The London Library Magazine - Summer 2017 Issue 36

MAGAZINE Summer 2017 ISSUE 36

£3.50

hidden corners

Early travellers’ accounts of adventures in Spain, located on the Topography shelves, are enjoyed by Jeremy Treglown

WASHINGTON ROEBLING in london Erica Wagner recounts a visit to the capital by the American engineer who would go on to construct the Brooklyn Bridge

aRUNDEL’s bibliophile dukes

The collection of the 9th and 11th Dukes of Norfolk is celebrated by John Martin Robinson

2 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

The London Library Magazine / issue 36

12 When American engineer Washington Roebling visited London in 1867, he witnessed the construction of Blackfriars Bridge and described the spectacle in letters home to his pioneering engineering father John, who was proposing to build a suspension bridge over New York’s East River. Erica Wagner recounts how Washington went on to construct the ambitious project – the Brooklyn Bridge – after his father’s death.

Contents 5 FROM THE librarian 6 Contributors 8 BEHIND THE BOOK

Washington Roebling towards the end of the Civil War (detail). © Roebling Collection, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

16

Angela Thirlwell’s background reading for her biography of one of Shakespeare’s heroines

11 MY DISCOVERY The gripping account of a real-life murder mystery was tracked down in S. Crime by Joshua Levine

12 washington Roebling in London Erica Wagner relates the trip to the capital of one of the nineteenthcentury’s most eminent engineers

Jeremy Treglown travels vicariously to Spain on a visit to Topography in the Back Stacks. Focusing on travel writing dating back to the late eighteenth century, his choice includes accounts

by Elizabeth Fox, Lady Holland, who in the early 1800s tried to pass as Spanish by wearing black petticoats, and V.S. Pritchett, who recalls his adventures walking through the austere Extremadura region in Marching Spain (1928).

16 hidden corners Jeremy Treglown takes us on a tour of his favourite titles in T. Spain

20 Arundel’s bibliophile dukes

Illustration from A.C. Andros’s Pen and Pencil Sketches of a Holiday Scamper in Spain (1860).

The collection amassed by the 9th and 11th Dukes of Norfolk is explored by John Martin Robinson

23 POETRY The winner of this year’s Cosmo Davenport-Hines prize

20

24 MEMBERS’ NEWS

The library at Arundel Castle is a fascinating reflection of the tastes of the 9th and 11th Dukes of Norfolk who built the collection in the Georgian period.

Notable works include illustrated naturalhistory titles such as Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina (1737), and also an unusual Catholic Counter-Reformation element, as John Martin Robinson, the Librarian at Arundel, explains.

The library at Arundel Castle. © Arundel Castle Trustees Ltd and Paul Barker, photographer.

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THE DRAWINGS

BOOK NOW 1 Jun – 3 Sept 2017 www.ashmolean.org

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p from the LIBRARIAN

On the cover

Cora J. Gordon, Scene near La Luz, Verdolay, Spain (detail), c.1920. Image courtesy of Ken Bryant (janandcoragordon.co.uk).

In 1988, as a young cataloguer just getting to grips with the Library’s unusual classification scheme, I recall discovering with astonishment the existence of our shelfmark T. Foreign Impressions of England. In this issue of the magazine, we travel vicariously, absorbing the impressions of the American engineer Washington Roebling as he visits London, through Erica Wagner’s account of his letters home, while Jeremy Treglown leads us through parts of T. Spain that might equally have been classified T. English Impressions of Abroad.

By contrast, Joshua Levine invites us to discover the fascination of the rather more macabre observations of the forensic pathologist Keith Simpson over a distinguished career, in My Discovery, and Angela Thirlwell reveals the entirely imaginary world behind her ‘biography’ of Shakespeare’s Rosalind. Perhaps we shall soon have to add Biog. (Imaginary) to the classification to complement H. Imaginary History?

Finally, I think the 9th and 11th Dukes of Norfolk would have felt quite at home among The London Library collections, judging by the eclectic nature of their own as described for us in their magnificent setting at Arundel Castle by John Martin Robinson.

In Members’ News this time we have a special message from our President, Sir Tom Stoppard, as he prepares to step down from that role on his 80th birthday. Tom became the President 15 years ago and since then he has played an exceptionally important, active and engaged role in the development of the Library. It is hard to overstate how unstinting he has been in this support. He has continually written letters, met prospective donors, spoken at events and acted as the most perfect ambassador for the Library. Many people in such a role allow you to use their name but will do nothing more. Tom has been the antithesis of this and we are hugely in his debt. The search for his successor is underway and we hope to have news of that in the autumn issue ahead of the AGM, which will take place on Wednesday, 8 November 2017.

Inez T.P.A. Lynn Librarian

Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 16 June 2017. © 2017. The London Library. ISSN 23984201.

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 Publisher Jane Grylls Editor Mary Scott Design and production Catherine Cartwright Picture research Charlotte Burgess

Editorial committee Emma Marlow Helen O’Neill Peter Parker Philip Spedding Erica Wagner

Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Charlotte Burgess 020 7300 5675 Development Office, The London Library 020 7766 4704

Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5

CONTRIBUTORS

Joshua Levine joined the library in 2007

Joshua Levine is an author and historian.

He is currently working as the historical consultant on a Warner Brothers film inspired by one of his own books. His latest book, Dunkirk: The Greatest Escape, is published this month. In the Library, he prefers to work by the window on the Fifth Floor, and it frustrates him when this seat is taken. In a past life he worked as a criminal barrister.

John Martin Robinson joined the library in 1974

John Martin Robinson is an architectural historian and writer. He is Maltravers Herald of Arms Extraordinary, and has had the care of the Library at Arundel Castle for nearly 40 years. His books include James Wyatt (1746– 1813) (2012) and Requisitioned (2014), a survey of the role of country houses in the Second World War. He is currently writing the bicentennial history of the Travellers Club.

Roo Waterhouse ‘Shelf-Portrait’

Isabel Stoner

Isabel Stoner is a second-year undergraduate completing a Degree in Comparative Literature at King's College London. She has been writing poetry for the past four years, and was previously a member of the Barbican Young Poets. She is the winner of this year’s Cosmo DavenportHines Poetry Prize.

oil painting commissions roowaterhouse.co.uk roowaterhouse@gmail.com

Angela Thirlwell joined the library in 1995 LLquarter_v3.indd 1

11/05/2017 18:13

Angela Thirlwell is the author of William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis (2003) and Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown (2010). She read English at Oxford and lectured in Literature and Theatre Studies at Birkbeck College.

Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare’s Immortal Heroine (2016) is her first life of an imaginary character.

Jeremy Treglown joined the library in 1991

Jeremy Treglown’s books include V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life (2004) and Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936 (2013). He has just completed a study of the career of John Hersey (1914–93), the author of Hiroshima (1946).

Erica Wagner

joined the library in 1993

Erica Wagner is the author of Gravity (1997), Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of ‘Birthday Letters’ (2000) and Seizure (2007); she is the editor of First Light: A Celebration of Alan Garner (2016). She is contributing literary editor for Harper’s Bazaar and a contributing writer for the New Statesman. She was the recipient of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award in 2014, and she is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths.

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JEAN RHYS ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, periodical publication of Part One, with autograph corrections and revisions

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Behind the

Book

‘

Much of the research material for Angela Thirlwell‘s highly original ‘biography’ was drawn from the Library’s English Literature and English Drama shelves

’

Angela Thirlwell’s Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare’s Immortal Heroine (2016).

My latest book is Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare’s Immortal Heroine (Oberon, 2016). Unlike conventional subjects of biography who lead their authors all over the world in track of their personal papers, Rosalind, an imaginary character, left me only her dazzling conversation in As You Like It. But in the Library’s rich collections I discovered Rosalind’s ancestors, her sisters, her lover and her descendants.

 Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge (1590), ed.

W.W. Greg (London 1931). L. English Lit. Stealing plots was common in Tudor times, and was not seen as the act of plagiarism it is today. Shakespeare gutted Thomas Lodge’s romantic tale of 1590 for the setting, story and most of the characters of As You Like It. Almost ten years before Shakespeare’s comedy, Lodge’s cross-dressing Rosalynde is the rehearsal for a more radical heroine.  Collected Works, Elizabeth I, Queen of England ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago 2000). H. England, Kings &c., Elizabeth I. The ageing Elizabeth I could have been the mirror image of Shakespeare’s transvestite Rosalind. Both turned sexual stereotyping inside out. ‘I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, ’ said Elizabeth, ‘but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too’ . Elizabeth’s manipulation of power and gender is apparent throughout this scholarly project, which collates and compares surviving versions of her letters and speeches.  The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines in a Series of Fifteen Tales by Mary Cowden Clarke (3 vols., London 1864). L. English Lit., Shakespeare.

