Читать книгу Ten Years in Washington: Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them - Mary Clemmer - Страница 16

Table of Contents

Inside the Library—The Librarian—Sketch of Mr. Spofford—How Congressional Speeches are Manufactured—“Spofford” in Congress—The Library Building—Diagram—Dimensions of the Hall—The Iron Book Cases—The Law Library—Five Miles of Book Shelves—Silent Study—“Abstracting” Books—Amusing Adventure—A Senator in a Quandary—Making Love under Difficulties—Library Regulations—Privileged Persons—Novels and their Readers—Books of Reference—Cataloguing the Library—The New Classification—Compared with the British Museum—Curious Old Newspapers—Files of Domestic and Foreign Papers—One Hundred Defunct Journals—Destruction of the Library by English Troops—An Incident of the War of 1814—Putting it to the Vote—“Carried Unanimously”—Wanton Destruction—Washington in Flames—A Fearful Tempest—The Second Conflagration—35,000 Volumes Destroyed—Treasures of Art Consumed—Congressional Grants—The New Library—Extensive Additions—The Next Appropriation—The Grand Library of the Nation.

The most remarkable fact of the present connected with the Congressional Library, is its Librarian, Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford.

Mr. Spofford was appointed Assistant Librarian by President Lincoln, December 31, 1864, and upon the resignation of Mr. Stephenson the same month succeeded him as Librarian. Mr. Spofford was formerly connected with the secular press of Cincinnati, Ohio, and was also engaged in the book trade in the same city. But neither fact accounts for his almost unlimited practical knowledge of books of every age and in every language. He is himself a vast library in epitome. If you wish to inform yourself upon any subject under the sun, if you have any right or privilege to inform Mr. Spofford of that fact, in five minutes you will have placed before you a list, written down rapidly from memory, of the best works extant upon the subject named, and in as few moments as it will take to find them, and draw them forth from their dusty nests, you will have them all heaped on a table before you, ready for your search and research, and all the headaches they will be sure to give you.

Mr. Spofford has the credit among experts of writing many Congressional speeches for honorable gentlemen whose verbs and nominatives by chronic habit disagree, and whose spelling-books were left very far behind them, but who nevertheless are under the imperative necessity of writing learned speeches of which their dear constituents may boast and be proud. By the way, a lady in private life in Washington,—a scholar and caustic writer,—used to earn all her pin money, before her ship of fortune came in, by writing, in the solitude of her room, the learned, witty and sarcastic speeches which were thundered in Congress the next day, by some Congressional Jupiter, who could not have launched such a thunder-bolt to have saved his soul had it not been first forged and electrified by a woman. The Librarian of Congress is too much absorbed by his routine labors to have much time or strength to spare for the writing out of Congressional speeches. But daily and almost hourly he suggests and supplies the materials for such speeches. When a member whose erudition is not remarkable, stands up in his seat, backing every sentence he utters on finance, law or politics, by great authority, more than one mentally exclaims, “Spofford!” We know where he has been. Mr. Spofford is a slight gentleman in the prime of life, of nervous temperament with very straight, smooth hair, classic features and a placid countenance. Always a gentleman, his patience and urbanity are inexhaustible, if you have the slightest claim upon his care. If you have not, and he has no intention of being “bothered,” his “shoo fly” capabilities are equally effectual. Like most book-people, Mr. Spofford’s nervous life far outruns his material forces. He needs more sunshine, air and out-of-door existence, as most Americans do. Therefore I here cast him a crumb of sisterly counsel, born of gratitude and selfishness. Spend more time on the Rock Creek and Piney Branch roads, on the hills and by the sea, Mr. Spofford. Then may you live long, prosper, and grow wiser, for the sake of my books, and everybody’s!

The halls of the Library of Congress are among the most chaste, unique and indestructible of all the halls of the Capitol. The Library occupies the entire central portion of the western front of the original Capitol. The west hall extends the entire length of the western front flanked by two other halls, one on the north the other on the south side of the projection.

DIAGRAM OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

The west hall which a few years since made the whole Library, is 91 feet 6 inches in length, 34 feet wide and 38 feet high, the other two halls of the same hight are 29 feet 6 inches wide and 95 feet long. The halls are lighted by windows looking out upon the grounds of the Capitol and by roof lights of stained glass. The ceiling is iron and glass, and rests on foliated iron brackets each weighing a ton. The pilasters and panels are of iron painted a neutral hue tinged with pale green and burnished with gold leaf. The floors are of tessellated black and white marble. The iron book-cases on either side rise story on story, floored with cast-iron plates, protected by railings, and traversed by light galleries. Including the Law Library, these halls contain 26,148 feet, or nearly five miles of book-shelving, and contain over 210,000 volumes. The iron floors are covered with kamptulicon floor cloth, a compound of India-rubber and cork, which possesses the triple advantage of being clean, light and cheap. The leg of every chair has a pad of solid India-rubber under it. Nobody is allowed to speak above a whisper; thus the stolid turning, or the light flutter of leaves make the only sound which stirs the silence. Alcove after alcove line the halls, but with the exception of two devoted to novels and other light reading, left open for the ladies of members’ families, they are all securely locked and protected by a net-work of wire, and thus the chance of pilfering and of flirting are both shut in behind that securely fastened little padlock.

