A Library’s Mistress
PALISADES, N.Y. – At the corner of Oak Tree and Closter roads rises a very old building, once a comfortable house and now a comfortable library, still a home of delight, of interest and intellect, of curiosity and education. Its fireplace is without blaze, but books and magazines and comfortable chairs now draw you to what is still a hearth, one long tended to by a doting mistress. Beatrice Agnew, as French as an expatriate can be in America, with a critical, no-excuses eye for cultural standards and the reading component, has passed on, her nearly 40-year role as director of the Palisades Free Library over but long to be remembered.
For there are already legends about this woman, this grande dame so particular in her habits of choosing the very right books for her particularly acute community. Beatrice WAS the library, just as surely as was her predecessor Mildred Rippey. Each put a stamp on what is the very best in libraries, the small community ones that offer unexpected jewels in their collections and which bubble over with informed, understanding ways from long-serving staff, including and especially in the case of Palisades, such people as Marie Firestone, Beatrice’s right arm.
The newspaper story on Beatrice Agnew gave the who, what, when, where, how and why of her life — that she was the daughter of two artists, born in Paris, who developed a surefire ability to choose books for the library even before they hit the best-seller list. Well, yes, Beatrice Agnew was an artist herself, heir to such temperament and fastidious in running a library that had to be just so — just so for Palisades, just so for the patrons.
Despite many annual budgets, taxpayer funding challenges and more than enough library trustees to deal with, Beatrice carried the standard of her chosen profession as forcefully and proudly as did the Parisians the drapeau tricolore in the Revolution of 1789.
Beatrice worked at the Palisades Library until she was stricken quite recently with a stroke. Vibrant in her 80s, her desk was left waiting for her to return, as general in charge. Whoever follows as director will offer chemistry of her/his own, but for a long time, in a Camelot of sorts, there was one Beatrice Agnew at a special place called the Palisades Free Library. No ISBN number is needed to cite that.
The writer is a retired journalist who was privileged to know Beatrice Agnew since 1973. His website is thecolumnrule.com