In this daring literary extravaganza Cowden Clarke reimagines some of Shakespeare’s

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female characters by inventing prequels or back stories for them. ‘Rosalind and Celia; The Friends’ is among the most touching. Although Rosalind chooses romantic heterosexual love with Orlando, Cowden Clarke is right to identify Celia’s love for her cousin Rosalind as perhaps the most enduring in the play.  Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England by Stephen Orgel (Cambridge 1996).

L. English Drama, Hist of.

This is an investigation of the tangle of gender on the Elizabethan stage where boys played all the female roles. Orgel saw As You Like It on Broadway in 1950 with Katharine Hepburn as Rosalind and William Prince as Orlando. The author unpacks his formative teenage experience in this later academic study. Boys disguised as women, he says, ‘destabilize the categories, and question what it means to be a man or a woman’ . Just like Rosalind.  On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters by Helena Faucit, Lady Martin (Edinburgh, London 1885). L. English Lit., Shakespeare.

Threaded through my book are interviews I held with modern actors, both male and female, who have played Rosalind.

I couldn’t interview the actors of the past, but Helena Faucit left a passionate

account of playing an acclaimed Rosalind throughout the Victorian era until she was 65. But she admitted she found Rosalind’s Epilogue almost impossibly challenging, for in it ‘one addresses the audience neither as Ganymede nor as Rosalind, but as one’s own very self’ .  The Modern Actor by Michael Billington (London 1973). L. English Drama, Hist. of.

The Guardian theatre critic makes many perceptive observations about the essence of acting. Billington identifies an androgynous quality that often underpins great acting. In the theatre we can release our inhibitions and accept that ‘our natures are a compound of masculine and feminine’ , as Rosalind embodies in Arden.  The Book World of Henry James: Appropriating the Classics by Adeline R. Tintner (Ann Arbor 1987). L. English Lit., James.

When I was asking myself who were Rosalind’s ‘daughters’ in life and literature, I happened on Tintner’s exploration of Henry James’s reading. This led me to his story, ‘The Papers’ (1902), based on As You Like It. James’s newspaper reporter, Maud, is an ambiguous Rosalind, for James says she might ‘as easily have been christened John’ .

In a bold rewrite, James pairs Maud, not with Rosalind’s Orlando, but with Howard, a latter-day version of cynical Jacques.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9

THE WRIT TEN IMAGE

by ROBERT PERKINS BENJAMIN SPADEMAN RARE BOOKS 24th May - 25th June 2017 An exhibition presenting 45 years of collaborations with poets including Nobel Prize Laureates Octavio Paz and Seamus Heaney, and also Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Basil Bunting,W.S. Merwin, James Merrill, Louise Glück, Jean Valentine, David Whyte...

The second part of the exhibition will be presented in November 2017.

A complete catalogue reproduces all the pieces.

14 Mason’s Yard, London SW1Y 6BU www. benjaminspademan.com contact@benjaminspademan.com Robert Perkins and Seamus Heaney, from The Haw Lantern, lithograph, 32’’ x 28’’, 1989. © Antiquarian Photographer.

112 Jermyn Street 10 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

MY DISCOVERY Forty Years of Murder: An Autobiography

by Keith Simpson (1978) The autobiography of a forensic pathologist in S. Crime contained an intriguing murder case, as Joshua Levine reveals

Keith Simpson attending court in Horsham, to give evidence at the trial of John George Haigh, the acid-bath murderer, April 1949. © Alamy Stock Photo.

Some of my happiest moments in The London Library have been quite unexpected. I’ll settle down to work on one of the upper floors, notice that someone has left a book on the edge of the table, and spend the next half-hour looking for mentions of Barry Cryer in Michael Palin’s diaries, or flicking through a massive volume of erotic Japanese Ukiyo-e prints.

And all the while, the clock ticks on some miserably short book deadline.

But just as unexpected is the time I have spent reading as a result of a recommendation. A couple of years ago I was writing a book about the Blitz. It occurred to me that this would have been an ideal period (if you were that way inclined) to commit a murder and dispose of the body on a bomb-site. How many grudges and scores were settled, I wondered, as bombs fell and fires raged?

I happened to mention this to a retired detective superintendent who told me about his hero, forensic pathologist Professor Keith Simpson. Over four decades, Simpson had worked on some of the most famous cases in British criminal history. He had performed autopsies on the victims of the Kray twins, Lord Lucan and John George Haigh, the acid-bath murderer.

And he had worked on the case of Rachel Dobkin, a woman murdered during the Blitz and deposited under the rubble of a wrecked Baptist church in Kennington.

If I wanted to know more, said my friend, I should read Simpson’s autobiography, Forty Years of Murder (1978).

I went along to the Library and, sure enough, his book was available, shelved in S. Crime. It had, I noticed, been borrowed

Further examination showed the victim to be a woman, aged between 40 and 50, who had died 12 to 18 months earlier. Simpson passed his information to the police, whose records indicated a missing local woman of similar description – Rachel Dobkin. When a picture of the skull was superimposed on a picture of Dobkin, the correlation between the eyes, nose and forehead was striking. And when records were obtained from the woman’s dentist, he was able to confirm that the four teeth found with the remains of the jaw contained work that he had carried out.

The woman was undoubtedly Rachel Dobkin, who had met up with her estranged husband Harry hours before her disappearance in April 1941. Harry was a fire-watcher at a solicitor’s office which was next door to the bombed-out Baptist church where his wife’s body was found.

Harry Dobkin was found guilty, at the Old Bailey, of his wife’s murder. The jury found that he had murdered her and dismembered her body in an attempt to make her look like a Blitz victim. But he had made two mistakes. First, he had placed her neatly underneath a stone slab.

No bomb could have done this. Second, he had covered the body with slaked lime (which had preserved bodily tissue) rather than quicklime (which would have decayed it, as he had intended). As a result, the evidence of strangulation was conserved.

Every now and then I take Simpson’s book off the shelf. It has become an old friend, and it is nice to catch up occasionally. It may no longer be my unexpected pleasure – but perhaps it will soon be yours.

almost a hundred times between 1978 and 1998 – but only 14 times in the years since.

Sometimes books deserve to fall out of favour, but this one, it seems to me, ought to be better known. It is part social history and part crime thriller.

As Simpson sets out each case, we are encouraged to guess the outcome. And from his very first examination, described early in the book, we are invited to learn the basics of forensic pathology alongside him: ‘I pulled the counterpane gently aside and inserted a zero-reading thermometer deep into the rectum. It measured 102 degrees! Nearly four degrees above normal.

The body had warmed up not cooled! I could not detect any muscle stiffening.

What did this mean?’ Fortunately for the young Simpson, a sympathetic Scotland Yard detective was present. ‘I suppose it’s pretty obvious she died of asphyxia, ’ he said, offering a blatant clue. Simpson took the hint, suddenly remembering that body temperature rises in deaths from suffocation, taking time to return to normal. A great career was underway.

In 1942, Simpson was presented with a career-defining case: the body found in the burned-out wreckage of a Baptist church.

But how did this person die – and who was it? The answer to the first question arrived when Simpson studied the tiny bones of the voice box and some tissue around them.

One of the bones had suffered a fracture that was only observed in victims of strangling. And when the doctor examined the tissue, it showed signs of bruising – which must have occurred while the person was alive. This individual, concluded Simpson, had died by strangulation.

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Washington Roebling in London Erica Wagner, whose book Chief Engineer: The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge was published last month, describes the trip Roebling made to London – and his fascination with the bridges then being built over the Thames

Above Washington Roebling towards the end of the Civil War. © Roebling Collection, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Opposite Photograph of 1882 by Valentine & Sons Ltd of Joseph Cubitt’s Blackfriars Bridge (opened 1869), seen from the south bank of the Thames. © RIBA Collections.

12 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

London, the summer of 1867. Construction had begun a few months earlier on what would become the Royal Albert Hall; the widowed Queen herself laid the foundation stone. Just a few days before that, John Stuart Mill had argued in Parliament that women should be given the right to vote; the notion was soundly trounced. And in the Royal Hotel on the banks of the Thames a young American engineer wrote home to Trenton, New Jersey, describing his adventures in the nation’s capital. ‘The places of interest one can visit are endless in number, ’ he wrote. ‘I shall only be able to visit a small number during my stay; we have been to St. Paul’s, Westminster, the Zoological Gardens, Houses of Parliament, up and down the Thames on the swift little steamers of which there are at least a hundred. ’ He took a trip on the new underground railway, which had begun service four years previously in 1863; New York wouldn’t get such a system until the beginning of the twentieth century. Overall, however, he wasn’t as impressed as he had expected to be with English trains: ‘I can’t say that you ride

any smoother than on the Penna. [sic] Central RR, ’ he wrote, enclosing a little drawing of the rail bed. There were other disappointments. ‘The large brewery of Perkins & Barclay did not quite come up to my expectation. I thought I would see horses as large as elephants, whereas they are no larger than our own mill horses. ’ Barclay Perkins, as it was more usually known, was one of the great sights of London in the nineteenth century; hardly unimpressive, it was just then producing nearly half a million barrels of beer a year.

