The Finish Line

Charlotte Brontë

The race is finished; I have crossed the line and stand in the winner's circle.

All that chatter just means I have completed Derby Day and Other Adventures by A. Edward Newton. He ends his book with two tales of the Brontës. One chapter about his first visit to the parsonage where the father, son, and three daughters lived in Yorkshire. A dreary, desolate place by all accounts.

The final chapter has to do mostly with information about Charlotte and her life. I was surprised to read that Mrs. Gaskell, of Cranford fame, had written a biography of Charlotte. Later, it was discovered that she had left out or simply ignored certain information that didn't fit her idea of who Charlotte was. Since then who knows how many books about the Brontës have been written.

According to Mr. Newton, it was a friend on his who called on Mr. Nichols, Charlotte's widower, after he had returned to Ireland and remarried. With the offer of some coin, this friend walked away with a chest full of letters, stories, and other Brontë personal papers.

Also, there was a story about an unrequited love of Charlotte's, a married tutor, whom she met in Brussels. Some letters of hers, expressing undying devotion, came to light.

Of course, by then, all the Brontës were dead.

I don't consider myself a fan of the family. I have never read Jane Eyre. I may have read Wuthering Heights in high school, but am more familiar with that story through film. And I must admit, even after reading about them, the Brontës are not on my To Be Read list.

Book Collecting and Sleuthing

Being a book collector and being a detective are surely one in the same thing - only one deals with perhaps more blood than the other although I have heard tell that book collectors can be a ruthless bunch.

I was summoned to the library today to pick up two books on hold for me: V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton and The Amenities of Book Collecting and Kindred Affections by my now good friend A. Edward Newton.

The copyright date of V is 2011, the copyright date of Amenities is 1918. Quite a spread.

I have had Grafton's book on hold for months. I am not even sure how long ago I reserved it, but if I were to add my name to the list today I would be 62nd on the list. The library has 75 copies of the book.

Not so amazing as Sue Grafton is a local author with a home here and a home in Santa Barbara.

Anyway, I plan on spending the weekend reading Kinsey Millhone's latest adventures and am glad to get the book before her creator comes out with her next in line: W is for ???

As to Mr. Newton, I am delighted that the library has not discarded this quite ancient volume. The spine has the notation 090 N561 written very carefully in white ink as they used to do. The spine was then shellacked or had some sort of hard, clear coating painted on so that the title and call numbers are forever preserved.

The book is fragile. It has many photos, illustrations, and samples of autographs and handwritings. The photographs all have the library name stamped across a corner. I guess to prevent tearing out and framing?

Anyway, I am happy to have both of these books by my reading chair.

Mr. Newton's Brief About the Brontës

Haworth Parsonage and Cemetery

Only two adventures left on which to report.  Mr. Newton has chosen to visit the Brontës, not once but twice.

His first visit to Haworth parsonage, "a dreary dwelling set in a graveyard," is made not for what he can see there, some books, papers and the odd piece of furniture, but for what he feels there.

"Because it was, a hundred years ago, the home of the greatest number of geniuses that ever lived in one small house, at the same time, anywhere. Father, son, and three daughters. What a family!"

Exhibits were in glass cases, which left him cold. There was a poorly composed inscription thanking Newton's friend Henry H. Bonnell of Philadelphia for the generous donation of the majority of such exhibits. To ease his mild disappointment, a drink was had at the Black Bull where the son Branwell used to regularly get drunk.

So goes the first pilgrimage.

Mr. Newton Bonds With Budapest



Library at Melk Abbey

Here is another city of Mr. Newton's that I have not visited. He almost didn't either. At the time this piece was written, Buda was the old city and Pest was the new. I don't know when it became one.

He relates to the reader histories of the city, talks of music, the difficulty of the Hungarian language, and the style and taste of the people.

But before he traveled east from Vienna to Budapest, he headed west and wrote of  his lunch with the Abbot of Melk.

The Abbot, who is a delightful old man, became much interested when I told him - my wife acting as interpreter - that I had seen his famous Gutenberg Bible sold at auction in New York. This is the Bible that Dr. Rosenbach bought for $106,000 and sold to Mrs. Harkness, who gave it to the Library at Yale.

"Has it a good home?" the Abbot inquired. I assured him that it had.

"I was sorry to part with it," the old man went on to say, "but we have many noble books in our library, which you shall see after lunch, and we had to have money for some very necessary repairs. We are very poor now."

Content with this world, sure of the next, no wife to order him about - the Abbot has much to be thankful for. I have never before thought of turning Abbot. It is a matter deserving consideration.

According to Wikipedia, there are eleven copies of the Gutenberg Bible in the United States; five of them are complete. I have viewed copies at the Library of Congress,  the Huntington Library in California, and the British Library.

The last complete copy that sold was in 1978 and it brought $2.2 million. It is in Stuttgart. The price of a complete copy today is estimated at $25-35 million.

Mr. Newton Visits Vienna

Austrian National Library
Vienna

My dear Mr. Newton has left the West Coast and has traveled to Vienna. I am at a disadvantage as I have never visited the city, but he writes so fondly of it that perhaps one day...

