Heaven may be the perfect library but some on earth come close
Isympathise with those mediaeval Jewish rabbis who, asked to describe heaven, pictured it as a perfect library. For them books were, or ought to be, inseparable from holiness. The words themselves, even the ink, had divine attributes. One 11th-century rabbi said that the works already present welcomed or rejected newcomers. They sensed whether new writings were edifying or not. If so, they would crowd themselves together and say: ‘Welcome! Plenty of room here!’ If they smelt wickedness, they would spread out: ‘No place here for you! Go away!’ So the heavenly library was always equally full, or empty, like a magic drinking vessel. This dealt with the main difficulty of an earthly library, a problem which is insoluble. A library must be full, for nothing is more repellent than empty shelves. On the other hand, if it is full, how is space to be found to accommodate new books, without which the library dies?
My perfect library would be a wing of a country house, with very high ceilings and a gallery; below it French windows opening on to a meadow with trees in the distance. Shelves would cover all the walls, with an oak staircase on wheels to get at the higher reaches, and a spiral staircase to the gallery, also full of books. A door would lead to an inner room, my study, with French windows leading on to an orchard. A spiral staircase within this room would ascend to a small bedroom above, with a tiny bathroom and rudimentary kitchen. So I could, at need, live a self-contained existence within my librarystronghold. In the main room would be a large mahogany table with racks containing portfolios of drawings and watercolours by its sides. No pictures on the walls — just books — and no nonsense of terrestrial and celestial globes.
I have two libraries. Because of the size of the volumes, my library of art history has to be kept in Somerset, where it occupies an entire large room, with a vast window opening on to the Quantock Hills and forest — a noble prospect. All the walls are covered in deep shelves from floor to ceiling, and to get to the top I have a superb piece of furniture. It is a delicate circular set of steps, in mahogany, but so light that I can lift up the tapering centre-post with one hand and carry it from one end of the room to the other without effort. It is an ingenious piece of design, the like of which I have never seen elsewhere, and as carpentry it is a model piece of craftsmanship. Where I got it I have quite forgotten. A mediaeval rabbi would have said: ‘Oh, the angels brought it.’ For my London library, containing history and literature and reference works, and also with shelves from floor to ceiling, I have a different piece of furniture machinery to gain access to the top shelves. This is a formidable ladder, of very hard wood, covered in dark green leather on the outside, and with many huge, brightly polished brass nails. When not in use it folds into a pole and can be hidden away behind the door. It looks very old, but I suspect it is a replica. It is very heavy and awkward to move around, and I use it seldom. Hence, gradually, the arrangement of the books has changed. The two bottom shelves have always housed sets of reference books: the DNB, the big OED, the Grove History of Art in 34 volumes, Grove’s History of Music in 20 volumes, plus the old Grove in five (better in some ways). I thought of getting the new DNB but that would have added nine feet of books, and I discovered that the entry on Jane Austen contains 70 errors (I have a list of them), so I dropped the idea. In this section I have all the Who Was Whos and many other biographical volumes, the six-volume Bibliography of English History, and similar works, and Benezit’s Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs in ten volumes, plus other useful tomes.
However, all the shelves except these at the bottom are arranged in rough chronological order, beginning with the Cambridge Ancient History and my vast and eccentric collection of books on ancient Egypt, Coptic dictionaries and the like. It is a melancholy fact, however, that in private libraries, as the ownerarranger grows older, discipline and order tends to break down. Laziness triumphs over method. I have always been a great reader of poetry, now more than ever. Unwilling to drag out my heavy folding ladder to consult a volume of verse at the top, I have recently made a hole on a more accessible shelf to contain a score of verse anthologies, such as the Golden Treasury and the Oxford Book of English Verse. This has been at the expense of chronology. Moreover it is not the only example of convenience creeping in to supersede system. I do not say that the chronological structure has broken down completely. It remains, like pristine teeth in an ancient mouth mended with gold, silver and ceramic. But there is no longer much logic, coherence or uniformity in my display of books. Yet are these necessarily virtues in a collection made from nothing by one person, and for his pleasure and edification? I know exactly where to find anything I want, even if I am the only one thus privileged. The celebrated historian Andrew Roberts, surveying my shelves, said, ‘I don’t quite follow the principles.’ Moral principles perhaps but bibliographical principles, with coding and card-indexes, are not for this ‘little old reader’ (to quote Malcolm Muggeridge’s description of Lord Beaverbrook).
The best private libraries I know are to be found in long-established country houses in Ireland. They were the creation, over a quarter-millennium, of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, one of the most civilised ruling elites in history, ‘no mean people’, as W.B. Yeats called them. They are not based on standard library principles but on taste, whim and sheer enjoyment. Their treasures are hidden, but sometimes surprising. You may search in vain for the volume you want, though assured by the owner it is there ‘somewhere’, but in scrabbling around you may come across a first edition of Pride and Prejudice, or another of Browning’s Sordello, uncut after the first few pages once the reader failed to follow the impenetrable meaning of the text and gave up in despair and irritation.
I am thinking of the splendid library at Tullynally, Gothic palace of the Pakenham earls of Longford in County Westmeath, or Clandeboye, in Ulster, where repose the global treasures of the first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. This amiable, even saintly, man was governor-general of Canada, viceroy of India and conqueror of Burma, ambassador to Paris and Rome, and holder of many other magnificent public offices until, in his credulous old age, he fell victim to a city slicker. There is a vivid portrait of him in Harold Nicolson’s book Helen’s Tower, which describes the house and its setting.
Such libraries — and I can think of a dozen more — are cosy places in which to stretch out in the many easy chairs with which they are provided and watch the rain lash the green universe outside the windows, thinking how lucky you are to be inside, warm and dry — a view shared by the handsome loose horses which occasionally peer enviously within. The carpets may be old, but they are deep and grateful. Within the large old-style fireplace an enormous fire roars cheerfully up the well-swept chimney, for Anglo-Irish houses are famous for cunning wood-girls who know how to stack a superb fire, and the sweeps of Ireland, like the notorious ‘Walking-Easy’, are good at their job. Thus you can wile away an afternoon enjoying the books, many signed by the authors with cryptic messages, or repositories of letters from them relating amorous escapades or dark doings during the Troubles. And you can be confident that, at ‘half-four’ or thereabouts, the parlourmaid will wheel in a sumptuous tea.
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