Part 25 (2/2)
It should be carefully noted, when studying this plan, that the distance between each pair of windows is not more than 2 feet, and that the end of the desk covers the whole of this s.p.a.ce. If this fact be borne in mind when examining libraries that are now fitted up in a different way, it becomes possible to detect what the original method was.
I propose to name this system of fittings the lectern-system; and I shall shew, as we proceed, that it was adopted, with various modifications, in England, France, Holland, Germany and Italy.
Fortunately, one example of such fittings still exists, at Zutphen in Holland, which I visited in April, 1894. Shortly afterwards I wrote the following description of what is probably a unique survival of an ancient fas.h.i.+on[310].
The library in which these fittings occur is attached to the church of SS.
Peter and Walburga, the princ.i.p.al church of the town. A library of some kind is said to have existed there from very early times[311]; but the place where the books were kept is not known. In 1555 a suggestion was made that it would be well to get together a really good collection of books for the use of the public. The first stone of the present building was laid in 1561, and it was completed in 1563. The author of the _Theatrum Urbium Belgicae_, John Blaeu, whose work was completed in 1649, describes it as ”the public library poorly furnished with books, but being daily increased by the liberality of the Senate and Deputies[312].”
The room is built against the south choir-aisle of the church, out of which a door opens into it. In consequence of this position the shape is irregular, for the church is apsidal, and the choir-aisle is continued round part of the apse. It is about 60 feet long, by 26 feet broad at the west end. In the centre are four octagonal columns on square bases, supporting a plain quadripart.i.te vault. The room is thus divided longitudinally into two aisles, with a small irregular s.p.a.ce at the east end.
The diagrammatic ground-plan, here subjoined (fig. 52), will help to make this description clear. It makes no pretensions to accuracy, having been drawn from notes only[313].
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 52. Ground-plan of the Library at Zutphen.]
There are two windows, each of three lights, at the west end of the room, and four similar windows on the south side, one to each bay. There is a fifth window, now blocked, at the south-east corner. Some of these windows contain fragments of richly coloured stained gla.s.s--among which the figure of a large green parrot is conspicuous; but whether these fragments were brought from the church, or are part of the gla.s.s originally supplied to the library, there is no evidence to shew. Most of these windows are partially blocked, having been damaged, it is said, in one of the numerous sieges from which Zutphen has suffered. The position of the church, close to the fortifications, as Blaeu's bird's-eye view shews, makes this story probable. The floor is paved with red tiles. The general appearance of the room will be understood from the view of the north aisle reduced from a photograph (fig. 53)[314].
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 53. General view of the north side of the Library attached to the church of S. Walburga at Zutphen.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 54. Desk and reader on the south side of the Library at Zutphen.
From a photograph.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 55. Elevation of (A) one of the bookcases in the Library at Zutphen: (B) one of those in the Library at Queens' College, Cambridge[315].]
There are eighteen bookcases, or desks; namely, ten on the south side of the room, and eight on the north side (fig. 52). The material is oak; the workmans.h.i.+p very rude and rough. I will describe those on the south side first. Each is 9 feet long by 5 feet 5 inches high, measured from the floor to the top of the finial on the end; and the lower edge of the desk on which the books lie is 2 feet 6 inches above the floor; but the general plan, and the relative dimensions of the different parts, will be best understood from the photograph of a single desk at which a reader is seated (fig. 54), and from the elevation of one of the ends (fig. 55, A), beside which I have placed the elevation of one of the desks at Queens'
College (B). The photograph shews that in fixing the height of the desk above the ground the convenience of readers has been carefully considered.
The iron bar that carries the chains is locked into the ornamental upright, pa.s.ses through a staple in the middle of the desk, and into the upright at the opposite end, which is left plain. This bar is half an inch in diameter, and one inch above the level of the top of the desk. It is prevented from bending by pa.s.sing through a staple fixed in the centre of the desk. A piece of ornamental iron-work is fixed to the upright. It is made to represent a lock, but is in reality a mere plate of metal, and the tongue, which looks as though it were intended to move, is only an ornament, and is pierced by the keyhole. The lock is sunk in the thickness of the wood, behind this plate, and the bar, which terminates in a k.n.o.b, is provided with two nicks, into which the bolts of the lock are shot when the key is turned (fig. 56). Between each pair of desks there is a seat for the reader.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 56. End of iron bar, Zutphen.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 57. End of one of the desks on the north side of the Library, Zutphen.]
The desks on the north side of the room differ slightly from those on the south side. They are rather larger, the ends are of a different shape and devoid of ornament (fig. 57), and there is a wider interval between the bar and the top of the desk. It seems to me probable that the more highly ornamented desks are those which were put in when the room was first fitted up, and that the others were added from time to time as new books had to be accommodated.
The books are attached to the desk by the following process. A chain was taken about 12 inches long, more or less, consisting of long narrow links of hammered iron. These links exactly resemble, both in shape and size, those of a chain which may still be seen in the library of the Grammar School at Guildford, Surrey[316]. This chain, of which a piece is here figured (fig. 58), was probably made in 1586, or only 23 years after the building of the library at Zutphen. It terminates, like those at Zutphen (fig. 59), in a swivel (to prevent entanglement), attached to the ring which is strung upon the bar. The attachment of the chain to the book was effected by means of a piece of metal bent round so as to form a loop through which the last link of the chain was pa.s.sed. The ends of the loop, flattened out, were attached by nail or rivet to the edge of the stout wooden board which formed the side of the book. This mode of attachment will be best seen in the volume which I figure next (fig. 60)--a collection of sermons printed at Nuremberg in 1487. It is believed to have once belonged to a Dominican House at Bamberg, in the library of which it was chained[317].
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 58. Piece of chain, shewing the ring attached to the bar, the swivel, and one of the links, actual size. Guildford.]
The iron loop in this specimen (fig. 60) is fastened to what I call the right-hand board of the book; by which I mean the board which is to the right hand of a reader when the book lies open before him; but the selection of the right-hand or the left-hand board depended on individual taste. Further the mode of attachment is never the same in two examples.
The iron and rivets are often clumsy, and do considerable damage to the leaves, by forcing them out of shape and staining them with rust.
In this method of chaining no provision is made for removing any book from the desk when not wanted, and placing it on a shelf beneath the desk, as was done in some Italian modifications of the system. Each volume must lie on the desk, attached by its chain, like a Bible on a church-lectern.
The smallest number of volumes on any desk at Zutphen is six; the largest, eleven; the total, 316. Most of those on the south side of the room were printed during the first half of the sixteenth century; those on the north side are much later, some as late as 1630. I did not see any ma.n.u.scripts.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 59. Piece of the iron bar, with chain, Zutphen.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 60. Chained book, from a Dominican House at Bamberg, South Germany.]
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