But Washington Roebling, not long past his thirtieth birthday, had been raised to have an exacting eye. He was the son of John Roebling, the Germanborn engineer who was one of the titans of his age, a pioneer who had flung a suspension bridge – one capable of carrying a railroad train, no less – over the Niagara Falls, and whose great bridge over the Ohio River at Cincinnati had opened the year before to tremendous fanfare.

Now John Roebling proposed to build an unprecedented suspension bridge over the swift tidal strait of New York’s East River, a feat many thought impossible.

Certainly, the techniques which would be required for its construction – the sinking of deep foundations into the river’s bed, the manufacture of thousands of miles of wire for the cables – were in their infancy. So John Roebling had sent his eldest son, along with his pregnant wife, Emily, to Europe, on an expedition to examine European methods of building and manufacture, with the ambition that the construction of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge would be the most advanced of its kind.

But by the summer of 1869 John Roebling would be dead, and it would fall to his son to build one of the greatest structures of the age, a task that took well over a decade, cost Washington his health, and presented challenges of construction no engineer had ever faced. The building of the Brooklyn Bridge is a dramatic story, but it is only one of many in the long life of Washington Augustus Roebling. Born in 1837, despite his poor health he lived until 1926: his life began on the frontier and ended in the Jazz Age. During his boyhood, William Wordsworth was made Poet Laureate; in the last full year

of Washington’s life, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published, and T.S. Eliot was in his prime. He witnessed a rural wilderness transform into an industrial powerhouse – by scrambling to the summit of a hill in Pennsylvania, ever after known as Little Round Top, and remaining there in the face of Confederate fire, he had a hand in turning the tide of the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, perhaps the most significant battle of the American Civil War – and finally, at the age of 84, he took over the running of one the largest and most successful manufacturing companies in the United States. The son of a tyrannical father, he was a soldier, a husband, a father, a linguist, a musician – and one of the nineteenth-century’s greatest engineers.

He was also a man who had the good sense and good luck to find himself a truly remarkable wife, Emily Warren Roebling, who played an extraordinary and vital role in the construction and completion of her husband’s greatest monument.

One of the hardships of writing the biography of such a man is deciding what to leave out. More than that: there is

the struggle of looking down a path and deciding simply to turn away. This is a digression, you say to yourself as you sit in an archive or a library: this is fascinating to me, but will it advance my story, his story? No, you think glumly, probably not.

Time to move on. I had this experience over and over again as I worked with the Roebling papers housed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, and at Rutgers University in New Jersey – the family’s remarkable archive is divided between the two institutions.

RPI, Washington’s alma mater, houses the more technical material, and Rutgers the more personal, though the distinction can be a loose one. But it was at Rensselaer that I read through the letters recounting Washington’s European trip, which are vivid documents full of personal detail (his only child was born while the couple were travelling) and include letters to his father – some nearly 30 pages long – describing the technical aspects of everything he had seen.

London’s bridges were carefully noted, and on The London Library’s shelves there are books and pamphlets THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13

Left Washington’s drawing of the Thames Embankment at Blackfriars, complete with fish, in a letter to his father, 18 July 1867. © Roebling Collection, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Opposite Giovanni Battista Piranesi‘s 1764 print of the first Blackfriars Bridge, designed by Robert Mylne (opened 1769), during construction. © RIBA Collections.

which reflect what Washington observed.

Since my biography has gone to press, there’s nothing to stop me from investigating a little further now. I took my cue from Washington’s remarks. ‘The numerous bridges across the Thames are exceedingly interesting, ’ he wrote to his father. ‘Two of them are in process of construction at present. From my room I can overlook the construction of the Blackfriars Bridge … of which I have sent you a description. Above the Charing Cross Bridge they are sinking the cylinders for another roadway bridge over the Thames. ’ The foundation stone for the new Blackfriars road bridge, an arch bridge designed by Joseph Cubitt, had been laid in July 1865; it would be finished in 1869, the year construction on the East River Bridge began. A few 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

days later Washington made his way to the bridges at Lambeth and Chelsea; the latter, designed by Thomas Page, he found ‘very handsome, especially the end view; sideways not so much because there is not the slightest camber to the floor. ’ The bridges Washington saw at Lambeth and Chelsea have long since been demolished, but Cubitt’s bridge at Blackfriars (enlarged and widened in the early years of the twentieth century) remains. Its construction was part of the grand remaking of the Embankment begun under the auspices of Sir Joseph William Bazalgette, whose monument on the Victoria Embankment bears the inscription ‘flumini vincula posuit ’ – ‘he placed chains on the river’ . One of my favourite finds in the RPI archive was a little drawing made by Washington in

a letter to his father: he indicates the river by the new Embankment with an illustration of a pensive-seeming fish.

The first Blackfriars Bridge, formally opened in November 1769, was designed by the engineer Robert Mylne; at the time that bridge was proposed, the only crossings of the Thames were London and Westminster bridges. Mylne’s bridge is now perhaps best known thanks to drawings of its construction made in 1764

by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, showing the wooden falsework supporting the arches as the work proceeded. That bridge, nearly 1,000 feet long, was built of Portland stone and supported by elliptical arches; the engineer saved money by reusing the falsework wood, so that only three centres had to be built for the nine arches.

I admit I was puzzled when I came across a pamphlet in the Library proposing a nineteenth-century bridge under the name of Robert Mylne.

Statement Accompanying the Designs for the Proposed New Blackfriars Bridge, Submitted by Robert W. Mylne, F.R.S., &c., June 27, 1861 to the Honourable the Bridge-House Estates Committee is in Pamphlets 717 in the Library’s catalogue.

(It is bound up with such pamphlets as History and Causes of the Incorrect Latitudes Recorded in the Journals of Early Writers, Navigators and Explorers Relating to the Atlantic Coast of North America 1535–1740 by the Revd Edmund F. Slafter, AM, privately printed in Boston in 1882; and A Brief Account of the Circumstances Leading to and Attending the Reintombment of the Remains of Dr William Harvey, the Discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, in the Church of Hempstead in Essex, on the 18th of October, 1883 by William Munk, privately printed in London in 1883. Here are more paths to follow, ones that have nothing at all to do with bridge-building; with regret I turned away.)

The puzzle of this Mylne’s identity was solved forthwith: ‘The question of the Thames embankment alluded to is

washington roebling in london one which must affect the design of any bridge to be erected over the river in a very important degree, ’ wrote Mylne in his 1861 proposal, ‘and it is one which has long occupied the attention of Engineers and Architects. Sir Christopher Wren evidently contemplated some such operation. Sixty or seventy years since, Mr. Jessop proposed the first elaborate design, which has formed the basis of nearly all the more modern schemes for the Thames embankment; and I have much satisfaction in saying it was strenuously advocated by my grandfather, the Architect of the original Blackfriars Bridge. ’ Familial connections didn’t sway the committee, it seems, though his proposed stone arch bridge, ‘executed in best Aberdeen granite’ , looks very handsome on the drawing appended to the back of the pamphlet. To be on the safe side, he also proposed a structure made from iron which was largely similar to the granite bridge, with slight variations in size. But he was cautious about the material: ‘Granite bridges, we know, will last for centuries; and there are no

authentic records of the duration of a castiron bridge of more than 130 years. ’ The metal of the future was steel: Washington Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge was the first suspension bridge with cables made from steel. The four main cables of the bridge are unaltered – bar some repainting – since its opening in 1883.

A few years after the opening of the 1869 Blackfriars Bridge, the District Line of the Metropolitan Railway was extended eastwards from the new bridge as far as Mansion House. In Pamphlets 250, Opening of the Line from Blackfriars Bridge to the Mansion House Station Queen Victoria Street: Of the Enlarged Station at South Kensington and of the North Junction Between Kensington High Street Station and the West London Railway; With a Report of the Proceedings at the Banquet: July 1st, 1871 records how arduous this portion of the Underground’s construction was, ‘even in metropolitan railway experience’ . The foundations of the church of St Nicholas had effectively to be remade, and there was archaeological work to be done which foreshadows the

care taken by the Crossrail project in the twenty-first century: ‘In the course of the excavation for this portion, a considerable quantity of human remains had to be removed from the burial-ground of the German Lutheran Chapel; in fact, the soil at this point, from the surface to a depth of sixteen feet, consisted of little else than skulls and bones. In one place there was a mass of about twelve cubic yards of human remains altogether, probably a plague-pit deposit. The bones were carefully collected, deposited in ironbound chests, and re-interred in Tower Hamlets and Woking cemeteries. ’ This was work Washington would not see. By 1870 he was back in Brooklyn, beginning the task of constructing the foundation for the Brooklyn Tower of the East River Bridge. Words taken from the pamphlet describing the Blackfriars to Mansion House tunnelling will, however, describe just as well what Roebling was undertaking: it was work ‘attended with difficulties never before experienced’ .

