I gained new insights into the collections of the National Trust and rare books cataloguing as it is practised today, as well as a hint of a way to pass my retirement,when I heard Stephen Massil speak at a seminar organised jointly by the Institute of Historical Research and CILIP's Library and Information History Group about his experience of cataloguing collections at Trust houses, under the title Libraries of the National Trust: some houses in Kent and Sussex —Shakespeare, landscape and the in-laws. I have taken the liberty of re-ordering some of his material to make for the purposes of this blog post. Of the 150 libraries the Trust owns, there remain 60 to be catalogued. Will there be any left for me when I retire, in ten years time at the earliest?
Stephen has worked at ten houses altogether, during a period when the National Trust holdings, more than 150,00 records, have been uploaded to COPAC. By comparison with other libraries on COPAC, the Trust entries are considerably more detailed, giving fuller descriptions including provenance. It is possible to limit searches to the Trust collections, using the limit options at the bottom of the COPAC search screen.
The Trust is not used to handling readers, so there are not the rare books reading rooms with security and supervision, that we might expect to find in a university. Policy is based on the belief that there should be no need for the public to see books in Trust houses, as there are copies available elsewhere. Most Trust collections have fixed shelf arrangements, which can cause difficulties. It is not unusual for some titles to be in the possession of family members, and when they are returned to the house it may be difficult to accommodate them.
The cataloguer often performs his task in view of visitors, roped off with the furniture and works of art. When Stephen arrives at a house, he uses the genealogies included in the Trust's official brochures as a guide to the history of the family, and hence the growth of the collection, but the evidence of inscriptions and marginalia in the book themselves quickly allow him to build up his own picture of the family tree. Collections are often built by marriage, brides bringing their family's books with them, along with their trousseau.
Cataloguers are issued with a CD of the catalogue, updated monthly. Migration to a new system, advertised as taking six to eight weeks, in fact took six to eight months. Asked what cataloguing system the Trust use, the consensus in the room was that it sounded very like MIMSY XG. In many cases, while parts of the house may have network connections, the areas where the cataloguers work is not networked, precluding live cataloguing. Stephen emphasised the importance of cataloguing the books as objects, of recording and preserving enclosures such as pressed flowers.
He discussed the relationships between owners and local booksellers, printers, publishers and binders. The libraries often offer rich information on these local print economies, for owners would have used the services of tradesmen nearby, for example in Cirencester, Kettering or Evesham. Visitors sometimes ask why all the books 'look the same', as at Stourhead. Usually the owner of the house would order books from publishers and booksellers and send them for binding, according to a bespoke template.
Visitors do not see the considerable annotations inside. While the Trust has a policy of sending archival material to local record offices, ephemera are retained. Thus at Canons Ashby, there is a fine collection of piscatorial material by Izaak Walton, and later angling writers; one late edition of Walton contains a playbill, the only surviving one for a production of a nineteenth century play based on Walton's life work, an unlikely choice of subject; at the Husseys' Scotney Castle, the copy of one of their books by William Sawrey Gilpin's books has the correspondence between Gilpin and the owner discussing how to plan the garden.
As for Shakespeare he told us how Canons Ashby, the Dryden's house, had a First Folio in the nineteenth century, that same one sold in 2001 by Christie's, the sale promoted by reading from the text at The Globe. In the 1860s it had been used for the first attempt at a facsimile edition, and the library there still has two copies of the facsimile.
At Ightham Mote they hold the Trust's earliest book, Ptolemy's atlas of 1477 by Bononi (originally thought to be from 1462). In a few cases the Trust has acquire houses without any collections and has had to stock them from elsewhere, such as at Mompesson House. At Nostell Priory Stephen had discovered a rich collection of Swiss Huguenot material, better than the collection in the Swiss national library. At Owletts, the house of the architect Sir Herbert Baker, the indigenous collection, in a house managed by tenants, is rich in African material, including a title published in Zanzibar.
The 1839 edition of the Voyage of the Beagle at Stourhead, in which Darwin is given as secretary of the Geological Society makes it clear that this is an earlier edition than those published later in that year when he appears as FRS. Darwin was elected FRS in February of that year.
At Wimpole Hall, Elsie Bembridge, Kipling's daughter, brought with her many books from Bateman's, her childhood home, including books she must have read, or had read to her by her father, in the nursery. Is the proper place for these Wimpole or Bateman's? The Kipling Society have strong views on the matter.
There a number of items with important associations, for example at Sissinghurst review copies sent to Vita Sackville-West. The trust has recently acquired Agatha Christie's house, Greenway, which has a rich collection of crime.
Stephen mentioned a confusion in the Senate House library catalogue of the Goldsmiths' collection between James Stanier Clarke, chaplain to the Prince Regent and librarian at Carlton House, the man who acted as go-between when George IV expressed the wish that Jane Austen should dedicate a novel to him, and Thomas Brooke Clarke, chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland and tutor to the duke's illegitimate son George Fitzernest. He also had some criticisms to make of the way that COPAC and the English Short Title Catalogue present books.
I was a little surprised that the Trust's emphasis on treating books as artefacts, and its implications for cataloguing, seemed new to many in the room. It's certainly the approach I used when managing the retrospective cataloguing of the RCVS Historical Collection, and would be second nature to anyone who has worked in the antiquarian book trade. And I would have enjoyed seeing some illustrations of the catalogue records, and the books themselves.
The seminar programme continues with a visit to Dulwich College and a meeting on 1 June to discuss women librarians in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
For more on books considered as objects, see:
Pearson, David
Books as History
London: British Library, 2008
NB links to people in this post go to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; most public and academic libraries have a subscription, so readers should be able to see them, though you may need to log in first.