A book
The book I am holding in my hands, a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histories of the Kings of Britain, is over 100 years old. It's in pretty good condition, much better than the other 100 year old book I have out. It's from our school library, and in the back it has stamps back from when they still checked out books manually.
It was checked out in the following years: 1919, 1920, 1921, 1926, 1927, 1930, 1933, 1946, 1959, and 1979.
We've had it for 100 years and it's only been checked out that many times, plus whatever from before 1919, and since they started using computers to catalogue it.
Not only that, this book, the only full English translation of the work in our library, sat alone on its shelf, untouched by any hand who wished to read it, for two decades, from 1959 to 1979.
No one wanted to read this book for the entire amount of time that I have been alive.
But that's not what makes me really sad.
What really hurts is this thought. LJ cut for being really sappy.
On November 7, 1919, a Hamilton student checked out this copy of the Historia Regum Brittaniae. He was probably not that unlike me. An interest in the Middle Ages, probably in King Arthur. Maybe even in Sir Gawain--that's why I'm reading the book.
He (definitely a he--Hamilton was single-sex back then, and for fifty years after) probably sat in his room.. let's say in South. No, Dunham. He sat in his room in Dunham with his roommates, overlooking the North Quad, and read about Uther Pendragon and King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere.
Now he's dead. When he read this book, he was my age. Now, unless he be over a hundred, this nameless man, of whom the only record I shall ever see is this stamped date, is dead. Who once pored over this tome and bathed in the legends, a five minute walk from where I sit, is no more. And someday, but by the grace of God, I too shall be no more.
But there is no stamp in the back of the Historia Regum Brittaniae to remember me.
It was checked out in the following years: 1919, 1920, 1921, 1926, 1927, 1930, 1933, 1946, 1959, and 1979.
We've had it for 100 years and it's only been checked out that many times, plus whatever from before 1919, and since they started using computers to catalogue it.
Not only that, this book, the only full English translation of the work in our library, sat alone on its shelf, untouched by any hand who wished to read it, for two decades, from 1959 to 1979.
No one wanted to read this book for the entire amount of time that I have been alive.
But that's not what makes me really sad.
What really hurts is this thought. LJ cut for being really sappy.
On November 7, 1919, a Hamilton student checked out this copy of the Historia Regum Brittaniae. He was probably not that unlike me. An interest in the Middle Ages, probably in King Arthur. Maybe even in Sir Gawain--that's why I'm reading the book.
He (definitely a he--Hamilton was single-sex back then, and for fifty years after) probably sat in his room.. let's say in South. No, Dunham. He sat in his room in Dunham with his roommates, overlooking the North Quad, and read about Uther Pendragon and King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere.
Now he's dead. When he read this book, he was my age. Now, unless he be over a hundred, this nameless man, of whom the only record I shall ever see is this stamped date, is dead. Who once pored over this tome and bathed in the legends, a five minute walk from where I sit, is no more. And someday, but by the grace of God, I too shall be no more.
But there is no stamp in the back of the Historia Regum Brittaniae to remember me.