The Man Who Climbed Stairs

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(Smith College, Northampton, Mass.)


For several years I had the good fortune to live in Northampton Ma. next to Smith College and across the street from Forbes Library. At that time the State Hospital for mental patients was in full operation in Northampton, and so, every day on Main Street mixed in with the college professors and upscale college students one saw numerous mental patients out on day passes, noticeable by their second hand clothing, smoking habits, and tendency to engage strangers in personal conversations apropos of nothing.

These characters were a regular part of Northampton and with time the students came to know, and even to care about their lives and struggles. One patient, an older man, would arrive at the Public Library each day in the late morning and once there he would embark on a project which consisted of climbing the stairs to the second floor stacks. At that time in the morning there might be perhaps a dozen individuals in the reading room working on various projects. One person would be following his investments in journals, another would be working on a doctorate, and another on their masters degree, but this man from the hospital was there for one and only one reason, to climb the stairs to the second floor stacks, which he was unable to do.

In between attempts to climb the stairs he would rest in the reading room, sitting sideways in a chair with his eyes fixed on the object of his struggle. Then abruptly, with a sigh, he would walk off to the stairs, take a grip on the hand rail, and start to climb. At the halfway point he would stop, and come back down backwards. Sometimes he would rush up the stairs almost by twos, but he never could get closer than two steps from the top before he would have to stop and come back down again.

He worked at this project single mindedly for several hours each day . Magazines, books and newspapers held no interest for him, and he spent the time in between attempts, simply staring at the objects that perplexed him. This struggle went on for over a year, and then one day, with no one noticing, he got up to the second floor.

Imagine just for a moment watching someone climb a flight of stairs and succeed, after failing to do so for more than a year.

But he was not the sort of man who would rest on his laurels..........

Occasionally people will ask me what connection there is between my drawings and the texts that I write. Sometimes there is almost none, and certainly they are never illustrations. In this case the drawing is of some buildings at Smith College and the landscape that the man passed every day on his way to and from the library. I passed that way also, and so it made me think about him.

Dimensions: 8” x 10.25”
Materials: Wax pencil on prepared paper
Signature: Across the bottom: Richard Britell, August 19, 2002