Eddie Lovett, polyhistor

Speaking of polyhistors, here is a very unusual polyhistor and a truly extraordinary man.

Eddie Lovett, a black sharecropper’s son from rural Arkansas who only got as far as eighth grade, may not have been a polymath as I have defined it, but he was a self-taught man who signed his name, “Eddie Lovett, Polyhistor,” and he is an inspiration to us all.

He may only have gone to school through the eighth grade, but he more than made up for it as an adult. In the Army, he read voraciously and attended history classes offered by the Army. He bought books wherever he was stationed, sometimes lugging around fifty books in his bags. He took advantage of being stationed in Europe to visit the great European libraries, including the Vatican Library.

At home, he was a farmer and a carpenter. Financially, he was a poor man, but his home intellectual life was as rich as could be.

He built a library on his property, which he called the Hippocrene Library. The name comes from the Hippocrene fountain in Greece, which was formed by the divine horse Pegasus, and which was the source of poetic inspiration. He had well over two thousand books, including Shakespeare’s complete works (forty volumes), Will and Ariel Durant’s eleven volume Story of Civilization, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and works by Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Rousseau, and countless others. A sign over the library door read, “Hic Habitat Felicitas” (Here Lives Happiness).

Unfortunately, disaster struck in 1975; his library caught fire and burned to the ground. But the story caught the ear of America, and people flocked to the rescue. People sent books by the case, and Lovett ended up with more books than he knew what to do with, at least 40,000. He had to beg people to stop sending books. He rebuilt his library, which he called the Phoenix, and settled down to read. Lovett figured that he spent about twelve hours a day reading and writing and estimated that he had read about 10,000 books in his life.

Why did Eddie Lovett read? He said, "I conceded my ignorance a long time ago, and have tried to overcome it. And you know something? Reading a book is still the only way to do that.” He also believed, “The more I learn, the more I learn that I need to learn, and the more I learn that I don't know. And I aspires [sic] to drink very deep from the fountain of knowledge.”

Eddie Lovett is in this pantheon of polymathy because his message is a critical message – reading a book is the way to overcome one’s ignorance.

A good article about him from the Los Angeles Times can be found here and a good book chapter about him is here.