Reading in bed: the forgotten pleasure
The bed in Western culture has undergpone a sexualization that does neither it nor us any good.
Whatever happened to public park benches, elevators, natural history museums, mountain tops, sandy beaches, kitchen tables or churches to celebrate love. The writer here disapproves of a certified lack of imagination of anyone thinking mostly about beds. Other bedly activities, that are similarly pleasing however, have come into neglect in our hasty world, and the writer wishes to advance these undertakings, in particular “looking at the bright side” with the aid of a book.
No better specimen than the THE BED-BOOK OF HAPPINESS comes in handy, which pledges: “Being a Colligation or Assemblage of Cheerful Writings brought together from many quarters into this one compass for the diversion, distraction, and delight of those who lie abed,-a friend to the invalid, a companion to the sleepless, an excuse to the tired”.
The philosophically disposed will note that this book is offered at the Project Gutenberg in the following formats: Generated HTML, EPUB, Kindle, Plucker, QiOO Mobile and Plain Text UTF-8. I say the philosophically inclined since happiness being priceless is available here free of charge and downloadable.
The year of publishing is 1914 which colors its speech and timbre, since it was still unaffected by the slaughter in the offing and known as the first World War. The happiness dispensed is more original and with an insight hardly ever found nowadays when everone rushes about important busy-ness.
“Old age is no such uncomfortable thing, if one gives oneself up to it with a good grace, and don’t drag it about To midnight dances and the public show.
If one stays quietly in one’s own house in the country, and cares for nothing but oneself, scolds one’s servants, condemns everything that is new, and recollects how charming a thousand things were formerly that were very disagreeable, one gets over the winters very well, and the summers get over themselves.”
The compiler is Edward Harold Begbie (1871-1929), whose lack of post-mortem recognition might be explained by the fact that he worked as a ghostwriter (for Shakleton the explorer), wrote two parodies on Lewis Carroll ( “Clara in Blunderl” and and “Lost in Blunderland”) and vacillated between the political and the religious. In short he chose topics that are very long lived and very short lived, depriving him of any chance of a solid fame after expiration.
And in this vein the time spent in bed results in longer lasting contentment, nay happiness, than any carnal follies of youth. Off to the internet and into bed, so that we use the time among the bedposts to its fullest.
The author proves that with a teaching job one has enough time to write about the good times, nay to live them.
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