As an antidote to a completely dulled mind, I’ve been web-crawling again, and I discovered Brian’s Amazon blog. In one post, entitled 'the balm of books', he talks about how books can act as spiritual restoratives on those days we are feeling out of sorts.Today is one of those days.
Among the books Brian lovingly remembers is R. L. Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. I cannot express how much I wish that book was here instead of sitting in my old room at my parents’ house. I can picture it now – the purple cloth cover with gold lettering that is missing a slipcover – lost, no doubt, one night at sea…
One night before bed I asked Mum for some craft supplies and rigged up a miniature mast complete with a paper sail. I lined up all my toy animals, with Wilbur the pig at the helm, at the foot of my bed, and stole a chocolate bar or two and a carton of drink from the kitchen. At night I would float across the poem's ocean, chasing all the other adventures from Stevenson’s imagination.My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor’s coat
And starts me in the dark.
At night, I go on board and say
Good night to all my friends on shore;
I shut my eyes and sail away
And see and hear no more.
And sometimes things to bed I take,
As prudent sailors have to do;
Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
Perhaps a toy or two.
All night across the dark we steer;
But when the day returns at last,
Safe in my room, beside the pier,
I find my vessel fast.
Sometimes at night when I am having trouble sleeping I close my eyes and try to relive those nights I would kiss my parents good night and truly believe I was setting out on a grand adventure in my bed.
It never works as well as it did back then.
But how could I think of not bringing that wonderful little book here with me?
What a glorious story! I can see you and Wilbur and the gang setting sail and buffeting the waves of childhood dreams...
Like R L Stevenson, I was a sickly child and his 'The Land of Counterpane' was MY own special poem!
WHEN I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.
My edition of 'A Child's Garden of Verse' is a humble Puffin paperback - but with dreamy little pencil drawings by Eve Garnett. Many years later, I discovered Charles Robinson's sumptuously illustrated edition of the book (have you ever seen it?), but for me, my - now rather battered - little Puffin is the book that will always live in my memory...