Irretrievable Glumpiness

That wonderful Mr. Lear termed his melancholy thus, and it’s often his A Book of Nonsense that joins me when mine hits. I don’t own an e-reader and find the weight of books reassuring. I love new books; they're crisp, creaky and secretive. However, old books have so many more stories to tell. Those musty, age-stained pages have seen and shared a lot, and often all sorts of people have read them in all sorts of circumstances. Like old houses, we’re really just borrowing them for a while. We don’t truly own them.

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of books, and Lear’s is one of several I won’t part from easily. Whenever I had a bad dream as a child, I’d turn to The House at Pooh Corner, and just a few pages would relax me.

There are two books my mother gave me between the ages of 12 and 14, both about truly heroic girls but with stark contrasts. Adeline Yen Mah tells the story of her upbringing as the Chinese Cinderella. I admired the hardworking, stoic little girl and loved reading about her culture, yet could not comprehend the cruelty and neglect she suffered. Her home is not recognisable from the wonderfully romanticised world in which Maria Merryweather blossomed in The Little White Horse. Two of my heroines growing up show, in their independence, endurance and optimism, some of what I’d like and some of what I’ve since found.

I won’t give up these books, and a few others, easily. As Jeanette Winterson says: 

'Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and space.'

There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. When you’re there, you know everything’s going to be all right. That may be more relevant to children, but the wonderful evocative escapism works for many adults, too.

I may never be as strong as Adeline, as fierce as Lyra Silvertongue, as sensible as Elinor Dashwood, or as determined as Jane Eyre; however I’m learning to recognise my glumpiness and what causes it, and I will continue to learn how best to manage it.

It may be irretrievable for a while, but the storm always passes. And I blink for a while and realise what and who, fictional and living, have helped me through.