Personal Pleasures (4 page)

The boat that lies tethered to a mangrove tree on one of the islands is unmoored; one rows her back, while the others wade beside, shoving her over the sandy shallows, to beach her on the palm-fringed Key, where the evening breeze goes rustling among the star-shaped heads of slender, leaning royal palms, and the small waves shuffle sighing on white sand.

It has been a lovely bathe, an exquisite wade, an immersion, however partial, in enchanted waters. Nevertheless, of all the world's uneasy beds on which to tread, on which to sit, a bed of coral is the least deserving of that name. Of what is the marine cœlenterate polyps thinking, that he builds him of the skeletons of his tribe such harsh, such jagged arborescent beds for his habitation?

Rise, rise, and heave thy rosie head

From thy coral-pav'n bed.…

One is happy to know that the spirit was here mistaken, and that dear Sabrina, sitting under the glassy, cool, translucent wave of the Severn, was not sitting on coral, nor, as his excited fancy elsewhere tries to make out, on diamond rocks. We may be sure that Sabrina's bed and seats were of Severn mud, and fortunate she was that this was so. She would have said, I think, with Clive, and with all who have waded
sandal-less off the Florida Keys, “I have no desire for coral.”

The sea's warm edge sways lisping on hot sand, curling into tiny ripples, hissing, creaming, running delicately back. Wade in, take five steps in water as warm as a tepid bath, and the sharply shelving beach fails beneath your feet and leaves you swimming. Lapped in the clear, thin stuff, so blue, so buoyant, so serene, you can conceive no reason for ever leaving it. Strange element, on which you may lie stretched full length as on a bed, eyes closed, the sun hot on your face, wriggling your spread hands now and then like fins to propel you; or you may stand upright with folded arms, treading the sea with your feet; or hurl yourself through the water arm over arm; or dive down to the bottom of the deep, gather a handful of seaweed or pebbles, and shoot up. You may start swimming out to sea, heading for Corsica; swim and swim, until you are suddenly afraid you will meet a shark, and turn and race panicking for shore. Yes, there have been sharks in our bay; we have never met one, but we sometimes fear that we may.

Often we take out the canoe when we bathe. Three sit in the middle and one on each end, when it capsizes, we ride astride on its backside. Oh, pleasure, reeling goddess, I have spent much time with you, but I think that while bathing of an August afternoon in our
bay with the canoe, we know you at your most reeling, your most zoneless. Such felicity seems to know no limit; measureless to man, it seems the pleasure of some celestial state, in which we swim and sport in the blue and heavenly inane, like the
putti
that leap through wreaths of flowers upon a painted ceiling.

Such pleasure, I say, like the pleasures of paradise, should know no term; it should endure for ever. But to our bathing a term is set. Unlike the children of the Italian
bagnanti
, we are summoned from the sea. We leave that lovely, that clear and celestial element, for thin air quivering with heat.

The birds wake me; many minds with but a single thought, they all break out singing at once; one does not know why. They wake me; they would wake the dead, if the dead lay where I lie, in an open arbour in a little wood by the river's edge. The river, pale and secret, slides past, between the green shadow of willows and the grey light of dawn and the white shining of the hanging may-bushes and the deep green of the waving weeds. It flows towards Cambridge, but will be long, at this rate, in arriving at that learned town, for it scarcely seems to move. Sluggishly the weeds wave, and with them the gold and white chalices with their broad-leafed saucers. A phantom stream, a pale dream of green shadow and grey light. Alone in the dawn world, a pink climbing rose gives colour, a pure sharp note in a faint chromotone of greys.

The east too grows rose-pink, beyond the grey pricks of the willow leaves. Drowsily I lie, and watch the sun rise to the clamour of the birds. When it looks above the pollarded head of the large willow on the opposite bank, I shall bathe.

