Among the few legacies that my father left me was a great talent for
sleeping. I think I can say, without boasting, that in a sleeping match I
could do as well as any man. I can sleep long, I can sleep often, and I can
sleep sound. When I put my head on the pillow I pass into a fathomless
peace where no dreams come, and about eight hours later I emerge to
consciousness, as though I have come up from the deeps of infinity.
That is my normal way, but occasionally I have periods of wakefulness in
the middle of the night. My sleep is then divided into two chapters, and
between the chapters there is a slab of unmitigated dreariness. It is my
hour of pessimism. The tide has ebbed, the water is dead-low, and there is
a vista of endless mud. It is then that this tragi-comedy of life touches
bottom, and I see the heavens all hung with black. I despair of humanity, I
despair of the war, I despair of myself. There is not one gleam of light in
all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me
up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the
darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who
sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal
Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by a
little sane companionship.
So I turn on a light and call for one of my bedside friends. They stand
there in noble comradeship, ready to talk, willing to remain silent, only
asking to do my pleasure. Oh, blessed be the name of Gutenberg, the Master
Printer. A German? I care not. Even if he had been a Prussian--which I
rejoice to think he was not--I would still say: "Blessed be the name of
Gutenberg," though Sir Richard Cooper, M.P., sent me to the Tower for it.
For Gutenberg is the Prometheus not of legend but of history. He brought
down the sacred flame and scattered the darkness that lay on the face of
the waters. He gave us the _Daily Owl_, it is true, but he made us also
freemen of time and thought, companions of the saints and the sages,
sharers in the wisdom and the laughter of the ages. Thanks to him I can,
for the expenditure of a few shillings, hear Homer sing and Socrates talk
and Rabelais laugh; I can go chivvying the sheep with Don Quixote and
roaming the hills with Borrow; I can carry the whole universe of
Shakespeare in my pocket, and call up spirits to drive Dismal Jemmy from my
pillow.
Who are these spirits? In choosing them it is necessary to avoid the
deep-browed argumentative fellows. I do not want Plato or Gibbon or any of
the learned brotherhood by my bedside, nor the poets, nor the novelists,
nor the dramatists, nor even the professional humorists. These are all
capital fellows in their way, but let them stay downstairs. To the intimacy
of the bedside I admit only the kindly fellows who come in their
dressing-gowns and slippers, so to speak, and sit down and just talk to you
as though they had known you ever since you were a little nipper, and your
father and your grandfather before you. Of course, there is old Montaigne.
What a glorious gossip he is! What strange things he has to tell you, what
a noble candour he shows! He turns out his mind as carelessly as a boy
turns out his pockets, and gives you the run of his whole estate. You may
wander everywhere, and never see a board warning you to keep off the grass
or reminding you that you are a trespasser.
And Bozzy. Who could do without Bozzy by his bedside--dear, garrulous old
Bozzy, most splendid of toadies, most miraculous of reporters? When Bozzy
begins to talk to me, and the old Doctor growls "Sir," all the worries and
anxieties of life fall magically away, and Dismal Jemmy vanishes like the
ghost at cock-crow. I am no longer imprisoned in time and the flesh: I am
of the company of the immortals. I share their triumphant aloofness from
the play that fills our stage and see its place in the scheme of the
unending drama of men.
That sly rogue Pepys, of course, is there--more thumb-stained than any of
them except Bozzy. What a miracle is this man who lives more vividly in our
eyes than any creature that ever walked the earth! What was the secret of
his magic? Is it not this, that he succeeded in putting down on paper the
real truth about himself? A small thing? Well, you try it. You will find it
the hardest job you have ever tackled. No matter what secrecy you adopt you
will discover that you cannot tell yourself the _whole truth_ about
yourself. Pepys did that. Benvenuto Cellini pretended to do that, but I
refuse to believe the fellow. Benjamin Franklin tried to do it and very
nearly succeeded. St. Augustine was frank enough about his early
wickedness, but it was the overcharged frankness of the subsequent saint.
No, Pepys is the man. He did the thing better than it has ever been done in
this world.
I like to have the _Paston Letters_ at my bedside, too. Then I go off to
sleep again in the fifteenth century with the voice of old Agnes Paston
sounding in my ears. Dead half a thousand years, yet across the gulf of
time I hear the painful scratching of her quill as she sends "Goddis
blyssyng" to her son in London, and tells him all her motherly gossip and
makes the rough life of far-off Tudor England live for ever. Dear old
Agnes! She little thought as she struggled with her spelling and her pen
that she was writing something that was immortal. If she had known, I don't
think she would have bothered. She was a very matter-of-fact old lady, and
was too full of worries to have much room for vanities.
I should like to say more about my bedside friends--strapping George Borrow
sitting with Petulengro's sister under the hedge or fighting the Flaming
Tinman; the dear little Boston doctor who talks so chirpily over the
Breakfast Table; the _Compleat Angler_ that takes you out into an eternal
May morning, and Sainte-Beuve whom I have found a first-rate bedside
talker. But I must close.
There is one word, however, to be added. Your bedside friends should be
dressed in soft leather and printed on thin paper. Then you can talk to
them quite snugly. It is a great nuisance if you have to stick your arms
out of bed and hold your hands rigid.