Joy, Happiness, Culture and Refinement - by Ruth Downie

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when, if you didn’t know something and neither did your neighbours, you had to find a book and look it up. When I first worked in a library it was not unusual for people to phone us in search of answers to quiz questions, because unless you owned your own encyclopaedias, there was only one place to find help. So when I started to look at the story of one local library I was amazed at what a struggle its creation had been. Surely everyone would have thought a library was a Good Thing? 

 

Evidently not. 

Ilfracombe's seafront pavilion, c.1870 

 

By the later years of Queen Victoria’s reign the small town of Ilfracombe, on the coast of North Devon, was a thriving holiday destination. In the first decade of the 20th century the reading tastes of locals and visitors alike were catered for by no less than five subscription libraries. Readers could thrill to stories by Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Louis de Rougemont, whose controversial adventures included “Round the World on Wheels”, “Twenty-eight Days Without Food” and the alarming “Shot Through the Head with a Ramrod.” 

 

Louis de Rougemont

Keen to attract customers, the libraries advertised their stock in the newspapers. JS Fletcher’s mystery novel “The Death that Lurks Unseen”, Florence Warden’s “A Lowly Lover” or AEW Mason’s “Miranda of the Balcony” could be borrowed for 3d (just over 1p). Eager readers could have three books at a time for an annual subscription of 21s (£1.05). However, if you couldn’t pay, your chances of enjoying any of the latest tales - including my absolute favourite title, LT Meade’s “Maid with the Goggles” - were slim. There was no mention at all of reference works.

From about 1850 onwards local councils were empowered to set up free public libraries, but take-up was slow. There was a flurry of activity around Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 but Ilfracombe’s attempts to join in did not begin until early 1899. On 14 January The Ilfracombe Chronicle & North Devon News printed a letter of support from an anonymous ratepayer who hoped the proposed library would prove “a counteractive influence to the public house.” 

The Chronicle’s local columnist, “Man about Town,” was also delighted with the idea, declaring in the same issue that “A library open to all classes, rich and poor, is a great boon to professional men and artizans [sic] alike”.

Unfortunately not all the town’s councillors agreed with him.

“The… speeches of the members,” declared the disgusted Man About Town in his column the following week, “proved… that many of them know nothing at all about the question.” This, he felt, was the only possible reason for the Council’s “utterly inexplicable” veto of the proposal despite widespread public support.

He dismissed the counter-suggestion of a “voluntary library” as “twaddle,” and saw no sense in the decision to consult the ratepayers. Indeed, 94 out of 99 letters sent to the Council chairman were in favour of the scheme.

“In the course of my professional duties,” declared one, “I am constantly brought in contact with students who are hampered in their studies for want of a good reference library.”

Another claimed, “The people of this town are endowed with great natural intelligence, but have been unfairly handicapped in the pursuit of knowledge by the absence of such an institution.”

On 28 January Man About Town returned to the subject for a third week, confident that despite this setback the ratepayers of Ilfracombe would see their own public library before long. Other local papers were not so sure. He quotes the North Devon Journal as being “astonished” at the decision, but the Exeter Gazette concluded that it was “a wise one” in view of other pressing needs for funds. Meanwhile the North Devon Herald pulled no punches. There was, it said, “no valid reason whatsoever why the ratepayers should be taxed… to furnish folks with a very limited selection of books, which they would only grumble and cavil over… the public will always clamour for anything they can see a chance of getting for nothing.”

Andrew Carnegie

The Council finally voted to adopt the Public Libraries Act in 1903, but little changed until 1904/5. That was when a knight on a white charger rode into town. In spirit, at least. In body, Dunfermline-born Andrew Carnegie remained in the USA. A man of humble origins, Carnegie had educated himself largely by reading, and subsequently made a fortune in the steel industry. In 1901 he sold his company for $480 million, which made him about twice as rich as Bill Gates is now. Carnegie then devoted himself to philanthropy and, along with much else, his generous grants enabled the setting up of 2509 public libraries across the world. £3000 of his money (about £375,000 today) was on offer to Ilfracombe.

