The British Museum in My Time: More Memories

Abstract

The fly on the wheel said, “Lord, what a dust do I raise!” As Secretary of the B.M. I was the fly on the wheel, and conscious that the dust was none of my raising. Dust there was in plenty. A place of such national—and international—standing is constantly straining not only its own resources but also those of its friends to make vital and correspondingly costly acquisitions. Such was the purchase, with the generous help of John Pierpont Morgan, junior, who would have liked them for the Morgan Library, of the Bedford Hours and the Luttrell Psalter; the latter being one of the chief sources of our knowledge of English farm life in the Middle Ages. But during my fourteen years in the Office the Museum was faced with four great opportunities, quite out of the ordinary; and in all four it was successful.

Citation

ESDAILE, A. (1952), "The British Museum in My Time: More Memories", Library Review, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 301-305. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012178