VB: What is the history of the library?
M McC: Approval for the building of the library was granted to Archbishop Marsh on July 9th, 1701. It was the first public library and Archbishop Marsh was absolutely specific about that in his letters, a public library open to all graduates and gentlemen who were to give place and pay due respect to their betters. No mention of women.
He was an Englishman sent over to Ireland to become provost of Trinity. He was a great scholar and a great collector of oriental material. He was promoted to Bishop of Ferns, later to be Archbishop of Cashel, later still Archbishop of Dublin and finally Primate, based in Armagh.
It was only about a year after he came to Trinity that he discovered that there was no public library in Dublin. Only the students and staff could use the library in Trinity in 1679-1680. If a student wanted to go to the library, he had to be accompanied by a senior member of staff who had to stay with him while he was there. The archbishop thought that the absence of a public library was a terrible disadvantage in a capital and so about a year after he came to Trinity he promised: "I will build a public library where all may have free access."
He didn't have the money as provost and he didn't have the money until he became Archbishop of Dublin and lived in the palace of St Sepulchre, the palace of the Archbishop of Dublin, which is where Kevin Street Garda station is now. He had the palace, he had a considerable income as Archbishop of Dublin and he had a big garden, which had space for a library. He got Sir William Robinson to design the first public library in Ireland where all might have free access.
VB: How was it funded?
M McC: Well, Archbishop Marsh funded the building of the library. He also bought some land that provided a small income and an income for the librarian. But of course, over the years that land disappeared, it was sold and eventually, all that was left was some government bonds which brought in, I think, about £250 a year.
VB: What sort of books did he arrange to be purchased for the library originally?
M McC: Well, he had his own library. He had collected nearly 800 oriental manuscripts, his great interest was oriental books. These he left to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where he had been educated. He thought there was nobody in Dublin that could avail of this collection. He left his own oriental printed books and books of general interest to the library. But the major thing he did was, he bought Bishop Edward Stillingfleet's collection.
Bishop Stillingfleet was the Bishop of Worcester and former Dean of St Paul's in London. He had been the spokesman for the Anglican Church in England and had been a great preacher. He was so handsome that he was known as the Beauty of Holiness. Crowds used to go to hear Stillingfleet preach.
He was the great man for any kind of a controversy and a great writer. It was Stillingfleet who answered for the Church of England and at one time he was engaged in a major controversy with the famous English philosopher John Locke, on the doctrine of the Trinity.
Stillingfleet also wrote on antiquarian subjects but he collected a library, which is in the first gallery, of 10,000 books on subjects from Bibles, prayer books, history of the Fathers, theology, philosophy, the religious orders, law, medicine, science, mathematics, witchcraft, dictionaries, lexi cons, travel books.
He was a wonderful Renaissance man. When he died and his son put up his library for sale, there was consternation in England that nobody would buy Stilling fleet's library. There were attempts to get the king to buy the library but they failed. Marsh heard about it and offered nearly £2,500 for it and it came to Ireland. When it came to Ireland, it was so well known it was described as This Golden Fleece.
VB: Those books from the Stillingfleet collection form the main body of the library's books?
M McC: Yes, the Stillingfleet collection is in the first gallery. The second collection is from the library of Dr Alias Bouhereau. He was a Huguenot who was driven out of France after the revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes (the Edict of Nantes of 1598 granted Protestants in France extensive religious freedom. This was revoked by King Louis XIV in 1685, which led to the emigration of between half and one million Protestants, some hundreds of whom came to Dublin and some of these were buried in the cemetery in St Stephen's Green).
Bouhereau was a medical doctor and a scholar and Marsh appointed him first librarian of the library. Dr Bouhereau's own collection is one of the finest sources for the study of Calvinism outside France. He collected a great deal of material to do with Protestantism and theology and medicine.
The Stearne books were bequeathed to the library in 1745. Bishop Stearne had interests very similar to Stillingfleet and Bouhereau, so that the whole amounts to a very homogeneous collection.
VB: Are most of the books in Latin?
M McC: A lot of them are. Latin was a common language for scholars from all over Europe, which meant that they could converse with one another and of course read one another's material. We have a lot in English, French, Italian, in Greek as well.
VB: What was Jonathan Swift's connection with the library and with Archbishop Marsh?
M McC: Swift was in Trinity College for a short time when Marsh was provost. Now whether he got into trouble there with Marsh, I don't know. Marsh was a very strict, very tough provost, but when Swift went to England and then decided to become a clergyman, he came back seeking ordination. The Irish bishops and, in particular Marsh, insisted that Swift would have a letter of his good behavior.
Now Swift had had a row with Sir William Temple and Marsh insisted that he get this letter which is known as "the penitential letter". Back he had to go, get a reference of his good behavior. Can you imagine, Swift having to get a reference of his good behavior? He then came back and was ordained. He went to his first parish in Kilroot and he didn't stay very long and went back to England.