Should the town accept? A Carnegie grant would come with strict conditions, and the recipients were expected to find the library’s running costs for themselves. The council voted to receive the money, but in January of 1905 the Chronicle reported “great differences of opinion” at a lively public meeting:
 

Mr W Pile said "they should put every opportunity of improvement in the way of the young men of the town. (CHEERS)

"…Mr Dadds went on to say that public libraries were a failure nearly everywhere. (HEAR HEAR) What did they read in these libraries? (RUBBISH) The town was expecting to get a Higher Grade School, and did not need the library."

The report offers a great deal more in this vein, suggesting everyone present was having a marvellous time – until the vote. The count was 85 for the library, 100 against.

Nevertheless, plans for a library were approved in 1912. There then follows a long silence, only partly explained by the interruption of the Great War.

On 23 May 1925 the Ilfracombe Chronicle Gazette and Observer ran the subtitle, “Carnegie Trustees want something definite”. This was not unreasonable, as “It is now more than 20 years since the promise was made by Mr Carnegie” and there was neither a library nor any obvious sign of one. The council, still mired in complications over the site, voted to adjourn.

It was not until 1934, 35 years after it was first proposed, that Ilfracombe’s Free Public Library finally opened in the rest room of the magnificent Ilfracombe Hotel - “lofty and airy, flooded with light from the glass dome roof.” (The hotel is the large building on the left in the picture.) There were 820 fiction, 300 juvenile fiction, and 440 non-fiction and reference books. It was created with help of the Devon County library service, which had received substantial help from the Carnegie fund and had set up 463 branches across Devon. The Ilfracombe Chronicle & North Devon News shared the good news on 14 December. 

Ilfracombe seafront

“I feel convinced,” announced County Councillor Mr RM Rowe, “that the provision of a public library will not only add to the amenities of this township, but will also bring a large measure of joy, happiness, culture and refinement to the inhabitants.”

The Ilfracombe Hotel is long gone, but the public library which began life there is still bringing joy, happiness, culture and refinement to the town. Sadly I have searched the catalogue in vain for “Maid with the Goggles”. 

*****

Thanks to Ilfracombe Library, who inspired the original research, and Ilfracombe Museum, who provided most of the material. All errors are of course my own.

For a brief summary of the rise of English public library (with occasional refs to NI, Scotland & Wales) visit the Historic England website.

For more on Andrew Carnegie, visit the website of the Carnegie Corporation. 

 *****

When she isn't hanging around museums, libraries and archaeological holes in the ground, Ruth Downie writes a series of murder mysteries. They're set mostly in Roman Britain and feature army medic Gaius Petrieus Ruso, and his British partner Tilla. To find out more, visit www.ruthdownie.com

*****

Photo credits -
Pavilion - Francis Bedford, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Louis de Rougemont - George Newnes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Andrew Carnegie -User Magnus Manske on en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ilfracombe sea front -Photochrom Print Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

'Please let me pass!' by KarenMaitland

Devon Lane. Photographer: Richard Knight

Country roads in Devon are hazardous at the best of time, but in freezing January, they can be lethal. Devon has 8,000 miles of roads, more than any other county, and many are twisting, single-track lanes, enclosed by high hedges on either side and pitted with deep potholes. You can always spot the car whose owner lives in Devon by the 'hedge rash', the numerous scratch marks on the near-side. When two vehicles try to pass each other they either have to ‘hedge hug’, squeezing passed each other, shaving the paint from the side of the car as it's dragged along a thorn hedge, or one car will have to back up or down the hill and round the twisting bends until they find a passing place. There is an unwritten local code governing who should politely give way. The pushy people who try to force someone else to back up, are contemptuously referred to as 'blow-ins' or 'emmets' (ants), better known as tourists, whether they are or not!