That, of course, is another path to follow – or, rather, another bridge to cross.

.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15

HIDDEN CORNERS

Back stack adventures

Jeremy Treglown revisits the Library’s T. Spain section, finds it all too easy to get sidetracked both literally and metaphorically, and encounters early signs of British xenophobia You just go to the shelves. Well, first you go up a few steps into History – these are the Back Stacks and it’s basically still the ground floor but it’s marked ‘Level Three’ . Turn sharp right twice, down two vertiginously perforated iron staircases to Level One, Topography. The regions are organised alphabetically, so Spain is – no, not in ‘Russia → Zululand’ , as it happens – you go a bit further to the right, then left past Arctic, Australia and British Columbia, up a couple of steps and you’ll see Scotland, Serbia & Jugoslavia ahead: there you are. Um, I may have, ah … no, that aisle’s blocked by a lift, so we go back, then around – I’ll just switch on these lights – New Guinea, Palestine & Syria, try right once more to the back of the lift. And immediately left, Sierra Leone, and here we are in Spain. Warm? Yes, me too.

Even by The London Library’s own standards its Spanish holdings are quirky and sprawling. Topography alone houses 27 military-style metal shelves full of Hispanic material, each shelf carrying about 30 books, among them relevant elements of a collection given to the Library by Joseph Conrad’s contemporary and friend, the part-Spanish Scottish-nationalist Harrovian socialist politician and adventurer R.B. (‘Don Roberto’) Cunninghame Graham, aka ‘the Gaucho Laird’ , in memory of his young wife Gabrielle. Alphabetically by author, the books start with John Leycester Adolphus’s Letters from Spain, published

by John Murray at Albemarle Street in 1858, and end with La Itálica (1886) by Fernando de Zevallos, a priest at the monastery of San Isidoro del Campo, Seville. ‘La Itálica’ was the name of the ancient Roman colony

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now better known as Old Seville, and Fr. Fernando’s book represents just one of travel writing’s multitudinous forms: an account of a journey not geographical – the medieval monastery is next door to, indeed on top of, some of the Roman remains – but in time. ‘I thought I could hear the noise of a vast crowd sitting on these steps, ’ Fernando wrote of the amphitheatre, ‘and could see the grandest aristocracy the world has ever known, knights and venerable magistrates of the Roman Empire thronging the rostrum which today is level with the ploughed fields’ .

But I mean to focus on Anglophone travellers on the peninsula so must ignore books in Spanish (and also, here, French, German and Italian), hard though that can be, particularly when they impose themselves physically: the seven decadently white-green-andgold-bound volumes of P. Gabriel de Henao’s Averiguaciones [Findings] de las antigüedades de Cantabria (1894–5), for example, the Library’s copy of which is flamboyantly dedicated by the author to the pretender ‘King’ Carlos VII: ‘receive this little tribute as proof of the love and unshakable loyalty offered you by your loyal vassal. ’ Nor must I get distracted by associations (I’m not the only Library member to have been lunched on a nearSpanish scale in Albemarle Street by the sixth John Murray). With these restrictions in mind it’s just a matter, as I said, of going to the shelves and starting at the beginning.

But what beginning? Alphabetically, the first relevant work after Adolphus’s (‘The only apology which the author can seriously make, ’ Adolphus writes, ‘for

Opposite, from top R.B. (‘Don Roberto’) Cunninghame Graham in 1876; Gabrielle de la Balmondière in a portrait by George Percy JacombHood. From A.F. Tschiffely’s Don Roberto, Being the Account of the Life and Works of R.B. Cunninghame Graham 1852–1936 (1937).

Right Illustration from A.C. Andros’s Pen and Pencil Sketches of a Holiday Scamper in Spain (1860).

adding one to the multitude of slight books on Spain is that having some practice in this kind of writing, and habits of labour to which the exercise was congenial … ’: if only pitches like that worked with today’s publishers) is by A.C. Andros. His cheerily titled Pen and Pencil Sketches of a Holiday Scamper in Spain (1860) begins with a colour sketch of picnickers in the palm forest at Elche, a fold-out route-map and a picture of a bullfight with a steam train in the background. These are followed by some mood-music perfect for a reader benighted in this mid-Victorian cellar on an unexpectedly sunny day: ‘The London season of 1859 is nearly over. The parks and gardens are rapidly emptying, the theatres and opera-houses are beginning to manifest signs of shutting up, the Royal Academy is about to be closed … the heat is becoming intolerable, and everyone is hurrying out of town … I can brook no further delay in the metropolis, and long to flee from its deserted streets. ’ Does anyone know who Andros was? This seems to be the author’s only book. Anyway, alphabetical order of author, whatever curiosities it yields, is no help. I’m where I started more than a decade ago.

Back then I was thinking about, and wanted to contextualise, V.S. Pritchett’s first book, Marching Spain (1928). In his own mind the young Pritchett was an explorer, an outsider, a pioneer. ‘I am not ashamed of my fears for they are my adventures, ’ he wrote about crossing the river Tagus in flood by the unnecessary means of scrambling along a dilapidated railway bridge, staring down at the water between broken sleepers (probably quite like the higher catwalks in the Back Stacks). Who else, before him, knew anything about Spain, least of all about the region through which he described himself walking, Extremadura?

Quite a lot of people, in fact, even if one excludes the Extremeños themselves, as I found by rearranging my notes in historical order. Here was Robert Semple, for example, who, having done a bit of spying around Badajoz’s as yet unbesieged

medieval walls on the eve of the Peninsular War, found as he and his friends set off at dawn for Mérida that the town’s gate was unreasonably ‘clogged with peasants’ going to market. ‘We had no resource but to spur up our horses, ’ he records in Observations on a Journey Through Spain and Italy to Naples (1807), ‘and force our way through with no small detriment to many a panier of figs and apricots’ .

Extremadura borders Portugal and, before both countries joined the EU, was a necessary stopping place on the way between Madrid and the Atlantic. One of Semple’s purposes was to offer a ‘Post Guide’ for horse-drawn travellers, listing distances between stages, prices per traveller for each stage including taxes, and

relative costs of using post-chaises and ‘solitaries’ . But while many people passed through this austere region, few stayed longer than they could help, so the more persistent could cultivate an illusion that it was ‘almost virgin territory’ . The ironic phrase is that of Jesús A. Marín Calvarro in his 2002 study of early Anglophone narratives about the area, Extremadura en los relatos de viajeros de habla inglesa (1760–1910) – works whose barest publication details take up half a dozen pages of bibliography and next to none of which Pritchett knew. For readers then as now the attractions included vicariousness, an indulgence surprisingly often enjoyed by the writers, too. Although Richard Ford travelled assiduously to prepare his THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17

bestselling Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1845), there were still many places he didn’t get to. As Ian Robertson shows in his 2004 biography of Ford, he never let this prevent him from writing about them, lifting descriptions by previous writers and embellishing them.

On Pritchett’s part there were milder deceptions. Affecting an explorer’s innocence may have been an excuse for neglecting accounts by most of his predecessors, but he was no newcomer.

He had lived in Spain as a reporter in 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

1924–5, travelling widely there with his Anglo-Irish first wife Evelyn Vigors and filing vivid colour-pieces for the Christian Science Monitor. Those journeys were often made by car. Pritchett himself didn’t drive but Evelyn’s role is recorded with what may have been a touch of irony in her Spanish driving licence, where she gave her profession as ‘conductora’ – ‘driver’ .

Her husband’s 18-day walk from Badajoz to León in the spring of 1927 was genuine enough, but some of the incidents he described came from previous visits.

More seems to have happened to him than one would expect during so short a stay, because some of it didn’t happen when he said it did, or not by the means of locomotion he implied.

Most travel writers are fabulists. Along with their sheer writing – their brio, their vividness – it’s what distinguishes them, in degree if not in kind, from anthropologists, geographers, topographers. Their ambitions may be quite modest, like those of F.H. Deverell, who in All Around Spain

by Road and Rail (1884) tells us he went to Extremadura to see ‘ “the abomination of desolation” spoken of concerning that province … and to enquire about the locusts said to swarm there’ . (Deverell also took the opportunity to visit ‘our wonderful English possession, Gibraltar’ , which figures in these books in ways that now stir an anticipatory nostalgia.) Or the approach can be grandiose. When Ford wanted a Spanish base for his family, he rented the governor’s suite in the then half-derelict Alhambra for months at a time.

Travel writers can no longer get away with pretending they are pioneers. The best of them among our contemporaries capitalise on being part of a continuum.

