'Let Them at Any Rate Be Your Acquaintances'

“Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.” 

An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a sort of litmus test to judge personality and values, might be to place your subject in a large, well-stocked library (or bookstore), wire him for blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductance, brain activity, etc., and monitor his reactions, followed by a questionnaire to be completed by the subject: Are you frightened? Do you wish to run away? Do you feel bliss? Boredom? Reverence?

 

The reverent one quoted above is Winston Churchill in “Hobbies,” one of twenty-three essays collected in Thoughts and Adventures (Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1932). This is the man who, while stationed in India from 1896 to 1898 read all 4,000 pages of Gibbon during his daily leisure time, followed by Gibbon’s autobiography, Macaulay’s six-volume History of England, the Lays of Ancient Rome, Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Republic, and volumes by Schopenhauer, Malthus, Darwin and Adam Smith, among others. Such heroic reading seems like preparation for the eventual forty-three books in seventy-two volumes Churchill would write, making him a rare deserving recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1953.

 

Today we can’t imagine a world leader -- or even an English major -- who reads and writes on such a Victorian scale. Churchill confirms the truth of an observation made by Dr. Johnson, as recounted by Boswell: “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” Churchill continues in the essay, describing his own reactions to a library visit:

 

“‘A few books,’ which was Lord Morley’s definition of anything under five thousand, may give a sense of comfort and even of complacency. But a day in a library, even of modest dimensions, quickly dispels these illusory sensations. As you browse about, taking down book after book from the shelves and contemplating the vast, infinitely-varied store of knowledge and wisdom which the human race has accumulated and preserved, pride, even in its most innocent forms, is chased from the heart by feelings of awe not untinged with sadness. As one surveys the mighty array of sages, saints, historians, scientists, poets and philosophers whose treasures one will never be able to admire—still less enjoy—the brief tenure of our existence here dominates mind and spirit.”

 

Churchill convinces us he is a genuine bookman. We’ve all been taken in by frauds who brag of having read libraries, or at least the fashionable titles of the day – a deception especially common among politicians. But Churchill has the dedicated reader’s understanding that reading is deeply idiosyncratic, as individual as DNA, a reflection of who we truly are not who we wish the world to think we are:

 

“‘What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question; and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.”