MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON NOW that I have ceased, presumably for ever, to be a rising politician, I shall strive, by devoting my declining years to art and literature, to recapture what is incorrectly called " le beau calme de jadis." Not that I should ever wish to become a retired man of letters, preserved as some old white horse in the paddocks of life, fretted by the flies that buzz around me, and from time to time indulging, with no apparent motive, in a little trot. I prefer to picture myself as a parental and, indeed, venerable figure, gathering the young ones around me, and dispensing advice upon all manner of subjects to people who, if interested at all, are interested only in observing the mechanism of a period piece. Yet it may be that, when I reach a really advanced old age, the demands for my opinion will diminish ; that the persistent letters which now irk my busy days will dwindle from a stream to a trickle and from a trickle to a few dull drops ; and that I shall never be asked again to write introductions to tonic works upon the Secretariat of the League of Nations or to inform unknown correspondents whether the French spoken at Angers is, in fact, more pure than that spoken at Toulouse. Shall I regret the time when, in slitting open my envelopes at the breakfast-table, I was confronted with the familiar first sentence : —" Much as I hesitate to trouble a busy man like you. . . ." ? Yes, I think I shall regret this,curious contact with other minds. Some of the enquiries which reach me are foolish, many are trivial, and some could only be answered adequately in an essay of five thousand words. I am quite sure that I am not flattered by these attentions ; my vanity takes other forms. But I am conscious that these questions arouse in me a definite interest in the lesser perplexities of mankind and that I shall be sorry, in a way, when I cease to be regarded as an Advice Bureau and when other, kinder, less impatient people take my place.
* * * * I am not suggesting that, in fact, I receive any very large number of letters from unknown correspondents. Other journalists, whose fame and glamour are far greater than my own, must be burdened with a hundred letters to my one or two. I have always been much impressed by those of my colleagues, whether in politics or journalism, who assure me that it is an empty day for them when they do not receive sixty letters both by the morning and the after- noon posts. I have never, even in my palmiest days, exceeded an average of twenty a day. But of those twenty, two or three (" Much as I hesitate . . .") do certainly' contain requests for information, to answer which in a friendly spirit entails patience, concentration and, on occasions, serious research. All those who indulge in literary criticism are familiar with the sudden sinking of the heart with which, among their morning pile of letters, they will recognise a square and battered envelope which, they well know, will contain the manuscript of a short story or the typed copy of a daughter's juvenilia. Yet from time to time an enquiry reaches one which is seriously intended and which obliges one to pause 'for a moment and to consider what, on that particular subject, one really thinks. This week, for instance, I received a letter from a lady in North Wales asking me what books I should recommend for a convales- cent anxious to indulge in a little " light reading." The obvious, the easy, answer would be " Tales of Crime and Adventure." Yet, much as I enjoy detective novels, it is difficult to distinguish those which are new to one from those which one has read before. It is a sad thing, when one is half way through a detective novel, suddenly to recall who is the villain ; the whole apparatus of the story then slips and tumbles like a house of cards.
* * * * Nor should I recommend to any invalid books which require even a low level of concentration, books which demand acuteness of perception or books which, in the watches of the night, are liable to cause alarm. Jane Austen imposes constant alert attention ; the sentences of Meredith, in his or your moments of lassitude, have to be read twice over ; Trollope and Balzac are excellent corn- panions in times of illness•; and it is a good plan, if one's suffering be severe, to read the diaries of people who, as it were Amiel or Novalis, were more hopelessly miserable than oneself. It is a mistake for any man or woman afflicted with even slight ill-health, to read Russian authors, unless it be Turgenev, who was scarcely Russian at all. Dostoevsky should above all be eschewed, since when the pulse is low after midnight, and the fever may return, he is apt to trouble the patient with nightmare dreams. The Brothers Kara- mazov will crouch together like three blackbirds in the top left hand corner of the ceiling and mutter to one, " We said, you said, they said " with malignant intent. It may on the whole be better to avoid fiction, which excites images, and to resort to long and temperate biographies, such as Morley's Life of Gladstone, provided always that the muscles of the forearm retain sufficient vigour to enable one to hold such heavy books in bed. Travel books are not to be recommended, since they may create restlessness and a dumb longing for open spaces or the phosphorous loop of dolphins in the night. On the whole, and after much anxious consideration, I should recommend to the invalid the Problemata of Aristotle.
* * * This book (which can be obtained in an excellent and modest translation in the Loeb edition) represents a fourth-century Child's Guide to Knowledge, and is constructed in the pleasant Victorian manner of question and answer. The questions are varied, stimu- lating and incisive ; the answers, frequently, are pretty poor. Even a short list of some of the many hundred questions asked in this entrancing catechism should indicate why I feel that the Problemata is exactly the book required to revive, but not to exhaust, the weary invalid,. Why, asks, Aristotle, should cold beans be so unappetising ? Why are figs so bad for the teeth ? Why do dogs lose all power of scent when the wind is in the west ? Why do we check sneezing if we rub our eyes ? Why do short-sighted people write a tiny script ? Why is it that, alone among animals, man should squint ? Why do some people start coughing when they scratch their ears ? Why do men and women with curly hair tend to have snub noses ? Why is it that most fishermen have red hair ? Why do young men who indulge too rapturously in the pleasures of the flesh lose their eye- lashes ? Why is it that human beings do not grow manes ? Why does no known animal stammer ? Why does a certain mark in the palm of the hand indicate longevity ? Why do deaf people speak through their noses ? Why do leeks improve enunciation ? Why do panthers have such a pleasant smell ? Why are all Egyptians bandy-legged ? Why should rue be a cure for the evil eye ? . Why should people who stammer have such melancholy dispositions ? Why do athletes have shrill voices ? Why should those who live in hot climates be so much wiser than those who live in cold climates ? Why do roses which have rough centres smell better than those of which the centres are smooth ?
* * * No decent invalid could fail to be enlivened by the answers to such questions. He will be glad to be told on such high authority that cabbages are a sovereign remedy for a hang-over, that of all creatures birds suffer most from nasal catarrh and that trees on which the rainbow falls become scented for ever after. He will be glad to learn that " Vinegar stops a hiccough, since it aerates the surrounding moisture and prevents eructation." What will please him most of all is that- he will acquire the comforting warm feeling that he himself knows. so much more than Aristotle. The greatest of Greek philosophers knew nothing about bacteria and viruses. Compared to the ordinary invalid of today he was a laughably ignorant man. The reader of Problemata may assume, therefore, that he is more erudite than Aristotle. He would be mistaken in this assumption, since the 'Problemata were not written by "il maestro di color the sanno" two thousand three hundred years ago. They were written by a peripatetic pedant, perhaps many centuries later. But they are entrancing none the less.
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