The Bed-Book of Happiness: 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 tiredBegbie, Harold
General
The Bed-Book of Happiness: 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
Begbie, Harold
Literature -- Collections
When I was fifteen or sixteen he (Newman) taught me so much I do
mind--things that will never be out of me. In an age of sofas and
cushions he taught me to be indifferent to comfort, and in an age of
materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen, and this so early
that it was well in me when life began, and I was equipped before I went
to Oxford with a real good panoply, and it has never failed me. So if
this world cannot tempt me with money or luxury--and it can't--or
anything it has in its trumpery treasure-house, it is most of all
because he said it in a way that touched me, not scolding nor
forbidding, nor much leading--walking with me a step in front. So he
stands to me as a great image or symbol of a man who never stooped, and
who put all this world's life in one splendid venture, which he knew as
well as you or I might fail, but with a glorious scorn of everything
that was not his dream.
RED LION MARY
[Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]
The life in Red Lion Square was a very happy one in its freedom. Red
Lion Mary's originality all but equalled that of the young men, and she
understood them and their ways thoroughly. Their rough and ready
hospitality was seconded by her with unfailing good temper; she
cheerfully spread mattresses on the floor for friends who stayed there,
and when the mattresses came to an end it was said that she built up
beds with boots and portmanteaus. Cleanliness, beyond the limits of the
tub, was impossible in Red Lion Square, and hers was not a nature to
dash itself against impossibilities, so the subject was pretty much
ignored, but she was ready to fulfil any mission or do anything for them
at a moment's notice, which was much more important. Never did she
dishonour their bills.
"Mary!" cried Edward one evening when ordering breakfast over-night for
Rossetti, who was staying with them, "let us have quarts of hot coffee,
pyramids of toast, and multitudinous quantities of milk"; which to her
meant all he intended. "Dear Mary," wrote Rossetti, "please go and smash
a brute in Red Lion passage to-morrow. He had to send a big book, a
scrapbook, to Master Crabb, 34, Westbourne Place, Eaton Square, and he
hasn't done it. I don't know his name, but his shop is dirty and full of
account books. This book was ordered ten days ago, and was to have been
sent home the next day _and was paid for_--so sit on him hard to-morrow
and dig a fork into his eye, as I can't come that way to murder him
myself." From these hints she knew exactly what to say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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