‘Rousseau had no theory of color, but fully understood its possibilities and became an absolute master of its effects.’ – Recollections of Henri Rousseau by Wilhelm Uhde
When I was a child, eight years old or thereabouts, my mother took me to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I recall walking up some steps, arriving in a small room, and finding myself face to face with this:
I stood for a long time, just gazing. I was transfixed. Not only was the image enchanting, but I remember that to my young mind, the painting made perfect sense. Peace, tranquility and beauty – they all dwelt there.
This is how Henri Rousseau describes The Sleeping Gypsy(1897):
“A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic.”
When I was able to tear my gaze away from this vision, I beheld this, on a nearby wall:
The Dream, 1910
Also enchanting, but not quite in the same way, or to quite the same degree – at least, to my young eyes.
I am currently reading Recollections of Henri Rousseau by Wilhelm Uhde (with an introduction by Nancy Ireson). Uhde, whose dates are 1874 to 1947, was a German art collector particularly interested in modern art. He moved to Paris at the age of 30, becoming an admirer and ultimately a friend of the painter Rousseau. Uhde later observed:
There are people who go through life as though they were special guests on earth; and then there are those whose joy is to give, rather than receive. These latter are few and far between. One of them was Henri Rousseau.
This little book is one in a series published by Getty. Their dimensions are roughly 4 & 1/2 by 6 inches; the thickness varies from one quarter to half an inch. The quality of the reproductions is stunning. Each one opens with an introduction by a contemporary writer. There follows the writings of those who were the artist’s contemporaries, or nearly so. It is inspired idea, beautifully carried out.
The series, called Lives of the Artists, is available from the Getty Museum Gift Shop, and, in certain cases, from Amazon. Thus far, in addition to the above, I am the happy possessor of these:
Meanwhile, back to Rousseau, here are some more favorites:
Carnival Evening, 1885-86
Self-portrait from Isle Saint Louis, 1890
Tiger in a Tropical storm, 1891
The Football Players, 1908
Tony Horwitz
Tony Horwitz, a gifted and witty prose stylist, wrote two of my favorite nonfiction titles: Baghdad Without a Map and Confederates in the Attic. I read the former when it came out in 1991. It might come across as somewhat dated now, but Confederates, with its wonderful stories of Civil War re-enactors and the lengths they go to to achieve authenticity, is probably just as entertaining today as it was when it came out in 1998.
Earlier this afternoon, I was checking my library reserves and was delighted to find that my reserve on Horwitz’s latest book, Spying on the South, had just come in. About an hour later, I read the news of his sudden death. He was here in the Washington area to promote the new book when he collapsed.
Tony Horwitz’s death was sudden, probably due to cardiac arrest. Married to novelist Geraldine Brooks, he was sixty years old.
This is very sad news.
Tony Horwitz June 8 1958-May 27, 2019
‘The sense of proximate skin–of latent power beneath respectable garments–it had the effect of spring water, bubbling beneath her skin.’ – Courting Mr. Lincoln, by Louis Bayard
A thoughtful essay on historical fiction recently appeared in The New York Times Style Magazine. “Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction?” may be a somewhat clunky title – at least, I find it so – but author Megan O’Grady makes some points worth pondering:
A new kind of historical fiction has evolved to show us that the past is no longer merely prologue but story itself, shaping our increasingly fractured fairy tales about who we are as a society. The unmooring of time can be found everywhere, in battles for social progress we thought we’d already fought and won. In the media age, history is not simply a chain of facts recorded by scholars but a complex narrative harnessed by political parties and Facebook disinformation campaigns to speak to our sense of identity and belonging. The past we inherit speaks to us individually and collectively, but a common thread, much less a consensus view of reality, feels increasingly hard to come by.
The author mentions a number of titles. Three are among my favorites. In Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel evokes a turbulent period in English history with uncanny exactitude. And the other – O’Grady calls it “Penelope Fitzgerald’s strange and wonderful take on Novalis” – The Blue Flower.
