Heritage Column for August 25, 2005
By Fred Anderson
HAWARDEN, Wales – I recently experienced a week in a private residential library in north Wales near Chester, England. When I entered the library's inner sanctum, I greeted the library assistant with a loud exclamation: “Why, it smells like a library!” When her voice never rose above a whisper, I realized not only did St. Deiniol's Library smell like an authentic library of yesteryear, but also it expected silence!
At breakfast a retired minister sat next to me while voluntary silence prevailed. Finally, he observed: “Many years ago, as a young man, I lived in a monastery and we practiced silence. But I never made it habitual!” It was his way of encouraging some exchange of conversation.
For the next few moments we talked about the state of Christianity in contemporary Europe. Through convenience and conviction, my breakfast companion, an Anglican minister of age 76, has become a regular worshipper at a Baptist church near his home. He confessed that he had not joined because he was content with his own infant baptism and did not care to be plunged beneath the waters.
Most of the other residential scholars were active or retired ministers, largely Anglican, and some were academic types working on research. When they learned that a non-conformist was present, they were cordial but did not seem to know just how to engage this Baptist from America.
In the confines of the library itself, there was no conversation. It was a treat to have unrestricted access to a library rich in church history, theology and general history. I perused most of the books on Baptists and enjoyed sampling biographies and histories. I read religious newspapers and history journals.
I actually had seen the library from the outside on a previous visit to Wales but I never thought that I would study there. The earlier visit was with Helen and Ian Petrie, who live in nearby Liverpool. Helen grew up in the village of Hawarden (pronounced Harden) and I first came to the village in 1982 to visit her parents. We became friends with the Petries many years ago when our son and their son were in the fifth grade in Richmond, where Ian had come for a year's teaching assignment at VCU. We quickly became fast friends.
Helen recalled doing her schoolwork in St. Deinol's Library, which welcomed the local schoolchildren. St. Deinol's was the brainchild of Hawarden's most distinguished resident, Prime Minister William E. Gladstone. He maintained a large library in his huge castle-like home and called his library “The Temple of Peace.” Visitors were permitted to speak when they first entered but afterwards dead silence was expected. He conceived of the idea of a residential library for scholars and clerics and gave it his collection of some 30,000 books. Much of the original collection was hauled by wheelbarrow and wagon from his home. Gladstone devised his own cataloging system, which is still followed. Today the collection has grown to some 250,000 books.
The century-old library building is a Gothic pile of dark stone and the interior is of beamed ceiling with a wooden gallery around the sides of two large rooms. Located hard by the library is the village's Anglican church, with its ancient graveyard. The view from my room was of many old tombstones. Altogether it is not a cheery setting on a rainy day; and in the Welsh winters, it must be dreary indeed. The rooms are monastic but adequate and there are some concessions to the modern era. The only noise in the library is the gentle tapping on laptop computers. Named for a sixth-century saint, St. Deiniol's is a place of refuge against the pulls of the world.
Last summer when I was planning ahead for this summer's visit, a rather strange thing happened. On a Saturday, I emailed my reservation; and on the following day, I was visiting a country church in Virginia to portray my favorite character, William E. Hatcher. When I am presenting a monologue on my 19th-century character, I always slip my sermon notes inside a vintage copy of the Religious Herald from the collection at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. I had grabbed a copy from the endless supply. As I waited for my cue, I began to read through a copy of the Herald issue, which was dated Sept. 16, 1886. Imagine my surprise when I discovered an unsigned article on Gladstone and his library!
The article told that Stephen Gladstone was the village rector and that when his father, the Prime Minister, visited the church, the Grand Old Man sat at a desk just inside the doorway. The Herald described the library, then in Gladstone's home: “In his study he has a table for each variety of work, a literary table, a political and theological one, and so on. As there is no public library in Hawarden, every one of the many thousand volumes belonging to the library of the castle is freely lent. The villagers come to select when a member of the household acts as librarian.”
Before I left, I gave a copy of the old Herald article to the library and sent a copy to Gladstone's castle for the current Sir William to see. Arriving about 120 years after its publication, it might be called a late delivery!
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society.