READING WHEN ILL.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19610, 4 May 1929, Page 13

READING WHEN ILL.

TROUBLES OF A "HIGHBROW." THE DOCTOR'S SURPRISE. [By Cyrano.] I have not read a rotten page Of "Sex Hate" or "The Social Test," And here comes "Husks" and "Heritage." O Moses, give us all a rest! "Ethics of Empire!" ... I protest. I will not even cut the strings, I'll read "Jack Redskin on the Quest." And feed my brain with better things.

I do not know whether Mr Chesterton was well or ill when he wrote this verse, but it will serve. He who has written some of the most profound prose and verse of our time, but has also defended the "penny dreadful," is a fit authority to place at the top of my article. I am moved to write this by a visit I had from a doctor. He seen me once, and returned to find me not so well as he expected or as I should have been in return for his kindness and skill. A volume of Wodehouse lay open on my pillow, and hiß eye lit up as he saw it, not only from a proper appreciation of Wodehouse, but from a solicitude for my welfare. He said he was glad to see I was reading something bo light. He didn't say he was surprised, but his voice and manner showed it 1 protested from an aehwg head that I read Wodehouse with avidity and enthusiasm, and I have been wondering since whether he thought any the more of me for that. The doctor's surprise made me think again of the curious impreasura there is that persons who enjoy serous literature necessarily eschew light books. The doctor was surprised because he knows 1 am a book, lover and that I write. I can picture him giving serious thought to my case: Now there's X I wonder how he a get ting on. Poor chap; what he wants i. I long holiday and a course of Ben "ravers or Stephen Leacock, but I bet he's lying to bedfrying to read Wodehouse. Friends and rcSives'taS nStioned Wodehouse and other humorists to me apologetically llif reading them was a piece of frivolity, beneath me ■ *°™ of as* is&. Sarlie Chaplin circus comedies like "The Farmer's Wife ana farces like "When Knights were BoUT' I hope I will be acquitted ot XJdiie egotism in citing my own humble case. Of course many instances can be culled from the live? of tho great. In his public relationships Gladstone was not conspicuous for humour, hut in his family circle he was the soul of fun He even sang comic songs. President Wilson devoured detective stories. Asquitn sought relief from the Btram of the war by reading O. Henry. Lord Robbery Mr Birrell, and Mr Belloc have combined to commend with enthusiasm "The Wary of a Nobody." The millions of men and women who have read Mr Edgar Wallace include, I am sure, grave college dons, poets, and novelists who write with a purpose. The most leanred man I have known—a man with a prodigious knowledge- ot, ancient and modern literature, philosophy, and half a dozen other things, grabs a new .Wallace—the midday Wallace, as "Punch" said — with joy-light in his eye. His knowledge of George Ade and Wodehouse is as extensive as his knowledge of Swinburne and Henry James. Visiting a distinguished English cleric while he was recovering from an accident—a man noted for piety and scholarship—T was struck by the piles of "shockers" by his bed. He must have read them at the rate of half a doaen a day. The idea that learned men, and persons generally who read books, are above the herd in the matter of light literature, must be part of that curious British refusal to give the humorist his proper place in life. The British are really humorous, and they have produced a magnificent body of humour, but they have a widespread disposition to regard the humorist as a greatly inferior being to the writer who deals iu the heavier aspetcs of life. "Of course he's very funny and all that, but . ." It seems to be a product of the Puritan tradition. But ask a publisher about the supply of humour, and he will tell you that for every really good book of laughter, half-a-dozen or more serious novels of quality are written. A musical friend said to me once: "Anyone can write a fairly good slow movement, but it takes a genius to compose a good scherzo." As for reading in sickness tastes must differ. I know a man who takes refuge in Scott, and a woman who seeks relief from influenza in Jane Austen. It depends on the illness. When stricken with lumbago you can read books that you couldn't open if your head was bad. Detective and mystery stories, the humour of Birmingham. Jacobs, and Wodehouse, are blessed things when the head aches or burns. It is in convalescence that one sometimes turns to more serious fare. "It is almost worth being ill," said a very robust and energetic friend, "for the sake of convalescence." He is an avid reader, and I do not think that one who was not would so regard the period of recovery; it would bore him. Convalescence with plenty of good books can be a blessed state. The body reclines (1 don't say always) in a delightful indolence, and the mental faculties may be all the clearer for the enforced rest and fasting. There I is a feeling that affairs are for the time beyond your control. This is akin to the feeling produced by a long train journey; nothing can happen, you can do nothing until you get to your destination, so you can spend your time with books without feeling that you are wasting it. You allow time to flow over you gently like a healing flood. I remember particularly well two such periods of incapacitation In one I read for the first time that greatest of all mystery stories, "The Moonstone," and I can still feel the thrill it gave me. In the second I reread, after many years, "Middlemarch." and experienced that full joy that comes when you bring your mature judgment to bear on a masterpiece that you read when you were too young to appreciate it properly. Indeed, there are some books of which one is tempted to think that they will be read only in long periods of "convalescence —"The Decline and Fall," Boswell's "Johnson," "Frederick the Great." However, since I read •War and Peace" Q2OO pages) without going to bed to do it, I have hopes that the price of illness may not have to be paid.