can use the order form below. Library Book by Tony McIntyre £10.00 An architectural journey through the first 165 years of The London Library. Written by architect, author and Library Trustee Tony McIntyre, the book is illustrated by remarkable images of the building now and in the past.

Pack of 5 Note Cards £4.00 Illustrations by Hugo Butterworth. Card measures 10 x 21cm.

MESSAGE INSIDE CARD READS:

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

Pack of 5 Pencils £3.25 Featuring quotes by 5 distinguished past Library members: Benjamin Disraeli, G.B. Shaw, Somerset Maugham, T.S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell.

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED GIVING A

GIFT MEMBERSHIP?

Book Bag £10.00 100% cotton canvas, in black, with London Library printed in two colours, on both sides. Bag measures W48 x H38cm.

For more information contact Bridie Macmahon in the Membership Office: 020 7766 4720

✁

ORDER FORM PLEASE SEND ME:

YOUR NAME (BLOCK CAPITALS PLEASE)

pack(s) of Christmas Cards, at £5.00 per pack: £ pack(s) of Note Cards, at £4.00 per pack:

£

pack(s) of Pencils, at £3.25 per pack:

£

Book Bag(s), at £10.00 each:

£

copy(ies) of Library Book, at £10.00 each:

£

Postage & Handling

£

ADDRESS

POSTCODE

2.50

(not applicable to Christmas card-only orders)

TOTAL:

£

Please make your cheque payable to The London Library

38 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

All proceeds will go towards The London Library’s Development Project. Charity registration number 312175 VAT registration number GB 239 6572 28

Please return this form and payment to: The London Library 14 St James’s Square London SW1Y 4LG

MEMBERS’ DONATIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT The President, Vice Presidents, Trustees and staff would like to pass on their personal thanks to all those listed below for their generosity. The readers and writers of the future will be grateful to you, too, for your help in ensuring that the Library has the extra space necessary to continue doing what it does so well for generations to come. Her Majesty the Queen DOUBLE ELEPHANT FOLIO Mrs Charles Carr Mrs T S Eliot Mrs Märit Rausing ATLAS FOLIO The Foyle Foundation Foundation for Sports & the Arts The Garfield Weston Foundation ELEPHANT FOLIO The Blavatnik Family Foundation Colin Clark Esq The Eranda Foundation Lady Getty The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation The Maitland London Library Trust The Oppenheimer Family, in memory of Harry Oppenheimer The Bernard Sunley Foundation The Wolfson Foundation FOLIO Mr Francis Finlay J. Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust Mr Peter Jamieson Mr and Mrs George Loudon Simon Morris and Paul Aitchison Karsten Schubert The Underwood Trust Carolyn Ward Mrs Charles Wrightsman QUARTO Access Industries Lewis L Golden Esq OBE JP The Helen Hamlyn Trust Mr John Kunstadter Dr P A McCarthy Basil Postan Esq Clive Richards OBE DL The Sackler Foundation Sir Tom Stoppard OCTAVO The A Trust P Andreae Esq The Hon Mrs J C T Astor, in memory of Michael Astor M L Astor 1953 Charitable Trust from Jamie & David Astor in memory of their father, Michael Astor Ms Maeve Binchy & Mr Gordon Snell Mrs R Blackett-Ord Viscountess Boyd Charitable Trust P A J Broadley Esq T B H Brunner Charitable Trust John L Cornforth The Cottisford Charitable Trust The Lord and Lady Egremont R Gapper Esq Nicholas and Judith Goodison Mrs Rosemary James