THE CENTRAL ROOM, CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.

INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

Before the era of locking up, many books were “abstracted” from the Library and never returned. And it is said that the alcoves were used during the sessions of Congress by the belles of the Capitol for reception rooms in which they received homage and listened to marriage proposals. The story is told of “a wealthy Southern representative gleaning materials for a speech in an upper section,” who was suddenly stopped in his pursuit after knowledge above by the knowledge ascending from below that “a penniless adventurer” was that moment persuading his pretty daughter to elope in the alcove under him. It did not take the parent long to descend into that alcove. The daughter did not elope.

The halls are lined with wide tables and arm-chairs provided for all who wish to make use of the treasures of the Library. Tickets with blanks can be filled with the name of any book desired, over the signature of the applicant, who retains the book while remaining in the Library. On the back of those tickets are printed the following regulations of the Library:

1. Visitors are requested to remove their hats.

2. No loud talking is permitted.

3. No readers under sixteen years of age are permitted.

4. No book can be taken from the Library.

5. Readers are required to present tickets for all books wanted, and to return their books and take back their tickets before leaving the Library.

6. No reader is allowed to enter the alcoves.

No books can be taken out of the Library except on the responsibility of a member of Congress. Till within a very few years, books were allowed to be taken by strangers who presented a written permit to do so from a Congressional official. This courtesy resulted in the destruction and loss of so many valuable works, it had to be abolished and the stringent rules of the present time established and strictly enforced. An act of Congress provided that books can be taken out of the Library only by the President of the United States, Members of the Cabinet, Judges of the United States Supreme Court, Members of the Senate and House of Representatives, Secretary of the Senate, Clerk of the House and members of the Diplomatic Corps. This privilege of course includes the families of these official gentlemen.

Forgetting this fact, the long list of story-books and new novels often “charged” to these State names would be something ridiculous. Dealers in light literature suffer somewhat from this privilege. The copyright law and the Congressional Library together provide society and State with all the surface literature that they want during their sojourn in Washington. For reference the books are most extensively and thoroughly used by all seekers after knowledge. American and foreign authors line the tables in these quiet halls daily, and the results of their research are usually given to the world. Legal, political, and historical works are the ones most constantly called for and searched.

From 1815 to 1864 the Library was catalogued on the system adopted by Mr. Jefferson according to Bacon’s Division of Science. This classification adapted to a small library was inadequate to the necessities of thousands of consulting readers. Mr. Spofford, on his advent as Librarian, went to work to simplify the system. The result was a complete catalogue of all the books in the great Library arranged alphabetically under the heads of authors. A proof of the perfection of this arrangement is, that any book hidden in the farthest corner of the most distant alcove is handed to a reader at the tables within five minutes after his application, while in the British Museum he would do well if he got it in the space of half an hour.

Till the reign of Mr. Spofford, newspapers, as valuable documentary history, had almost been ignored by the guardians of the Library. This great defect Mr. Spofford has done much to eradicate and remedy. Files of all the leading New York dailies are now regularly kept. Some unbroken files have been secured, including those of the New York Evening Post, from its beginning in 1801, the London Gazette from 1665, the French Moniteur (Royal, Imperial, and Republican,) from 1789, the Illustrated London News, the Almanac de Gotha from 1776, and a complete set of every newspaper ever published in the District of Columbia, including over one hundred now no more. Before the last progressive regime, even after Congress had appropriated $75,000 for the replenishing of the Library, the entire national collection did not contain a modern encyclopedia, or a file of a New York daily newspaper, or of any newspaper except the venerable Washington National Intelligencer. De Bow’s Review was the only American magazine taken, “but the London Court Journal was regularly received, and bound at the close of each successive year!”

The Congressional Library is the only one in the world utterly fire-proof, without an atom of wood or of any combustible material in its miles of shelving. Before it attained to this indestructible state it suffered much. First from the British. On the evening of August 24, 1814, after the battle of Bladensburg, General Ross led his victorious troops into the Federal City. As they approached the Capitol a shot was fired by a man concealed in a house on Capitol Hill. The shot was aimed at the British general, but only killed his horse. The enraged Britons immediately set fire to the house which contained the sharp-shooter, who, it is said, was a club-footed gardener-barber Irishman. The unmanageable troops were drawn up in front of the unfinished Capitol, a wooden scaffolding, occupying the place of the Rotunda, joining the two wings. They first fired a volley into the windows and then entered the building to prepare it for destruction. Admiral Cockburn ascended to the Speaker’s chair, and derisively exclaimed:

“Shall this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? All for it say ‘Aye!’”