Of course, these lanes were in use centuries before the invention of cars, caravans and tractors. So perhaps the solution is to encourage tourists to read the highway code section of an ancient medieval book called The Sachsenspiegel which became the law book of the Holy Roman Empire. It was written around 1220, but parts of it were still in use until 1900. A learned administrator, Eike von Repgow, complied a book at the behest of his liege, Count Hoyer of Falkenstein, drawing together the Saxon laws of custom and practise. He translated the work from the Latin into Middle Low German. The Sachsenspiegel covers laws governing many aspects of life, but some of the most fascinating rules concern roads and travellers.

One states that the king’s highway must be wide enough to enable one cart to give way to another, in other words about 13 foot. There was a strict rule in the order of precedence. Someone on foot must give way to a rider, a rider must give way to a cart and an empty cart must give way to a laden one. But if carter should find himself behind a pedestrian or rider approaching a narrow bridge, then he must draw the cart aside allow them to cross the bridge first in case the cart becomes wedged.

If two carts are approaching on either side of the bridge, then whichever cart gets onto the bridge first must be allowed to cross first, regardless of whether it is full or empty. The same principle underlies a familiar proverb which also comes from this book, 'Wer zuerst kommit, mahlt zuerist.' It literally means ‘He who comes first, grinds first,’ which was a law governing people who were bringing their grain to the mill. Chaucer was obviously familiar with this, as he uses it in the ‘Wife of Bath Prologue’ – 'Whoso that first to mille comth, first grynt.' Or as we now say – 'First come, first served.'

Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims by William Blake

The Sachsenspiegel states that any traveller could cross uncultivated land provided it wasn’t enclosed, but could be fined heavily for straying across cultivated fields. If you were in a cart you were fined a penny a wheel, or if riding then a halfpenny. You could also be obliged to compensate the farmer for the value of any of the crops you had destroyed. These were on-the-spot fines and anyone refusing to pay could be lawfully seized and held until fine of 3 shillings was paid, which was roughly the cost of a sheep.

Any traveller stealing hay or corn from a field at night and carrying it off, faced the death penalty, but it was permitted that if a traveller’s horse was on the verge of collapse, the traveller could feed it by cutting as much corn or fodder as he could reach while standing with one foot on the road. But it had to be eaten by the horse on the spot.

Travellers being directed to shrines containing holy relics.

Travel was extremely hazardous, not only did you have to contend with the weather and the risk of accidents, but there were unfriendly animals too. Many travellers put the herb known as hound’s tongue inside their shoes which had such a foul smell that it was supposed to drive away unfriendly dogs.

But in case that didn’t work, the law said that any traveller who was attacked by a dog, pig or bull, was entitled to defend themselves, even to the point of killing it, without having to pay the owner compensation, provided he swore on a holy relic that he’d had no other choice. But anyone who owned an aggressive dog or a pet wolf, bear, stag or ape, must pay for any damage these animals did. It is interesting that in the 13th century there were enough people who kept these animals as pets or for use in entertainments at fairs, that it was necessary to specifically name these ‘tamed’ animals in law.

1411-1413 A pet ape or monkey

playing with a dog

at the foot of a bed.

If you survived the vicious farm dogs and wandering livestock, one major hazard still remained – outlaws and robbers. They knew that most travellers, especially those on horseback or in carts, were bound to be carrying at least enough money for a few night’s lodgings and probably a great deal more, in addition to goods, valuable horses and carts which were a great temptation to any thief. The significance of choosing to travel on the king’s highway or waterways was that, in theory, you were under the protection of the king at all hours of the day and night. Specifically mentioned in the Sachsenspiegel was the protection it afforded to women, Jews and priests.

Anyone found guilty of murdering, assaulting or robbing a traveller on king’s highway was liable to be executed by beheading or being broken on the wheel depending on their crime. Severe though this punishment was, it probably didn’t do that much deter crime, since you first had to catch those responsible and on a lonely stretch of forest road, it might be hours if not days before a victim would be found.

