SCENE: THE LIBRARY. (Curious Freshman removes a catalogue-card from its proper place).
NOAH. Look here, sir! Don't you know it's against the rule to take those cards from the drawer?
CURIOUS FRESH. But I suppose it's no matter, as I did it insensibly.
NOAH (excited). Yes, but it is! You will incense Sibley, if you are not careful!
This comic dialogue was included in the “Brevities” section of the very first issue of a newspaper called “The Magenta,” published on January 24, 1873 (it would later be renamed The Crimson). Though satiric, it sent a cautionary message to the unsuspecting freshman class: mess with John Langdon Sibley, the University’s head librarian, and you’ll regret it.
Sibley easily commanded this kind of fear and respect: He worked in the library for almost 45 years, from 1841 to 1885, and served as head librarian for more than 20 of those years, until failing eyesight finally compelled him to step down. Even upon his retirement in 1877, he remained on campus as “librarian emeritus.” In his time at the library, he outlasted two wars and six Harvard presidents, and witnessed the beginning of Harvard’s transformation into a modern research university. Although he is most remembered today for his extensive series of biographies of early Harvard students, he also kept a personal journal that spans nearly 37 years of the College’s history. Within its pages, he provides us with a glimpse into everyday life at Harvard 150 years ago.
When Sibley began his journal in 1846, Harvard was a sleepy jumble of buildings on the outskirts of Boston. Holworthy was the biggest and most luxurious of the four existing dormitories, and students ate meals on the second floor of University Hall. By the time of his death in 1885, the Yard—then illuminated by gas lighting—was fully enclosed by four additional dormitories. Memorial Hall had been erected on what was previously a football field, and Cambridge had become a bustling urban community. Sibley, himself a member of the Class of 1825, noted all these changes in his journal as they occurred.
Amidst all the new construction, he was repeatedly disappointed by the College’s refusal to build a new library capable of housing Harvard’s rapidly-expanding collection of books. He wrote in 1874: “[T]he sponging of every graduate to put up Memorial Hall, connected with the pertinacity of Eliot in tinkering up Gore Hall, (on which he is wasting a good deal of money) are almost insufferable difficulties. The general conviction is that Gore Hall is unfit for the purpose [of housing the collection].”
The library was central to Sibley’s life and career. In his journal, he frequently described various trips to catalogue and purchase new books for the College. He would eventually quadruple the number of volumes in Harvard’s collection. He jealously guarded the library’s shelves, and was constantly on the lookout for potential book-snatchers. An entry from Jan. 14, 1847 reveals his loathing towards a repeat offender: “To a certain extent he may be considered as not being an accountable mortal. He seems to be destitute of a moral sense. He took books from the library a year ago without having them charged….He was guilty not only of licentiousness but of mean, low, dirty acts too indecent to be named.” When the student was expelled, Sibley was overjoyed.
Despite these suspicions, Sibley remained fond of the student body. He held a grudging appreciation for the antics of the Navy Club, which performed an annual spoof of senior class elections. Sibley particularly enjoyed watching their yearly selection ceremony. In 1846, he wrote: “The Lord High Admiral is generally chosen because he has been sent off the most times by the Faculty or has been away the longest absent more during his College course than any other member of the class & is rather a wild fellow & popular…The Rear Admiral is generally chosen because he is the laziest person in the class… The person who swears the most is generally the Navy Club Chaplain.”
The students’ pranks, which occasionally proved dangerous, were a constant source of horror and fascination for Sibley. On May 12, 1846, he wrote: “Last evening some one, probably an undergraduate, set fire to a bunch of crackers which exploded in the entry to the President's study.” A year later, he was scandalized that “[t]he students had saturated a large quantity of cotton wool with turpentine & ignited it against the south door on the west side of University Hall. The door was nearly burned through.” On Nov. 19, 1859, he simply wrote: “Tutor Goodwin in effigy tied with ropes to the cross on the west end of the chapel in such a way as to appear as if he were crucified.” In this case, Sibley seemed at a loss for words.
He also enjoyed watching the annual football game between the freshman and sophomore classes, which he described in an 1855 entry: “The Freshmen, as yet imperfectly acquainted with each & with the game, & generally unable to distinguish their classmates from members of other classes, of course, were beaten in the first three games. They were then joined by volunteer Juniors & the Sophomores by volunteer Seniors & they were again obliged to yield in three games more. The play was with great spirit & some violence & brutality.”
When the increasingly rough nature of these games led to their being banned in 1863, Sibley was amused at the students’ response: “[A] procession appeared…six pall bearers with a six foot coffin on their shoulders, & then the Sophomore class in full ranks. They looked poverty-stricken. Their hats, with the rims torn off or turned in, bore the figures ’63 in front, that being the year of the class, & their apparel such as is suited to the tearing football fight, & their left legs with crape on them. The procession moved on in perfectly good order to the Delta & halted under the shade of the trees towards the upper end, where a circle was formed & the coffin passed round for the friends to take a last look at the contents, which were a football with painted frill fastened into the head of the coffin; while the spadebearers plied their spades industriously in digging the grave.”
Whatever Sibley may have thought of students’ behavior outside the library, he remained a steadfast resource for any and all seeking academic support. His generosity even extended outside of his official role as librarian: He became known in later years for giving poorer students loans to help them pay tuition, often paying their fees with his own money. Sibley was a mentor to countless generations of students, who returned year after year to visit him at Gore Hall.
The College, where he had spent the majority of his life, was his only true home, and he continued to frequent the library until his death in 1885. Many Harvard graduates lamented his passing as the end of an era, and The Crimson’s daily issue announcing his death was printed with black borders. The Boston Globe’s eulogy claimed that “[His] face is familiar to a larger number of the children of Harvard than [that] of any other man connected with the university.”
Ultimately, Sibley would not live to see his dream of a new library realized. Thirty years after his death, however, the University received the funds to demolish Gore Hall and build an enormous new facility in its place—one with more than enough room for all of his acquisitions. Though it was officially built as a memorial to Harry Elkins Widener, its origins lie with the stubbornness and tireless effort of Harvard’s most outspoken librarian.
