'The Few Feet of Books in My Library Case'

For more than thirty years, George Hamlin Fitch (1852-1925) wrote a weekly column for the Sunday book page of the San Francisco Chronicle. I know little else about him except that in 1911 he published the charmingly titled Comfort Found in Good Old Books, which comes with this dedication: 

“TO THE MEMORY

OF MY SON HAROLD,

MY BEST CRITIC, MY OTHER

SELF, WHOSE DEATH HAS

TAKEN THE LIGHT

OUT OF MY

LIFE.”

I make no great claims for Fitch’s gifts as a writer and critic but the baldness of his grief and the absence of self-pity stunned me. “These short essays on the best old books in the world,” he writes in his introduction, “were inspired by the sudden death of an only son, without whom I had not thought life worth living. To tide me over the first weeks of bitter grief I plunged into this work of reviewing the great books from the Bible to the works of the eighteenth-century writers.” I understand the notion of books-as-solace and admire Fitch for his love of books and his son.

 

Nothing on Fitch’s list of books and writers will surprise the reader. His chapter on Dr. Johnson is largely devoted to Boswell’s biography ("one of the great books of the world”) and Fitch is rather dismissive of Johnson’s accomplishments as a writer. Of his versions of Juvenal he writes: “These are not great poetry. The verse is of the style which Pope produced, but which the modern taste rejects because of its artificial form.” He claims modern readers of Johnson only need to read the Lives of the Poets, the prayers and the letter to Lord Chesterfield. He makes little mention of the periodical essays.

 

Fitch is very much the reader’s advocate and makes allowances for individual tastes. In his chapter on St. Augustine’s Confessions he writes: “If a book is recommended to you and you cannot enjoy it after conscientious effort, then it is plain that the book does not appeal to you or that you are not ready for it. The classic that you may not be able to read this year may become the greatest book in the world to you in another year, when you have passed through some hard experience that has matured your mind or awakened some dormant faculties that call out for employment.” No argument here. I like Fitch’s emphasis on “hard experience” maturing a reader's sensibilities.

 

Fitch is forever striving to accommodate readers of varying tastes, education levels and gifts. In his chapter titled “How to Get the Best Out of Books,” he tells us anyone who “understands English and who has an ordinary vocabulary” can read and enjoy the books on his list. He writes:

 

“[I]n this age of the limited railroad train, the telephone, the automobile and the aeroplane, it is well occasionally to be reminded that Shakespeare and the writers of the Bible knew as much about human nature as we know today, and that their philosophy was far saner and simpler than ours, and far better to use as a basis in making life worth living.”

 

In particular, read Fitch’s prefatory remarks about his son’s death and the power of the greatest books: “When the first shock had passed came the review of what was left of life to me. Most of the things which I had valued highly for the sake of my son now had little or no worth for me; but to take up again the old round of work, without the vivid, joyous presence of a companion dearer than life itself, one must have some great compensations; and the chief of these compensations lay in the few feet of books in my library case—in those old favorites of all ages that can still beguile me, though my head is bowed in the dust with grief and my heart is as sore as an open wound touched by a careless hand.”