A woman being set upon by robbers on the road.

But there was also a class of beggars or confidence tricksters who flourished both in Europe and England. They specialised in stripping themselves naked, smearing themselves with dirt and animal blood and wandering into towns or villages tearfully claiming they had been robbed on the road. Monasteries, churches or kind-hearted townsfolk would often take pity on them providing them with shelter and food, and also fresh clothing which they could carry off and sell in the next town. They might even receive a little money to compensate them for their loss, especially if they claimed the supposed robbery had taken place within the village bounds, which the inhabitants were supposed to protect. I suppose the modern equivalent would be those fraudsters who make false insurance claims.

The type of traffic on our roads may have changed, but human nature doesn’t.

Odette by Julie Summers

There are very few characters from the Second World War who are known by their first names but Odette is one of them. Probably the most famous female Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent to survive was born this day in 1912. She was christened Odette Marie Celine Brailly in Amiens and remarkably was blind for nearly two years of her young life following a serious illness. In 1926 she moved to Boulogne and met an Englishman, Roy Sansom, who she married in 1931. The couple moved to London after the birth of their first daughter. Two more little girls followed in 1934 and 1946.

Despite her physical frailty early in life Odette grew up to be headstrong with an irrepressible enthusiasm for life. In 1939 she and her family were evacuated to Devon and three years later she sent a postcard that changed her life. The Admiralty were asking for photographs of the west coast of France so she sent a selection of pictures of Boulogne, adding that she was French by birth and knew the area well. Her 'mistake' was to send the letter to the War Office, not the Admiralty, and soon afterwards she was invited to an interview in London. She had no idea what she was being interviewed for but the interviewer immediately spotted her potential as an agent.

Leaving her children behind with great reluctance she joined SOE as one of the first women to be recruited by them, joining the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry or FANY as a cover should she be captured in France. She was trained in Northern Scotland and at the SOE finishing school in Beaulieu, Hampshire where she was given the following assessment: 'She is impulsive and hasty in her judgments and has not quite the clarity of mind which is desirable in subversive activity. She seems to have little experience of the outside world. She is excitable, temperamental, although she has a certain determination.' But no one could doubt her patriotism and determination to do something for her country where her mother and brother were living under Nazi occupation.

She landed in France in November 1942 and made contact with Captain Peter Churchill who was running an SOE network based in Cannes. He obtained permission from London to use her as his courier and she worked in Marseilles for a few months until an Abwehr counterintelligence officer, Hugo Bleicher, infiltrated Churchill's operation and arrested Odette and Peter Churchill.

Captain Peter Churchill

Odette was interrogated by the Gestapo fourteen times and tortured but she refused to disclose the information she held about two agents they were after. She fabricated the story that Peter was a nephew of Winston Churchill. She also told them that she was married to Peter and that he knew nothing of her activities. This diverted attention from Captain Churchill but she was condemned to death on two counts in June 1943 to which she replied: 'Then you will have to make up your mind on what count I am to be executed because I can only die once.' This so infuriated Bleicher that he ordered her to be sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp where she was kept in a dark, horribly overheated cell with no food. Eventually that regime was relaxed and she was moved to a cell next to the crematorium where she witnessed an instance of cannibalism of a dead inmate by starving prisoners. Her cell was frequently full of burned hair from the cremations.

At the end of the war she was handed over to the Americans and gave evidence at the Hamburg Ravensbruck Trials of the war crimes she had witnessed. In 1946 her first marriage was dissolved and the following year she married Peter Churchill. The story of their lives as SOE agents was celebrated in a best selling biography of Odette and a film. She became the most famous British female agent on either side of the channel and the only woman to receive the George Cross, the highest civilian honour, while alive. All the other women were awarded their George Crosses posthumously.

