Hidden Libraries (Bookhounds)

This week’s post is inspired by recent announcements concerning a hidden medieval library discovered it Romania.  

Briefly: the library was discovered in a tower of the Church of St. Margaret in Mediaș, a 15th-century Gothic structure built by the Transylvanian Saxons. It includes hundreds of documents, books and registers, some of which go back as far as the 13th century. It was probably deliberately hidden during a time of upheaval and is remarkably well-preserved.  

There’s all kinds of articles about it but, if you want more information, it can be had here.  

OK, let’s turn this into a Bookhounds seed.  

What are the basic elements? A lost library, meticulously catalogued by its long-forgotten owner, which has recently been discovered. It was hidden during a time of upheaval, possibly religious, to preserve it. 

The events that best fit that pattern in an English timeline are the English Reformation and the Civil War 1642-51. 

The Reformation destroys the Catholic Church in England, replacing it with Protestantism and in the process scattering Church holdings far and wide. It inspires, among other things, many a tale of priest’s holes and other hiding places for Catholics and their goods. It used to be you couldn’t have a decent ghost story in English literature, or a murder mystery in a stately home, without someone mentioning the long-forgotten priest’s hole hidden somewhere in the walls of the family manor.  

Sourced from Harvington Hall

Sometimes these treasures are protected. E.G. Swain’s ghost tales set in East Anglia feature at least two tales of spectral figures guarding Church relics, who go to some trouble to move those same relics when it looks as if Swain’s Protestant Vicar, Mr. Batchel, is about to get too close to the secret. M.R. James features several similar tales, one of the best of which is probably O Whistle! In which a Templar secret is unwittingly discovered by an academic on holiday. However, for my money the best of all is Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book, in which an academic discovers ‘a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century,’ filled with collected scraps and illuminated manuscript pages from other books. This is probably the closest to the Romanian story, though the Canon’s Scrap-Book is considerably smaller than the Romanian hoard.  

The Civil War has the added historical bonus of providing romance and a definite termination point to the ownership of this fictional library. Point being that many old Catholic families were scattered or destroyed during the War, which means that you, as Keeper, can trace a definite timeline for the history of this hidden treasure. First kept by the Catholic Church, then moved in a hurry to the family manor of [whoever it may be] to preserve it from Protestant hands, then lost to memory when the last living [whoever] gets killed in the war or dies in exile waiting for the restoration of Charles II. The secret then lies dormant for several hundred years before being rediscovered in the modern era. 

Why rediscovered, though? Could be all kinds of reasons, but let’s say for the sake of the narrative that the manor’s been bought by a new, foreign owner, who has all sorts of modern views about plumbing, electrics and so forth. They wanted to redo the place so it was a bit less like an ivy-clad shithole .. beg pardon, so it was less authentic.  

That’s the kind of owner who could be conveniently off-site when the library is rediscovered. Allowing the Hounds access. 

From all that we get:

The Howling Library

The Buckinghamshire manor Dorney Hall was, at one time, owned by the de la Roche family, but the last of that name died at Chalgrove Field and the Hall has been in the hands of an increasingly impoverished cadet branch of the family ever since. The Rochedales finally decided to offload their white elephant and sold it to an American, Norwell Cupman, who made his fortune in automobiles. The Cupman Comet is an up-and-comer in the racing world and the Cupman Coupe is a solid, commercial brand. 

Cupman wanted Dorney Hall but he wants it to be a little less drafty and damp, so he brought on board an architect, Ernest Brenchley, to do the place up. Brenchley is well known to the Hounds; he's a buyer of Italian incunabula and, depending on your plotline, might have Arabesque, Sordid, or Technicolor flaws.

Cupman is in New York this month so what he doesn't know won't hurt him.  However, he's due to visit the works in a few weeks so time is of the essence. All the more so when Brenchley finds the old priest's hole in a forgotten corner of Dorney Hall.

This, the Hounds can discover after some research, may well be the infamous Howling Library of Dorney Hall. Allegedly salted away by the de la Roche, whose Catholic connections are well known. Rumor has inflated the size of the collection over the years, and its contents, but it could include almost anything from a Necronomicon to an incomplete version of Monstres and Their Kynde, with particular attention paid to something called the de la Roche Changeling. Or perhaps that's just an old wives tale, but there's definitely papers up there and if Cupman ever finds out about them he'll probably give them to Cambridge or some rot. Denying hard-working Hounds a profit.

Option One: Rival Shenanigans. This is actually a scheme cooked up by the Hounds' rivals, who suborned Brenchley with a promise of incunabula. The idea is to get the Hounds to swallow this hook and take on board some cunningly faked-up manuscripts, and then reveal the fraud just as the Hounds are about to make a profitable sale. This will cause a Reversal. Anything supernatural about the Library is a fiction put about by the rivals, who have some magickal skills and use them to fake up a haunting.

Option Two: Mutton Dressed as Lamb. Well, it looked promising. It could still be promising, with a little help from a forger. But the best stuff has gone to the worms; insects got into the Library and snaffled the manuscripts, over the years. Peculiar little things, too, all legs and plump white bodies. Brenchley's looking a little ill, but that may be because he had to make promises to Elihort to keep body and soul together ...

Option Three: The Changeling. Apparently, there's one de la Roche still living, technically speaking, and the Changeling's been standing guard over the Howling Library these many centuries. Hence the name Howling Library; the Changeling's peculiar cry in stormy weather chills the blood. However, there's a near-complete copy of Monstres at stake, with illuminated pages. If the Hounds can figure out a way of keeping the Changeling off their backs, the prize is there for the taking. 

That's it for this week! Enjoy!