Revisiting these travelogues I found many of my earlier impressions confirmed, particularly that Extremadura was long imagined as one of Western Europe’s last wildernesses. The resentful insular ‘debate’ over Brexit, however, brought something else into focus. How many British clichés about abroad can be traced back to even the best educated of our all-powerful, all-scorning ancestors? The personally adventurous, trend-setting Elizabeth Fox, Lady Holland, who during visits to Spain in 1802–5 and 1808–9 read Don Quixote in the original and tried to pass as Spanish by putting on ‘some black petticoats and draperies’ , dismissed much of what

she saw as simply ‘bad taste’ , including churches which she said lacked ‘any pretensions even to architecture’ . As for her contemporary Robert Southey, poet laureate and a noted Hispanist, there can’t have been many writers whose official pronouncements have been so at odds with their private observations. ‘Spain! still my mind delights to picture forth/ Thy scenes’ , he rhapsodised, and again, … still the charmed eye Dwelt lingering o’er Plasencia’s fertile plain, And loved to mark the mountain’s bordering snow, Pale purpled as the evening dim decayed … … Oh pleasant scenes!

But his late 1790s Letters Written During a Journey in Spain are full of irritable mutterings against ‘Bad wine, beds even worse than usual, no towel, and a dear reckoning’ , and villages whose habitations ‘are fit only for the pig part of the family’ .

If there was nothing new about this, nor was there much to support the Enlightenment idea that travel opens minds. Among the British, the opposite has all too often been the case. In Through Spain to the Sahara (1868), the muchtravelled, prolific Matilda Betham-Edwards, having commented (was she the first?) that ‘In Spain the railways are not made for travellers but travellers for railways’ , turned her scorn on a regimental parade: ‘The soldiers were the shabbiest set I ever saw, the music poor, and the whole thing spiritless. ’ Twenty-five years later, Frances Elliot, the popularity of whose books on exotic places owed something to a promise of undemandingness in titles like Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople (1893) and Roman Gossip (1894), wrote breathlessly about Spain’s past but was brisk in her exasperation at its present: ‘A peseta or two settles the sour-faced official, and I pass out into a yard, all mud and slush in winter, and dust and flies in summer, carrying my own bags; for the brown-faced natives on the platform cannot be bothered with such unremunerative trash. ’ And so to Bart Kennedy (1861–1930), a ‘tramping’ writer and former seaman from a working-class family in Leeds, who went to the peninsula at the beginning of the twentieth century ‘armed with a

hidden corners

Opposite, from top Spanish driving licence of V.S. Pritchett’s first wife Evelyn, from Jeremy Treglown’s V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life (2004); illustration from Bart Kennedy’s A Tramp in Spain (1904).

Above ‘Plasencia – A Street’, from V.S. Pritchett’s Marching Spain (1928).

Right ‘Spanish Courtyard’ by Cora Gordon, from Jan and Cora Gordon’s Poor Folk in Spain (1922).

revolver, a passport, and no knowledge of the language … to see how things looked to the absolutely new eye’ . Firearms apart, you can meet Kennedy’s resolutely non-Hispanophone descendants in any Spanish resort. ‘How the row started I haven’t the faintest idea, ’ he begins one chapter of A Tramp in Spain (1904).

‘We were all together in a wineshop …’ Within a few pages, one man has grabbed another by the throat, another has thrown a knife, and the narrator, having fired his revolver ‘just in front of’ a Spaniard in the street outside, has been arrested. Before we blame today’s redstomached hedonists for their arrogance and ignorance it’s worth asking where it all came from. The trickle-down theory may be discredited in economics but visà-vis Anglo-Saxon Attitudes might repay further investigation.

Happily, there have been many exceptions: British people who have enjoyed foreign places and people without having to treat them as eccentric or inferior. Pritchett was one. Others included Jan and Cora Gordon, widely travelled painter-musicians who after the First World War found themselves

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“I think we went to Spain to look for something that the war had taken from us”

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in a depressed London, gazing out of their ‘low-ceilinged flat … upon a sky covered with flat cloud’ , wondering ‘how we might escape in order to seek for our original selves – if they were not irretrievably lost’ . So they went to Spain and wrote and illustrated two books about the experience, Poor Folk in Spain (1922) and Misadventures With a Donkey in Spain (1924). ‘I think we went to Spain to look for something that the war had taken from us, ’ they said.

Perhaps they had read Augustus Hare, who advised potential emulators of his 1885 Wanderings in Spain to ‘put all false

Anglican pride in [their] pocket, and treat every Spaniard, from the lowest beggar upwards, as [their] equal’ . You must take a foreign country as you find it, Hare wrote: Spain ‘is not likely to improve; she does not wish to improve’ . It was a matter of difference – and, having understood that, one had to allow, too, that it might also even be one of superiority: ‘The Spanish standard of morals, of manners, of religion, of duty, of all the courtesies which are due from one person to another, however wide apart their rank, is a very different and in most of these points a much higher standard than the English one, and, if an English traveller will not at least endeavour to come up to it, he had much better stay at home. ’ Stumbling around the Back Stacks basement at a time when our native offshore-ists were atavistically resuming their primitive woad, it was good to hear generous, cosmopolitan observations being made in an English accent. A reminder, too, as the pound seemed to be heading south of the euro, that for the price of a subscription to The London Library you can always travel vicariously. You just go to the shelves.

(Might be worth taking a map.)

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19

ARUNDEL’s BIBLIOPHILE DUKES John Martin Robinson describes the history and highlights of the remarkable collection created by the 9th and 11th Dukes of Norfolk Occupying the shell of the Elizabethan Long Gallery, the library at Arundel Castle is an extraordinary room. It is fitted out in mahogany, while the bookcases are lined with cedar (thought to deter bookworm).

Despite the large scale it feels cosy, as it is divided into three sections and there are crimson velvet curtains and a Victorian fitted carpet (now a copy). The fireplaces are in alcoves scooped out of the thickness of the walls, like gothic chantry chapels.

This idiosyncratic but friendly architectural creation forms the setting for a diverse array of beautifully bound books. The collection is characteristic of the tastes of a well-educated Georgian landowner, but with a distinctive Catholic CounterReformation element which marks it out from most English country-house libraries.

The historic library of the Dukes of Norfolk provides fascinating insights into the intellectual life of the time.

Comprising around 10,500 volumes (about half the total in the castle), it is largely the work of two contrasting characters, Edward, the 9th Duke (1686– 1777), and Charles, the 11th Duke (1746– 1815), one a shy, reserved crypto-Tory, the other a larger-than-life extrovert Whig.

Edward, ‘Ned’ , was brought up a Jacobite. His father drowned at sea after fighting for James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Ned, too, fought for James and was taken in arms at Preston in 1715.

His eldest brother Thomas, then 8th Duke, saved his life by going to George I and promising that if Ned’s life was spared the ‘House of Howard’ would support the Hanoverians. Both sides kept their word.

When Ned came up for trial on a charge of High Treason, there were no witnesses against him and he was released; and the 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Opposite Edward, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686–1777). © Arundel Castle Trustees Ltd and Paul Barker, photographer.

Above The library at Arundel Castle, created by Charles, 11th Duke of Norfolk, in 1800. © Arundel Castle Trustees Ltd and Leigh Simpson, photographer.

Norfolks did indeed support successive King Georges.

Having had a narrow escape, Ned avoided public affairs and devoted his long life – he lived to be 91 – to managing his estates, rebuilding his houses, praying, and the ‘cultivation of the fine arts’ , collecting paintings and books. The library is his bestpreserved memorial. His wife Mary Blount was the daughter and co-heiress of Edward Blount of Blagdon, Devon, the early patron and correspondent of Alexander Pope and other writers. She inherited her father’s literary tastes and some of his books and was intelligent, energetic and charming. Mary Blount counterbalanced her husband’s more retiring nature, as reflected in Lady Irwin’s description of the couple in 1733: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk were at Court on Friday where they were received with great distinction [by George II]. The Duchess who is a sensible woman and must act the man where talking is necessary, behaved much to her credit. ’ Horace Walpole often referred to her as ‘My Lord Duchess’ , and her chaplain, Father Alban Butler, author of

The Lives of The Saints (1754–60), described her as being ‘gifted with great talents: [she] was easy, dignified, and, when she pleased, singularly insinuating’ . She and her shy, scholarly, pious husband shared similar interests and worked together on the formation of the library.

Their principal house, Worksop Manor in Nottinghamshire, was an Elizabethan ‘prodigy house’ similar to Hardwick, and had been inherited from the Earls of Shrewsbury.

It burned down in 1761. One victim of the flames was the library which the Duke had created in the Long Gallery on the top floor.

He was faced at the age of 75 with creating a new collection of books, and this forms the nucleus of the library at Arundel.

