BOOKS CHEEK-BY-JOWL
On Libraries and Book Handling
A WONDERFUL LIBRARY
Having just yesterday had a tour of the wonderful research library of the Warburg Institute, our minds have been running strongly on books. We had gone to view the small Tarot exhibition, Origins and Afterlives there, and were fortunate to be shown around the library after this. The Warburg’s collection is largely based on the study of cultural history of the Western world, with a particularly emphasis on medieval works, and so its library is the kind of place folk like myself and John might well run amok with glee. John actually disappeared into the stacks, asking to be left there for several weeks. He was particularly pleased to see that our book on King Arthur, published by the Folio Society (now in print again as the Complete King Arthur) appeared on the shelves here, donated by the House of Windsor!
Many rare books live here, in many different languages, with 15th century volumes side by side with modern ones on the open shelves, in many European languages, and it seems a very good place for a scholar to sit and read around their chosen topic with ease. It is also a place where you might also find many related but different topics that lead you into new vistas of your research that you didn’t expect because of its unique classification system. This really delighted my heart and was wonderfully familiar to me, because I shelve my own books – not by Dewey classification – but by topics that I associate together; for example, I have a long shelf that goes from books on Sovereignty, through heraldry and pageantry through to Celtic folk customs about the year, ancient oracles and faery traditions.
It is much the same at the Warburg. The floors are labelled Image, Word, Orientation and Action – where you can read on, respectively, Art and iconography; Literature and Emblems; Magical Beliefs to Philosophy and Religion; and the Survival of Ancient Patterns and Society and Political Life. Many great authors and thinkers donated their libraries to the Warburg, including that of the great magical scholar, Frances Yates. In just one of the few sections I looked within, books on divination were sitting beside books on the Mythology of Mount Etna, geographic explorations of folklore, and I was utterly beguiled by the transcription of prayers and invocations to the Babylonian gods to move their hearts towards you. You would never get out of here without doing a book search in the same manner many of us end up ‘lost on the internet’ – following a topic into the labyrinthine depths of the library until you were utterly astray of your original research mission.
Of all the libraries I have worked and studied in – including the original British Museum reading room, the Taylorian, and the Bodleian – the Warburg has some of the most exciting cheek-by-jowl books I’ve ever seen. Of course, other parts of it were very familiar to us both since our own house is library also. Here books make up most of the house, with ordinary furniture and suchlike taking second place to shelves and books. My studio alone is 8 x 12 feet, but it is shelved along one wall, with more shelves over my desk.
Shelves are also opportunities for iconostases! as you can see, as well as keeping images and books together! Alas, my books have not always had respectful treatment.
ON HANDLING BOOKS
My parent’s house was not a place of books, and so I grew up with very few indeed. I had to conclude that they had thrown away the only book I ever possessed on dinosaurs, which distressed me greatly, as I never found it again. I really only an Alice in Wonderland, a Winnie the Pooh, and girl’s annual given me by an aunt. Books were not very important to my parents, and it wasn’t until I got to school that books became accessible to me. But it wasn’t all delightful.
When I was at school, I once went into choir to find that my hymnbook had had a banana skin inserted into it, like a bookmark. Banana skin stains are indelible, I have to remind you. Another time, it was a marmite sandwich, which is equally and distressingly damaging to pages. The same hymnbook later acquired a kipper which finally rendered it completely unusable, due to the odour! The culprit was the girl I shared a desk with. Georgina’s practical jokes caused all kinds of angst when I was young, not the least helped by the fact that our two handwriting styles were remarkable similar, so I was always getting into hot water due to Georgina’s awful notes in which she persisted in implicating me in terrible trouble by sheer low cunning and gleeful contrivance. I was given several demerits during our time of desk-sharing, which took house marks off my school-house’s score, due to her antics. My teachers finally worked out what was happening, but that took many months of pleading innocent, and striving to hide the state of the hymnbook. It set up in me a deep detestation for book vandalism.
Gentle and careful book-handling is the law in my house. There are no open books left face-down. Indeed, any open book is usually facing upright or on its own stand. Almost no book looks read in our house, although it will have been read many times. We no longer allow book-loans of any kind, not since a friend’s wife borrowed one of my favourite hardback novels and dropped it in the bath. It took me years to replace it with a similar pristine copy. There are some books so important that no marginalia is allowed, and any notes will be written on inserted sheets of paper. But I also have hard-working books that are marked in pencil for future reference, along with suitable annotations.
Having worked in a public library for a few years after drama school, I have seen many awful examples of how not to handle a book. But this proves not to have been a problem confined to this age. If we go back into the era of the hand-written and hand-bound book, it is much the same. Listen to medieval bibliophile Richard de Bury, the Bishop of Durham, who inveighs against poor book handling in his Philobiblon of 1345:
‘And in the first place as to the opening and closing of books let there be due moderation, that they be not unclasped in precipitate haste, nor when we have finished our inspection be put away without being duly closed. For it behoves us to guard a book much more carefully than a boot. But the race of scholars is commonly badly brought up, and unless they are bridled-in by the rules of their elders, they indulge in infinite puerilities …
You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over his studies, and when the winter frost is sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of wiping it with his pocket handkerchief until he has bedewed the book before him with the ugly moisture… He does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or carelessly to carry a cup to and from his mouth…
The handling of books is especially to be forbidden to those shameless youths, who are soon as they have learned to form the shapes of letters, straightway, if they have the opportunity become unhappy commentators, and whatever they find an extra margin about the text, furnish it with monstrous alphabets, and if any other frivolity strikes their fancy, at once their pen begins to write it.’
The afterlife of books can be extended if they are carefully used indeed, and in our own house, John and I still bring home a pre-owned book with all the care of the shepherd bringing home the sheep, like this statue in the foyer of the Warburg.
From The Warberg Institutes’ foyer
Tarot: Origins and Afterlives is a free exhibition on until 30th April 2025, at Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB from 10am-6pm daily, but you have to book ahead for a time-slot. Note: The exhibition will be closed Thursday 17 April - Tuesday 22 April 2025 inclusive.
https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/tarot-origins-and-afterlives-2025
If you would like to see another, equally wonderful, tarot exhibition, while you are in the vicinity, please make your way over to Atlantis Books, 49A Museum St, WC1A 1LY, from 1 March 2025. This is also free. John and myself have lent items for this exhibition which contains some real treasures by people who live and work by tarot. We saw some of the exhibition being mounted yesterday and you will certainly enjoy its delights!