Two mystery series, not well known in this country, more than satisfy my craving for atmospheric historical fiction: PF Chisholm’s Sir Robert Carey books and the Titus Cragg and Luke Fidelis novels written by Robin Blake.
And I’ve just finished the richly rewarding Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard. While my husband and I were vacationing in the Hudson River Valley, I had the great good fortune to be reading A Pale Blue Eye, Bayard’s fictional account of Edgar Allan Poe’s brief and turbulent tenure at West Point. So I had high hopes for this new novel – which hopes were more than fulfilled.
I can do no better than to quote from the jacket copy:
Told in the alternating voices of Mary Todd and Joshua Speed, and inspired by historical events, Courting Mr. Lincoln creates a sympathetic and complex portrait of Mary unlike any that has come before; a moving and deep portrayal of the deep and real connection between the two men; and most of all, an evocation of the unformed man who would grow into one of the nation’s most beloved presidents.
“All right,’ said Joshua. Try it with me. Until you find your way.”
“We’ll regret this,” Lincoln said.
“Now you are the lead, so you will just…you will hook your right hand round my back. Like that. Now I will rest my hand…lightly…here.
“This will end badly.”
“Be quiet. Now…raise your elbows. Shoulder height, that’s it. And back straight. And knees…well, you can bend the knees a little.”
“Like this?”
“Well, no, not like you’re praying.”
“I am praying.”
Louis Bayard
‘Thus it will be our concern, however difficult the undertaking may be, to tell of the doings of the great Tintoretto….’
….and through our narrative to make his works known, to tell how he reached the arduous apex of art; and how with his brush he brought to the images that he painted the greatest state of perfection and how he adorned painting with the most novel and rare inventions, so that nature, which at times is defective, obtained through his hands grace and grandeur.
Carlo Ridolfi, ‘Life of Tintoretto’: from The Marvels of Art, 1648, excerpt included in The Lives of Tintoretto 
I do not know how to train my mouth to sing your praises adequately. How there could be so much intelligence in a small man’s body remains as much a mystery to me as a crocodile in the fourth clime.
….but you, twiddling with your paintbrush and a small dash of white lead, and mixing some red earth…you create a figure portrayed from Nature in half an hour….I also knew that you had so fine a conception for presenting gestures, postures, front-faces, foreshortenings, profiles, distant views and perspectives as anyone riding the modern Pegasus; and it would be very fair to say this truth, that if you had as many hands as you have stpirit and knowledge, there wouldn’t be a difficult thing that exists in Nature that you couldn’t create.
Andrea Calmo: ‘Further delightful and ingenious letters from Calmo to Messer Giacomo Tinitoretto the Painter, the favourite of Nature, the Commixture of Aesculapius, and Stepson of Apelles’, 1548
Also from Lives of Tintoretto
[This post is a sort of addendum to a recent one entitled “A day at Washington’s National Gallery, Part One: The Little Dyer and his Outsized Genius.”]
Click to enlarge each of the following images;
The Miracle of St Mark Freeing the Slave, 1548
Man in Armour, 1550
St Louis, St George, and the Princess, ca 1553. Our docent told us that the Princess’s depiction on the dragon was considered, at the time, to be indecorous. This led to a discussion as to whether there existed anywhere specific instructions on how ladies should ride dragons. (Side saddle, maybe?)
The Origin of the Milky Way, 1570. This painting possesses a rather bizarre back story. From Wikipedia: ‘According to myth, the infant Heracles was brought to Hera by his half-sister Athena who later played an important role as a goddess of protection. Hera nursed Heracles out of pity, but he suckled so strongly that he caused Hera pain, and she pushed him away. Her milk sprayed across the heavens and there formed the Milky Way With divine milk, Heracles acquired supernatural powers.’
The Last Supper, ca 1563-64
Deposition of Christ, ca 1562
Venus, Mars, and Vulcan, ca 1551. Vulcan catches his wife Venus in the act of cheating on him. Mars, the other guilty party, is hiding under the bed.
Portrait of a Procurator of St Mark’s, 1570s
Portrait of Doge Pietro Loredan, 1567
For a while now, I’ve been curious about those strange round objects found going down the edge of the Doge’s ceremonial robe, and probably elsewhere as well. They’re especially noteworthy in Giovanni Bellini’s masterful 1501 portrait of the Doge Lorenzo Loredan:
The docent explained that those round objects contained within them a selection of aromatic herbs. The purpose was to sweeten the air around the person wearing the cloak – remember, bathing was an infrequent activity in those days – and more important, to ward off the Plague.
Self-Portrait 1588. Tintoretto had lived a long, eventful and largely successful life. By this time, he was elderly and tired. He died in 1594, age 75.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Poem by Walter Savage Landor, 1849
‘I remained beyond mortality’s reach. Death and decay were for others.’ – Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
I want to set down my thoughts about this book before looking at the reviews, which I’m eager to read.
First – let it be said – for me, this was a page turner. Right from the moment that Charlie Friend brings his newly acquired ‘Adam’ into his home and into his life, I had no idea how events would unfold, and I wanted badly to find out. From that moment – right from the novel’s beginning – I had that careening roller coaster feeling; I never knew what was going to happen next. At the same time, I was getting to know Charlie – an okay guy, not entirely admirable – and his upstairs neighbor Miranda, with whom he has fallen in love. Naturally she gets embroiled too in Charlie’s Adam project.
Adam is a facsimile human – nothing like the clunky robots one sees nowadays. He is remarkably close to being the real thing – in appearance, that is. As for his more subtle attributes – knowledge, responses to human emotions, language, so many other things – these must all be uploaded into his brain-like mechanism. The online manual runs to 470 pages. The owner has a fair degree of choice with regard to the settings.
To say more would be to give away too much. Meanwhile, Ian McEwan’s writing is provocative and precise, as always. Here, Charlie and Adam have been conversing, in a way that has made Charlie feel profoundly uneasy:
The little black rods in his eyes were shifting their alignment. As I stared, they appeared to swim, even to wriggle, left to right, like microorganisms mindlessly intent on some distant objective, like sperm migrating towards an ovum. I watched them, fascinated–harmonious elements lodged with in the supreme achievement of our age. Our own technical accomplishment was leaving us behind, as it was always bound to, leaving us stranded on the little sandbar of our finite intelligence.
‘…the little sandbar of our finite intelligence.’ At times, I myself feel as though that sandbar is becoming steadily narrower.
A word to the wise: There’s a strong sexual undercurrent present in this novel. Not as blatant as it was in Nutshell, but all the more potent, for that fact.
I have to admit, it’s very difficult for me to write dispassionately about Ian McEwan. I find him brilliant.
There are certain authors I read no matter what they write. Ian McEwan is one of them. Over the course of more than 40 years and some dozen and a half books — including Amsterdam, Atonement, and The Children Act — his generally realist, propulsive work reveals an abiding preoccupation with both the repercussions of deceit and how life can change in an instant.
There are some pokey moments in this novel, some dead nodes. But McEwan has an interesting mind and he is nearly always good company on the page. In whichever direction he turns, he has worthwhile commentary to make.
Ultimately, Machines Like Me is a novel about the power of novels. Charlie realises that his stance regarding his purchase has been shaped by literature. “The imagination,” he says, “fleeter than history, than technological advance, had already rehearsed this future in books…” This is a novel that holds up the form as an example of the unreplicable subtlety of the human mind. While Adam composes haikus of stultifying banality to Miranda, he finds the novel’s obsession with misunderstandings and reversals obsolete in an age when technology has colonised the private life. Novels, McEwan is saying, do something that robots can’t: they are a heroic record of our imperfections, a celebration of the flaws that make us human.
Half a century ago, Philip K. Dick asked, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” and now Ian McEwan is sure those androids are pulling the wool over our eyes.
His new novel, “Machines Like Me,” takes place in England in the 1980s, but it’s an uncanny variation of the past we remember.
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Ian McEwan
A day at Washington’s National Gallery, Part One: The Little Dyer and his Outsized Genius
Summer 1555
The Creation of the Animals 1551-52
The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne 1576/1577
Tintoretto’s father was named Battista Comin. Because of his fearlessness in battle, he earned the nickname ‘Robusti’ – the Robust One. Upon completing his military service, he took up the profession of cloth dyer – tintore di panni. His son Jacopo thus became known by the diminutive, Tiintoretto.
Okay, so having gotten that out of the way….
The above art works are among my favorites from the National Gallery’s spectacular exhibit. I was in the process of determining the date(s) of The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne when I chanced on a poem written about the painting by one Michael Field. Here it is:
Tintoretto
The Ducal Palace at Venice
Dark sea-water round a shape
Hung about the loins with grape,
Hair the vine itself, in braids
On the brow—thus Bacchus wades
Through the water to the shore.
Strange to deck with hill-side store
Limbs that push against the tide ;
Strange to gird a wave-washed side
Foam should spring at and entwine—
Strange to burthen it with vine.He has left the trellised isle,
Left the harvest vat awhile,
Left the Maenads of his troop,
Left his Fauns’ midsummer group
And his leopards far behind,
By lone Dia’s coast to find
Her whom Theseus dared to mock.
Queenly on the samphire rock
Ariadne sits, one hand
Stretching forth at Love’s command.Love is poised above the twain,
Zealous to assuage the pain
In that stately woman’s breast ;
Love has set a starry crest
On the once dishonoured head ;
Love entreats the hand to wed,
Gently loosening out the cold
Fingers toward that hoop of gold
Bacchus, tremblingly content
To be patient, doth present.In his eyes there is the pain
Shy, dumb passions can attain
In the valley, on the skirt
Of lone mountains, pine-begirt ;
Yearning pleasure such as pleads
In dark wine that no one heeds
Till the feast is ranged and lit.
But his mouth—what gifts in it !
Though the round lips do not dare
Aught to proffer, save a prayer.Is he not a mendicant
Who has almost died of want ?
Through far countries he has roved,
Blessing, blessing, unbeloved ;
Therefore is he come in weed
Of a mortal bowed by need,
With the bunches of the grape
As sole glory round his shape :
For there is no god that can
Taste of pleasure save as man.
I had not heard of this particular poet and so set about doing further research. The facts came to light quite readily.
This is Michael Field: 
Under this pseudonym, Katherine Harris Bradley (1846-1914), left, and her niece and ward Edith Emma Cooper (1862-1913) published numerous works of poetry and drama and kept a lengthy journal entitled Works and Days. More information on these two can be found on Wikipedia and on the Poetry Foundation site.
For me, one of the chief joys of the internet consists in discovering unexpected linkages like this.
And never fear – There’s more Tintoretto to come…
Crime fiction: First lines of note
I’ve recently come across two memorable beginning sentences in works of crime fiction.
From The Secret Pilgrim by John Le Carre:
Let me confess to you at once that if I had not, on the spur of the moment, picked up my pen and scribbled a note to George Smiley inviting him to address my passing-out class on the closing evening of their entry course–and had Smiley not against all my expectations, consented–I would not be making so free to you with my heart.
The entire paragraph consists of this one sentence. The Secret Pilgrim is copyright 1990 but might as well be dated 1890, or even earlier, so graceful and old-fashioned is it, in its expressiveness.
For me, A Legacy of Spies (2017) was triumphant return to form for John Le Carre (not that he was ever really off form). And there is a new novel on the horizon: An Agent Running in the Field, due out here in October.
Alec Guinness as George Smiley. The Secret Pilgriim is dedicated by Le Carre to Alec Guinness, “with affection and thanks”
John Le Carre, at his home in Cornwall. What kind if expression is that: querulous? quizzical? inscrutable? some combination?
***************
A completely different case is presented by the opening gambit of the story “Dark Waters” by Freeman Wills Crofts:
For years Weller, the solicitor, had handled Marbeck’s affairs, and when he received the old man’s letter saying that he wanted to realise some securities, it struck him like a sentence of death.
