BOOKS - musings inspired by Hazlitt 3rd May 2021
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Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, if biased (Susan Hill)
So now for something completely different:
Some months ago I had cause to go into my attic to look through a box of books. Needless to say, I did not find what I was looking for! In passing though there was the six-volume (I think) set of The Bible printed by Dent at the beginning of the 20th Century. I remember buying them in Cirencester, mainly because of the quality of the paper and the exquisite printing - and the wonderful smell of old books. Not unsurprisingly, the pages were, for the most part, un-cut... However, that aside, what I DID chance upon was a small book of essays entitled "On Books and Character" by William Hazlitt (1718-1830).
Hazlitt was not someone I knew anything about, but Wikipedia sorted THAT out: an interesting, if not terribly likeable character who numbered painting amongst his numerous skills. This is a self-portrait at the age of 24 - and what an amazingly modern face that is...
This is another exquisite little book, in that the paper quality is superb and the printing delectable. Ok, this is the bookbinder in me talking I suppose, but back when I was studying at Roehampton, we had lectures on page layout and printing and this ticks a lot of boxes for me...
"When I take up a work that I have read before... I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated... In thus turning to a well-known author [he means well-known to the reader] there is not only an assurance that my time will not be thrown away... - but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried and valued friend in the face. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it and which I can never have in any other way... They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours." [and so it goes on...]
Whilst Hazlitt's prose is not really 'me', it is the pleasures of memory, feelings and associations which caught my eye - and has been in the back of my mind this past several months. Certainly my earliest memories of reading (aged about four) conjure up a view from the kitchen floor, in the company of Beatrix Potter and Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit.
When we moved to Paris a year or two later, I had Dr Seuss' Cat in the Hat - in french - as my french primer and some very dear Australian cousins, also living in Paris, gave me a copy of 'The Magic Pudding' by Norman Lindsay which is still on my shelves and still conjures up images of Cousin Cecy and her indomitable mother, Aunty Mercy. These two ladies lived in the next block of flats to us and could be reached by a dimly lit interconnecting corridor in the basement; scary territory for a small boy with a vivid imagination, as he scuttled from one lift to the next, past who knew what lying locked away behind bars...
These were followed in a year or two by Tin Tin and the inestimable Asterix books. To this day, I can only read 'Asterix chez les Bretons' in the original French: to me, the jokes simply don't make sense in english!
Later, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe appeared on my radar and inevitably conjure up the library at Walhampton School (a room I think I spent a fair bit of time in); The Mill on the Floss conjures up the foothills of Snowdon, where I was reading it in preparation for studying A-level English. I found it difficult then and I still can't get on with it! Other A-level books conjure up the classrooms at Milton Abbey School to this day: Shakespear's Anthony and Cleopatra, Little Dorrit by Dickens, Voltaire's Candide.
I don't remember doing a huge amount of reading between leaving school/college in the mid-'70s and the late '80s, when my partner and I bought a weekend cottage in Gloucestershire. This allowed more time for relaxing in front of the fire with a good book (the Master and Commander series by Patrick O'Brian springs to mind).
Other books I simply re-read for the pleasure of doing so - the 'old valued friend'. Some years ago (many years ago in fact) I made the acquaintance of Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse - a mammoth epic concerning the travels and travails of the eponymous hero. At the time - 1933 - it outsold the bible but, sadly, was overtaken by Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind a few years later. The book's ending is quite tragic - and although I know what's coming, I still am still nearly in tears by the final pages. It's even worse with another of his books - Action at Aquila - concerning the American Civil War, with a heartrending scene where a young squaddie dies. I just have to resign myself to having a hankie nearby. Perhaps I'm just sentimental, but my imagination is so very vivid at times, which is partly why I'm not a fan of books with too much violence, cruelty or suspense...
On a slightly different note, it IS interesting how one's tastes change over time: I started re-reading Little Dorritt a couple of months ago - having had to buy an edition with slightly larger print (the photo shows the original Penguin paperback re-bound by your's truly several years ago; the text is minute). I am finding Mr Dickens' style just too heavy and mawkish for me these days - I wade through it in short stretches for old times sake, if only because of the author's descriptions of the acute poverty of the times... but...
On a side note, any mention of Nicholas Nickelby instantly take me to the thick of the National Theatre's stunning 'all round' marathon production at the Aldwych Theatre in 1980 (before they moved to the South Bank). Having reminded myself of the story-line on Wikipedia, I am not surprised the performance took eight hours!! Memorable stuff...
With the pandemic, I have been reading a lot of books from the local library's electronic section. Some quite interesting stuff, but I find none of it really sticks in the mind the way the real printed text does. My current reading is John Julius Norwich's Sicily (in real, book form) which is totally engrossing; his more specific The Normans in Sicily is waiting in the sidelines.......
Right, I think I have waffled on enough - I could talk about books endlessly! But perhaps this episode will encourage you, in some stray moment, to have a think about which books have meant something special to you - or represent certain memories... I shall leave you with some sage words by Susan Hill:
Have fun!
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