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The London Library
(published in BuzzWords, December 2002)
It is worth the annual subscription to this fine private lending library, founded in 1841, if for no other reason than it makes you feel you're almost there, a real writer at last.
Up the stairs, the balustrade of polished mahogany, on the wall neatly arranged portraits of Great People with connections to The London Library: Dame Rebecca West, Rupert Hart-Davis, Rudyard Kipling and many others. Blessings to you all, Oh Great Ones.
More fine mahogany in the elegant reading-room, the large window delicately sectioned, the eyes of readers' like queen bees over their pots of honey.
So I settle, quietly buzzing over the nectar-scented pages of wondrous reference books. As you take these books from the shelves they smell fresh and green like a selection from the finest vegetable garden, not like the arid sterility of the tomes in most university libraries, pored over by the anxious fears and desires of student, lecturer, thesis writer.
Who is that over there? It is Richard Ingrams! And isn't that Andrew Roberts up from Oxford? Over there, my God, Margaret Drabble!
Well, here I am. I sweep a little dust from the desk, practise my autograph on the blank surface....
I duck and dive amongst the delightful plethora of books: Whitaker's Almanac 1993, Who's Who 1999, The Guide to British Birds. I then settle in a comfy brown-leather armchair in the corner and peruse the 1997 Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary.
As I sink into the chair, I begin to feel very small, against the large confident forms of Successful Writers, Scholars, Men and Women of Letters.
Oh, I can't spell, I can't write, I can't syntax do, I'm a dud at etymology, semantics, analysing a sentence, having an original thought. Yet here I am in the reading-room of The Great Ones.
One Great One taps another on the shoulder, a knowing laugh, a squeeze, a club of which I'm not, never will be, Oh....
I retreat into the silent labyrinths of The London Library, thousands of beautifully-bound volumes, the calm, the long journey ended. I would like to die now and have my flesh and bones transformed into a leather book cover. Inside there will be one pure white page of finest hand-made vellum. Each year on my birthday a new librarian would be allowed to place me anywhere on any shelf in The London Library.
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