The Handwriting on the Wall

IN CONSTRUCTING HIS personal library, the financial tycoon J.P. Morgan did not leave a single object unadorned; the building is a singularly impressive display of wealth, power, and fine taste. But the modern glass cases now interspersed throughout the library contain art that is far more absorbing than the surrounding finery: pieces from Morgan’s vast collection of letters and books, such as Dickens’s working manuscript of A Christmas Carol, intimate postcards from Thomas Hardy, and one of Thoreau’s journals. Each text, with its scratched-out sentences and marginalia, is linked to the intricate thought-processes of writers long dead. Those dark little scratches of ink on paper beckon viewers to see the humanity in each stroke of the pen.