The London Library

BOOK REVIEWS 252-page journey altogether rewarding; indeed, I'm not sure if or where the journey arrived. Wendell Harris Pennsylvania State University The London Library John Wells. Rude Words. A Discursive History of the London Library. London: Macmillan, 1991. 240 pp. £17.50 LAST YEAR, the New York Times Book Review (30 June 1991) featured the London Library as the "most English Library in all of England" and as one of the few outstanding libraries in the world. The Library has indeed played a unique role in the history of English literature from the onset of the Victorian era to the present day and, in celebration of its 150th year, well deserves an anniversary history. Since the slim volume on The London Library (LL) edited by Miron Grindea in 1977, which recorded reminiscences of the LL and its habitués by many leading personalities (Lord David Cecil, Angus Wilson, etc.) and such "guardians at the gates of learning" in the LL as Sir Charles Hagberg Wright, Oliver Stallybrass, and Douglas Matthews, there has been no complete history of this unique institution. And so to celebrate the century and a half of its existence, the administration of the LL authorized the author-playwright -journalist John Wells to chronicle the life and times of the Library. The result is a fascinating story of the LL and the literary personalities and eccentrics associated with it. The LL was founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle, with the help of the lawyer, William Christie, largely because of Carlyle's ire at being denied special privileges in the Reading Room of the British Museum by its Keeper of Printed Books, Anthony Panizzi. From the beginning the LL drew its support from such "Serious Readers" as John Stuart Mill and many "frivolous aristocrats," but "the single most influential group in the foundation of the London Library" was the Cambridge alumni Christie, Monckton Milnes, F. D. Maurice, Lord Tennyson, and Erasmus Darwin. The task which Carlyle, Christie, and their friends assumed was to secure financial support, premises, books, and a librarian for their creation. The first home of the LL was in the heart of London's clubland, at 49 Pall Mall, where it was presided over by its first Librarian, a 59-year-old failed publisher and bookseller, J. G. Cochrane. He was Carlyle's personal choice and proved to be an indolent incompetent who produced a 513 ELT : VOLUME 35:4 1992 catalogue for the first 13,000 volumes acquired by 1842 which was "no better than a bookseller's list." As for Carlyle, ever the non-conformist, he refused to abide by the LL rules which he had helped formulate and was outraged when asked to return books borrowed on time. Jane Carlyle was even worse than her husband. It was a great inconvenience to her when the Library moved (with 20,000 books) in late 1845 to St. James's Square which, John Wells notes, was "socially, a retreat into .. . the austere heartland of entrenched aristocratic privilege." By this time, the LL had employed as Cochrane's assistant James Edward Jones, its first long serving employee and "one of the most intriguing and mysterious figures in the whole history of the library." A great favorite of the Carlyles, Jones aspired to succeed his idle chief when Cochrane died in 1852. But it was never to be for the unfortunate Jones. Carlyle was furious when the most eminent member of the Library's managing committee, William Gladstone, sought to install one of his Italian emigré friends, Giacomo Lacaita, as Librarian. In a relentless campaign against Gladstone, Carlyle succeeded in denying the post to the "miniature Panizzi" and secured it for the literary poseur and "belle-lettriste," William Bodham Donne. He inherited a mess from Cochrane and did very little to improve the LL largely because he used his position to indulge and promote his interest in the theatre. The Library benefitted when he departed in 1857, with its catalogue of 80,000 books still incomplete. Again the hardworking Jones was passed over as the position was accorded to Robert Harrison, a bankrupt brewer who had some experience administering the Leeds Library. Donne also left...