Library of Progress
As far as I can tell, Syracuse University’s Bird Library is best known for two things: 1) When the architect filed the design plans, he didn’t account for the weight of the 2.3 million books that the building would inevitably house, and so, with every passing year the weight of those books causes Bird’s foundation to sink into the ground by a centimeter or two. (Given how the world’s oceans are rising, I fully expect Bird to be underwater at some point in my lifetime.); and 2) the fifth floor. In a scientific study published by Playboy during my undergrad years, Bird’s fifth floor was recognized as one of the top 10 places in the country to pick up women. No shit. Top 10.

Let’s not kid ourselves. As an undergrad, I was perfectly happy for those two dubious achievements to serve as the calling cards for my university’s library. On the one hand, I had a cute story to tell visitors. On the other, a place to look for cute co-eds. What more could a guy ask for from a library? Well, as it turns out …

A few days into the fellowship, a program administrator escorted several interested fellows to the basement of the Cambridge library with letters that recognized us as temporary members of the university. On the other side of an enormous oak door sat a frumpy middle-aged English woman with chains dangling off the frames of her horn-rims. I’ll call her Mary. There are two kinds of female librarians. Mary was the other kind.

With all the enthusiasm of a DMV clerk, she showed me to a chair. As as she typed my information into her PC, I gazed around the room and noticed a sign: "In order to access the University’s manuscript and rare book archives, applications must include explicit authorization from a sponsoring college." I had no such authorization. Think, O’Brien. “Um, would it be possible to include access to the manuscript room?” I asked sheepishly. So charming. Mary craned her neck around the monitor, glared at me without answering, and redirected her attention back to the screen. “I don’t see anything on your letter saying you can view manuscripts,” she advised without looking up from her keyboard.

A reporter has one loyal friend at times like this: silence. She looked at me; I widened my eyes. “Are you the only person in your group who wants access to the manuscripts?” she asked.

We were alone in the room. “Yes,” I lied.

Truth be told, there’s only one real reason why I wanted to get into the library, and that’s to see Charles Darwin’s original papers. The university has been undergoing an impressive indexing of the letters Darwin wrote and received while traveling the Galapagos on the HMS Beagle, before the publication of On The Origin of Species, and afterward, when he was roundly attacked by peers, friends, enemies, and religious zealots alike for publishing his theories on natural selection. You can see the contents of some of these letters here, and most of them are available in 15 bound volumes that sell for about $130 each (I hope to ship a few home with the help of my $1,200 book stipend). But I wanted to pore over the actual letters, to see Darwin’s stationery, his inkblots, his penmanship. I thought it might provide a window into the mind of the man who had what may be the single greatest insight in the history of insights. Mary probably thought I was just going up there to pick up chicks. But she gave me authorization anyway. She hrmphed and 30 seconds later issued me a card with a magic letter on it. M for manuscripts.

It took me two days to figure out how to actually get my hands on the letters. I’m not kidding when I say I had to walk through probably a dozen sets of double doors before I reached the manuscript room, which is lined with everything from 400-year-old middle-English dictionaries to early Greek translations of the Bible (and that’s just the off-the-shelf stuff). I handed a request form to the youngest person at the desk. She looked up from the box where I wrote “Darwin papers,” and told me I needed a particular classmark. Damn these Brits. Why can't they just speak English? I don't think I have a classmark. Next thing you know, I’m in the office of Adam Perkins, the bespectacled caretaker of the entire Darwin project, and I’m playing the journalist card.

He tells me about the exhaustive nature of the correspondence and says I'm going to have to narrow my interests. I tell him I’m particularly interested in seeing any letters in which Darwin addresses his emerging problems with organized religion and the notion of God. Bonus points for antagonism directed at him from the religious community. Adam tilts his head, licks the tip of his pencil and tells me I’m in luck. Just last week, an Oxford scholar sent an email with a similar request. It outlined all the letters where Darwin addresses these subjects. “Perfect,” I say, and Adam prints a list of a few dozen classmarks. I leave the library for a previously scheduled meeting with a psych professor at the Eagle Pub, careful to stay along the left hand side of the sidewalk.

After a morning of email and surreptitious photography around the library, I re-emerge in the manuscript room today at 2p. I fill out a request form with an official classmark: DAR 115.189 (volume 115, covering correspondence between Darwin and his friend and confidante, a botanist named J.D. Hooker), and the librarian hands me a large green volume about the size of an atlas containing all correspondence between the two men between 1863-1864. I have two years of Darwin’s letters in my hands. I lay the book on a pillow and flip open to a random page. There, on stationery about the size of the scratch pad near my cordless phone at home, is Charles Darwin’s handwriting.

It begins with a dateline:

July night

My dear Hooker

It is very good of you to think of William;

And then something about an invitation and sea-sickness, and regret. More humps and dotted I’s interspersed with an occasional recognizable word: Southhampton, 1 Carlton Terrace. It’s like he’s writing with his toes.

I flip the page. And another. And another. I’m having trouble making much of any of it. And yet am mesmerized. He’s mainly discussing family issues. Little things, cordialities and odd observations on, for example, the quizzical nature of stamp-collectors. But when he breaks into his career, it becomes clear that he’s exasperated and exhausted. He uses words like indignation and disagreeable when talking about the church's interpretation of his work. He mentions how Origin half-killed him. I request another volume, this one mainly between his wife, Emma, and various others. She jokes about Darwin’s handwriting. Much of the papers are in another language. French? Italian? Latin? Some appear to be early taxonomy grids.

At this point, it’s 5p. I’ve been looking at these papers for nearly three hours. My entire nourishment for the day: 1 banana, 3 cups of coffee, and a “fruit” scone. I’m woozy. I turn in the final volume, collect my belongings, and excuse myself.

Stop now if you’re not one for melodrama.

As I walk from the university toward my bed & breakfast, I begin to think about what I just saw. I’m not going to belabor this, but I will say that today I learned something about the difference between education and inspiration. I’ll be 37 years old in about an hour. I live in a hyper-networked world, work in an industry of information overload, and am never more than a few keystrokes away from the answer to almost any question I can imagine. And yet I'm not sure I've ever felt as close to actual knowledge.

You might say it's like I went to church today. Except that church never made me feel this way.