The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and introduced by Geoffrey Grigson, had not been checked out by another patron (hardly surprising) and should be on the shelf. I couldn’t find it. Not a good sign. That could mean the volume had been stolen (not likely) or misshelved. In either case, it might be lost forever.
While heading to the
circulation desk on the first floor to report the missing book, I passed
through the voluminous Dickens section, and there among the commentaries and
biographies, with a dark blue cover and typography on the spine resembling an
Oxford University Press volume, was the Landor Poems I had been looking
for, hiding in plain sight. A clerk had likely misshelved it.
The error is partially understandable.
Dickens based his character Lawrence Boythorn in Bleak House on his
friend Landor and named his fourth child Walter Savage Landor Dickens. I’ve come to almost expect such acts of happy serendipity, especially in
libraries. I once found a twenty-dollar bill in a history of Argentina.
Recently I had read “Pericles and Aspasia” from Landor’s Imaginary Conversations. Aspasia says to Cleone: “Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library. What a delight in being a discoverer! Among a loose accumulation of poetry, the greater part excessively bad, the verses I am about to transcribe are perhaps the least so.” The following poem is mediocre so I’ll transcribe only the opening stanza:
“Life passes not as some
men say,
If you will only urge his
stay,
And treat him kindly all
the while
He flies the dizzy strife
of towns,
Cowers before
thunder-bearing frowns.
But freshens up again at
song and smile.”
1 comment:
I know some people use bills for bookmarks, but that never made sense to me, especially a twenty. In a pinch, you can use any old piece of paper for a bookmark, and with a twenty, you can buy another book or two.
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