To his advantage, however, his wife (never named) is Viennese and helps with the translating. He quite breathlessly gives in just a few pages the long history of the country. And this only up to the 1930s. He writes of the Great War which to him is WWI. I doubt if he had an inkling of the horrors that were to come.

Of course he visits the library:

The library, which interested me most, is one of the great libraries of the world. The building itself is the work of the famous Fischer Von Erlach, an architect to whom Vienna owes some of its finest buildings. The great hall is one of the most superb rooms in Europe. It is baroque at its very best and is so placed that the doors at one end can be opened; it then becomes a part of a great ballroom.

How lovely it would be to find oneself walzing to the "Blue Danube" among all those books.

He later states:
The National Library in Paris is the most unhospitable institution in the world; the British Museum holds out a welcoming hand to the scholars of all nations; but for sheer beauty the Hofbibliothek of Vienna surpasses anything I have ever seen.

In looking for a photograph of the library, I read that it almost burned to the ground in 1992 but was saved. It contains over 200,000 manuscripts and books and remains the largest baroque library in Europe.

Mr. Newton Conquers California

Library at Hearst Castle
San Simeon, California

I read this morning from Derby Day. Mr. Newton is in California. He visits Huntington Library, Hearst Castle, the redwood forests, and San Francisco. Since I have been to all those places, albeit some 40 years after him, it was fun to revisit. He stayed at Hearst Castle as a guest of Mr. Hearst. I didn't have that pleasure. I had to buy a ticket. But it was worth it to see how the really, really rich live. Can you fault Mr. Hearst for wanting to surround himself with so much beauty? Some did.

Newton writes that he headed straight for the library as soon as he had the chance. As a book collector, he would certainly be interested in what books the wealthy man owned. He recounted a couple of times when he was bidding on books at an auction only to lose out to Mr. H as he was known at the auction houses.

I hosted a Mother's Day brunch at a private club for a friend and her mother and another friend whose mother lives in another state. My mother was there is spirit only. This was my third Mother's Day without her. We toasted mothers living and dead and settled in to enjoy the food and the conversation.

I regaled the three - my captive audience - with tales of the Grand Southern Literary Tour to great acclaim.

I planned on curling up after the brunch to read State of Wonder. Alas, that was not to be.

The friend whose mother lives elsewhere came back to my house to retrieve her car. She came inside. We had tea. We talked. And talked. Next thing we knew it was 5:30. No afternoon of reading for me. But friends are friends and we hadn't been together for a while so it was time well spent.

A Stroll Through London circa 1932

Queen Elizabeth II (age 3) with her father, the Duke of York
who went on to become King Edward VI
July 1929

A. Edward Newton is a delightful tour guide. For an American, he is well versed in the history and the streets of London.

We start off in the morning with a church service at the Guards' Chapel, Wellington Barracks:

"At the stroke of eleven, such guards as are in attendance enter. They come in with heavy tread, in their gorgeous uniforms, carrying their tall black bearskin headgear at rest, so to speak, upon their left arm, as though each man had been entrusted with a baby."

The service ends with "a rattle of kettledrums and everyone in the church stands at attention, while "God Save the King'" is sung."

We are in for a morning walk afterwards from the Chapel to Piccadilly, past the Burlington Arcade, the Ritz Hotel, Mayfair, and on to Hyde Park where "Subjects which are taboo in the drawing room  -- chiefly, politics and religion; the wickedness and stupidity of the party in power, whichever it may be, or the superiority of Mohammedanism over Christianity" are shouted about from talkers on the open stands or pulpits.

Along the way we are given histories of Nell Gwyn, the favorite mistress of Charles II; the purported burial site of Lawrence Sterne; Hercules Pillars, a famous tavern where Squire Western in Tom Jones takes a rest; Coutts's Bank; and, the Underground.

There is also a point at which we approach Apsley House "which is now the residence of the Duke and Duchess of York, with the young Princess who will in all probability become a second Queen Elizabeth."

What a splendid stroll. And all before lunch.

I love reading essays from the past. The comments on that time's current culture and conundrums prove that there is nothing new under the sun.

For instance, in my 1934 copy of Derby Day and Other Adventures, author and bibliophile A. Edward Newton has this to say in his essay about the Grand National steeplechase:

"In a word, we (Americans) do not know how to enjoy life; we work like the devil and save our money, only to be robbed of it by our politicians and the bookmakers who call themselves bankers."

Doesn't that sound familiar.

Mr. Newton has nothing good to say about bankers or brokers. He lets slip little asides that one stumbles upon in the body of the essay. And don't even mention Prohibition, which at this time he is happy to refer to in the past tense.

He chats on in one essay about racing at Ascot and greyhound races, which were just coming into fashion, in another. He then moves on to a stroll through London. Recognizable landmarks are still standing today. Newton quotes Dr. Samuel Johnson quite often and I see from the book jacket that he has written a play about the distinguished British author.

A well-written essay is like having a spirited conversation with its author - the topic wanders here and there and comes back to here...usually. But if it doesn't, where's the harm.