The collection includes finely bound sets of the Classics, volumes of history, topography, travel, literature, art and architecture, and heraldry. The recusant material is less conventional, and illuminates the predominantly Catholic history of the senior line of the Howards.

The seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Dukes maintained a succession of Benedictine or Jesuit chaplains, and

being educated men the priests served as librarians alongside their religious duties.

This is reflected in some of the books. There is a good group of Bibles, missals, breviaries and volumes of Catholic theology, but also some interesting controversial texts in the form of rare recusant pamphlets and distinctive Jesuit material.

The latter includes not just fifteen copies of the Rules of St Ignatius and six contemporary editions of his Spiritual Exercises, but also seventeenth-century English anti-Jesuit works such as Robert Barker’s True and Perfect Relation of the whole Proceedings against the late most barbarous Traitors, Garnet, a Jesuite and his Confederates (1606) and the amusingly titled Pyrotechnica Loyolana, Ignatian Fireworks, Being an Historical Compendium of the Rise, Increase, Doctrines and Deeds of the Jesuits; Exposed to Publick View for the Sake of London (1667), published after the Great Fire. The even-handed character of the collection is particularly noticeable in the ‘Pro and Anti Popery’ section, a unique assemblage of pamphlets debating Protestant and Catholic standpoints during THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21

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The library at Arundel is entirely lined and vaulted in Honduras mahogany, like a cigar box

the reign of James II, bound in 58 volumes.

Art, architecture and gardening are also strong elements, and reflect the Duchess’s influence. She was especially interested in horticulture and natural history, and created a menagerie and rural library housed in a folly, Castle Farm. There are still volumes bound by a blue label with the words ‘Castle Farm, Worksop’ on the shelves. The many fine colour-plate books include a first edition of Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina in two volumes, to which she subscribed at the time of its publication in 1737; John Hill’s General Natural History (3 vols.,1748– 52); The Complete Florist (1747); and John Edwards’ The British Herbal (1770).

When the Duke died in 1777, he left his new library as an entailed heirloom, and thus kept it together as an entity down to the present day. All his books contain an armorial bookplate and a little note saying, 22 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

‘Bequeathed by the will of Edward Duke of Norfolk to remain in his family’ , with the names of his executors, Henry Howard and Thomas Eyre.

Charles, the 11th Duke, was a very different character and a fascinating illustration of the impact of the French Enlightenment on traditional English Catholicism. He was also representative of the great age of Georgian bibliomania in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He greatly augmented the book collection and added the special treasures, creating the present library at Arundel in 1800 in a room 112 feet long. It is entirely lined and vaulted in Honduras mahogany, like the inside of a wooden model for a Commissioners’ Church, or a cigar box.

He designed it himself, ostensibly on the pattern of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, though the inspiration seems tenuous. The

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naturalistic carving of capitals and spandrels was done by his own employees the John Teesdales, father and son. He moved the books to Arundel from Worksop, together with his own acquisitions from London, to create a splendid ensemble which serves as an epitome of Regency bibliophile luxury in a charmingly eccentric setting.

Charles was educated at the English Jesuit College of St Omer and then spent time in Paris meeting leaders of the Enlightenment, as did several of his school contemporaries, such as the Catholic William Constable of Burton Constable, Yorkshire, whose portrait was painted with Constable wearing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s hat. Charles befriended the naturalist George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, whose beautifully illustrated volumes on birds he acquired. He also bought the works of Voltaire and Rousseau and subscribed contemporaneously to Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1772). All remain in the Library. A free-thinker and Foxite Whig, he conformed to the Anglican church in 1780 in order to contest a parliamentary election in Carlisle against the Tory nominee of the Earl of Lonsdale. On the death of his father in 1786 Charles succeeded to the dukedom and took his seat in the House of Lords (the first member of his family to attend since the Test Act of 1678), where he was a regular and forceful speaker. He remained cheerful in his apostasy: ‘I cannot be a good Catholic; I cannot go to heaven; and if a man is to go to the devil, he may as well go thither from the House of Lords as from any other place on earth. ’ The Victorians painted a disapproving caricature of Charles as the drunken begetter of strings of illegitimate children; big and stout, ‘destitute of grace or dignity … He might indeed have been mistaken

POETRY Cosmo Davenport-Hines, who was the youngest life member of The London Library, died on 9 June 2008, aged 21. The Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize was set up at King’s College London in his memory. This year’s winner is Isabel Stoner.

Alloys Opposite Charles, 11th Duke (1746–1815). © Arundel Castle Trustees Ltd and Paul Barker, photographer.

Above The library, showing one of the stone alcoves containing a fireplace. © Arundel Castle Trustees Ltd and Paul Barker, photographer.

for a grazier or butcher’ . He was also generous and well educated, and this side of his character is represented in his book-collecting and patronage of scholars and writers. He financed William Dallaway’s History of the Western Division of Sussex (2 vols., 1815–32) and the Revd John Dumcumb’s History and Antiquities of the County of Hereford (1804). He employed David Pugh as an antiquarian and librarian, giving him a good reference as an antiquarian to Lord George Gordon, imprisoned in a cell in Newgate after the Riots, when the latter requested it ‘as Lord George’s situation obliges him, having only one apartment, to make all his visitors, more or less, Table Companions’ .

The Duke interceded for Percy Bysshe Shelley with the poet’s father and was generous to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, lending him the Deepdene, his old house in Surrey, free of rent, where Sheridan wrote his celebrated speech for the trial of Warren Hastings: ‘I impeach you in the name of the people of India …’

Charles was regarded by contemporaries as a bibliophile ‘distinguished among the cognoscenti and amateurs’ , and he made important purchases at Richardson’s sale in 1803 and the Duke of Roxburghe’s sale in 1812, bidding in person. At the latter he acquired an illuminated fifteenth-century

manuscript of Lydgate’s Life of St Edmund, with annotations by the sixteenth-century antiquary John Stow, and a fine set of Delphin Classics in Louis XIV crimson and gilt morocco bindings. His most important trophy was a sumptuous mid-fifteenthcentury illuminated manuscript of the ‘Golden Legend’ , commissioned originally in around 1454 by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, from the Master of the Privileges of Ghent and Flanders. It remains the star of the library.

He also had a taste for illustrated natural-history books, adding to the 9th Duke’s and Duchess’s existing collection with, for instance, a second edition of Catesby’s Carolina ; and he specialised in English sixteenth- and early-seventeenth century printed works, with editions of the histories of Leland, Camden and Holinshed, as well as a First Folio of Shakespeare which survives in almost unblemished condition.

The library at Arundel remains an astonishing Regency Gothic tour de force, and a worthy home for an interesting Georgian book collection which has survived into the twenty-first century, to provide information about the history and aspects of English intellectual life and the interests and tastes of its dissimilar ducal creators.

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sometimes i can’t trust myself not to buckle under the weight of your near enoughs and almost words you can’t quite force out from between my teeth. like the accusatory cutlery your eyes never fail to reflect this would look better with the lights off and between sheets but then again i always have had trouble with the twin tormentors dark and sleeping. sometimes i feel as though red is the only colour i know and you insist on inhabiting it, you have ruined sunsets and arsenal and jelly for me. like i was not made to walk through fire just as well as ocean i have merely forgotten the way spoon fed on ashes and bad pennies glinting off the electrics, i refuse to give you my spectrum. sometimes my ribcage admirably lives up to its name and i find myself choking on thoughts i’d sworn not to inhale. like non newtonian fluid i have inherited your sudden cusps and contradictions lit up momentarily only to be put out. when i am around you i find myself craving cigarettes.

Isabel Stoner

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23

MEMBERS’ News A MESSAGE FROM TOM ‘To be President of The London Library has been my honour and my pride. I will be stepping down in July.

In this season of handshakes and embraces, by the hospitality of the magazine I am able to say thank you (by no means farewell) to the thousands of members I have never met. My thanks come naturally because there is no Library without the subscribers. The printed book has been central to my life since childhood and I suspect the same is true for most of you. There is a fellowship in like-mindedness and we subscribers are like-minded about books. Thank you for supporting the idea and the liveliness of this great independent lending library.’

Tom Stoppard, President of The London Library, 2002–2017.

MEMBERSHIP TRENDS The story of The London Library for the past half-century has been one of a constant struggle to balance its books, relying on the income it receives from subscriptions and its hard-won endowment to meet the costs of running the Library in the way that members value so much. Today the struggle is acute as the number of members is at its lowest for 30 years. We cannot continue to rely on additional donations to maintain our core service so it is vital that we boost the number of members and we thought it might be helpful to provide some context to that imperative.

Membership today (6,569) is at its lowest level since 1985. At its peak in 2000, we had 8,479 subscribing members. As longstanding members will be aware, from January 2008, after much hard analysis of the Library’s financial position, trustees took the painful decision – with member consent – to raise subscriptions by an unprecedented 78%. Without that major fee rise, The London Library would not be here today but, as expected, it had an immediate impact on membership which can be seen in a spike in withdrawals across 2008 and 2009 and a short-term drop in the recruitment of new members over the same period in the graph, right.

