Eastern Librarians' Conference

By JAMES L. CLIFFORD Reading and the College Library F COLLEGE LIBRARIANS sometimes ap lifetime obsession. Even when her eye I pear harassed and perplexed, the re sight finally failed, she kept up with the cent rapid rise in enrollments is only one best literature through talking ;records for cause of worry. Equally important, the blind. Scornful of the soap operas though perhaps less publicized; is the and melodramas which made up the fact that within the last half century usual daytime radio programs, she de there has occurred a rna jor shift in our manded, even in her eighties, solid intel reading habits, and, as a result, libraries lectual stimulus, and kept the mailman are now called upon to provide services busy bringing large packages of books. which used to be found elsewhere. In her last year, when almost eighty Let me illustrate by some personal five, she insisted on listening to a new recollections. As I grew up, the center version of one of the old Greek classics, of my education was in the home. My and passing on its story to her grand parents, for whom this beautiful library children. is named, 1 were avid readers. Indeed, no Father, too, was a buyer of books, with two people ever loved books more. What a wide variety of interests--chiefly sci stands out clearest in all my childhood ence, theology, and politics. His collec memories is books--walls lined with tion of books on astronomy was out books--books on the tables-books standing. He tried to keep up on every stored in boxes and cases in the attic. subject, and was always complaining And they were not on the shelves merely about lack of time to range as far as he for decoration; they were being read. would have liked. Mother was an enthusiastic reader of To be sure, neither Mother nor Father history, biography, and poetry. From the was a collector in the strict sense of the time that she left Wellesley College after word. They had no interest whatsoever only one year, she started the practice in first editions or rare volumes. Thev of buying large quantities of books. did not delight in beautiful bindings or Heavy packages would regularly arrive in de luxe publications. They had no from a well-known Boston bookseller, bibliographical tastes, and little schol filled with sets of the classics and the arly discrimination in the choice of texts. historians--collected works of the major Father's attitude was that the more figures of literature. More and more books he could buy for the money he bookcases had to be purchased, and soon had to spend the better. It was what was they lined every available wall in the inside the books that counted. large middle-western family home. Nor were my parents the kind of pos For her the love of books remained a sessive book lovers who insist on reading 1 This article is part of an address given at the only what they have in their own col dedication of the Clifford M emorial Library of E vans ville College, Evansville, Indiana, on March 19, 1957. lections.· There were constant visits to the library-not a short trip by horse Dr. Clifford is professor of English, and carriage in those days-and the Columbia University, and the author of stacks of borrowed books on the living the recently published Young Sam John room table were continually changing. son. But basically it was the mass of books SEPTEMBER 1957 369 permanently on our own shelves which was pitched higher than their immediate made up the core of our family life. comprehension. It was mental stretching Both Father and Mother read aloud to which was important. If the main themes us children from the time we could un went over our heads, and if we played derstand, and there was never any con with tin soldiers while the reading was descending to childish tastes. Father going on, they thought that the char was a slow reader, who grappled with acters from the novels would make some every word, and Mother one of the most impression, and the sound of the words, rapid I have ever known. When reading those long Victorian cadences, would be merely for her own pleasure she would come part of our imaginative thinking. dash through a volume with amazing I like to think that my parents' theory speed. When reading out loud she would was correct- that my brother and I did push ahead for hours, never apparently get something real and lasting from tired or bored. Between the two, my those long hours of exposure to the clas brother and I were exposed to a never sics. That it fostered a love of reading is ending succession of classics-novels, bi undeniable. As I grew older, I developed ography, history-all of Scott, Dickens, the habit of browsing among those books Thackeray, together with lesser writers that had been read to me years before. whom not many people today would I can't say that I actually read them all even remember. On our shelves, I recol again, but I kept going back to favorite lect, there was a twenty-six volume set of passages and to beloved characters such the complete works of Bulwer-Lytton, as Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness which Father methodically read to us in Dickens; Old Curiosity Shop, Mark from beginning to end. To this day I Tapley in Martin Chuzz lewit, and Cap have a sentimental and nostalgic feeling tain Cuttle in Dombey and Son. I doubt about that minor Victorian novelist, not if I ever went all through that four-foot for the well-known Last Days of Pom set of Bulwer-Lyttori, but even there I peii, which everybody read, but for other devoured some of the novels over and long-forgotten novels like Wha·t Will over. Then there were favorite scenes He Do With It? and Paul Clifford. from the past to be found in the many On Sunday afternoons there were volumes on American history-exciting more serious works. Mother took us adventures of explorers, or accounts of through the long histories by Parkman scientific discovery. The books were fac and Prescott, and the whole of Motley's ing me every day as I passed through Rise of the Dutch Republic. Father in the rooms and halls. It was easy to stop· troduced us to some of the eighteenth and pull out a volume, drop into an century classics: selected passages from easy chair, and thumb through the the letters of Lord Chesterfield, to teach pages. Along with the old favorites there us good manners (and I have heartily were others which I had never heard of. disliked Chesterfield ever since), and The walls of books were an ever-present Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The lure to further delights. So it was that I only time, I remember, that we success ranged about merely as the whim of the fully rebelled w.:ts over Bishop .T oseph moment directed. Butler's Analogy of Religion, Natural It was in this way, you may remember,. and Revealed, to the Constitution and that Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth Course of Nature, which even Father century acquired most of the wide at last found too heavy going. knowledge which fitted him to produce It was my parents' theory that chil the first great dictionary of the English d~en would benefit from hearing serious language. Since his father was a country books read aloud, even though the level bookseller, the boy had access to thou- 370 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ......\ sands of volumes as they passed through bination library and rumpus room or the shop. These he was able to sample, combination television and book room to dip into as he wished, to savor with with a few shelves for magazines and the happy excitement. He always felt that most recent selections of the Book-of he had acquired more of value from the-Month Club. But modern methods such casual dipping than by any later of construction, which now can employ imposed assignments. A boy's own dis wider windows and less wall space, leave coveries, he said, make more impression little room for book shelves. I wonder than any forced · discipline. And I am how many people have thought about sure that he was right. the effect of the increase of light in mod But you will be eager to reply that ern houses-with broad picture-windows the kind of large family library which or rows of dormers-on the reading hab I have been describing scarcely exists to its of our children. With constantly day. I will at once agree, and I am afraid shrinking wall space there are fewer that there are incontrovertible reasons places for books. why it will never come back. No matter Modern taste in interior decoration how much we may deplore its passing, is also partly responsible. Today we dis there are practical reasons that stand in like clutter. Our aesthetic approach is the way of many parents' achieving the becoming more severe, and we prefer sort of bookish surroundings which my plain walls and the opposition of masses father and mother provided for their of color. Dog-eared volumes or the varie boys. Yet this is no reflection on the in gated patterns produced by differing telligence or tastes of the present gener jacket designs tend to spoil the modern ation. It is simply that conditions have decorator's schemes.

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