‘I’ve got it,’ said Beth, tapping a red fingernail on the tabletop. ‘We start up a monthly circular instead. We take it in turns to mail out to the rest of the group what we’re doing.’
‘I love it. Kind of like a bibliophile bulletin.’ Grace laughed.
‘Dispatches, but for librarians,’ Evelyn agreed. ‘I’m in.’
‘What’ll we call it?’ Annie asked. ‘Secrets of the Stacks?’
‘Nice. But does it hit quite the right note?’ Joyce ruminated, pursing her lips as she thought. Then, in the silence, she heard the voice, whispering urgently in her ear. The female writer who embodied the truth and integrity that Joyce sought, her voice a clarion call.
One must have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think.
And thanks to Virginia Woolf, it came to her.
‘What about“Libertatem per Lectio”?’ Joyce asked, her eyes shining. ‘It stands for “freedom through reading”.’
Seven cups were once again raised in agreement, and in a smoky attic in London WC1, the Secret Society of Librarians toasted their dear friend Dorotha and the future – whatever it held.
Eight minutes later, a siren sounded.
1
Joyce
London, Friday 6 September 1940
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 2
Occupied Poland, September 1939
Friends, I know we’re usually concerned with the movement of books, not people, but already I have a plea for help. I don’t know how much is being reported on the news in England, but Poland is in chaos.
Lódz is now occupied. It makes me ill to my stomach to write these words. Nazi flags smother our buildings. The Grand Hotel, remember, where you all stayed last summer when you came to visit on that happy, carefree holiday? It’s now the headquarters for the Nazi administration. There are thousands of Volksdeutsche on the streets, greeting the invaders with happy cries of ‘Heil Hitler’. They are persecuting my people. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never believe it. Jewish leaders are forced to clean lavatories with their prayer shawls, and laughing soldiers shaved the beards off Jewish men and threw their holy books in the mud. We are in the dark ages once more.
Our library is still standing and as yet untouched, but time is running out. I received your letter about the forming of Libertatem per Lectio on the very day my city fell to the Germans.
‘If people can’t get to the books, we take books to the people.’ I love it. How clever you all are. When I dreamt up the Secret Society in more innocent times, I had no idea of its true potential.
Which is why I need you, friends. I need to get my younger sister, Adela, out of the country. I’ve heard that, in England, there are jobs to be had for Jewish refugees as housekeepers or nannies. Can anyone act as a guarantor for Adela? We are terrified for all our safety, but there simply isn’t the money to get us all out. It is only right the youngest leave. Please help if you can. This is her last and only chance. She has secured papers, but we need to act fast to get her out now.
As a librarian, I feel helpless to protect my patrons, but perhaps, with your help, I can do this one thing for my sister.
I’m risking my life to send this letter. The Nazis are fast encroaching on public life. Where hatred, fear and ignorance take root, censorship is never slow to grow. This might be my last letter to you all. But do not worry, SSL. It will take more than bigotry to drive me from my library.
I’ll leave you with my favourite line from Virginia Woolf’sA Room of One’s Own.
‘Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’
Until we meet again.
Your friend, Dorotha.
One year later
‘You want to start a mobile library...?’ The chief librarian’s voice climbed to even shriller proportions. ‘In a city where one is never more than a Tube ride away from a library?’
Joyce girded her loins. Hildegard March, chief librarian of Camden Library, was about to blow a gasket.
