Part 1 (2/2)

The question of economy, for those who from necessity or choice consider it at all, is a very serious one. It has been a fas.h.i.+on to make bookcases highly ornamental. Now books want for and in themselves no ornament at all. They are themselves the ornament. Just as shops need no ornament, and no one will think of or care for any structural ornament, if the goods are tastefully disposed in the shop-window. The man who looks for society in his books will readily perceive that, in proportion as the face of his bookcase is occupied by ornament, he loses that society; and conversely, the more that face approximates to a sheet of bookbacks, the more of that society he will enjoy. And so it is that three great advantages come hand in hand, and, as will be seen, reach their maximum together: the sociability of books, minimum of cost in providing for them, and ease of access to them.

In order to attain these advantages, two conditions are fundamental.

First, the shelves must, as a rule, be fixed; secondly, the cases, or a large part of them, should have their side against the wall, and thus, projecting into the room for a convenient distance, they should be of twice the depth needed for a single line of books, and should hold two lines, one facing each way. Twelve inches is a fair and liberal depth for two rows of octavos. The books are thus thrown into stalls, but stalls after the manner of a stable, or of an old-fas.h.i.+oned coffee-room; not after the manner of a bookstall, which, as times go, is no stall at all, but simply a flat s.p.a.ce made by putting some sc.r.a.ps of boarding together, and covering them with books.

This method of dividing the longitudinal s.p.a.ce by projections at right angles to it, if not very frequently used, has long been known. A great example of it is to be found in the n.o.ble library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and is the work of Sir Christopher Wren. He has kept these cases down to very moderate height, for he doubtless took into account that great heights require long ladders, and that the fetching and use of these greatly add to the time consumed in getting or in replacing a book. On the other hand, the upper s.p.a.ces of the walls are sacrificed, whereas in Dublin, All Souls, and many other libraries the bookcases ascend very high, and magnificent apartments walled with books may in this way be constructed. Access may be had to the upper portions by galleries; but we cannot have stairs all round the room, and even with one gallery of books a room should not be more than from sixteen to eighteen feet high if we are to act on the principle of bringing the largest possible number of volumes into the smallest possible s.p.a.ce. I am afraid it must be admitted that we cannot have a n.o.ble and imposing spectacle, in a vast apartment, without sacrificing economy and accessibility; and vice versa.

The projections should each have attached to them what I rudely term an endpiece (for want of a better name), that is, a shallow and extremely light adhering bookcase (light by reason of the shortness of the shelves), which both increases the accommodation, and makes one short side as well as the two long ones of the parallelopiped to present simply a face of books with the lines of shelf, like threads, running between the rows.

The wall-s.p.a.ces between the projections ought also to be turned to account for shallow bookcases, so far as they are not occupied by windows. If the width of the interval be two feet six, about sixteen inches of this may be given to shallow cases placed against the wall.

Economy of s.p.a.ce is in my view best attained by fixed shelves. This dictum I will now endeavor to make good. If the shelves are movable, each shelf imposes a dead weight on the structure of the bookcase, without doing anything to support it. Hence it must be built with wood of considerable ma.s.s, and the more considerable the ma.s.s of wood the greater are both the s.p.a.ce occupied and the ornament needed. When the shelf is fixed, it contributes as a fastening to hold the parts of the bookcase together; and a very long experience enables me to say that shelves of from half- to three-quarters of an inch worked fast into uprights of from three-quarters to a full inch will amply suffice for all sizes of books except large and heavy folios, which would probably require a small, and only a small, addition of thickness.

I have recommended that as a rule the shelves be fixed, and have given reasons for the adoption of such a rule. I do not know whether it will receive the sanction of authorities. And I make two admissions. First, it requires that each person owning and arranging a library should have a pretty accurate general knowledge of the sizes of his books. Secondly, it may be expedient to introduce here and there, by way of exception, a single movable shelf; and this, I believe, will be found to afford a margin sufficient to meet occasional imperfections in the computation of sizes. Subject to these remarks, I have considerable confidence in the recommendation I have made.

I will now exhibit to my reader the practical effect of such arrangement, in bringing great numbers of books within easy reach. Let each projection be three feet long, twelve inches deep (ample for two faces of octavos), and nine feet high, so that the upper shelf can be reached by the aid of a wooden stool of two steps not more than twenty inches high, and portable without the least effort in a single hand.

I will suppose the wall s.p.a.ce available to be eight feet, and the projections, three in number, with end pieces need only jut out three feet five, while narrow strips of bookcase will run up the wall between the projections. Under these conditions, the bookcases thus described will carry above 2,000 octavo volumes.

And a library forty feet long and twenty feet broad, amply lighted, having some portion of the centre fitted with very low bookcases suited to serve for some of the uses of tables, will receive on the floor from 18,000 to 20,000 volumes of all sizes, without losing the appearance of a room or a.s.suming that of a warehouse, and while leaving portions of s.p.a.ce available near the windows for purposes of study. If a gallery be added, there will be accommodation for a further number of five thousand, and the room need be no more than sixteen feet high. But a gallery is not suitable for works above the octavo size, on account of inconvenience in carriage to and fro.

It has been admitted that in order to secure the vital purpose of compression with fixed shelving, the rule of arrangement according to subjects must be traversed partially by division into sizes. This division, however, need not, as to the bulk of the library, be more than threefold. The main part would be for octavos. This is becoming more and more the cla.s.sical or normal size; so that nowadays the octavo edition is professionally called the library edition. Then there should be deeper cases for quarto and folio, and shallower for books below octavo, each appropriately divided into shelves.

If the economy of time by compression is great, so is the economy of cost. I think it reasonable to take the charge of provision for books in a gentleman's house, and in the ordinary manner, at a s.h.i.+lling a volume.

