Part 6 (2/2)

FRESH GROUND

It was not my inspiration to run one of our huts entirely as a library for the troops. I was merely the fortunate person chosen to conduct the experiment. In most of the huts there was already some small supply of books for circulation, and at our headquarters in the town a dusty congestion of several hundred volumes which n.o.body had found time to take in hand. The idea was to concentrate these scattered units, to obtain standard reinforcements from London and the base, indent for all the popular papers and magazines, and go into action as a Free Library at the Front. It was at first proposed to do without any kind of a canteen; but I was all against driving a keen reader elsewhere for his tea, and held out for light refreshments after four and cigarettes all the time. On this and many other points I was given my way in a fas.h.i.+on that would have fired anybody to make the venture a success.

The hut placed at my disposal was a very good one in the middle of the town, indeed within the palisade of the once magnificent Town Hall. That grandiose pile had been knocked into mountains of rubbish, with the mere stump of its dizzy belfry still towering over all as the Matterhorn of the range. These ruins formed one side of a square like a mouthful of bad teeth, all hollow stumps or clean extractions; our upstart hut was the only whole building of any sort within sight. It had a better saloon than my last land-s.h.i.+p; on the other hand, it was infested with rats from the surrounding wrecks. They would lope across the floor under one's nose, or dangle their tails from the beams overhead, and I slept with a big stick handy.

Relays of peace-time carpenters, borrowed from their units for a day or two each, fell upon all the benches and table-tops they required, and turned them into five long tiers of book-shelves behind the counter. In the meantime our own Special Artist was busy on a new and n.o.ble scheme of decoration, and two or three of us up to our midriffs in the first thousand books. They were a motley herd: the sweepings of unknown benefactors' libraries, the leavings of officers and men, cunning shafts from the devout of all denominations, and the first draft of cheap masterpieces from the base. Cla.s.sification was beyond me, even if time had been no object: how could one cla.s.sify 'The Sol of Germany,' 'A Yorkstireman Alroad,' 'The Livinz Waze,' 'From Workhouse to Westminster: Life-Story of With Gooks, M.P.' (four copies), or even the books these t.i.tles stood for in the typewritten catalogue that arrived (from Paris) too late to entertain us? All authors in alphabetical order seemed the simplest principle; and in practice even that arrangement ran away with days.

Then each volume had to be labelled (over the publishers' imprint on the binding) and the labels filled in with the letter and number of each in one's least illegible hand; and this took more days, though the rough draft of the catalogue emerged simultaneously; and the merit of the plan, if any, was that the catalogue order eventually coincided with that of the actual books on the shelves. The drawback was that books kept dropping in or turning up too late for insertion in their proper places. I could think of no better way out of this difficulty than by resorting to a large Z cla.s.s, or dump, for late-comers. This met the case though far from satisfying my instincts for the rigour of a game.

Another time (this coming winter, for instance, when I hope to have it all to do again) I shall be delighted to adopt some more approved method of dealing with a growing library; last spring one had to do the best one could by the light of nature. Nevertheless, there was not much amiss (except the handwriting) with the clean copy (in carbon duplicate) of a catalogue which ran to a good many thousand words, and kept two of us out of bed till several successive midnights; for by this time I had a staunch confederate who took the whole thing as seriously as I did, and perhaps even found it as good fun.

We had hoped to open--it was really very like producing a play--early in February, but a variety of vicissitudes delayed the event until the twentieth of the month. As the day approached we had many visitors, who had heard of our effort and were prepared to spread our fame; time was well lost in showing them round, and I confess I enjoyed the job. They had to begin by admiring the sc.r.a.per. It was perhaps the worst sc.r.a.per in Europe--I ached for a week from sinking its two uprights into harder chalk with a heavier pick-axe than I thought existed--but it was symbolical. It meant that you could leave the mud of war outside our hut; but I am afraid the first thing to be seen inside was inconsistent with this symbol. It was the complete _Daily Mail_ sketch-map of the Western Front, the different sheets joined together and mounted on the locked door opposite the one in use. The feature of this feature was that the Line was pegged out from top to bottom with the best red-tape procurable in the town. It toned delightfully with the art-green of the sketch-map.

In the ordinary Y.M.C.A. n.o.body would have seen it! In winter, at any rate, it is dusk at high noon in the ordinary hut, which is lighted only by canvas windows under the eaves. In our hut, however, we had a pair of fine skylights, expressly cut to save our readers' eyes, and glazed with some s.h.i.+mmering white stuff which seemed to increase the light, like a fall of snow, instead of slightly diluting it like the best of gla.s.s.

The side windows glistened with the same material, so that a dull day seemed to clear up as you entered. Between the skylights stood four trestle tables under one covering of American cloth, whereon the day's papers, magazines and weeklies, were to be displayed club-fas.h.i.+on; the writing tables, likewise in American cloth, were arranged under the side windows; and at an even distance from either end of the fourfold reading table were the two stoves. One stove is the ordinary hut-allowance.