P G Hooker Esq The Lennox & Wyfold Foundation A M McGreevy Esq The Michael Marks Charitable Trust The Normanby Charitable Trust Pidem Fund Peter Stormonth-Darling Charitable Trust Miss C M Tyerman DUODECIMO David and Lucy Abel Smith D Acland Esq, CBE Ralph Aldwinckle Mr L S Allan Alligator Trust Anthony Southcliffe Ashton Mrs J B Bailey Mr Baker Mr and Mrs Nicholas Baring The Hon Mrs Susan Baring OBE J M Barney Esq Mrs N C Beauman A J Beevor Esq Rebecca Beisly A R Bekhor Esq Mrs A O Bell, in memory of her father A E Popham and her husband Quentin Bell Mrs H M Bell Mrs M Bennett S Benson Esq Lady (Aline) Berlin Dr J Bourne Taylor Professor Sir Alan Bowness Dame Ann Bowtell, DCB Mrs M E Brocklebank MA M E Burton Esq A C Butler Esq Denis Buxton Charitable Trust The Cadbury Trust Michael Cayley Dr Hugh Cecil A L Chapman Esq Mrs R G Clayton Francis Coles Miss L Collis John Wilfrid Collis Professor Tim Congdon Gifford Coombes Dr R P T Davenport-Hines Benjamin Davis Janet Dawe F M Dineley Esq The Marquess and Marchioness of Douro Patrick Drysdale Sir William Dugdale J M Dyson Esq Miss R J Ensing Sir Richard Faber Stephen Fay Lady Antonia Fraser, CBE R Farquhar-Oliver Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin Friends of Croydon Libraries Jonathan and Jacqueline Gestetner Mrs A F C Gibson The Hon H M T Gibson’s Charity Trust Mrs J M Goose

40 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Ian Gowans NDM Grant Miss I Greatorex Robert Green A T Gregory Esq CBE The Bryan Guinness Charitable Trust Ms D J Guthrie Mrs Janet Hamilton Countess of Harewood The Hawthorne Charitable Trust D O Haythe Esq Wendy Hefford Prof. J N Hillgarth and Tristan Hillgarth Anthony Hobson Esq Eur Ing M G Holmes Dr Catherine Horwood Mrs S Howatch Emily Hughes-Hallett Fund Mrs Fanny Hugill, in memory of John Antony Crawford Hugill The J P Jacobs Charitable Trust H E A Johnson Esq James & Lucilla Joll Charitable Trust Mr Roger Jospe Donald & Jeanne Kahn A M Keat Esq Laurence and Linda Kelly Janey King Herbert and Sybil Kretzmer Paul Latcham C L Lee Esq Sir Thomas Legg Lady Legg Ms S C Leigh L Leventhal Esq Sir Geoffrey Littler, KCB His Honour Humphrey Lloyd, QC A D Loehnis Esq CMG Prince Rupert Loewenstein Overseas Charitable Trust S P D Loftus Esq Logos Charitable Trust The Rt Hon The Lord Justice Longmore The MacTaggart Third Fund Linda Marcus Charitable Trust I McEwan Esq John McEwan Rupert McNeil J Mitchell Esq Mr Dolf Mootham J A Morgan Esq Sir Jeremy and Lady Morse Alan Moses W R F Mount Esq Cecilia Neal M E Nelson Esq Ms G B Newbery Julie Nightingale Mrs D Norman Mr Jeremy Norman The Viscount Norwich J Obelkevich Esq R L Ormond Esq, CBE Ms C H O’Sullivan Capt C H H Owen RN Dr B H M Palmer Paragon Trust PF Charitable Trust R W Phelps Esq CBE P T G Phillips R G Pilgrim Esq Mrs P H Pinder T Plaut Esq Peter Ratzer J M Renshall Esq CBE Mr Martin and Mrs Margaret Riley Ms A M Robbins David Robinson P A Rosenthal Esq P M Roth Esq Estate of Ralph Peter Roth

The Rothermere Foundation A W F Russett Esq T W Sanderson Esq The Norman Scarfe Charitable Trust The Schroder Charity Trust Helen Morris Scorsese Mrs S V Shean A Shivdasani Esq R J C Shuttleworth Esq R R O Skelton Dr M A Smith M H Smith Esq Ernest Sondheimer Alison Sproston, in memory of her parents, librarian and library historian Dr W.A Munford and his wife J B Stainton Esq Marjorie Stimmel Mark Storey W A Suttill Esq C W Swift Esq B Sykes Esq The Tana Trust Mrs Antonia Till Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Mrs P A Treadwell The Trusthouse Charitable Foundation Julian and Sarah Tunnicliffe C N Villiers Esq Dr M Voikhanskaya, in memory of her husband Norman Cohn G Waldman Esq Alison E Walker John C Walton Parthenope Ward Mrs M E Welch Michael Wheldon Patrick White Mrs A Wilson Mr David and Mrs Vivienne Woolf B L Worth Esq Naomi Zimba Davis SEXTODECIMO A H J Charitable Trust Professor J Abecasis-Phillips David Abrahams Mrs C Adeane Elizabeth Allen F Allen Esq Judy Allen Prof M Alpert, PhD M H Amory Esq Caroline Andrewes The Marquess of Anglesey Toby Anstruther Mrs J Antill Miss Gillian Arthur Dr S E Ashmore A C Astbury Esq P G Atherall Esq D Aukin Esq Lord Alymer William Bagshaw A Bailey Esq T W Baines Esq J. G Baird Ms J D Bakewell Mrs Jane Balfour Lady Balfour of Burleigh Mrs M J Barber Dr R W Barber Stephen Barber, in memory of John Barber P Batten Esq A S Bell Esq, FSA P M H Bell Sir Geoffrey De Bellaigue GCVO David Belton Mrs Alice D Berkeley Dr T H Bewley A Y Binnie Esq I H Birchall Esq R H Bird Esq

