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Abbotsford — For The Love Of Learning
February Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Love”
Which comes first? Books or shelves?
My parents were great library readers, but owned very few books. I recall my father reading to us youngsters a humorous story, complete with a line-drawing illustration, from a decrepit leather-bound tome which I guess must have been acquired from a jumble sale.
There were the Janet and John books when learning to read, and then the Ladybird series of short fiction with plenty of illustrations to help us along, but I can’t recall the moment the pleasure of reading jumped to… Wow! Books!
I remember well, though, the moment I aspired to own a library.
I must have been on the cusp of my teenage years. We were holidaying in Scotland, south of Edinburgh, and we visited Abbotsford, the Victorian house of advocate and novelist Sir Walter Scott. A man with an undoubtedly fertile imagination, he’d purchased a farm beside the River Tweed and on its site built a fantasy castle home in what became known as the Scottish baronial style.
It held an armoury full of collected items. It had a spacious library. More than that, it had a small study with an enormous desk and acres and acres of books. The upper tier was reached by…
