Last night, having written what you
have just read about the benefits of fairy literature,
I bethought me to renew my acquaintance with some
of those tales which so often have delighted and solaced
me. So I piled at least twenty chosen volumes
on the table at the head of my bed, and I daresay
it was nigh daylight when I fell asleep. I began
my entertainment with several pages from Keightley’s
“Fairy Mythology,” and followed it up
with random bits from Crofton Croker’s “Traditions
of the South of Ireland,” Mrs. Carey’s
“Legends of the French Provinces,” Andrew
Lang’s Green, Blue and Red fairy books, Laboulaye’s
“Last Fairy Tales,” Hauff’s “The
Inn in the Spessart,” Julia Goddard’s
“Golden Weathercock,” Frere’s “Eastern
Fairy Legends,” Asbjornsen’s “Folk
Tales,” Susan Pindar’s “Midsummer
Fays,” Nisbit Bain’s “Cossack Fairy
Tales,” etc., etc.
I fell asleep with a copy of Villamaria’s
fairy stories in my hands, and I had a delightful
dream wherein, under the protection and guidance of
my fairy godmother, I undertook the rescue of a beautiful
princess who had been enchanted by a cruel witch and
was kept in prison by the witch’s son, a hideous
ogre with seven heads, whose companions were four
equally hideous dragons.
This undertaking in which I was engaged
involved a period of five years, but time is of precious
little consideration to one when he is dreaming of
exploits achieved in behalf of a beautiful princess.
My fairy godmother (she wore a mob-cap and was hunchbacked)
took good care of me, and conducted me safely through
all my encounters with demons, giants, dragons, witches,
serpents, hippogriffins, ogres, etc.;
and I had just rescued the princess and broken the
spell which bound her, and we were about to “live
in peace to the end of our lives,” when I awoke
to find it was all a dream, and that the gas-light
over my bed had been blazing away during the entire
period of my five-year war for the delectable maiden.
This incident gives me an opportunity
to say that observation has convinced me that all
good and true book-lovers practise the pleasing and
improving avocation of reading in bed. Indeed,
I fully believe with Judge Methuen that no book can
be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed
over. You recall, perhaps, that eloquent passage
in his noble defence of the poet Archias, wherein
Cicero (not Kikero) refers to his own pursuit of literary
studies: “Haec studia adolescentiam
alunt, senectutem oblectant; secundas res ornant,
adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent;
delectant domi, non impediunt foris;
pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur!”
By the gods! you spoke tally, friend
Cicero; for it is indeed so, that these pursuits nourish
our earlier and delight our later years, dignifying
the minor details of life and affording a perennial
refuge and solace; at home they please us and in no
vocation elsewhere do they embarrass us; they are
with us by night, they go with us upon our travels,
and even upon our retirement into the country do they
accompany us!
I have italicized pernoctant because
it is that word which demonstrates beyond all possibility
of doubt that Cicero made a practice of reading in
bed. Why, I can almost see him now, propped up
in his couch, unrolling scroll after scroll of his
favorite literature, and enjoying it mightily, too,
which enjoyment is interrupted now and then by the
occasion which the noble reader takes to mutter malédictions
upon the slave who has let the lamp run low of oil
or has neglected to trim the wick.
“Peregrinantur?” Indeed,
they do share our peregrinations, these literary pursuits
do. If Thomas Hearne (of blessed memory!) were
alive to-day he would tell us that he used always
to take a book along with him whenever he went walking,
and was wont to read it as he strolled along.
On several occasions (as he tells us in his diary)
he became so absorbed in his reading that he missed
his way and darkness came upon him before he knew
it.
I have always wondered why book-lovers
have not had more to say of Hearne, for assuredly
he was as glorious a collector as ever felt the divine
fire glow within him. His character is exemplified
in this prayer, which is preserved among other papers
of his in the Bodleian Library:
“O most gracious and merciful
Lord God, wonderful is Thy providence. I return
all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou hast
always taken of me. I continually meet with
most signal instances of this Thy providence, and
one act yesterday, when I unexpectedly met with three
old mss., for which, in a particular manner, I
return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue the
same protection to me, a poor, helpless sinner,”
etc.
Another prayer of Hearne’s,
illustrative of his faith in dependence upon Divine
counsel, was made at the time Hearne was importuned
by Dr. Bray, commissary to my Lord Bishop of London,
“to go to Mary-Land” in the character
of a missionary. “O Lord God, Heavenly
Father, look down upon me with pity,” cries
this pious soul, “and be pleased to be my guide,
now I am importuned to leave the place where I have
been educated in the university. And of Thy
great goodness I humbly desire Thee to signify to
me what is most proper for me to do in this affair.”