Ms C A Bonnyman P J Borrett Esq Mrs C C E Bowen D J Bowen Esq Mr G P Bowen Mrs J Bowden-Green P Bowsher Esq David Bradbury Ms S A Bradbury Mrs P C Brand The Brian Marsh Christian Trust The British Czech and Slovak Association F H Brittenden Esq R W Broad Esq Mr Peter Brock Sebastian Brock Ms K C Brooke John Brooker Dr Anita Brookner Malcolm Brown M S Brown Esq Dr J Buckingham M J Bullen M I A Bulmer Miss D C Burnstein Michael Burrell J B Bury Esq Mrs M E Buxton Aifric Campbell Dr J Candy P L Caracciolo Esq Mrs D Carr T H Carr Esq R D Carter Esq Sir Roger Cary, Bart D Cashdan Esq Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey, Bt Ms A M G Chaldecott Mrs C S Chapman E A Chard Esq Mr & Mrs J Cherry C Chilton Esq R E Christiansen Esq Mrs C M E Clark, in memory of Miss Diana Lyddon J H Clarke Esq A O J Cockshut Esq R Cohen Esq T J Coldrey D J Coleman Esq Professor L J Colley, FBA Mrs A Collier Francis Collin Esq The O J Colman Charitable Trust Sir Howard Colvin Gillian Comins Alistair Cooke OBE D Coombs Esq E J Copley Esq Corcos Trust R P Cordero Esq Ms H P B Corlett Miss M Cosh Graeme Cottam John Coulter Clare Craig Dr D G Craig John Crawley R Crewdson Esq Mrs M F Crombie P C Crookston Esq J D H Cullingham A Curtis Esq The Curtis Charitable Trust Mrs B J Curtoys M G Darlow Esq Dr F Davidson A E Davies Miss I M Davis Prof D L D’Avray Mrs F Debenham Mrs M E Delorme Dr Diana Devlin Michael Diamond H Dibben Esq

Professor M L Dockrill S C V Dodgson Esq Dr P C Doherty C A Donaldson E G Donohoe Esq L J Douglas Esq Mrs Emma Dowley N A Draper Esq C E Drennan J Dromgoole Esq Dr M R Dudley Dr Frank Duffy B D Duncan Esq B S Dunn Esq A H B Dunstan Esq Julian Duplain Isabelle Dupuy J T Eades Esq John Edmonson R K Edwards Esq Mr and Mrs Nicholas Egon J P W Ehrman Esq C A Elliott Esq M J G Elliott Charles Elwell Dr L Evans P M Everard Esq Mr Roland Everington B Fairweather Esq Mrs J H Falloon M P Farmar Esq P J C Firth Esq Dr Bernard Fishel Dr M Fishel J L Fisher Esq Judith Flanders G Flint Esq Lady Foley Tamara L Follini Ms M L Ford F M Frankland Esq C E Franklin Esq A D Fraser Jenkins Esq R D Freeman Esq Mrs B Fyjis-Walker M Gainsborough Esq William Garforth Mr J Gathorne-Hardy A D B Gavin Esq A D Gee Esq Mrs K K George Mr & Mrs Piers Gibson Robert Giddings F T R Giles Esq Mrs E F H Gillies Victoria Glendinning CBE Knight of Glin J Godfrey Esq J R Godsall Esq Robert Gomme Esq CB Sir Philip Goodhart Mrs J A Goodman Mrs S V Goodsir Mrs P J Gordon Anthony Graham-Dixon S M Gray Esq Ronald and Anita Gray L E Green Esq Peter StB Green Gair Greene Esq Graham C Greene S Greenwood Esq R A Griffiths Esq The Worshipful Company of Grocers Mrs Elizabeth Grubb G Guest Esq Louise Guinness J M Gullick John Gurney L J Guyer Esq M Haddon Esq Mrs L W B Hall M Hall Esq Sir Richard Hanbury-Tenison Ms S C Hancock OBE Lady Hancock

