VAGRANT READINGS

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 June 1933, Page 12

VAGRANT READINGS

BOOKS IN THE ATTIC.

■ Nearly seventy years ago the first never-to-be-forgotten library was stumbled on—a find as unexpected as it. was delightful. In the distant house in the Australian bush that in the sixties had essayed to model itself on the home in rhe Old Country, but which through lack of funds failed in this design, the whole upper storey was left, as attic. Here were stored the yet unsorted treasures that were not pioneer necessities. Those that at once, caught, and' held prying young eyes were pictures, curios, stringed musical instruments, and books, together with the cases from which they had been hurriedly and not wholly unpacked, and heaped in the middle ot the great loft. This was probably because, although the roof of then shelter was watertight, the walls were as vet unlined (writes A. D. Bright, in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). ; Remembering those volumes 1 , _it seems that a very noble collection indeed was dumped' in the big unfurnished house beside the sea. Here were Latin and Greek, French, German, and English classics in piles that might have overcrowded a secondhand bookshop in the Charing Cross Road. If sold before the embarkation, these would have added’ materially to the capital this pioneer family needed, for .the working of acres which in the end were never to be actually farmed. . Here as a small child the vagrant read to a young heart’s content. Scott’s novels were here in that fine big edition that readers of the period will remember: Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, and Yytton in newest bindings; Shakespeare, with Goethe beside him, in splendid’ but more dilapidated dress. Magazines were everywhere; those of then current date were newly cut; more numerous were the older periodicals. some of these in the lettering affected in the days of Steele. Everything human is fashioned on more than one model. The booklover is no exception to the rule, and in the form of the future highbrow he conscientiously reads from cover to cover and learns and inwardly digests. But the vagrant bookworm, the drone as it were, dips into delights and browses at will. Beside these heaps, perched on a milking stool carried from the bails beside the sliprails in the clearing, one youthful drone reprehensibly but most contentedly tasted to the full the delights that make for the vagrant, as for the highbrow, the booklover’s paradise. The place was dusty, it was cramped, it was sunless —not airless exactly; that was impossible in the unfinished state ot the building—but it was stuffy to a degree. But it was peopled by a world, and it brought within ken that world the booklover delights in, find that only he is ever to know.

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. The attic of the sixties holds pride of place in memory, but its experiences are not. more precious than those that, centre in the British Museum reading-room. Not. only vagrancy, but the budding and mellowed genius of half Europe gathers to read in this great .court, sharing the ministrations of bemedalled porters (the doorkeeper here wears the V.C.) and velvet-footed attendants. One bearded reader, not long .freed from duties in a Government department, was known then almost as furiously—the term is used advisedly—by his activities with the London County Council as by his pleasant and unpleasant plays. Miller, the philologist, filled a neighbouring chair, and the vagrant, still thrills to the memory of recognising at. a table a. yard away the author of The Laodicean, only that morning purchased at a bookshop in the Strand. Priceless volumes at the call of lettered and unlettered alike, and celebrities read of with no thought of ever seeing them, share between them the glamour and memory of those halcyon days. In this the human —is it wonderful? —stands out more clearly than the tome. Most of the- brilliant lights of literature and journalism of Britain and’ perhaps of Europe visited or frequented the big silent, domed hall. At one time- or another Frederick Harrison, the future Lord Ernie, one overrated dramatic ciitic of the day, young Harmsworth not yet arrived at greatness, and Cbestertcn, slimmer than he is thirty odd years later, but wearing his own disarming smile; Ibsen, Zola, and Henry James were recognised in this library by eyes that had -watched’ the sunset from the cowbails in the clearing. They were not sophisticated eyes, so it is possible that scores of lesser or greater folk passed unrecognised, as were also numbers of “ghosts” doing spade work, i.e., the technical details and everyday research, for the literary and scientific giants.