It was carried unanimously, and the torch of the Englishman applied to the hard-earned treasures of the young Republic. The Library of Congress, used as lighting paper, was entirely destroyed. With it, two pictures of national value were burned; portraits of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, which, richly framed, had been sent to the United States Government in Philadelphia, by the unfortunate French King.

While the Capitol was burning, clouds and columns of fire and smoke were ascending from the President’s house and all the other public buildings of the young city. The conflagration below was dulled by the conflagration above; one of the most dreadful storms of thunder and lightning ever known in Washington, met and lighted on the British invaders, dimming and quenching their malicious fires.

In 1851 the magnificent new library-room of the Central Capitol, which now held 55,000 volumes and many works of art, was discovered to be on fire. The destruction was immense. Thirty-five thousand volumes were destroyed. Among the valuable pictures burned at the same time were Stuart’s paintings of the first five Presidents; an original portrait of Columbus; a second portrait of Columbus; an original portrait of Peyton Randolph; a portrait of Boliver; a portrait of Baron Steuben; one of Baron de Kalb; one of Cortez, and one of Judge Hanson, of Maryland, presented by his family. Between eleven and twelve hundred bronze medals of the Vattemare Exchange, some of them more than two centuries old, were destroyed; also, an Apollo in bronze, by Mills; a very superior bronze likeness of Washington; a bust of General Taylor, by an Italian artist; and a bust of Lafayette, by David.

The divisions of Natural History, Geography, and Travels, English and European History, Poetry, Fiction, and the Mechanic Arts and Fine Arts were all burned. The whole of the Law Library escaped the fire.

It indicates the intellectual vitality of the nation that an appropriation of $10,000 was immediately made for the restoration of the Library, and by the close of the year $75,000 more for the same purpose.

Like most beginnings, that of the Congressional Library was humble in the extreme. The first provision for this great National collection was made at Philadelphia by an act of the Sixth Congress, April 24, 1800, appropriating $5,000 for a suitable apartment and the purchase of books for the use of both Houses of Congress. The first books received were forwarded to the new seat of Government in the trunks in which they had been imported. President Jefferson, from its inception, an ardent friend of the Library, called upon the Secretary of the Senate, Samuel Allyne Otis, to make a statement on the first day of the session, December 7, 1801, respecting the books, the act of Congress having provided that the Secretary of the Senate, with the Clerk of House of Representatives, should be the purchasers of the books. The Congressional provision for the Library in 1806 was $450.00.

In a report made by Doctor Samuel Latham Mitchell from New York to the House, January 20, 1806, he says:

“Every week of the session causes additional regret that the volumes of literature and science within the reach of the National Legislature are not more rich and ample. The want of geographical illustration is truly distressing, and the deficiency of historical and political works is scarcely less severely felt.”

President Madison always exercised a fostering care over the Library and an act approved by him, December 6, 1811, appropriates, for five additional years, the sum of one thousand dollars annually for its use.

The whole number of books accumulated in fourteen years, from 1800 to 1814, amounted only to about three thousand volumes. The growth of the Library may be traced in the relative sums appropriated to its benefit by successive Congresses. In 1818, $2,000 were appropriated for the purchase of books. From 1820 to 1823, $6,000 were voted to buy books.

In 1824, $5,000 were appropriated for the purchase of books under the Joint Committee; also $1,546 for the purchase of furniture for the new Library in the centre building of the Capitol.

The yearly appropriation for the increase of the Library, for many successive years after the accession of General Jackson, was $5,000; these were exclusive of the appropriations made for the Law Department of the Library. In 1832 an additional appropriation of $3,000 was made for Library furniture and repairs. In 1850 the annual appropriation of $1,000 to purchase books for the Law Library was increased to $2,000. Within a year of the burning of the Library in 1851, $85,000 had been voted by Congress for the restoration of the Library and the purchase of books.

The west hall of the New Library was completed and occupied July 1, 1853. It was designed by Thomas A. Walter, the architect of the Capitol. The appropriation for miscellaneous books alone in the years 1865 and 1866 amounted to $16,000. In 1866, $1,500 were set apart for procuring files of leading American newspapers, and the sum of $4,000 was voted June 25, 1864, to purchase a complete file of selections from European periodicals from 1861 to 1864 relating to the Rebellion in the United States. July 23, 1866, the amount of $10,000 was voted by Congress for furniture for the two wings of the extension. The present magnificent halls of the Library of Congress were built at an expense of $280,500. The main hall cost $93,500, and the other two halls $187,000. The last two have been built under the superintendence of Mr. Edward Clark. Beautiful and ample as these three halls are in themselves, they are already too small to hold the rapidly accumulating treasures of the Library.

The next appropriation will take the Congressional Library out of the Capitol altogether into a magnificent building, built expressly for and devoted exclusively to the uses of the Grand Library of the Nation.