MY LIBRARY Owen Dudley Edwards’s father said he owed his career to a librarian and the former Edinburgh University history lecturer gets his point OWEN DUDLEY EDWARDS love A HYMN OF A familiar voice on the PA system at closing time leads Owen Dudley Edwards, who marks this year as his 50th as a National Library of Scotland reader, on a walk along the shelves of memory, featuring past librarians. Each exudes patience, inspires academics, talks in eloquent tones – or excludes undergraduates SUMMER 2019 | DISCOVER | 11 MY LIBRARY t is 6.40pm on Monday to Thursday, of authoritative Irish historiography or else 4.40pm on Friday or established in the academic journal Irish Saturday, and a voice is telling us to Historical Studies. Father was giving a draw our work to a conclusion. In 10 striking proof of what academics should minutes’ time it will tell us to finish know to be a truism, that behind every Iall work and hand in any of the property scholarly enterprise is one or more of the National Library of Scotland which librarians without whom it would have we may be using. been written on water. The Library is my home away from Richard Ellmann, master-biographer home, my best beloved public workplace of Joyce and Wilde, and David Krause, since I retired from lecturing in history at critic and editor of Sean O’Casey and his the University of Edinburgh 14 years ago, Letters, told me of their own debts to but cherished by me for a half-century. the National Library of Ireland. And it is Yet I meet this particular closing time perpetually happening in the National with an affectionate smile. Library of Scotland. It’s not that I’m glad to be interrupted: Look at that massive, authoritative and I always need about two hours more for ubiquitous pursuer of the texts of Walter whatever I may be doing. But the voice Scott’s novels, the Edinburgh Edition, a stamped, self-addressed envelope. is the recorded voice of musician Dougie scrutinise its apparatus criticus and Thank God he didn’t: if it had been Mathieson, now retired from the Library, realise the innumerable ways in which our returned he would almost certainly have yet to so many of its readers the spirit of librarians rescued its individual editors. destroyed it – well, how would you like it if its humanity, who taught us all so much the world saw your first short story? about the best way to work the Library There is a paradise of ghosts, some and to understand the Scottish culture it The Library is personally remembered, some not. houses. And as I look up, I seem to see his my home away Having been enriched by the National half-smile in which kindness, knowledge, Library’s material on Burke and Hare, and irony are so happily blended. from home, my I enjoy insisting that the old ‘Libberton A week before my father, Professor Lock-Up’ where Burke was hanged in Robert Dudley Edwards, died, we said best beloved public January 1829 donated the space of its goodbye in our native Dublin. He may former existence to our Library building have suspected it really was goodbye, workplace since a century later, and if ever an unwary because he told me almost as a final I retired from reader is locked in for the night, he may be blessing that he would not have become able to tell us if the murderer for medical a historian if his father had not given him lecturing in history science is among those present. HG Wells’s The Outline of History when There is Denis Roberts, Librarian he was 10, and would not have become a at the University here after Trinity College Dublin and his professional historian if it had not been of Edinburgh native Belfast before that. His “we can’t for a librarian in the British Museum. break a rule, but we can bend one” as An attendant in the Reading Room 14 years ago. he arranged for a Library custodian to walked up to his desk in 1930 and said it bring a rare volume for my colleagues had been noted that Father was ordering Look at the discoveries, acquisitions, Paul Addison, Tony Aldgate and me to many titles on Tudor Ireland, and so “our gifts, awards and competitions with star in our Edinburgh University History Mr Wilson would like to speak with you”. which the National Library has played so Department film The Spanish Civil War; And so Father went into the hallowed grand a part in the declaration of Robert and Denis 17 years later, in 1990, on mysteries where he was welcomed by Louis Stevenson’s place among the crutches, dying, but still coming in to an elderly scholar, Philip Wilson, whose foremost writers of the world’s history. work with a cheerful grin. work he knew but whose survival he Look at the John Murray Archive telling us There is Donald Dewar, First Minister of had not realised, and who now opened how so many Scottish writers from Byron Scotland, reopening the National Library an Aladdin’s cave, including proofs of onward, adrift in a sometimes cordial of Scotland on 8 October 1999 (after we forgery of works up to now taken as sometimes treacherous London, found had finished our exile in the Map Library authentic, deposits of manuscripts as their (usually reliable) protector. on Causewayside), destined to die a year yet unreported, and unknown means of Look at the manuscript of the late and three days later. We were old sweats access to archives still jealously guarded Sherlock Holmes story The Illustrious on the student debating circuit and saw by governmental authorities. Client, crowning our Conan Doyle each other now and again, enemies in He was telling me that to a librarian holdings whose earliest in time the Scottish politics, friends in English. he owed his University of London PhD, unreturned first surviving short story He was eloquent in the National Library his first published monograph Church The Haunted Grange at Goresthorpe was above all, speaking as a bookman more and State in Tudor Ireland, his chair in found in the Blackwood collection when than a politician, one whose reviewing Modern Irish History at University College given to the National Library because the for the Herald won much regard, and Dublin, and his place as co-founder inexperienced author had failed to include who now spoke with deep affection for 12 | DISCOVER | SUMMER 2019 the National Library but said firmly that he could not call it his library since that Undergraduates reading this should not was the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, but be discouraged from entering the National that he hoped the National Library would become the library of his children. He Library today, it welcomes all. But they should grinned warmly enough when I told him on the way out that it had been a great know that quietness at the Reading Rooms speech but that the National Library still needed much more money. remains sacrosanct. There is Alison Harvey Wood whose I remember a scholar arriving for the hence for a time undergraduates were beautiful, if carrying voice, gave a funeral of the Library’s Max Begg, saying excluded: even Dougie’s seemingly endless polished mastery to her introduction to he could hardly realise Margaret was the patience had reached the end of its tether. the bibliography of Edinburgh’s master schoolgirl starting work in the Library We worked out a compromise by which historian of the Renaissance, the brilliant whom he remembered. Max had been an undergraduates were permitted to consult and beloved Denys Hay in the Map Assistant Keeper who left the Library his books not in the University Library on and Science Library on his retirement, rich collections of books and manuscripts the basis of which the National Library followed by a full essay in Renaissance on Caithness as well as his vast range of admitted them: having had to work their Studies in 1998: it was a beautiful symbol pirated editions of Kipling: I had brought a passage, they then valued the silence to of university and library partnership at university external examiner who wanted which it admitted them. When they had its most inspiring. to see him, but he was mysteriously progressed so far, they too realised what There is Margaret Deas, whose absent and no answer came from his door mines of information the librarians could eloquent Scottish tones were moderately a few doors down. We had to turn away open for them, guiding them through the if authoritatively orchestrated in her disappointed, and later discovered he had demands of past and present. benevolent and deeply resourceful rule been dead inside the flat for two days. Undergraduates reading this should of the Reading Room, though I sometimes Inevitably some edginess existed not be discouraged from entering the seem to hear her supreme commination between university and Library. At one National Library today, it welcomes all. calling down the fires on the head of the stage students would freeze staff and But they should know that quietness at miscreant who put his shod feet on a table. readers by the volume of their voices, and the Reading Rooms remains sacrosanct. Owen, right, is reunited with one of the voices of the Library, Dougie Mathieson SUMMER 2019 | DISCOVER | 13 CURATOR’S CHOICE SOARING ABOVE THE OTHER STARS though the most minute particle of the comets tale – yet I rise & fall with it, & my interest in your soaring above the other stars – & continuing to create wonder even in your aberrations is past calculation John Murray to Lord Byron, 16 July 1819 hese words were written by famously describe him as “mad, bad and publisher John Murray to his most dangerous to know”.