Dr J H Hardiman Sir David Hare J D Harkness Esq Lord Thomas Harmsworth Dr A J Hart-Davis Miss B F Harvey Sir Max Hastings R C Hatchwell Esq G P Havergal Esq Miss A Hayter R Healey Esq Philip Healy Margaret Heffernan Mrs A M J Herbert Mr K S Herbert J E T Heuston Esq M L Hichens Esq Mrs David Higgins Miss Pamela Hill R Hill Esq Joe Hillaby Judy Hillman A D Hine Esq Mrs J Hobhouse M D Hobkirk Esq R B Hobson Esq Mrs J A Hodge D J Hodgkins Esq G Hodgson Esq Mary Hoffman, in memory of John Barber Ms E R Hogan J D Hogg Esq R G H Holmes Esq E A Hooper Esq Sir Alistair Horne, CBE A F G Hornyold Esq Michael Horowitz QC C Howard Mrs M Hughes Peter Hughes M J Hughes Esq A W Huish Esq J S Hunt Esq J Hussey Esq OBE A J T Irvine Esq B Jackson Esq Ms K Jackson David M Jacobs T Jagger CBE I M & R G James Mrs L Jarvis, in memory of Norman Cohn D M Jasper J Jeffs Esq QC JJF Charitable Trust Mrs J E Jones Margaret Jones T G P Jones Esq Mr & Mrs Jordan Dr F B Jowell D F Keeling Esq FLA Mrs U Keller Frances and Crispin Kelly Sir Francis Kennedy J M Kennedy Esq Lord and Lady Kennet Professor Peter Kidson & Ms Sarah Pearson The Hon Mrs J King Mr S King Lady Kingman D L Kirkpatrick Esq General Sir Frank Kitson C J Koenig Esq Miss L Kronidov, in memory of John Hulton Miss Lucinda Lambton S P Lamont Esq Michael Leach Dr J Learmonth Geoffrey Lee J D Lee J M Lee Esq Sir William Lees, Bt Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, DSO, CBE Sir Peter Leslie

Margaret Lesser Mrs L Lewis P C S Lewis Esq Ms J A Lewis-Jones J R Ley Esq Miss J P Liddiard Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith N A Loden Esq Prof D J Lodge, DLitt, PhD Ambassador John L Loeb, in honour of Lord and Lady Foley C Logue Esq Mrs H-C Lovell Fiona MacCarthy Julia MacKenzie in memory of Wendy Gay G R MacLaren Esq J R Madell Esq J Man Esq A P R Mann Esq Lady Manning Marie-Caroline Manyon The Marigold Trust Miss J C M Marrin R Marriott Esq A Marston Esq D Massa Esq J Massey Stewart Esq Nick Mathys Esq Dr R J Mayne Prof J O McCormick T J McCormick Esq R G McFarland Esq Anthony McGrath Mr C J McInerny A O McIntyre Esq Henry McKenzie Johnston Mrs E C McLaren-Throckmorton Sir Kit McMahon J H McNally Esq E.P McPeake D McSweeney Esq The Revd A H Mead Mrs P A Meath Baker Caroline Medawar Ms J Melville M Meredith-Hardy Esq Catherine Merridale Sir Oliver Millar GCVO K F C Miller Esq Miss L Miller B E Mills R Milne-Tyte Esq Dr C M Mitchell J I Mitchell Esq John Montgomery Alan Morgan Richard Morris E B Mullins Esq Clive Murphy K Murphy Esq P T Murphy Esq James Myddelton M Nadin Esq D A Nash-Brown Esq Dr G E Naylor J Naylor Esq G R Nicholas Esq J R Nicholson Esq Ms D Noack B A Norman Esq A O’Hagan Esq Mrs O Olver Mr Edward J O’Neill, in memory of Mr Anthony John Coulson J P O’Sullivan The Paicolex Trust P R N Parker Esq Dr J Paxton Dr J Payan B Pearce Esq Professor S M Pepper Christopher & Jenny Pick Dr P E Pickering Pickering & Chatto Publishers A J Pickford Esq Dr M Pines