The river emerges from greyness into deep green colour and clear light. The sun tops the pollard. I throw off blankets and night clothes and slip from the bank into the cold stream. Spreading my arms wide, I let the slow flow carry me gently along through shadow and light, between long weedy strands that slimily embrace me as I drift by, between the bobbing white and gold cups and slippery juicy stems, beneath willows that brush my head with light leaves, beneath banks massed high with may, smelling sharp and sweet above the musky fragrance of the tall cow-parsley. Buttercup fields shine beyond those white banks; the chestnuts lift their candles high against the morning sky.

But suddenly there sprung
,

A confident report, that through the country rung
,

That
Cam
her daintiest flood, long since entituled
Grant …

Is sallying on for
Ouze,
determin'd by the way

To entertain her friends the Muses with a lay
.

Wherefore to show herself ere she to
Cambridge
came
,

Most worthy of that town to which she gives the name
,

Takes in her second head, from
Linton
coming in
,

By
Shelford
having slid, which straightway she doth win;

Than which a purer stream, a delicater brook
,

Bright
Phœbus
in his course doth scarcely overlook
.

Thus furnishing her banks, as sweetly, she doth glide

Towards
Cambridge,
with rich meads laid forth on either side;

And with the Muses oft did by the way converse …

A wondrous learned flood
. …

Possibly. But possibly also, by the mud of three centuries, a less pure stream, a less delicate brook now than then.

Beneath a hanging may-tree, a thin cheeping comes; a brood of baby moor-chicks has hatched in the night, and now swims out to explore the green and gold world, four small black balls behind their mother, chirping their excitement to the morning.

I splash up stream against the flowing weeds, scramble out and dry myself. The pure stream, the delicate brook, the learned flood, has a floor of soft mud, and is cold before the sun is high. I creep again into blankets, and would sleep the day in, but for the indefatigably cantiferous birds.

When I consider how, in a human creature's normal life, each day, however long, however short, however weary, however merry, circumstanced by whatever disconcerting, extravagant, or revolting chances of destiny, ends in getting into bed—when I consider this, I wonder why each day is not a happy, hopeful, and triumphant march towards this delicious goal; why, when the sun downs and the evening hours run on, our hearts do not lighten and sing in the sure and certain hope of this recumbent bliss. If it were a bliss less recurrent, more rare and strange, its exquisite luxury would surely seem a conception for the immortal gods, beyond any man's deserts. Even through the cold and sober definition given by the dictionary, comfort and anticipation warmly throb. “It consists for the most part of a sack or mattress of sufficient size, stuffed with something soft or springy, raised generally upon a ‘bed-stead' or support, and covered with sheets, blankets, etc., for the purpose of warmth. The name is given both to the whole structure in its most elaborate form, and, as in ‘feather-bed,' to the stuffed sack or mattress which constitutes its essential
part. (A person is said to be
in bed
, when undressed and covered with the bedclothes).”

What delicious memories and hopes do the quiet words evoke! A sack or mattress of sufficient size, stuffed with something soft or springy, raised generally upon a bed-stead or support, and covered with sheets, blankets, etc., for the purpose of warmth. Can well-being further go? Yes: for the purpose of even greater warmth, there may be a rubber bottle filled with hot water. Reflecting on, and still more, experiencing, this state of Olympian, of almost lascivious pleasure, how one pities Titania sleeping sometime of the night on her bank among thyme, oxlips, violets and snakes, her only coverlet the cast skins of these reptiles, which serve us not for sheets but for shoes. She was but a fairy queen, and knew nothing of our soft human elaborations of comfort. “Thou shalt lie in a bed stuffed with turtle's feathers; swoon in perfumed linen, like the fellow was smothered in roses.”

And to your more bewitching, see, the proud

Plumpe Bed beare up, and swelling like a cloud
. …

…
Throw, throw

Your selves into the mighty over-flow

Of that white Pride, and Drowne

The night, with you, in floods of Downe
. …

That is better than the bank where the wild thyme grows; better, even, almost certainly, than the bed which Eve made out of flowers in the blissful nuptial
bower, or than the roses that smothered the fellow. Not that down is necessary, or even desirable: a good hair mattress over box springs is more resilient, and as accordant to the frame as one can wish. The down can fill the pillows. The sheets are of smooth, fine cambric; not linen, which is heavier, colder, and less pliable, even when perfumed. Blankets should be according to season and temperature; it is well to have one or two in reserve, cast back over the bed's foot.

