This time last year, in March 2022, the bookcases that had been covering the old fireplace in Marsh’s Library for 40 years were removed. We knew about the fireplace – in a magazine from the 1820s it was claimed that Jonathan Swift enjoyed sitting by the fire in the old reading room while gazing out at St Patrick’s Cathedral – but it was a pleasant surprise to find that the original mantelpiece was still intact.
Swift was one of the first readers at Marsh’s Library, the first public library in Ireland. In 1707, when it officially opened, he had just turned 40. After receiving a doctorate in divinity from Trinity College he lived between London and Dublin, becoming well known as a writer and satirist and growing increasingly politically active. Swift wrote his most famous novel, Gulliver’s Travels, from 1726, while serving as dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, living next door to Marsh’s Library and being one of its trustees.
Russia invaded Ukraine a few weeks before we uncovered Jonathan Swift’s favourite fireplace. We have welcomed many Ukrainian visitors to Marsh’s Library since then
The fictionalised travel-diaries style of writing in Gulliver’s Travels was not ground-breaking: Marsh’s Library has several rare books of this genre, such as Edward Webbe’s tales, printed in 1590, of being enslaved in Crimea and meeting unicorns on his journeys, and George Psalmanazar’s completely fictional account of life on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). Description of Formosa caused quite a scandal in literary circles when it was published, in 1704, and that certainly attracted Swift’s attention. Indeed, he mentioned the disgraced author with the impossible surname in A Modest Proposal, in 1729. The copy of Description of Formosa in Marsh’s Library was so popular that it was one of the first books stolen and had to be replaced later, but it was certainly there during Swift’s years.
The librarian who would have given Swift those books was a French doctor, Elias Bouhéreau, who was a refugee in Ireland, having fled persecution in France. In Gulliver’s Travels Swift called these religious conflicts the Egg Wars – deep ideological divides over which end to crack an egg at. Bouhéreau was the first person the library hired; it gave him accommodation on the ground floor of the premises. His family came with him as well, with the exception of one of his young daughters, who was left behind in tragic circumstances and was never able to reunite with her family in Dublin. They were the kind of harrowing events one would not expect to take place in Europe in the 21st century.
Russia invaded Ukraine a few weeks before we uncovered Swift’s favourite fireplace. We have welcomed many Ukrainian visitors to the library since then. Of all the stories that we can tell of Marsh’s famous books and readers, they seem to enjoy hearing anecdotes about Swift the most. Gulliver’s Travels was part of the international-literature canon in the Soviet Union and has remained so in its former territories, including in Ukraine. Everyone reads an abridged edition at primary school and knows what to expect if you happen to find yourself in unknown lands far from home, what unbelievable creatures you might meet there and how to make the best of the most awful and absurd circumstances, all while everyone thinks you are the one who is weird.
This nearly 300-year-old book still manages to provide much-needed escapism and comfort, especially if one decides to revisit its pages by the fireplace in the old reading room of Marsh’s Library.
Olga Taranova is a visitor-services officer and curator at Marsh’s Library in Dublin. Half-Russian, half-Ukrainian and raised in Soviet Tajikistan, she became a refugee at the age of 12, after fleeing the Tajikistani civil war, in the 1990s
