Day 29: Pleasure Reading, 1890

Being sick wasn’t part of my plan for this week, but at least my houseboundness and limited attention span for work gave me time to do something I’ve been longing to do since I first walked into this room: Pick a random book of the shelves from George C. Baker’s collection and read it - for no particular reason.

The Firm of Girdlestone, by Arthur Conan Doyle

The book I chose turned out to be The Firm of Girdlestone by Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. The book had no publication date and no jacket blurb, so I dove in, deliberately not checking the Google for contemporary orientation. The book clearly revealed references to late nineteenth-century England and Scotland: a London shipping firm engaged in African trade; a manipulable shipping insurance industry and a wealthy “Muster Lloyd”; a detailed description of an early football game. Immigration to the U.S. even makes a brief appearance, as a washed-up character is said to have been spotted years later in seedy areas of San Francisco.

The book - which, I learned today, was Conan Doyle’s first novel, published in 1890 - is entertaining in the Gothic formula of the era, a bit like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) without the memorable monster. Aside from pure entertainment, it interested me most as a comment on the hypocritical mores of the late nineteenth century London merchant class, for which the senior and junior Mister Girdlestones serve as compellingly horrifying representatives (perhaps some types of monsters hit closer to home).

Reading Beyond Space and Time

But more than that, reading this book held my attention because of the path it has walked. George C. Baker, who built this house and filled this library in 1915, stamped his name in the inside front cover. The book is one volume in an literary anthology, the kind my grandfather still had on his shelves when I was a kid. I can’t tell whether Baker read the book - it is unmarked but the binding is well worn - but I know he valued it because he saved it until his death in 1942, and passed it on in this home library to his son.

The house has passed through a few owners since then - after the son came two granddaughters (and a great-grandson who lived here during their tenure). In 1992 it passed to the first unrelated owners, who sold it to us in 2020.

History and Humility

Being sick has a way of humbling you, and so does history. As important as we believe our lives to be, this library and this book whisper a different story. But they also hold up a beacon for us - this way have others walked; take their hands and you might move beyond the veil of consciousness that seems to separate us. If space-time is an illusion and all moments exist in a field of potential, I don’t see why George Baker (and Arthur Conan Doyle) can’t meet me somewhere that lies just beyond their words. It’s that ineluctable feeling that animates me to read and recount history.