AT HOME, A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE by Bill Bryson
Book Quote:
“On one occasion in
the 1890s, Lord Charles Beresford, a well-known rake, let himself into what he
believed was his mistress’s bedroom. With a lusty cry of ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’
he leapt into the bed – only to discover that it was occupied by the Bishop of
Chester and his wife.”
What would the
world do without Bill Bryson? One simply wants to sit at his knee with a huge
grin and listen interminably. I’m an irredeemable skinflint and get all my
reading material from the library, but At Home is one book I would seriously
like to buy for myself. Considering I have almost no books apart from reference
books, my Complete Shakespeare and a Bible I once found in a discard pile
somewhere, that’s saying quite a lot.
The volume is in
essence a long and amiable discourse on the marvel that was the Victorian era.
It’s loosely based around (and supposedly inspired by) the Victorian rectory
Bryson lives in. The chapters have titles like: “The Hall,” “The Kitchen,” and
so on. The theory is that “houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history
ends up.” However, apart from in the early chapters (notably “The Hall”)
there’s little talk about anything prior to the Victorians. It’s the speed of
change and the immeasurable vigor with which so many Victorians pursued their
eccentricities and interests that really fascinates Bryson, and he re-tells it
at the top of his engaging best.
The downside of the
book may perhaps be that it has little structure. It is a little like swimming
through thick soup, but oh such good soup! It’s the perfect book for sitting
companionably of an evening. The urge to exclaim “Listen to this one!” and
regale anybody within earshot with the latest snippet of fascinating
information Mr. Bryson has dredged out of history for you, probably occurs
about once every fifteen minutes. Which, incidentally, is the perfect interval
for this sort of activity: any less and it’s startling, any more and it gets
annoying.
The best thing
about it is that it’s simply so shockingly knowledgeable. The bibliography
alone goes on for 25 pages of dense text, with a further note at the bottom:
“for Notes and Sources, please go to www.billbryson.co.uk/athome .”
Despite this, there
are a number of curious little niches which harbour the oddest throw-away
statements. Like the one that claims the dining room really came about because
of the advent of upholstery, with the Victorians not really wanting people
smearing greasy chicken over their expensive sofas. What on earth were all
those Medieval dining halls doing, then, one wonders briefly? Or the later
Elizabethan private dining rooms? Oh Billy, one thinks – but it’s such a lovely
idea that a specialised room should be invented because people couldn’t quite
envisage a table napkin that one quite forgives it.
These little
anomalies only seem to add to the charm: they’re like “Easter eggs” in a
computer game. The vast majority of the time, one is overwhelmed with gratitude
at the sheer volume of reading and dredging that has been done to winkle these
pearls of Victoriana from dusty obscurity. They range from the obscure (why
forks usually have three tines: actually it’s never quite explained but
apparently people have experimented with other numbers and it’s never quite
right) to the monumentally important (such as the discovery of the sources of cholera
and scurvy). Electricity holds sway over a whole chapter in “The Fuse Box,” and
seems to hold a particular fascination for Bryson, as the “characters” who
feature here pop up throughout the book. Perhaps it is not surprising, as
without electricity so much of further development would simply not have been
possible.
I would recommend
this unreservedly to anybody, but actively prescribe it if you are feeling
glum. Perhaps that’s why I’d like it on my shelf permanently. It’s cheering for
three reasons. The unquenchable amiable spirit it’s written in, along with the
sheer love of language and words that beams through the pages are two of these
reasons – but any Bryson fan will already be familiar with these. The third is
that the book will immerse you entirely in the day-to-day reality of Being
Victorian. Which includes carrying 40 bucket loads of hot water upstairs
nightly for a bath, having to take clothes apart and re-stitch them together
for the laundry, refrigerating food (if one were so lucky) with ice brought
over from lakes in the States, and countless other inconveniences and checks to
daily living that we would simply never consider possible. The writing is so
engrossing one’s arms almost ache with the weight of the water-buckets… only to
look up and find that: joy! One can just turn the hot water on instead. If you
think you’re bogged down with a tedious job or an unrewarding existence or poor
working conditions, just read this. You’ll be skipping in no time.
(First published in
Mostly Fiction Book Reviews, 2011)
