The following is an extract from a private letter, written a short time since, in which, although the writer confesses that his memory, at this distance of time, is not as fresh as it might be, a fair description is given of the second or intermediate Reading-Room, as it was in the year 1846:—
“What I recollect about it is as follows. It was entered by a sort of lane going down from Montague-place into what must have been at one time a stable-yard. You then went up a staircase into a long, lofty room.... I think there were two great sort of chests of hot water pipes on each side of the entrance from the staircase. The entrance divided the room into two unequal parts, and I fancy that the smaller portion was reserved for readers of MSS. The catalogue was in a series of presses near the west wall, commencing about opposite the entrance, and extending north. The rest of the floor of the room was occupied by reading-tables. At the north end was a thing like a buttery hatch. From this you got your books, having previously given your docket describing them. The walls of the room, for eight or ten feet from the floor, were crowded with book-cases, except at the entrance and hatch, and all accessible to readers in the room. I think the room was lighted by windows above the book-cases, but, as far as I can recollect, on the east side only. I think the other walls above the book-cases resting on the floor of the reading room were also covered with book-cases, but these not accessible from the Reading-Room, but from galleries, &c., opening into the other parts of the building. I recollect nothing about the ventilation, but I know that after working some time, you found your head very hot and heavy, and your feet cold. These were the symptoms of the ‘Museum Megrims,’ about which there was, shortly after my experience of the place, a deal of chaff in the papers. I fully sympathized with it at the time.”
The Library of the British Museum continued to increase in proportion to its rapid influx of readers; and in 1849, the collection, excluding the masses of MSS., pamphlets, and other unbound works, amounted to no less than 435,000 volumes.[[Q]] What a vast acquisition must this have been to the public, whether to the student, the critic, or the occasional lounger!
[Q]. In 1880, 1,300,000 volumes.
The power of exercising rights of ownership was, however, by no means commensurate with the legal title to the property: indeed, owing to lack of room and other conveniences, such rights, in the case of very many who would otherwise have taken advantage of them, scarcely extended to liberty of inspecting the outsides of the volumes; as to the insides, they were literally closed books.
Such a state of affairs made a deep impression on Panizzi, whose incessant anxiety for, and interest in the Department over which he presided, added to his repugnance to suffering so much of its contents to lie idle and unprofitable, caused in him a ceaseless feeling of regret. He saw and knew, only too well, how alone reform was to take place—viz., by provision of ample room, and by due attention too the requirements of readers, at the same time securing the necessary amount of space in the building for the ever increasing additions to the Library.
From a very early period his attention had been directed to the requirements of the Reading-Room, and an important improvement in its service had been introduced by him even before he became Keeper of Printed Books. Before his time, the press-mark denoting the place of a book in the Library was not affixed to the Reading-room copy of the Catalogue, and the reader simply indicated the books he wished to see, which were then looked out in the Library copy of the Catalogue by the attendants. This system, which may have answered very well while the daily average of visitors did not exceed thirty, became entirely inadequate when they amounted to two hundred; and Mr. Baber, at Panizzi’s suggestion, directed that press-marks should be put to the Reading-Room Catalogue, so that the readers might search it for themselves. This innovation occasioned an immense saving of time, but was naturally resented by many to whom time was of less importance than trouble. Sir Harris Nicolas, an excellent type of the really hard-working reader, thought differently, and spontaneously addressed a letter to Panizzi, congratulating him upon his reform. This incident had an amusing sequel. Sir H. Nicolas saw fit to assail Panizzi’s management in a series of anonymous articles in the Spectator newspaper, and among other points censured the very regulation of which he had previously approved. A correspondence ensued, in the course of which Panizzi cited the material parts of Sir Harris’s former letter to himself without marks of quotations, and Sir H. Nicolas mistaking his own arguments for his antagonist’s, fell foul of them in a fashion which gave Panizzi the opportunity he sought of withdrawing from further controversy with “a man endowed with so flexible a judgment, and so treacherous a memory.”
The improvements introduced by Panizzi into the internal arrangements of the Old Reading-Room were nevertheless trivial in comparison with those which he was destined to accomplish by the construction of a new one.