Ms E Plackett W G Plomer Esq C Plouviez Esq Dr W Plowden Revd Dr J C Pollock Professor M H Port Mr Nicholas Powell & Dr C Powell J E Powell-Jones, CMG M J Power Esq Mrs S C Prentice Clive Priestley, CB M Priestley Esq D Pryce-Jones Esq Mrs Mary Quinn Michael Radcliffe, in memory of John Hulton Jennifer Radice Rt Hon James Ramsden PC Mrs F Raven Mrs E M Ray RA & VB Reekie Charitable Trust Mrs J S Rennie E Rhode Esq A & Mrs M Richardson M W G Ridpath Esq Rosemary Righter N R Riley Esq I W Roberts Esq G W Robertson Esq W R B Robinson Robinson Charitable Trust A M Robson Esq The Lord Rootes Dr S P Rose Mrs R B Ross Sir Richard Rougier P K Rowland Esq Lady Russell Dr R J G Rycroft A J Saint Esq Sir John Sainty Mrs A B Salter W M Samuel Esq M G Sargent Esq J D G Saul Esq Dr A Saunders Mrs D C Scott-Kilvert Miss P M Searle J B Seaton Esq Mrs A M Sebba The Countess of Selborne Mrs M Seymour Ms C Sharp Miss E M Sheen F H W Sheppard Esq D Sherlock Esq G Sherriff Esq Mrs E V Shirley Dr D C Shove Miss S D Shulman Mr Keith Sissons P Skipwith Esq Professor A D S Smith Grey Smith Mrs Rosemary Smith The Lady Soames DBE Lady Anne Somerset Tom Soper Mrs Caroline de Souza Dr Margaret Sparks Dr G S Spathis Mrs S A Sperry Dr C Spitzfaden Jim Stacey Sarah Stamford Professor Philip Steadman Miss L Stein Dr J N Stephens Dr Gerald Stern H S Stevenson Esq J G Stitt Esq Mrs P M Stokes Julia Camoys Stonor Dr H V Stopes-Roe Sir Peter Stothard Lord & Lady Strabolgi

Geoffrey Strachan Dr J Stratford Mr S Strauss Sir Roy Strong Mrs Virginia Surtees, in memory of Laurence Irving M D C Sutcliffe Esq D B Swift Esq C Swinson Esq R J Tainsh Esq Dr E Tandello- Pugh H E Taylor Mrs D A W Thomas Priscilla Thomas Mrs J Thompson Sir John Thomson J H Thornton Esq The Thoresby Charitable Trust Robert Thorne Ms D J Thorold T C B Timmins Esq TLS Charitable Trust Mr Robert M Tomlinson Mrs P M Toomey A J Toop Esq Sir Anthony Touche, Bt Sir Cyril Townsend G G Trefgarne Esq E J Tresidder Esq R Trevelyan Esq Monica Tross Lady Tugendhat T E Tutton Esq S P Vaci Esq Dr W van der Kloot D N Vermont Esq R G Verner-Jeffreys Vivatex J von Halasz Esq D P Waley Esq R A Wallington Esq R Walters Esq Dr J C Walworth P Ward-Green Esq Germaine Warkentin Professor M Warner, FRSL, DLitt John Warrack Lucy Warrack David Warrell Prof J C Waterlow Merlin Waterson Louise Weale Wilfred Webber Ms J A Weeks Richard Wells CBE N Wenban-Smith Esq T L West Esq CBE Professor Sir Christopher White, CVO Mr David White J R White Esq N J S White Esq P J White Esq A Whittam-Smith Esq A M Wickham Esq John Wilcox Wilder Family Charitable Fund, in honor of Barbara Fyjis-Walker Miss M Willes Miss A Williams Anthony J T Williams Mr Gareth Williams N Williams Esq C H Wilson Esq Lord Windlesham, CVO, DLitt Revd A C Winter Donald Wintersgill, in memory of Bishop William Turnbull Susan Wood Ms P Woodford J G Woodnutt Esq Mrs J Worsley Sir Peregrine Worsthorne Clive Wright OBE And members and friends who wish to remain anonymous.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 41