Climb, then, into this paradise, this epicurism of pleasure, this pretty world of peace. Push up the pillows, that they support the head at an angle as you lie sideways, your book held in one hand, its edge resting on the pillow. On the bed-head is a bright light canopied by an orange shade; it illustrates the page with soft radiance, so that it shines out of the environing shadows like a good deed in a naughty world. You are reading, I would suggest, a novel; preferably a novel which excites you by its story, lightly titillating, but not furrowing, the surface of the brain. Not poetry; not history; not essays; not voyages; not biography, archæology, dictionaries, nor that peculiar literature which publishers call belles-lettres. These are for daytime reading; they are not somnifacient; they stimulate the mind, the æsthetic and appreciative faculties, the inventive imagination; in brief, they wake you up. You will never, I maintain, get to sleep on Shakespeare, Milton, or Marvell, or Hakluyt, or Boswell, or Montaigne, or Burton's
Anatomy
, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Herodotus, or any poetry or prose that
fundamentally excites you by its beauty, or any work that imparts knowledge. These will light a hundred candles in your brain, startling it to vivid life. A story, and more particularly a story which you have not read before, will hold your attention gently on the page, leading it on from event to event, drowsily pleased to be involved in such fine adventures, which yet demand no thought. Let the story amuse, thrill, interest, delight, it matters not which; but let it not animate, stimulate or disturb, for sleep, that shy nightbird, must not be startled back as it hovers over you with drowsy wings, circling ever near and nearer, until its feathers brush your eyes, and the book dips suddenly in your hand. Lay it aside then; push out the light; the dark bed, like a gentle pool of water, receives you; you sink into its encompassing arms, floating down the wandering trail of a dream, as down some straying river that softly twists and slides through goblin lands, now dipping darkly into blind caves, now emerging, lit with the odd, phosphorescent light of oneiric reason, unsearchable and dark to waking eyes.

But what a small mischance can mar this clinic joy, this opulent bed of pleasure. Adam and Eve doubtless encountered pricks and thorns and crumpled leaves in their roseate couch, though we are reassured as to the completely unentomologous condition of the bridal bower. And our passible frames may meet, in some untended mattress, with a lump. Or, in some alien dwelling, beneath the roof-tree of callous friends, with coverings cold as charity, blankets scant and thin. The
eiderdown, if eiderdown there be, may glide and slide to the floor, like a French
duvet
. The hot-bottle may leak. Your head may face the window, and the curtains be of white casement, with a gap between to admit the dawn. The bird of dawning may sing all night long. A clock may tick, and be too large to be shut in the wardrobe. There may be a thin, transaudient wall, and a snorer beyond it. Or a snorer in your very bed, or even a somniloquent. Worst of all, worse than any other clinic grief, almost too profound a grief to be so much as glanced at in a survey of pleasures, it is conceivable that the light may only be extinguishable by the door. I believe, nay, I assert with confidence and deliberation, having clearly in mind all other bedroom woes—such as hard mattress, flock pillows, scant covering, intrusive dawn, eoan bird-songs, disappointed or fatiguing love, companions lapped and chrysalised in robbed blankets and close-gripped sheets, and yet turning and ever turning still—I say with deliberation, that this is the shrewdest stroke of fortune, the harshest bedroom chance, a light only extinguishable by the door.

Infinite and interminable rivers of eloquence have run, singing and murmuring on this inexhaustible theme. It is probable that all has been said or sung on it that can be sung or said. Yet one is bound to contribute one's tributary, one's little stream of eloquence,
to the flood which has flowed down the ages in praise of this great joy. The point is, once in the bed of pleasure, why get out of it? Humanity sees this point clearly every morning, yet, nearly every morning, obfuscates it, deserts the sheltering couch (where so much of the business of life might be transacted if we so chose, and at so much less cost of labour and distraction), and steps into the cold embattled world without.