We were once haunted by a shabby-genteel man; he was bodily present to our senses all
day, and he was in our mind’s eye all night. The man of whom Sir Walter Scott speaks in
his Demonology, did not suffer half the persecution from his imaginary gentleman-usher in
black velvet, that we sustained from our friend in quondam black cloth. He first attracted our
notice by sitting opposite to us in the reading-room at the British Museum, and what made
the man more remarkable was, that he had always got before him a couple of shabby-genteel
vol. i, pp. 152-5.
4
The Reading Room in Literature
eBLJ 2019, Article 5
books – two old dogs’-eared folios, in mouldy worm-eaten covers, which had once been
smart. He was in his chair every morning just as the clock struck ten; he was always the last
to leave the room in the afternoon, and when he did, he quitted it with the air of a man who
knew not where else to go for warmth and quiet. There he used to sit all day, as close to the
table as possible in order to conceal the lack of buttons on his coat, with his old hat carefully
deposited at his feet, where he evidently flattered himself it escaped observation.
About two o’clock you would see him munching a French roll or a penny loaf; not
taking it boldly out of his pocket at once, like a man who knew he was only making a
lunch, but breaking off little bits in his pocket, and eating them by stealth. He knew too
well it was his dinner.
6
Dickens was very appreciative of the Reading Room, whatever its defects of ventilation (a
problem which also affected the rooms at the north end of the King’s Library which were used
from 1833 to 1857). But another famous writer, Thomas Carlyle, was very critical of the room
and of the readers. This is part of his evidence to the Royal Commission on the British Museum
which sat from 1847 to 1849.
There are several persons in a state of imbecility who come to read in the British Museum.
I have been informed that there are several in that state who are sent there by their friends to
pass away their time. I remember there was one gentleman who used to blow his nose very
loudly every half hour. I inquired who he was, and I was informed that he was a mad person
sent there by his friends; he made extracts out of books, and puddled away his time there.
A great number of readers come to read novels; a great number come for idle purposes, –
probably a considerable proportion of the readers. And, on the whole, a vast majority come
to the reading-room chiefly to compile and excerpt; to carry away something which they may
put into articles for encyclopaedias or periodicals, biographical dictionaries, or some such
compilation. I do not suppose it to be very urgent that much more accommodation should be
afforded to all those various classes of people.
7
Carlyle was of course notoriously irascible, and never forgave Antonio Panizzi, who became
Keeper of Printed Books in 1837, for refusing to allow him the use of a private room in which
to study. Indeed he was so irritated by the failure of the British Museum to grant him the special
facilities which he demanded, that he founded the London Library in order that he might not
have to rely to any extent upon the British Museum. Even so, he could not entirely do without
its resources, and so he employed an amanuensis to devil for him there. The following extract
is from the memoirs of his friend, the journalist Francis Espinasse, who was for two or three
years in the 1840s on the staff of the Department of Printed Books.
For ordinary copying work at the British Museum and elsewhere Carlyle then employed an
amanuensis, a forlorn-looking young Scotchman, whom he called a ‘much-enduring man’,
and whom, I observed, he treated with considerable delicacy. For something more than mere
copying, however, he had himself often to visit the old reading-room of the Museum, the
overcrowding, bad ventilation, and general stuffiness of which had given rise to a malady
which Carlyle called ‘the Museum headache’, and had encouraged the propagation of a
maleficent organism known to others as ‘the Museum flea.’ To these inconveniences was
added a confused and almost chaotic catalogue (since superseded by one far superior to it),
full of perplexing cross-references and of innumerable interlineations, made in an attempt
to produce something like alphabetical sequence. It was painful to see Carlyle stooping as
he groped, perplexed and irritated, in the confused and confusing catalogue trying to find
out whether the book which he wanted was in it, and therefore in the library. If it was there,
like every one else, he had next to write on a ticket the title of the work and the press-mark,
6
Charles Dickens, ‘Shabby-Genteel People’, in
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