When asked how she coped with the torture and the solitary confinement she pointed back to her childhood when she was blind and paralysed and by the inspiration of her grandfather 'who did not accept weakness very easily.' Odette and Peter Churchill divorced in 1955 and she married for a third time that year. What I honour about this remarkable woman is the way she fought for recognition for her fellow agents and the respect with which she treated their memories even decades after the war. Every year she laid a wreath beneath the FANY memorial at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge in remembrance of her colleagues who did not return. After her death in 1995 a plaque commemorating her life was added to the memorial.

GREENWAY by Adèle Geras

In the middle of April, I spent five days at Greenway. This is the country home of Agatha Christie, on the banks of the River Dart, just across the water from the pretty village of Dittisham. 

Greenway House was built in 1792 but Agatha bought the property in 1938 and spent many holidays here. The house is large and square and stuccoed in cream. It looks over lawns and trees and a magnificent array of magnolias, rhododendrons and camellias. The sun shone for the whole time we were there and the shrubs were at their very best.  Since 2009,  Greenway has been  a National  Trust property and the old servants' quarters have been turned into an apartment that can sleep 10 people. It's comfortable and also old-fashioned....you feel that Agatha herself might easily come walking into the lounge or sit at the dressing table in one of the bedrooms. In the bookshelf in my room, for instance, I found a Gwen Raverat's Period Piece with this dedication:  

I read and loved Agatha Christie back in the 1950s and early 60s, but now have a personal connection with the Queen of Crime. My daughter, Sophie Hannah, has written a new Hercule Poirot novel and has been obsessed with all things Christie for eighteen months or so. The name of this novel is embargoed till tonight but I will put it up in a comment below this post so if you want to see what it is, come and have a look  tomorrow.

Here is one of the paths leading down to the river. Agatha was very keen on gardening and there are gardening books on many bookshelves. The planting is inspired. Periwinkles, bluebells, tulips, fuchsia and banks and banks of azaleas make a walk around the property a real pleasure.

This typewriter was on the windowsill at the end of the passage in the guest apartment. I suppose that means it's not actually the one Agatha wrote on...that would have been moved to the House itself. Still, it's an old machine and it's here so I like to think she must have written at least a letter or two on it. It is, whoever used it, a beautiful object, I think. 

The first thing that strikes you as you walk  around the house is what a collector Agatha was. Here are some snuffboxes, but she also assembled a great deal of  crockery, ornaments, books, pictures, and assorted pieces of archaeological pottery, connected to the work of her husband, Max Mallowan. She used to accompany him to his archaeological sites and work on her books while he was overseeing the digs.

This doll  ( above) has, like a great many dolls, a touch of the sinister about her. Below is the portrait of Agatha when she was four. I love it because the artist has captured exactly a kind of sulky boredom that's not often depicted by artists. 

And here is the top of the grand piano, full of family photos.

There are several dressers in the house.  On this one,  alongside the crockery, is a skull, which struck me as appropriate.

A great many books are displayed both in the house and in the apartment. You can see scrapbooks and letters and on various tables there are envelopes addressed to the author, looking as though they've just been delivered. I wanted to take photos of these but for some reason my camera decided to malfunction just at that moment. 

Here are some of the toys arranged on a sofa. I love the mad look on the eyes of the doll on the left. And that teddy has been loved to bits by someone, maybe even Agatha herself.

Finally, wisteria, growing beside the greenhouse in the Walled Garden. The greenhouse is full of tropical plants and cacti. There are espaliered trees, and a herb garden with everything in it: sage, marjoram, lemon balm, dill, orange-scented thyme, rosemary, and bay. 

Agatha Christie called Greenway "The loveliest place in the world." She had travelled widely but  Greenway's tranquil atmosphere, and the thousand shades of green that she could see from the windows of her house made this place into  the best kind of home.  Her benevolent and inspiring presence is everywhere here.  If you find yourself in the area, it's a wonderful place to visit. I loved my time there.