Swift had been asked by the Irish Church of Ireland bishops to negotiate with the British government the removal of a tax known as "first fruits" and he had almost succeeded in getting its removal, when the bishops, prompted by Marsh, removed the commission from him and gave the responsibility to the Duke of Ormond. The duke got all the kudos for the removal of the tax and Swift was very bitter. And it's finally got by the Duke of Ormond who gets all the kudos and Swift is very bitter. Clearly then Marsh has opportunities to promote Swift and he doesn't promote him.
Just three years before Marsh's death, when everybody thought he was about to die, Swift drew up the portrait of Primate Marsh, in which he says amongst many other things (she quotes from her own book on the library): "Marsh has a the reputation of most profound and universal learning; this is the general opinion, neither can it be easily disproved.
"An old rusty iron chest in a banker's shop, strongly locked and wonderful heavy, is full of gold; this is the general opinion, neither can it be disproved, provided the key be lost, and what is in it be wedged so close that it will not by any motion discover the metal by the chinking. He is so wise to value his own health more than other men's noses, thought that the most honourable place at his table is much the worst, especially in summer . . . no man will be either glad or sorry at his death, except his successor . . ." So, very bitter. A bit unfair. Marsh did spend all his money, he left himself at one stage almost penniless, he did die very rich actually, but at one stage he left himself penniless while he built this library and supplied all the books.
VB: What age was he when he died?
M McC: He was 75. He was born in 1638 and he died in 1713.
VB: What connection did Swift have with the library itself?
M McC: Well, as Dean of St Patrick's, you automatically are a governor of the library. It is very interesting that he didn't purchase many books after he came to Dublin in 1713 when he was appointed Dean of St Patrick's. He did collect books before that and after that didn't collect. Why would you, he's 50 yards away, if that, across the road in the deanery. So he could, as a governor, he could come in and out as he wished. All of these would have been available to him.
VB: Was Thomas Moore connected with the library?
M McC: He studied here. He was a friend of the librarian and they used to lock him in.
VB: In one of the cages?
M McC: I don't know. The opening hours weren't long enough for him. So they locked him in . . .
VB: What was James Joyce's connection with the library?
M McC: James Joyce mentions us in Ulysses. As far as I know, he had been reading a book by Yeats called the Tables of the Law by Joachim Abbas, the Abbot of Floris. Joyce would have found it very difficult to get into the Trinity library because he was only 20. The National Library didn't have a copy and how he found his way to Marsh's, I just don't know. It would have been pretty obscure at that time but he did. So in the Bouhereau Collection is The Prophecies of Joachim Abbas. It's in the same place, so Joyce would have gone in there, asked the Reverend Newport White (then librarian in 1902) for The Prophecies of Joachim Abbas.
VB: Was the library much used in its initial days in the 18th century?
M McC: It was. It was used a great deal. I suspect it was very popular because of course there wasn't anywhere else to go. It was very popular but then as the other libraries began, the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Dublin Society, the National Library, then Marsh's became unpopular. It became very dilapidated and the entry was through a walled passage through the graveyard and it got more and more dilapidated.
Then in the middle of the 19th century, Benjamin Lee Guinness, when he was restoring the cathedral, offered to restore the library.
VB: How is the library used nowadays?
M McC: It is becoming more and more popular. After all, this is a marvellous 17th-century library with one of the richest 17th-century collections on a vast array of subjects and the thing to do is to attract more research.
VB: Did Archbishop Marsh have much fun in his life?
M McC: I don't think so. He was deeply pious, deeply religious, genuinely deeply religious. He was responsible when he came, within a year of his arrival in Trinity, again he came across the first translation of the Old Testament into the Irish language. The New Testament had been translated and printed, not the Old Testament. He got a group of scholars, they prepared transcripts which he supervised and sent to his friend the Honourable Robert Boyle in order to put up the money and it was because of Marsh that the first translation of the Old Testament into the Irish language was published.
He was genuinely deeply religious. It wasn't a put on kind of thing. This man was a very prayerful character and also a great scholar. He became so interested in Irish that he tried to write a grammar and he writes to Boyle and he says: "I have the grammar ready but I can't get anybody to check it. I don't know anybody, I can't get anybody to check it." There's no sign of it, which is a great pity.
I should say that Marsh also wrote some of the Penal Laws. Although he was a renowned scholar, he was timid and easily manipulated, especially, I think, by another archbishop, his successor in Dublin, Archbishop William King.
Marsh hated being involved in politics. He said "when I'm away from my books, I'm away from my dearly beloved studies", he'd keep saying this over and over again. I think he was a very good man and in building up the library and buying all the books and everything, an astonishing gesture.
He did it for the people of Dublin, he did it not for any personal glory - it was known initially as the library of St Sepulchre, not Marsh's Library - it has been a wonderful gift, which I hope will be enjoyed more and more.
