Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if
only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the
premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several
pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping
and masterly way, and laid on the colour in great washes, it might drip
down again on one’s face in floods of rich and mingled colour like some
strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid
it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of
artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would
be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of
a white ceiling being put to.
But for the beautiful experiment of lying in bed I might never have
discovered it. For years I have been looking for some blank spaces in
a modern house to draw on. Paper is much too small for any really
allegorical design; as Cyrano de Bergerac says, “Il me faut des géants.”
But when I tried to find these fine clear spaces in the modern rooms
such as we all live in I was continually disappointed. I found an
endless pattern and complication of small objects hung like a curtain of
fine links between me and my desire. I examined the walls; I found them
to my surprise to be already covered with wallpaper, and I found the
wallpaper to be already covered with uninteresting images, all bearing
a ridiculous resemblance to each other. I could not understand why one
arbitrary symbol (a symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious
or philosophical significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my
nice walls like a sort of small-pox. The Bible must be referring to
wallpapers, I think, when it says, “Use not vain repetitions, as the
Gentiles do.” I found the Turkey carpet a mass of unmeaning colours,
rather like the Turkish Empire, or like the sweetmeat called Turkish
Delight. I do not exactly know what Turkish Delight really is; but I
suppose it is Macedonian Massacres. Everywhere that I went forlornly,
with my pencil or my paint brush, I found that others had unaccountably
been before me, spoiling the walls, the curtains, and the furniture with
their childish and barbaric designs.
.....
Nowhere did I find a really clear space for sketching until this
occasion when I prolonged beyond the proper limit the process of lying
on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my
vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition
of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas!
like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable;
it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the
window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom
has been discouraged--never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all
political rights--and even my minor proposal to put the other end of
the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it to charcoal has not been
conceded. Yet I am certain that it was from persons in my position that
all the original inspiration came for covering the ceilings of palaces
and cathedrals with a riot of fallen angels or victorious gods. I am
sure that it was only because Michael Angelo was engaged in the ancient
and honourable occupation of lying in bed that he ever realized how the
roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made into an awful imitation of a
divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.
The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is
hypocritical and unhealthy. Of all the marks of modernity that seem to
mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than
the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the
expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties
and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern
weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor
morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad
taste than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays,
for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an
offence. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as
he does not misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite
pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic
acid. Especially this is so in matters of hygiene; notably such matters
as lying in bed. Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as
a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to be
regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up
early in the morning. It is upon the whole part of practical wisdom; but
there is nothing good about it or bad about its opposite.
.....
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get
up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its
mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle.
A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible,
creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his
ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly;
but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and
rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes
in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the
top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let
them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of
good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which
mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues
which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of
inspired pity or of inspired candour. If ever that abrupt appeal is made
to us we may fail. A man can get use to getting up at five o’clock in
the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his
opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little
more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and unexpected.
I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an
almost terrible virtue.
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic
caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like
journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as,
for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that
the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution
I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it
without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course,
of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it
without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he
does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific
explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.