ADDRESSES AT THE OPENING OF ITS LIBRARY IN HARTFORD, CONN., JAN. 2,
1893.
These addresses, by Charles Dudley Warner and Charles H.
Clark, are reprinted from brief abstracts given in _The
Library Journal_ of January, 1893.
Charles Dudley Warner was born in Plainfield, Mass., Sept.
12, 1829 and graduated at Hamilton College in 1851. He
practised law in Chicago in 1856-60 and in 1861 became
managing editor of the Hartford, Conn., _Press_. In 1867 on
its consolidation with the _Courant_, he became co-editor.
He was made associate editor of _Harper's Magazine_ in 1884,
and died at Hartford, Oct. 20, 1900. He was widely popular
as an essayist, first gaining favorable notice by his "My
Summer in a Garden."
This building and its contents are contributory to the excellence and
enjoyment of life exactly as Bushnall Park is--not merely that it is a
place of rest and recreation, but it is a training in beauty, in the
appreciation of nobleness, and in the public and private refinement.
Culture is a plant of rather slow growth. I suppose there never was such
a change wrought, almost instantaneously, in a people as was wrought in
the American people by the opening and exhibition of the Philadelphia
Centennial of 1876. Its effect was at once apparent everywhere. But
knowledge precedes culture, culture being, after all, but another name
for educational taste.
Now this institution is simply a means for the culture of the city of
Hartford, in all ways, because literature and art--not taken externally,
but absorbed as a part of our lives, not only of knowledge, but of
experience--are the things that make life worth living.
No one can speak too highly of the offices of a great library. It was
one of our great essayists, you remember, who said that the
monastery--speaking of it with reference to its books--was the ark that
floated down over the tempest and darkness of the middle ages, in order
to carry classic learning to the fifteenth century. They were
repositories of learning. That is the old idea. And for a long
time--almost to our day--that was the notion of the library. It was a
place to put something away. It was not even like a market for the sale
of provisions or eggs; indeed, if they were eggs the librarians thought
it their duty to sit on them, with the idea that they might hatch out
other books. That was a noble thing to do. But much better than that is
to scatter these books abroad among the people, so that we shall not
have reproduction--an egg for an egg--but that these books will so
revivify the life that we shall have books new, that express the actual
conditions and that appeal to the human life as it is. This is the
modern idea of the library. This great collection, which is not to be
secluded, is to be carried and even forced upon the people, so that it
shall enter into and become a part of their daily lives.
You remember, perhaps, what Milton says about the books, in that
noblest of noble defences of unlicensed printing, that "they are not
dead things. As good almost," he says, "kill a man as you kill a good
book. Who kills a man, kills a reasonable being, made in God's image.
Who destroys a good book destroys reason itself, kills the image of God
as it were, in the eye. Many a man," he goes on to say, "lives a burden
to the earth, but a good book is the precious life blood of a master
spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life; so
that if we slay a good book we would slay immortality rather than a
life."
Charles Hopkins Clark, who immediately followed Mr. Warner,
was at this time editor in chief of _The Hartford Courant_,
of which Mr. Warner was co-editor. Mr. Clark was born in
Hartford April 1, 1848, graduated at Yale, and joined the
_Courant_ staff in 1871, becoming editor in 1890.
One of the earliest sins of my youth, or rather one of the earliest that
is burnt into my memory, was committed in the library of what was then
the Young Men's Institute. I spoke out loud! The rebuke that I received
sent me down the stairs overwhelmed with a sense of the enormity of my
crime, yet more than sustained by joy to think that I had escaped the
utter annihilation with which my reprimand was freighted. And I can say
that the awe with which I used to enter that chamber of silence, and the
fear with which I regarded the librarian were the common property of all
the young people of that somewhat remote period. But long since we found
out that the old librarian was one of the gentlest and most inoffensive
men, and that we had misunderstood him as completely as he had
misunderstood us.
But I have no such gloomy recollection, nor to be honest, have I any
recollection at all of the Wadsworth Athenaeum gallery, because, like
everybody else who then lived in Hartford, I never went in there. The
door was often open and the only sentinel on guard had no more
formidable weapon than a pair of knitting-needles. But no one ever
crossed that threshold. The simple legend, traced on a placard at the
door, "Admission Ten Cents," did the business, or rather, to be more
elegant as well as accurate, prevented any business being done. The
people who came up the stone steps read the notice and turned off to the
left to the library or to the right to the Historical Society, where
entrance was free. I say free, but freedom must have its limits if we
are to have safety, so the tin sign on the outside of the door gave
notice to the always unwelcome boy that he could not go in until he
reached the mature age of twelve years. That was one of the things that
I wanted to grow to full manhood for.
And I well remember my first visit there. As I walked slowly up the
stairs I wondered what venerable monument of patriotic achievement, what
new inspiration to love for our noble State whose history is such a
priceless treasure, what vision of heroic self-sacrifice in her behalf
would first burst upon my eager eyes when I should look around the hall.
I looked and lo! there in a glass jar stood the chaste but familiar
figure of Charles Hosmer's night-blooming cereus--the modest pioneer of
the canned-fruit industry in this community.
I have made this brief review in order to suggest to you the state of
innocuous desuetude in which for more or less time the various miscalled
interests in this building had been lying for lack of any interest at
all. The library had a limited and dwindling clientage. The Athenaeum
was deserted. The Historical Society, with no funds and few friends, was
exhibiting a collection of animal, vegetable, and mineral curiosities,
while its real treasures of history and truth were by lock and key shut
off from the very public for whom they were collected and preserved.
Look at that picture, then look at this which greets us here to day.
In these elegant and spacious buildings the whole public of Hartford is
welcome, without money and without price. The circulating library will
furnish every home with books, and Miss Hewins, who has devoted her life
to this town, is always ready to help the younger readers. The Library
of Reference, monument alike to Mr. Watkinson's liberality and Dr.
Trumbull's rare judgment and life-long devoted service as a librarian,
offers free to all students the authorities on every branch of
knowledge. The Historical Society, with improved facilities, has been
able to adopt a more liberal policy, and is widening its claim upon
public interest, and so increasing its usefulness, and, thanks largely
to the women of Hartford, the Art Gallery and Art School are ready to
spread their refining and wholesome influence all through this
community.