* *
The Wright Library is the second biggest university library in England. Made of dark grey stone three storeys high, it resembles a cathedral with great banks of high windows on its southern and eastern sides. Inside, the ground floor is laid out in a chessboard of black-and-white tiles, the two mezzanines above it connected by spiralling staircases of brass and oak. On mornings like this one, the building’s interior was bathed in gorgeous sunshine, and people would occupy the chairs by the windows until the heat proved too much.
There was no escape from the August humidity, even in here. Sunlight poured in through the huge windows, bouncing brightly off the checkerboard tiles and polished wood of shelves and tables.
On a normal Term day at just after eight, the Wright Library would be bustling, swarming with charged columns of ant-like, black-gowned undergraduates. All of them would be busy. Some would be buried in their work, reading, scratching at their essays with their pen nibs or scuttling about with stacks of tomes as others prowled the labyrinth of endless bookshelf corridors. But this was high summer, and I had the place almost to myself.
It smelled like a library in here. It smelled like musty paper and old leather, like ink and oak. Like quiet learning. Compared with the sporting fields and boxing rings, where I would unleash my animal spirit in wars of skill and strength, libraries have always felt comforting to me. It is a strange dichotomy. Perhaps I am attracted to their peace because so much of me is restless, or possibly it is the other way around: that I have become an athlete because I spend too much time working at a desk, enjoying the quiet atmosphere of places like this. But I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I liked it here and that was that.
Apart from books, libraries had one thing in common. They inspired me. They were the homes of rows of books by great and ancient minds, minds organised onto pages that could sit there, unchanging through the years, until I took one down and rediscovered it.
Whenever I read an old book, I would wonder: who has come before me to this work? Did he marvel at its writer, at the discipline of his setting out those civilised ideas, as I did? Did he feel the same deep reverence, the unending sense of privilege that the reading of a scholar-crafted work like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Aeschylus’ Orestia, or Caesar’s Gallic War provides? If he did, I knew him well, and respected him profoundly.
My studies here have fundamentally changed my view of the world. I think that, in the heart of every well-earned Humanities degree, beneath the layers of learning to think and express oneself clearly, of teaching oneself to independently pursue a project to its full potential, of developing a sound control of one’s mental faculties and improving the quality of one’s decisions, the diligent scholar will discover something eternally wonderful: a sense of himself at his most refined. What a gift to the world that beautiful feeling becomes. It is a wellspring of dignity and self-respect. It teaches that human beings have something fine and precious inside them; that we are capable of so much beyond the brutality and baseness that some say dominate our world.
* * *
During Term I sometimes stop my work in the library to observe the students as they go about their studies. It gives me heart to see them so industrious, so diligent, so dignified. I remember feeling exactly that way when I arrived in Allminster twelve years ago, proud of my first proper suit and my new commoner’s robes, of working through the difficult years that followed my parents’ deaths, of winning the scholarship to Allminster University and justifying the faith that Uncle Albert had placed in me. In my mind, as I walked through the famous college’s towering gates for the first time, I had nearly reached the summit of my dreams, and could not have been happier.
In those days, somewhat paradoxically, I had also felt unwelcome here, a lower-order intruder in the grooming ground of young lords and future politicians, but I made friends, and my talents for games and study steadily shone through. I was offered the chance to sit for a position at St Matthew’s immediately after graduating. My uncle Albert was overjoyed: at a time when full employment was scarce, I had earned a seat at one of England’s most respected colleges. He told me that my parents were rejoicing in heaven for me, and I succumbed to tears at that when no-one was looking.
Yes, I am proud of how I’d fought hard to get here. I have earned my self-respect. I deeply honour that feeling -fostering a sense of it in others is the very reason I teach here. And definitely, I am proud of the young men and women who search for it, quietly, perhaps not even knowing what they really seek, on the bookshelves of the Wright Library.
* * *
To search for information about the letters, though, I couldn’t afford any distractions. I chose the quietest spot I knew, my special spot, a seldom-visited table on the west of the top level, overlooking the main floor. The table was large, and could have seated twenty, but I had rarely seen more than three or four sitting there at any given time. For the moment there was no one but me up there, and I could afford to spread my things out the way I liked.
I laid them on the table in ritual order: my foolscap exercise book, the pen that had belonged to my father, one wooden ruler, a nib case and two bottles of ink - one red, one blue. My hat and briefcase I put to my right side, as usual. Brand new paper was expensive, so for informal note-taking, and the writing of daily lists, I normally used reverse sides of old student essays that I had in abundance in my office. I fished one from my briefcase, smoothed it with my hands, and began my work.
Carefully I ruled two lines three inches apart, straight down in red ink. In blue I wrote a checklist of things I remembered from the letters down the left side column.
Barking Abbey. King Sigeric of Essex. Ohthere of Barking. Eulalia of Barking. Archbishop Bregowine. Bishop Ecgwulf.
Not much to build on, but a start, I thought. Next, I spent twenty minutes searching the upstairs catalogue, noting holding numbers for as many sources as I could in the next column over. There were hardly any. I was confident that the indices of these sources would provide other references, but reminded myself I did not have long to complete the list as best I could and get back to normal duties. I set to it.
By ten, I had a bare and disappointing skeleton of notes under the red headings in my exercise book.
Barking Abbey: Eighth Century.
Founded 666 by Archbishop Bregowine. Double (but not mixed) monastery. Men lived in separate quarters. Men performed building and farm labour for
nuns. Active commercial centre. Had own port and fishing fleet, mill, glass furnace. Traded deep-water fish, eels from Thames, high-quality glassware (later). Destroyed by Danes c. 870. Little else known.
Sigeric: East Saxon King.
Son of Saelred. Preceded by Swithred. Ruled c.758-798. Looks genuinely pious: abdicated in
798 to enter a monastery in Rome. Little else known.
Ohthere: Monk-Priest, Barking. Missionary.
Nothing found.
Eulalia: Barking Abbess, niece of Sigeric.
Sources: Letter from Aldhelm to nuns of Barking mentions a “Eulalia”.
Aldhelm’s letter written late 7th century, cannot be same “Eulalia”. Nothing else found.
Bregowine:
