Thursday night: to the 166th Annual General Meeting of the London Library . Never been to an AGM before, but I happened to be in the Library as it was about to begin. And as some staff members smiled and beckoned me from tables of drinks and nibbles, I decided to attend. Chatted to fellow Library members and writers, such as Auden biographer Richard Davenport-Hines.
As I’d imagined it was a genial, old-fashioned, well-dressed crowd; lots of suits, and more than a few cravats and pocket-square handkerchiefs. I was told some previous AGMs had lasted 15 minutes and attracted about ten members. This one took two hours, with about two hundred people crammed into the Reading Room. Many had to perch on the balconies for the duration.
The item responsible was the drastic rise in the yearly membership fee, from £210 to £375. For the last few years, the Library has been subsidising its own members from its various financial investments and reserves. Turns out this can’t go on any longer, hence the fee increase to cover the true running cost. For those who can’t afford the full cost (such as myself), they will increase their concessionary grant resources accordingly. Makes sense to me. It’s still cheaper than the average London gym membership, points out one member.
The rise is ‘exceptional but necessary’, says the Library’s President, Tom Stoppard. Sir Tom was unable to attend but had a pretty good excuse: he’s in NYC overseeing the Broadway opening of his latest play Rock ‘N’ Roll, and has put on a fundraising performance over there for the Library. His message cited a speech by his predecessor TS Eliot at the 1952 AGM: ‘the disappearance of the London Library would be a disaster to civilisation.’ Added Stoppard, ‘We must not let it not happen on our watch’.
There were some strongly dissenting opinions in the audience, not least from a former Treasurer who read several sheets of notes detailing his concerns, even offering to donate his own savings to help cover the deficit. But when it came to the vote to confirm the new fees – via raised hands – the ‘aye’s had it. Then everyone filed out to a lot of acquiescent sighing noises. ‘Massed sighs of bookish acquiescence’: I should have captured that as a sound effect.
For my part, I’m rather excited about the forthcoming expansions to the building, including a new common room with coffee facilities and a rooftop reading room with a skyline view. The Cataloguing Room has already been freed up to provide extra study desks. The Lovely Labyrinth: because it’s worth it.
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Friday night: to the Colony Room with Sebastian Horsley, his girlfriend Rachel, and Rachel’s white bison frise dog, Charley. (Sebastian H: ‘it’s essentially a tampon on a leash’).
Seeing dogs walked in the Soho streets is unusual, even cute little fluffy dogs. Though I look the way I do, and Sebastian looks the way he does (today with a towering top hat and plush dandy suit), when it comes to eliciting a reaction from passers-by, Charley upstages us both. As we walk to the Colony from his flat, young women out on the town stop and stroke Charley, making the kind of noises echoed elsewhere at firework displays across the city: ‘Oooh! ‘Ahh!’
Says Horsley, ‘I had no idea a small dog could be such a babe magnet.’
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I love that while others are blogging about the new Joss Whedon series, the new Girls Aloud album, or the unfolding media morality tale of Heather Mills McCartney, I’m blogging about the London Library AGM. With the phrase ‘babe magnet’ in the same entry.
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Modern Halloween in the USA. Blogger Scythrop reports on teenagers on his doorstep:
If you can’t take your mobile phone away from your ear to say “Trick or Treat!” … you’re not gettin’ much from me.
