EARLY TO BED AND

Evening Star, Issue 17920, 16 March 1922, Page 8

EARLY TO BED AND

MAX PEMBERTON ON THE “NONSENSE OP IT.”

What is all this nonsense about going to bed early and tho ills which await the man who sits up Into? (demands Mr Max Pemberton in an amusing philippic in the London ‘ Daily Mail ’). Regarding the reports of recent controversies. lam driven to_the conclusion that certain well-meaning if platitudinous reformers attribute haJf the evils of the day to late hours, and consider any man a. sinner who is not between the sheets by 10 p.im For them night is the tune when tho sons of Belial wander forth “flown with insolence and wine.” But what possible virtue or _ gain is there in going to hod at these ridiculous hours? Look at the men who observe them and vou will discover a liverish race, heavy in speech, of to 11 totally lacking in wit, dull companions and soulless fellows. They make millions, wc arc told, and when they die prosperity is bored by books which tell us how they lived on apples. It is the rarest thing to discover in the story of a. really great man that ho went to bod early. The medieval age, of course, had to obliterate itself a dusk, for its lamps were primitive and its tapers guttered. Yet, consider the splendid eighteenth century ! Walpole, Chatham, Fox, Pitt, Burke —imagine these giants of tho night being asked to retire when tho clock struck 10. For them the day was hardly aired until the supper table was spread. They spent historic nights at Westminster in a House of Commons where men crowed like cocks, eprawled on benches, whistled, fought, and cursed, and generally did the nation’s business better than it had been dono before. Gladstone, of course, was a late bird when the House was sitting, and ho and Disraeli generally got to grips about midnight. This present House of Commons rarely gets homo with the milk, and we see tho consequence in universal bankruptcy and ruin. The idea that men want a lot of steep has, indeed, permeated the whole land, with the result that our wit is becoming duller every day and ideas are surely deserting us. What great work of imagination does not owe something to the midnight oil? And upon what really scientific ground do we say that we were meant to sleep at night and not by day? Man is an animal, and he should sleep as the animals do.

Regard the felines! They wander forth at the witching hour—and they_ strongly object to cold wato" with their music. Equally tho lion has the best judgment in lambs when the church clocks are chiming the hour of midnight, and no selfrespecting tiger would think of eating the station master in the middle of the day. I met a. distinguished Irish nobleman the other day who had just made a great discovery. Ho had found in Piccadilly one of his clubs where, by paying a lino of £25, he could sit up until 7 o’clock in tho morning. Promptly ho took two friends with him, and, having written out a. little cheque for £75, enjoyed himself quite in the old style.

But what a reflection upon our decadence that such a payment should be necessary! And what memories one has of delightful all-night sittings with Irving Toole, Kemble, and Tree, the great talkers of twenty years ago! People cannot talk now. They go to bod too early.