Well, gosh! Talk about in medias res!
The story is off to a frantic start; Crofts sustains the pitch right through to the end of this brief and powerful tale.
“Dark Waters” appears in Bodies from the Library, an excellent new anthology featuring, according to the subtitle, Lost Tales of Mystery and Suspense by Agatha Christie and Other Masters of the Golden Age. As for Freeman Wills Crofts, he is one of the Golden Age writers whose works are currently being reissued as part of the British Library’s Crime Classics initiative.
In the 1920s high culture priest T.S. Eliot, an avid detective fiction reader, classed Crofts with R. Austin Freeman, a still-active contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle, as the two greatest living detective novelists. Of Crofts, Ivor Brown, drama critic and Oxford graduate in the Classics, sics, humbly declared: “Before his invention, mine eyes dazzle.”
Curtis J. Evans, Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920–1961
The meticulous account of detective work, coupled with the ingenuity of the construction (and deconstruction) of the alibi were to become Freeman Wills Crofts’ hallmarks, and they sett his debut novel apart from the competition. Over the next twenty years, the book sold more than 100,000 copies.
Martin Edwards on The Cask, in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books
The Cask is excellent; I highly recommend it.
Freeman Wills Crofts 1879-1957
‘It’s a fascinating subject, the study of this venerable civilization….’ – Queens of Egypt at the National Geographic
Yes, there she is, in all her beauty and mystery: Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt, wife of Akhenaton, the iconoclast Pharoah who instituted worship if the sun as the sole deity of the kingdom. But this exhibit at the National Geographic is not about him. Rather, it is about her, and the other notable queens whose reigns span this remote and exotic era. 
The bust pictured above is a copy of the original, which was found in Amarna by a team of German archaeologists led by Ludwig Borchardt. It currently resides in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, much to the annoyance of its country of origin, which has been trying to get it repatriated since 1924. Museum officials claim that the bust is too fragile to travel.
Meanwhile, it is listed on Time Magazine’s list of Top Ten Plundered Items.
I digress. But it’s hard not to, when dealing with so vast a subject.
Six queens are highlighted in this exhibit. The first is Ahmose-Nefertari; her dates are 1539 BCE to 1514 BCE.
I quote from the exhibition guidebook:
Ahmose-Nefertari was the first queen of the 18th dynasty and of the New Kingdom. She was a powerful and influential queen who enjoyed widespread acclaim. After her death, she and her son were deified in Deir-el-Medina, where she was worshiped as a goddess of resurrection.
Ahmose-Nefertari 1539-1514 BCE
Hatshepsut (1479-1425 BCE), rather singular and remarkable, reigned as Pharoah for some twenty years in the mid-fifteenth century BCE. (The exact dates are disputed.) To emphasize her masculine qualities, she was sometimes depicted as bearded:
Hatshepsut with beard
Hatshepsut, clean shaven, as it were
The third queen was Tiye (1390-1340 BCE):
Tiye is found at the nexus of powerful rulers, being the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III, mother of Amenhotep IV, who became known as Akhenaton, and grandmother of Tutankhamun. Still, she held her own in the game of power.
Queen Tiye 1390-1340 BCE
Tiye’s mummified remains were discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1898: 
Then, there was Nefertiti, wife of AmenhotepIV/Akgenaton (see above).
Nefertari was the Great Royal Wife of Ramesses II. At a time when life expectancy was all too brief, Ramesses II reigned for an astonishing sixty-six years. He ascended the throne in 1279 BCE, ruling until his death in 1213 BCE. 
Ramesses lived to be ninety-six years old, had over 200 wives and concubines, ninety-six sons and sixty daughters, most of whom he outlived. So long was his reign that all of his subjects, when he died, had been born knowing Ramesses as pharaoh and there was widespread panic that the world would end with the death of their king. He had his name and accomplishments inscribed from one end of Egypt to the other and there is virtually no ancient site in Egypt which does not make mention of Ramesses the Great.
