Quick Reads:
The Librarian’s Tale
Ed Rehkopf
Copyright 2012 Ed Rehkopf
Tom O'Malley and his wife Kathleen broke a twenty-six year tradition when they decided to spend their summer vacation in Maine rather than down on the Cape. Now that the kids were grown and the traffic had become so bad on Highway 28 through Dennis Port, they decided to seek a vacation in a place farther from the madding crowd.
When they heard from a friend about the Todd House Bed and Breakfast in the heart of antiquing country, they decided Oxford County, Maine, would be just such a place. Kathleen practically drooled at the thought of two solid weeks searching out undiscovered antiques and Tom planned to fulfill his longstanding desire to reread the great novels of his youth. It was a plan he'd made nearly every summer since he was thirty-five, but somehow it always got lost in the swirl of events at the Cape. He went back to work each third week in August complaining to his Broad Street compatriots that a vacation on the Cape was never a vacation, particularly with three teenaged daughters in the house.
What they found at Todd House was just what they had hoped to find: a casual, yet elegant gingerbread Victorian with a wide porch fronting on the village green. Ellen and Richard Todd made them welcomed and comfortable. Every aspect of their accommodations from the Irish linen tablecloths and Sheffield china to the turn-down mints on their handmade quilted bedspread, spoke of the proprietors' loving attention to detail.
Kathleen was delighted with the back country roads and little antique shops. "Everything is so unspoiled," she had said after her first day out, "and the prices are a third of what they are in Cambridge." So each day she headed out in the Suburban with her route laid out on a map. While she headed for particular shops recommended by the Todds, it was not beyond her to drive up to any old farmstead that looked "promising." And in fact, some of her best purchases came from this "Boston brashness," as she called it.
Tom was beside himself with free time. He spent his mornings on the porch relaxing over coffee, croissants and The Globe. For hours at a stretch he devoted himself to his classics. Then he explored the various shops around the common or the local library and took long leisurely walks in the afternoon. In his free and easy way he came to know several village residents and found himself invited back for coffee and conversation. All in all, both Tom and Kathleen were delighted with their vacation.
By Monday of their second week they were both completely relaxed and lamented the few days left before returning to the pace of the city. Kathleen had the back of the Suburban chock full of her finds and Tom had worked his way through Anna Karenina, Magister Ludi and was now setting sail into Moby Dick. As a diversion to this meat and potato fare, he checked out several books from the town library.
"You know, Kath," Tom said as he crawled into bed that night, "I'm finding a lot more in these books than I did thirty years ago. If I could only go back and rewrite that paper Mrs. Higgins gave me a C minus on . . ."
Kathleen lifted her head up from her copy of Connoisseur, looked down her nose through her glasses and answered with a tone of high indignation, "Thomas O'Malley, you'd do no such thing. You might as well have your grandfather write it for you." She smiled at him, pleased with her little joke, and looked back to her magazine.
"Ye gods!" Tom cried.
"What's the matter," Kathleen looked up, alarmed at the shock and fright on his face.
"I think I'm in bed with Mrs. Higgins. Is that possible?"
"You rat!" She said, hitting him on the arm with her magazine.
Tom adjusted his pillows, pulled the reading lamp closer and gathered a stack of books from the bedside table. Kathleen glanced over and said, "What have you got there?"
"Some books I picked up at the library today. I thought I'd take a break from the hunt for the Great White Whale."
"Find anything interesting?" she asked reaching for the pile.
"Nothing on antiques, if that's what you mean," he said with a sideways look of sarcasm. "There's a book of short stories, a biography of Isak Dinesen, and this moldy one is a book of local history. I found it practically buried in a stack of old books on the mezzanine." He began to glance through it as Kathleen picked up the biography and flipped through it, looking at the pictures.
A sudden breeze started to blow through the trees outside the open window. Kathleen spoke absently not looking up from the book, "It smells like rain. Did you hear a forecast?"
When Tom did not answer she looked over to find him engrossed in some papers that had fallen out of the old book. "What is it, Tom?" she asked expectantly.
"I don't know. I just found these old papers folded up inside the back cover. It seems to be some sort of story. And here's a note."
"Well, don't keep me in suspense," she said.
Tom started to read from the handwritten note attached to the sheets of yellowed typing paper.
Dear Reader,
I offer for your enjoyment a little story. You obviously have a love of the written word or you would not have visited our library. I hope you find the story interesting and entertaining. I took pleasure in writing it and only hope that I may share some measure of that feeling with you.
I have but one request: when you've finished, please return it to the desk at the Town Library. In this way, the story will be recirculated and shared with others.
Thank you and enjoy your reading.
The little note was signed Harriet B. Stoddard.
Tom looked at Kathleen with raised eyebrows and said, "This is an interesting little surprise." He inspected the typed sheets of paper.
"Read it aloud," Kathleen said.
Tom again began to read.
What becomes of a little girl who loved to read – whose favorite playmates were the books she devoured by the dozens; who spent her entire childhood immersed in stories that took her to exotic lands, cast her in exciting adventures and taught her the secrets of the heart? If she has her wits about her, she becomes a librarian and literally surrounds herself with the written word. So it was with Harriet Barkley Stoddard.
By the time she went off to Smith College, Harriet knew that she would become a librarian. Her education was classical, as it was for most women at Smith, but she also took a number of courses in the then-fledgling library sciences. She spent many hours exploring the college library and the more extensive ones at Amherst and the University of Massachusetts. Her major diversion besides reading was writing poetry and an occasional story for the school's literary magazine.
While she had a close circle of friends, what bound them together were not the normal concerns of young women of the time, but rather a complete abandonment to the joys of literature. They met often to read together and frequently copied passages from the books they were reading to share with the others. It was an inspiring and invigorating time for young Harriet.
Upon graduation she applied and was accepted at the post of junior assistant librarian at Bates College in Lewiston. She traveled there full of high hopes and expectations in the late summer of 1913. Though she enjoyed the college environment, she found that she was unable to enter into close friendships with the students and share her passion for literature. This was so because as Mr. Osborne, the Head Librarian, had told her, "You are a member of the faculty and must comport yourself with the dignity of your position. You are expected to help the students in their quest for knowledge, but your relationship with them must always be conducted in an atmosphere of aloof civility."
She was never quite sure what he had meant by this but it made little difference because she labored in the obscurity of the libra
ry's back office. In retrospect, she was little more than a secretary for the exalted Head Librarian. So after three less-than- satisfying years in Lewiston, she accepted the position of Librarian in a neighboring Oxford County town.
There she found a cordial and sympathetic town board who gave her free rein in structuring the services of the small yet active library. Among the wealthier town residents she found several supporters whose generosity helped the library grow considerably during and after the war years.
In addition to improving the regular services of the library, she started a number of programs that helped the library reach out to larger segments of the community. She organized a volunteer reading brigade to provide service to shut-ins, the elderly and the blind. She instituted a lecture series that drew literary figures on the New England circuit and she gave an annual address to the sophomore class entitled "Great Treasures of Literature." All in all, she found life much more satisfying in this rustic community than in the academic environs of Lewiston.
Despite the pleasure her work gave her, there seemed to be something missing from her life. No matter what she did or how much she accomplished, there was a vague yearning in her soul. It was something so sublime and so intrinsic to her being that she could only give it voice through writing. She began to keep a journal of her