Both aspects recovered well in 2010–2011, however, as major building-improvement work concluded with enhanced facilities for members and much attendant publicity. Since then, recruitment of new members has remained higher annually than before the fee rise, with an average of 734 new joiners a year in the eight years since 2009 compared to an average of 531 in the eight years before that date.

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The main longer-term trend we have seen is towards a much higher churn rate. Where once we might expect to lose 6–8% of members each year, we now lose around 12% a year, leading to an annual net member loss despite achieving higher recruitment figures.

MEMBERSHIP … IN YOUR OWN WORDS In the meantime, every member who renews their membership is making a real contribution to sustaining the Library. Finding us a new member doubles that contribution and we hope that many members will do just that over the next few months, taking advantage of the introductory offer outlined by the Librarian in her recent letter to members.

While the cost of membership in a difficult economic climate is clearly a factor, there are others, not least changes in the ways people use libraries and changing employment patterns in the creative industries. Over the last financial year, we have therefore been tracking the pattern of withdrawals in more detail. It is immediately striking that over half of the withdrawals occur during the first two years of membership (52%) and that a number who withdraw from membership subsequently re-join. For example, 15% of those who took out membership last year were former members and 2% were re-joining within twelve months of having resigned or allowed their membership to lapse.

We have long tracked reasons cited for leaving and have started to look in more depth at patterns of individual use among those who stay in membership and those who do not. In order to engage new members with the life of the Library more quickly, we are already experimenting with tailored communications within the first year and a range of opportunities such as new member welcome evenings with drinks and library displays during which staff are also on hand to help them get started using the Library if they have not yet done so. Nevertheless, we are clear that a more strategic approach to the recruitment and retention of membership is needed and we are in the process of recruiting a Membership Director to oversee and drive this.

While we are focused on recruiting new members it is good to remind ourselves of the many benefits membership brings, so we have put together some facts and figures from 2016–2017 and just a few of the ways in which current members expressed those benefits (anonymously) in our recent membership survey:

Here for you The Library is open 306 days a year and 55.5 hours a week, including three evenings and all day on Saturday. Over the last year members made 66,682 visits with 130 to 300 visits recorded daily (tip: if you like quieter days, try Thursday to Saturday).

‘It’s pretty much my university – I left school at 15 and 60 years later I’m still learning.’

Browsing and borrowing Members may browse among 1 million books and periodicals on over 17 miles of open shelving. With generous borrowing allowances and long loan periods, reading for pleasure or profit is made easy. Last year members took home nearly 70,000 volumes and very many more were used within the Library itself. Indeed, some 2,300 volumes are returned to the shelves by staff each week, meaning that about 120,000 (over 10% of the collection) are used in a year.

‘Nothing can quite match the experience of getting lost in the endless maze of bookstacks, spending hours that feel like minutes, and with every light switch pulled yet another row of undiscovered books is revealed.’

Our collections continue to grow as we acquire some 8,000 new volumes a year across our main subject areas. Many would be very expensive for individuals to buy and there is real value in having them available to borrow within weeks or even days of their publication.

Writing and studying Besides browsing and borrowing, some members use the Library as a place to read, write and study. While many members pop in and out in 10 minutes and some stay for whole days, the average visit lasts 2.5 hours. We can offer a range of different reading rooms as well as individual desks hidden away in the bookstacks, free WiFi and a members’ room in which to relax between times.

‘I can work in a place where others are working around me, that really helps concentration, and if I have a new idea or a new thought as I work I’m surrounded by resources to help me develop it. It’s the perfect place to read and write.’

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25

Online use Library membership includes online access to hundreds of journals and articles through services like JSTOR and to a range of online databases such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, compilations of historic newspapers and other reference works. Members have access to these resources not just from within the Library but wherever they are in the world through a PIN. ‘I do appreciate your online service. I think it is worth the annual fee, and cannot pursue my career without it.’

Study with Oxford from home Online courses for the public www.conted.ox.ac.uk/online17 @OxfordConted

We are continually adding to our online services and the addition of Catalyst – the Library’s powerful online discovery tool – facilitates searches across 70% of our holdings and hundreds of thousands of titles held elsewhere, while also allowing members to reserve books online and create their own reading lists. Last year members made more than 115,700 fulltext downloads from our eJournals alone.

Help from staff Our highly trained, dedicated staff can help in many ways: from dispatching books by post to setting books aside for collection, helping with research enquiries and advising on how to find and make use of online sources. In the last year they retrieved and set aside nearly 36,000 books for members to collect, sent 4,700 books to members by post and assisted with innumerable enquiries.

Online Courses - May 2017.indd ‘I use a lot of libraries (in this country and abroad). The London Library is my favourite. The staff are the best I ever have to deal with – always courteous and so expert, so professional.’

Finding a community For many members the Library is not so much a resource as a refuge, a calm, quiet place to take stock, a community of writers and keen readers. Over the last year, as well as our public 175th anniversary celebration ‘Words in the Square’, we ran 15 small-scale events for (and led by) members, from talks on earthquakes, Macbeth, and Victorian turkish baths, to literary walks and visits; from ‘how to …’ sessions on getting published and pitching an idea, to regular games nights and discussion groups. Members also make possible our quarterly magazine by their contributions, giving everyone a taste of the writing and research that takes place here.

‘I love the Library and greatly value the opportunities it has given me for research and mental recreation. It is also such a welcoming place. The staff are well-informed and most helpful.

It is a privilege to be part of this great institution.’

In short, Library membership has so much to offer to people with a love of reading but limited bookshelves, to those who have always dreamed of writing a book, to those who write for a living, to independent scholars, and to anyone who relishes being part of a literary community. May all our efforts to recruit members bear much fruit.

26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

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04/05/2017 12:00:59

MA/MRes in the History of the Book The MA in the History of the Book is an unparalleled multidisciplinary opportunity to study the book’s influence on cultural and intellectual change, while making use of the resources of central London. Students take two required courses (The Medieval Book, The Printed Book in Britain) and select from several option courses, including an internship at a London bookselling firm. Tutors are leading experts in their fields, and classes take place in Senate House Library, the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and other institutions.

One-third course work, two-thirds research, the MRes in the History of the Book allows a greater degree of specialism for those who are already drawn to a particular topic or period.

Tel.:+44 (0)20 7862 8680 Email: iesMA@sas.ac.uk

ies.sas.ac.uk

Follow us on: twitter.com/@IES_London

MEMBERS’ NEWS

NEW MEMBER OFFERS THE UNION CLUB MEMBERSHIP OFFER

LIBRARY CLUB MEMBERSHIP OFFER

Located in a Georgian townhouse on Greek Street, The Union blends the elegant and quirky with the antique and modern. Throw in some art, chandeliers and open fires, and the club could be described as bohemian, eclectic and far from minimalist. The club even has its own resident poet, Murray Lachlan Young.

LIBRARY is a private members’ club on St Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden, with a contemporary and eclectic style with a splash of the traditional thrown in for good measure. It offers 6 luxury boutique hotel rooms, a full programme of free events all year round and a host of reciprocal club and hotel offers worldwide.

MEMBER BENEFITS

MEMBER BENEFITS

•

•

• • •

Restaurant & rooftop terrace, serving fine modern British food with a twist all day, from breakfast through to afternoon tea and evening dinner Four meeting rooms for hire Studio and gallery hire – open-plan warehouse-style studio and gallery spaces to rent Regular backgammon club and member events

SPECIAL OFFER: London Library members can take advantage of a very special half-price rate on membership of The Union: • £225 annual membership (normally £450), a saving of £225 • No joining fee How to apply: for details and for a membership application form, contact The Union at membership@unionclub.co.uk, mentioning that you are a London Library member to ensure that the special-offer price is applied.

T&Cs: The half-price membership offer applies to the first and every subsequent year of Union membership. Price is exclusive of VAT. There is no limit to how many London Library members can take up this offer. The offer is open-ended until either The Union or The London Library withdraws the offer for any reason at a future date.

• • •

2 bars and a restaurant 20% off bedroom bookings at LIBRARY Free member events programme – from live music to authorled book clubs Complimentary venue hire for book launches, birthdays and personal events*

*minimum bar/catering spend may apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: London Library members can join LIBRARY at a special discounted rate, saving over £700 on the first year of membership alone: • Annual membership £450 per year (normally £850) • Annual membership fee fixed at £450 for life • No joining fee (a saving of £250) • One extra month free on joining (13 months for 12) To join online, visit londonlibrary.co.uk/cluboffer or contact the club directly on 020 3302 7912 quoting ‘London Library 450 offer’ T&Cs: The half-price membership offer applies to the first and every subsequent year of membership.