Another famous man who made a practice
of reading books as he walked the highways was Dr.
Johnson, and it is recorded that he presented a curious
spectacle indeed, for his shortsightedness compelled
him to hold the volume close to his nose, and he shuffled
along, rather than walked, stepping high over shadows
and stumbling over sticks and stones.
But, perhaps, the most interesting
story illustrative of the practice of carrying one’s
reading around with one is that which is told of Professor
Porson, the Greek scholar. This human monument
of learning happened to be travelling in the same
coach with a coxcomb who sought to air his pretended
learning by quotations from the ancients. At
last old Porson asked:
“Pri’thee, sir, whence comes that quotation?”
“From Sophocles,” quoth the vain fellow.
“Be so kind as to find it for
me?” asked Porson, producing a copy of Sophocles
from his pocket.
Then the coxcomb, not at all abashed,
said that he meant not Sophocles, but Euripides.
Whereupon Porson drew from another pocket a copy of
Euripides and challenged the upstart to find the quotation
in question. Full of confusion, the fellow thrust
his head out of the window of the coach and cried
to the driver:
“In heaven’s name, put
me down at once; for there is an old gentleman in
here that hath the Bodleian Library in his pocket!”
Porson himself was a veritable slave
to the habit of reading in bed. He would lie
down with his books piled around him, then light his
pipe and start in upon some favorite volume.
A jug of liquor was invariably at hand, for Porson
was a famous drinker. It is related that on one
occasion he fell into a boosy slumber, his pipe dropped
out of his mouth and set fire to the bed-clothes.
But for the arrival of succor the tipsy scholar would
surely have been cremated.
Another very slovenly fellow was De
Quincey, and he was devoted to reading in bed.
But De Quincey was a very vandal when it came to the
care and use of books. He never returned volumes
he borrowed, and he never hesitated to mutilate a
rare book in order to save himself the labor and trouble
of writing out a quotation.
But perhaps the person who did most
to bring reading in bed into evil repute was Mrs.
Charles Elstob, ward and sister of the Canon of Canterbury
(circa 1700). In his “Dissertation on Letter-Founders,”
Rowe Mores describes this woman as the “indefessa
comes” of her brother’s studies,
a female student in Oxford. She was, says Mores,
a northern lady of an ancient family and a genteel
fortune, “but she pursued too much the drug
called learning, and in that pursuit failed of being
careful of any one thing necessary. In her latter
years she was tutoress in the family of the Duke of
Portland, where we visited her in her sleeping-room
at Bulstrode, surrounded with books and dirtiness,
the usual appendages of folk of learning!”
There is another word which Cicero
uses for I have still somewhat more to
say of that passage from the oration “pro Archia
poeta” the word “rusticantur,”
which indicates that civilization twenty centuries
ago made a practice of taking books out into the country
for summer reading. “These literary pursuits
rusticate with us,” says Cicero, and thus he
presents to us a pen-picture of the Roman patrician
stretched upon the cool grass under the trees, perusing
the latest popular romance, while, forsooth, in yonder
hammock his dignified spouse swings slowly to and
fro, conning the pages and the colored plates of the
current fashion journal. Surely in the telltale
word “rusticantur” you and I and the rest
of human nature find a worthy precedent and much encouragement
for our practice of loading up with plenty of good
reading before we start for the scene of our annual
summering.
As for myself, I never go away from
home that I do not take a trunkful of books with
me, for experience has taught me that there is no
companionship better than that of these friends, who,
however much all things else may vary, always give
the same response to my demand upon their solace and
their cheer. My sister, Miss Susan, has often
inveighed against this practice of mine, and it was
only yesterday that she informed me that I was the
most exasperating man in the world.
However, as Miss Susan’s experience
with men during the sixty-seven hot summers and sixty-eight
hard winters of her life has been somewhat limited,
I think I should bear her criticism without a murmur.
Miss Susan is really one of the kindest creatures
in all the world. It is her misfortune that
she has had all her life an insane passion for collecting
crockery, old pewter, old brass, old glass, old furniture
and other trumpery of that character; a passion with
which I have little sympathy. I do not know
that Miss Susan is prouder of her collection of all
this folderol than she is of the fact that she is a
spinster.
This latter peculiarity asserts itself
upon every occasion possible. I recall an unpleasant
scene in the omnibus last winter, when the obsequious
conductor, taking advantage of my sister’s white
hair and furrowed cheeks, addressed that estimable
lady as “Madam.” I’d have
you know that my sister gave the fellow to understand
very shortly and in very vigorous English (emphasized
with her blue silk umbrella) that she was Miss Susan,
and that she did not intend to be Madamed by anybody,
under any condition.