Round each stove ran a ring of canvas and wicker arm-chairs, in which a tired man might read himself to sleep, and between the chairs stood little round tables for his tea and biscuits when he woke. They were garden tables painted for the part, with spidery black legs and bright vermilion tops, and on each a nice new ash-tray (of the least possible intrinsic value, I admit) in further imitation of the club smoking-room.

That was the atmosphere I wanted for the body of the hut.

At the platform end we were ready for anything, from itinerant lecturers to the most local preacher, and from hymns to comic songs; the best piano in the area was equal to any strain; and a somewhat portentous rostrum, though not knocked together for me, was just my height, while the American cloth in which we found it was a dead match for our extensive importations of that fabric. It was at this end of the hut that our Special Artist and Decorator had excelled himself. All down the sides were his frieze of flags, his dado of red and white cotton in alternate stripes, and his own extraordinarily effective chalk drawings on sheets of brown paper between the windows. But for the angle under the roof, over the platform, he had reserved his masterpiece. One day, while we were still busy with the books, our handy man of genius had stood for an hour or two on a ladder; and descending, left behind him a complete allegorical cartoon of Literature, including many life-size figures in flowing robes busy with the primitive tools of one's trade.

I am not an art critic, like my friend the war correspondent, who ruthlessly detected faults in drawing, instead of applauding all we had to show him; to me, the pride of our walls was at least a remarkable _tour de force_. The Official Photographer was to have come at a later date to witness if I exaggerate. He left it too long. He may have another chance this winter. 'Literature' has been preserved.

These private views too often started at the counter, because visitors had a way of entering through my room; but to see the library as I do think it deserved seeing, one had to turn one's back upon all I have described, and with a proper piety bear down upon the books. In their five long shelves, each edged and backed with the warm red cotton of the dado, and broken only by my door behind the counter, those thirty yards of good and bad reading were wholly good to see, on our opening day especially, before the first borrower had made the first gap in their serried ranks. There indeed stood they at attention, their labels at the same unwavering height as so many pairs of puttees (except the few I had not affixed myself); and I felt that I, too, had turned a mob into an army.

Immediately over the top row, on a scroll expertly lettered by our Special Illuminator (another of our talented band), its own new motto, from Thomas a Kempis, ran right across the hut:

_Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won._

I really think I was as pleased with that, on the morning I thought of it in bed (having just decided to call the hut The Rest Hut), as Thackeray is said to have been when he danced about his bedroom crying--'”Vanity Fair”! ”Vanity Fair”! ”Vanity Fair”!' But I only once heard a remark upon our motto from the men. 'Well, that's logic anyhow!'

said one when he had read it out across the counter. I could have wished for no better comment from a soldier.

Higher still, in the angle of the roof at this end, the flags of the Allies enfolded the Sign of the Rest Hut, which was an adaptation of the Red Triangle. I was having a slightly more elaborate version compressed into a rubber stamp for all literary matter connected with the hut.

The rubber stamp did not arrive in time for the opening; nor had there been time to stick our few rules into more than a few of the books. But I had a paste-pot and a pile of these labels ready on the counter. And since we _are_ going into details, one may as well swing for the whole sheep:--

THE REST HUT LIBRARY (=Y.M.C.A.=)

_This book may be taken out on a deposit of =1 franc.= which will be returned when the book is brought back._

_Books cannot be exchanged more than once daily, and no Reader is ent.i.tled to more than one volume at a time._

_A book may be kept as long as required: but in each other's interests Readers are begged to return all books as soon as they conveniently can, and in as good order as possible._

Frankly, we flattered ourselves on dispensing with time-limit and fine; and in practice I can commend that revolutionary plan to other amateur librarians. Obviously you are much less likely to get a book back at all if you want more money with it. You shall hear in what circ.u.mstances many of ours were to come back, and at what touching trouble to men of whom one can hardly bear to think to-day.

But all the books were not for circulation; a Poetry and Reference Shelf bestrode my end of the counter. Duplicate Poets were to be allowed out like novels; but they were not expected to have many followers. A more outstanding feature, perhaps the apple of the librarian's gla.s.ses was the New Book Table, just in front of the counter at the same end. I thought a tableful of really new books would be tremendously attractive to the real readers, that their mere appearance might convey a certain element of morale. So one long day I had spent upon fifteen begging letters to fifteen different publishers--not the same begging letter either, for some of them I knew and some knew me not wisely but too well. On the whole the fifteen played up, and the New Book Table was well and truly spread for the inaugural feast. The novelties were to grace it for a fortnight before going into the catalogue; and we started with quite a brave display. There were travels and biographies, new novels and books of verse, all spick-and-span in their presentation wrappers; and we arranged them most artistically on a gaudy table-cloth that cost thirty francs; with a large cardboard mug (by our Illuminator) warning other mugs off the course. And I think that really is the last of our preparations, unless I mention the receptacles for waste-paper, which proved quite unable to compete against the floor.

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