Free events THE BIOGRAPHERS’ CLUB The Biographers’ Club celebrates the sociable and serendipitous art of writing lives. It organises events all year round, including talks by biographers, workshops on the biographer’s craft, literary lunches, dinners and a prize-giving party.

Membership offer London Library members who, as published biographers, are eligible to join the Biographers’ Club, can enjoy a £10 reduction on the annual membership fee (£20 instead of £30). To take up this discounted rate, email your details and Library membership number to jasminkirkbride@gmail.com.

Event Offer All London Library members can now attend Biographers’ Club events without being a member of the club (i.e. without being a biographer and paying the annual subscription). For details of forthcoming events visit biographers. club and mention that you are a London Library member when booking.

LIBRARY runs a lively programme of events throughout the year, from live jazz and pop-up games nights to poetry readings and talks. As part of the promotion with LIBRARY, all London Library members and a guest can attend evening events at the club (after 6pm) for free, regardless of whether or not you are a member of the club. For the latest events programme, visit lib-rary.com/events. If you wish to attend an event, email bookeeper@lib-rary.com with your name and London Library membership number.

Royal Overseas League (ROSL) A reminder that London Library members can enjoy a 25% discount on the one-off joining fee at the ROSL on St James’s Street, with no need to provide a proposer or seconder. To apply email membership@rosl.org.uk or call 020 7408 0214 (ext. 214).

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27

Supporting The London Library You may have noticed a new donor board in the Library. Last year, to mark its 175th anniversary, the Library launched a special fundraising appeal and the response was remarkable, with over £110,000 raised for key library activities. We are enormously grateful to all who donated. This donor board, outside the Reading Room, recognises those who contributed £175 or more.

Over the last year we have been remounting a number of the Library’s donor boards, highlighting the importance of philanthropy to our history; from Sir Steven Runciman’s wonderful support for the old lift (complete with the motto

‘Plurimi pertransibunt et multiplex erit scientia’) to the beautifully inscribed plaque to Sir Ian Anstruther at the 4th-floor entrance to the Anstruther Wing.

Today philanthropic support remains a vital part of the Library’s income, ensuring that we can continue to be a place where people will learn, create and inspire. Of course by being a member of the Library you are already a valued part of this institution. However, if you feel you would like to help further, we have outlined below some of the ways in which you can do so.

Every donation, no matter what size, will make a difference.

Donate to the Tom Stoppard Innovation Fund

Adopt a Book

For 15 years Sir Tom Stoppard has been the most remarkable ambassador for the Library. In honour of his work and all that he has done for the Library we are launching The Tom Stoppard Innovation Fund. The Fund is focused on the future of the Library and we will be writing to all members about this soon.

Adopting a book at The London Library is the perfect gift for any book lover and helps develop and preserve the Library’s unique collection. Adopting a book can be a special way to celebrate all kinds of occasions, from births and birthdays to anniversaries and graduations. Or you could consider adopting a book in memoriam, a wonderful way to commemorate the life of a loved one.

Choose a new book on a subject close to the recipient’s heart or a favourite book from the Library’s collection of over one million titles. A bookplate will be placed inside the selected volume recording the adoption as part of the gift.

You can adopt a new book for £50 or a favourite book for £250.

Join the Founders’ Circle

Christmas Party, 2016. © Richard Young.

The Founders’ Circle is a group for literary enthusiasts right at the heart of the Library. Members of the Founders’ Circle enjoy an exclusive programme of events with prominent writers and arts experts, visits to private collections and cultural institutions, and invitations to the Library’s parties. But, more importantly, they are part of a group dedicated to sustaining and developing the Library’s resources.

There are three levels of annual membership, named after early Library members: Charles Dickens (£10,000), William Makepeace Thackeray (£5,000) and Harriet Martineau (£1,500). We will also be launching the Conservation Circle in the autumn, to support the extensive conservation work that the Library undertakes.

Leave a Gift in Your Will

Thank you for your support.

Since we opened in 1841 the Library has been fortunate to benefit from many individual bequests. Some have enabled major developments to take place, others, more modest in their scope, have played an important role in allowing the Library to strengthen its current work or develop much-needed programmes of activity.

By including The London Library among the beneficiaries in your Will, once you have provided for your family and loved ones, you can play a direct part in helping ensure our long-term survival and success. A gift in your Will can be tax-efficient, would cost you nothing during your lifetime, and no matter how small or large would make a real difference to The London Library.

For further details on how you can support the Library please contact the Development Office on 020 7766 4734, development@londonlibrary.co.uk or visit londonlibrary.co.uk/ support-us.

Sir Ian Anstruther’s plaque, Anstruther Wing.

28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MEMBERS CLUB

London Clubhouse Over-Seas House Park Place St James’s Street London SW1A 1LR Edinburgh Clubhouse Over-Seas House 100 Princes Street Edinburgh EH2 3AB

The Royal Over-Seas League is a unique, not-for-profit, private membership organisation. For over 100 years we have encouraged international friendship and understanding through arts, social, music and humanitarian programmes.

With membership benefits including accommodation and dining at our historic clubhouses in London and Edinburgh, and reciprocal arrangements with over 80 clubs around the world, we offer our members a home away from home.

HOW TO JOIN Call +44 (0)20 7408 0214 (ext. 214 & 216) and quote ‘THE LONDON LIBRARY’ for special joining discounts, visit www.rosl.org.uk or email info@rosl.org.uk

ROSL_AD_LONDON_170x112.5mm_TLL.indd 1

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See London with a different Eye. Spend a day exploring the artistic riches of London, in the company of one of our experts. Martin Randall Travel London Days focus on many fascinating themes.

Exclusive and special arrangements feature: visit Transport for London’s historic headquarters at 55 Broadway or enjoy a private organ recital in a West End church. Sip champagne at the Savoy or cocktails at the Walkie Talkie. Admire the Spanish Golden Age with Dr Xavier Bray or the works of Hogarth with Dr Lars Tharp. Delve into hidden corners with Professor Gavin Stamp or large-scale landmarks with Sir Jeremy Dixon.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29

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30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Member Events Member events are free, but places are limited so must be reserved in advance at londonlibrary.co.uk/ memberevents How to … Promote Your Book With Diane M. Hinds Tuesday, 27 June 2017 SOLD OUT Monday, 18 September 2017 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room In a talk aimed at independent and selfpublished authors, Diane Hinds will guide members through the process of publicising a book. Providing useful information on how to research your audience, write a press release and use digital channels to get your message out to the media and readers, the session will offer practical tips on promoting your publication in an affordable and effective way.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets With Penny McCarthy Monday, 3 July 2017 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room Penny McCarthy, author of Discovering the Hidden Figure of a Child in Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2015), presents her challenge to the consensus interpretation that Shakespeare’s sonnets fall neatly into two categories: those addressed to, or about, a Fair Youth, and those addressed to, or about, a Dark Lady. She will argue that two other personae emerge as significant – an older woman and an unborn child, a child Shakespeare believed to be his, but whose paternity he had to renounce.

Philosophy Group Second Wednesday of every month, 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room annexe The newly launched London Library philosophy group meets at the Library on the second Wednesday of every month in the Members’ Room annexe. It provides a regular forum for discussing topical issues in philosophy.

All members are welcome to attend, from complete beginners to those who are well read in the subject.

Members should be willing to read the text that is being discussed and join in the discussion (the text is circulated in advance of each meeting).

Numbers are limited to 15 at each meeting. Anyone wishing to attend future meetings should contact the group co-ordinator, John Robinson, by emailing llphilosophy@outlook.com including your name and Untitled-2 1 contact details.

22/05/2017 10:26

‘the sky all around me as if I am an eagle in an eyrie, the clouds like lace lying over silk’

Ph.D. Members’ Group After two successful years, the Members’ Ph.D. group has decided to meet more informally in future and therefore will no longer hold a formal meeting each month.

We would like to thank Cleo Roberts for all her support in launching and running the meetings, and to all the members who have attended the group during this time.

women’s

If you would like to start a discussion group on a subject that is of interest to you, and likely to be of interest to other members, please email marketing@londonlibrary.co.uk to find out more about how the Library can support you in this.

1st prize: £5,000

from Three Sisters, Three Queens

by Philippa Gregory

NOVEL

competition 2017 for unpublished women novelists only

Closing date: 18 September 2017 JUDGE: Philippa Gregory

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31

FINE BOOKS, MAPS, MANUSCRIPTS & PHOTOGRAPHS

THE KENNEDY-HARLECH PAPERS Archive of Sir David Ormsby Gore Sold for £100,000

ENQUIRIES +44 (0) 20 7393 3828 books@bonhams.com Closing date for entries Friday 29 September 2017

Wednesday 15 November 2017 Knightsbridge, London

bonhams.com/books Prices shown include buyer’s premium. Details can be found at bonhams.com