This may vary either way, but it moderately represents, I think, my own experience, in London residences, of the charge of fitting up with bookcases, which, if of any considerable size, are often unsuitable for removal. The cost of the method which I have adopted later in life, and have here endeavored to explain, need not exceed one penny per volume.

Each bookcase when filled represents, unless in exceptional cases, nearly a solid ma.s.s. The intervals are so small that, as a rule, they admit a very small portion of dust. If they are at a tolerable distance from the fireplace, if carpeting be avoided except as to small movable carpets easily removed for beating, and if sweeping be discreetly conducted, dust may, at any rate in the country, be made to approach to a quant.i.te negligeable.

It is a great matter, in addition to other advantages, to avoid the endless trouble and the miscarriages of movable shelves; the looseness, and the tightness, the weary arms, the aching fingers, and the broken fingernails. But it will be fairly asked what is to be done, when the shelves are fixed, with volumes too large to go into them? I admit that the dilemma, when it occurs, is formidable. I admit also that no book ought to be squeezed or even coaxed into its place: they should move easily both in and out. And I repeat here that the plan I have recommended requires a pretty exact knowledge by measurement of the sizes of books and the proportions in which the several sizes will demand accommodation. The shelf-s.p.a.cing must be reckoned beforehand, with a good deal of care and no little time. But I can say from experience that by moderate care and use this knowledge can be attained, and that the resulting difficulties, when measured against the aggregate of convenience, are really insignificant. It will be noticed that my remarks are on minute details, and that they savor more of serious handiwork in the placing of books than of lordly survey and direction.

But what man who really loves his books delegates to any other human being, as long as there is breath in his body, the office of inducting them into their homes?

And now as to results. It is something to say that in this way 10,000 volumes can be placed within a room of quite ordinary size, all visible, all within easy reach, and without destroying the character of the apartment as a room. But, on the strength of a case with which I am acquainted, I will even be a little more particular. I take as before a room of forty feet in length and twenty in breadth, thoroughly lighted by four windows on each side; as high as you please, but with only about nine feet of height taken for the bookcases: inasmuch as all heavy ladders, all adminicula requiring more than one hand to carry with care, are forsworn. And there is no gallery. In the manner I have described, there may be placed on the floor of such a room, without converting it from a room into a warehouse, bookcases capable of receiving, in round numbers, 20,000 volumes.

The state of the case, however, considered as a whole, and especially with reference to libraries exceeding say 20,000 or 30,000 volumes, and gathering rapid accretions, has been found to require in extreme cases, such as those of the British Museum and the Bodleian (on its limited site), a change more revolutionary in its departure from, almost reversal of, the ancient methods, than what has been here described.

The best description I can give of its essential aim, so far as I have seen the processes (which were tentative and initial), is this. The ma.s.ses represented by filled bookcases are set one in front of another; and, in order that access may be had as it is required, they are set upon trams inserted in the floor (which must be a strong one), and wheeled off and on as occasion requires.

The idea of the society of books is in a case of this kind abandoned.

But even on this there is something to say. Neither all men nor all books are equally sociable. For my part I find but little sociabilty in a huge wall of Hansards, or (though a great improvement) in the Gentleman's Magazine, in the Annual Registers, in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, or in the vast range of volumes which represent pamphlets innumerable. Yet each of these and other like items variously present to us the admissible, or the valuable, or the indispensable.

Clearly these ma.s.ses, and such as these, ought to be selected first for what I will not scruple to call interment. It is a burial; one, however, to which the process of cremation will never of set purpose be applied.

The word I have used is dreadful, but also dreadful is the thing.

To have our dear old friends stowed away in catacombs, or like the wine-bottles in bins: the simile is surely lawful until the use of that commodity shall have been prohibited by the growing movement of the time. But however we may gild the case by a cheering ill.u.s.tration, or by the remembrance that the provision is one called for only by our excess of wealth, it can hardly be contemplated without a shudder at a process so repulsive applied to the best beloved among inanimate objects.

It may be thought that the gloomy perspective I am now opening exists for great public libraries alone. But public libraries are multiplying fast, and private libraries are aspiring to the public dimensions. It may be hoped that for a long time to come no grave difficulties will arise in regard to private libraries, meant for the ordinary use of that great majority of readers who read only for recreation or for general improvement. But when study, research, authors.h.i.+p, come into view, when the history of thought and of inquiry in each of its branches, or in any considerable number of them, has to be presented, the necessities of the case are terribly widened. Chess is a specialty and a narrow one. But I recollect a statement in the Quarterly Review, years back, that there might be formed a library of twelve hundred volumes upon chess. I think my deceased friend, Mr. Alfred Denison, collected between two and three thousand upon angling. Of living Englishmen perhaps Lord Acton is the most effective and retentive reader; and for his own purposes he has gathered a library of not less, I believe, than 100,000 volumes.

Undoubtedly the idea of book-cemeteries such as I have supposed is very formidable. It should be kept within the limits of the dire necessity which has evoked it from the underworld into the haunts of living men.

But it will have to be faced, and faced perhaps oftener than might be supposed. And the artist needed for the constructions it requires will not be so much a librarian as a warehouseman.

But if we are to have cemeteries, they ought to receive as many bodies as possible. The condemned will live ordinarily in pitch darkness, yet so that when wanted, they may be called into the light. Asking myself how this can most effectively be done, I have arrived at the conclusion that nearly two-thirds, or say three-fifths, of the whole cubic contents of a properly constructed apartment[12] may be made a nearly solid ma.s.s of books: a vast economy which, so far as it is applied, would probably quadruple or quintuple the efficiency of our repositories as to contents, and prevent the population of Great Britain from being extruded some centuries hence into the surrounding waters by the exorbitant dimensions of their own libraries.

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