Not every frequenter of the British Museum and its Reading Room, however, has gone there just to read.
By CLEO PASKAL
Published November 9, 2003
"In the center of the reading-room at the British Museum sit four men fenced about by a quadruple ring of unwieldy volumes which are an index to all the knowledge in the world . . . Vague reverberating noises roll heavily from time to time across the chamber, but no one looks up; the incessant cannibal feast of the living upon the dead goes speechlessly forward, the trucks of food are always moving to and fro, and the nonchalant waiters seem to take no rest."
- Arnold Bennett, 1898
* * *
LONDON - It has spawned revolutions, incited passion and created art - perhaps more so than any other place in the modern world. And it is a library. It is THE library, a successor to the great one at Alexandria. And, for nearly 150 years, the way to access that library was through the Reading Room at the British Museum.
The British Museum was created in 1753 by an act of Parliament to house the rambling collections of Sir Hans Sloan (1660-1753). It first set up shop in a 17th-century mansion in London.
The aristocracy realized that here was a good place to dump all that stuff you should keep but don't really want to look after - relics from expeditions, explorations and campaigns poured in from all over the empire. And so did the books.
In 1757, King George II gave the museum the massive library of the sovereigns of England as well as their "copyright deposit" (a right to a copy of every book published in England). In 1823, King George IV sent more than 65,000 additional books.
Soon, the librarians had to tear down the mansion and build a bigger place. The idea was to make a square building with a large, inner courtyard where visitors could stroll while admiring botanical samples. But by the time construction was completed, the books seemingly had spawned more of themselves. There was no choice but to plunk an enormous round, domed reading room in the center of the courtyard.
Desks were spread along spokes that radiated from a central librarians' desk. Each reader had his or her own spot, complete with hat hook and ink bottle. Twenty windows in the dome let in enough light to read by. If it wasn't too foggy.
The greatest librarian
The de facto king of this intellectual empire was Antonio Panizzi. Panizzi had fled his native Italy in 1823 when he was caught on the wrong side of the struggle for unification. He arrived in England with little English and less money. He worked his way up from teaching Italian to becoming "perhaps the greatest administrative librarian who has ever lived."
Yes, that is a compliment, offered by Marjorie Caygill in The British Museum Reading Room. The author wrote that Panizzi "applied revolutionary zeal to the Museum collections." He raised money for the new building. He enforced the copyright deposit by taking publishers to court. He found funds for new acquisitions.
Behind it all, stated Panizzi, was a simple goal: "I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry, as the richest man in the kingdom, as far as books go, and I contend that the government is bound to give him the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this respect."
Pretty revolutionary. And it sparked some rather British comments. In 1857, Sir Frederic Madden, who held the title Keeper of Manuscripts, judged the new Reading Room:
"A splendid room, but perfectly unsuited, I think, to its purpose, and an example of reckless extravagance occasioned through the undue influence of a Foreigner."
It is amazing the sort of passions that a library can arouse. The Reading Room was always a pretty raucous place.
According to G.F. Barwick, author of the 1929 book The Reading Room of the British Museum:
"There is hardly an infraction of the rules of the Room that has escaped comment, coupled with an urgent call on the authorities to take vigorous action against the offenders. The non-observance of silence was a constant cause of complaint, also the appropriation of more than one desk, lengthy absences from the Room while leaving a desk apparently engaged, not replacing books of reference and catalogues; using the Library steps as seats, concealing books of reference for their own use or to keep them away from others working on the same subjects, uncleanliness, intoxication, etc. . . ."
There was an actual black book, which banned the most outrageous scofflaws.
Celebrities in the stacks
Fights often would break out. One pugilist argued that he should be forgiven since he was a real writer and the guy he was beating up was just a journalist. Love also bloomed in the dusty stacks. Samuel Butler (Row B), famously wrote that he had "loved too wisely but not well" after Eliza Mary Ann Savage (Row G) died before they could consummate their love.
All manner of readers haunted the room. There were clergymen who would come to crib from long-forgotten sermons or, in more blatant cases, rip out a few choice passages and stuff them inside their jackets, for later use. There was a Miss McDonald, usually first in the line to enter for almost 50 years. No one knows what she was researching.
Someone once described the readers as "novelists in search of plots, historians in search of facts, and critics in search of mistakes." Many found what they came for.
Karl Marx showed up nearly daily for almost 30 years, part of it while working on Das Kapital. Lenin researched the "land question." Even Trotsky "gorged himself" on the books. Perhaps sensing something, around the turn of the 20th century the librarians took The Dictionary of Explosives off the shelves.
Fiction writers were even more obvious in their debt to the Reading Room. Many, sitting at their desks waiting to be struck by the arrow of inspiration, got fed up and just set scenes in the library: Bram Stoker sent Jonathan Harker there to do research on Castle Dracula. Frederick Forsyth's killer in Day of the Jackal used it to find good spots for murders. Arthur Conan Doyle had Holmes hone his scientific skills in the stacks. Jerome K. Jerome's protagonist from Three Men in a Boat drops in to check on "some slight ailment," reads a few medical books and staggers out a complete mess, convinced he has everything but housemaid's knee.
Eventually the collection became too large even for the British Museum. The British Library was created and, in the 1990s, a massive, modern building was erected next to St. Pancras railway station. By 1999, 12-million books had been moved to the new site, where about 152 miles of shelves (and even more impatient readers) were waiting. The Reading Room closed.
But it was not abandoned. The Reading Room was restored to its 1857 glory, using lots of 23.25-carat gold leaf and a couple of tons of paint. It sits in the heart of the Great Court, in the center of the British Museum complex, now more an exhibit itself than a place to spawn sedition or love.
The desks are still there, and you can use them to consult the 12,000 or so reference books relating to the museum's collections. There are also 50 computers that let you access the COMPASS system (which you can also find online), which describes the origins and the meaning of thousands of the museum's objects. There is even a kids' section.
- Cleo Paskal is a freelance writer living in Quebec.
If you go
The British Museum Galleries are open Saturday to Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
The Reading Room is open every day from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and the first Thursday of each month from 10 a.m. to 8:30. Admission is free. Taking the guided tours is well worth it.
The British Museum, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DG; call 011 44 20 7323 8000; www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk The main branch of the British Library there are two other minor branches has rather arcane opening hours. You are most likely to find it open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Sundays, when it opens at 11 a.m.
To consult books, you need a readers pass, which is available in advance online.
It is worth a visit even if you don't want to fondle the books. Some of the highlights of the collections are on permanent display (including about 80,000 stamps), and the temporary exhibits are always fascinating. Recent exhibits have included Leonardo da Vince's mechanical drawings, the Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio, Handel's original manuscript of Messiah, and other superstars of Western culture.
The British Library, 96 Euston Road, St. Pancras, London NW1 2DB; call 011 44 20 7412 7000; www.bl.uk
