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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 21st May 2008

Heaven may be the perfect library but some on earth come close

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 owner- arranger 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).