Here is the beautiful Nefertari:
Nefertari 1279-1255 BCE
As the passage above indicates, Ramesses was plentifully supplied with wives and concubines. But Nefertari was his great love. On the wall of her tomb enclosure he caused the following to be inscribed:
“My love is unique — no one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful woman alive. Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart.”
Just by passing, she has stolen my heart….
As well as being a loving helpmate, Nefertari was apparently an accomplished woman in her own right:
She was highly educated and able to both read and write hieroglyphs, a very rare skill at the time. She used these skills in her diplomatic work, corresponding with other prominent royals of the time.
In 1904,
Nefertari’s tomb in the Valley of Queens was unearthed by a team of Italian archaeologists. It is an exceptionally gorgeous burial place.
This picture depicts Nefertari playing an Egyptian board game called Senet. According to Wikipedia, the rules of this game are not precisely known, yet a site called Discovering Egypt provides a fairly complete description of how the it is played.
The Geographic exhibit had two stations set up side by side, and folks were trying their hand at it. 
Finally, Cleopatra, the last Queen of Egypt(51-30 BCE). What can one say about this storied woman? Perhaps we had best leave it to Shakespeare:
‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies;’……
‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.’Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, Scene 2
What did Cleopatra look like? The exhibit featured this sculpture, purportedly of her:
Yet it’s my understanding that no one is certain of the answer to this question and that the most reliable likeness is to be found on a coin:
For a more in depth look at the life of Cleopatra, see this article from the Smithsonian Magazine. This piece features a number of striking images, including, inevitably, that of Elizabeth Taylor.
I also recommend Stacy Schiff’s biography. What I remember best from this book is the author’s description of the city of Alexandria. It sounded so glorious, I wanted to go there immediately. Alas, a period of some two thousand years separates us from that magnificent ancient city.
The Geographic exhibit was about more than just the queens. For instance, there was a set-up whereby people could inscribe their own names and see what they would look like in hieroglyphic script. I found a site online where you can do the same thing, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Here’s what my name looks like: 
You can try it with your own name by clicking here.
One of the most fascinating components of the exhibit concerned Deir el-Medina. This was a village composed of artisans whose brief it was to help build the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. It was located on the west bank of the Nile in Thebes. There was a recreation of the place being shown on a large screen in a dimly lit room. I kept circling around and coming back to it. I’d just sit on the bench and stare. In short, I was mesmerized.
Our docent – a wonderfully knowledgeable young woman – passed around two items of great interest. One was a swatch of linen of the type that would have been used in the mummification process. The other was a piece of actual papyrus. This last was thrilling to me. It felt like a kind of nubby parchment. It was strange to hold it in my hand and rub it gently between my fingers.. I was reluctant to give it up.
Numerous archaeologists won fame in the course of their explorations in Egypt. The exhibit featured one, a woman – two, actually – of particular interest, whom I’d never heard of: Margaret Benson (1865-1916) and her friend Janet Gourlay (1863-1912). There’s a detailed recounting of the life and professional accomplishments of Margaret Benson on the site of Egyptologist William H. Peck.
Janet Gourlay, left, and Margaret Benson
In 2013, an historical novel came out about ancient Egypt. Written by Kerry Greenwood, it was called Out of the Black Land. Once I got it, I could do nothing but read it. It brought the era of the rebel Pharoah Akhenaton so vividly to life that I was seeing it in my dreams. I particularly remember the description of Queen Tiye, Akhenaton’s mother, struggling to give birth, her women grouped around her providing help and support.
An amazing book. 
“It is a fascinating subject, the study of this venerable civilization, extending back to the childhood of the human race, preserved for ever for our instruction in its own unchanging monuments like a fly in a block of amber. Everything connected with Egypt is full of an impressive solemnity. A feeling of permanence, of stability, defying time and change, pervades it. The place, the people, and the monuments alike breathe of eternity.”
R. Austin Freeman, The Eye of Osiris: A Detective Romance, 1913
Books to the Ceiling 