Between the sixties and this year of grace came readings in the Bodleian and Ryder collections on one side of the sea, in the early Australian and New Zealand libraries on the other. In the Sydney library in Macquariestreet of fifty years ago, highbrow and vagrant could find equal content. It was one of the pleasantest reading places in the southern -world —the pride of citizens and a joy to tired passers-by. Its atmosphere was never stiff ling; for, in comparison with its present state, the room in its youth was well ventilated. It housed a very fine collection indeed, and seating was comtortable, although every class of reader found the way through its hospitable doors. The Melbourne Public Library, then, did not offer like attractions for vagrant tastes, and neither the Parliamentary library in Wellington (N.Z.) nor the fine building and collections of the then now Auckland Library, could better please any but readers on special subjects. Casual readings, too. in Hobart, and Adelaide, in Cape Town and Halifax. N.S., brought (hoi: own thrills.

| IN NEW ZEALAND. It is in New Zealand, however, that the- aging reader would choose to loiter in this twentieth century. Throughout the Dominion are maintained branches of the municipal library in every city suburb—'fine selections of volumes, in most cases, adequately housed. Country libraries in l oth island's are set about twelve miles apart, and these maintain wellappointed reference rooms where, in seme cases, unlooked for rarities are found. In Hamilton (16,000 inhabitants) translations of the latest Italian amt Spanish plays were read in 1930, although they are not yet in evidence in larger libraries in New South Wales.' One of the surprises in a reader's life came to the vagrant at Fairlie. a halting-place on the way to Moiyit Cook. In mid-war years this small settlement maintained a. resident, librarian in a tasteful little building with a reading-room, where, together with the current English and I

American magazines, the Paris Figaro and the Revue de deux Mondes were tabled. Another wayback library that brought amazement was found in 1917 at Cross Creek—-not a settlement at all, but a railwaymen’s camp on the Wairarapa. Here, a collection to grace any library contained not only quite modern scientific books, and magazines, but such unusual fiction as the whole of de Balsac and most of the translations of d’Anuncio and Materlinck, all well and darkly thumbed.

It> took a month of strenuous exploring to discover quite recently, that a very fine collection of reading mattei- is maintained in the Sydney Municipal Lending Library, behind the markets, where any searcher for literature may be rewarded, if alone, and as unhampered for time as the child was when free to steal off from a busy household and be lost. Attendant disabilities are here, too; it needs more initiative than was necessary nearly seventy years ago in the purloining of the milking stool, to become possessed of any seating accommodation whatever. But before peak hours it is sometimes possible to take possession of a miniature stepladder, and, perched on. this, forgetful of lack of air and elbow-room, the 'vagrant still browses at will over the old delights. Here is a travel book, here a play, even a Henry James novel; here a life and —most welcome of all —the well remembered letters—Cicero’s, Madame Sevigny’s. Walpole’, Carlyle’s, Page’s or Gertrude Bell’s. Down in the newspaper room are tables and chairs, but it is here, perched precariously among the orderless bookshelves, that the vagrant is io bo envied. For hero is open again the world of the booklover’s fancy, where every fingered volume presages delight. Hero time again gallops withal. For 1 here, before this insatiable reader, lies for the taking, a book—a thrill—and then, though this, perhaps, is only transitory—certain and unalloyed content.

“THE TRAVELLERS’ , GUIDE.” Trains leave Greymouth:— For Christchurch—7.4o a.m., Mondays; 10.18 a.m. Tuesday, Thursday, [ Saturday. For Reefton—7.B a.m., 3.40 p.m. For Hokitika—7.3s a.m., 4.45 p.m. daily, 12.50, 9.15 p.m. Saturdays. For Otira—7.4o a.m., 4.30 p.m. daily, 8.33 p.m. Saturdays. For Dunollie—6.3s, 8.30 a.m., 4.50 p.m. daily, 12 noon Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12.10 p.m. Wednesday, 7.28 a.m., 3 p.m. M.T.W.T. F., 6.10, 9 p.m. Saturday. Trains arrive Greymouth: — From Christchurch—s.4l p.m. Mondays, 4.28 p.m. Tues., Thurs., Saturdays. From Reefton—ll.2s a.m.,- 6.24 p.m. From Hokitika —10.5 a.m. daily, 6.9 p.m. Tues., Thurs., 6.14 p.m. Monj, Wed., Fri., 2.24, 7, 10.45 p.m. Saturdays. From Otira—9.s2 a.m., 5.41 p.m. From Dunollie —8.20, 10 a.m. daily, 1.35. 5.26 p.m. M.T.W.T.F., 1.10, 2.25, 7.53, 10.50 p.m. Sat.