Edinburgh Days, or Doing What I Want to Do

A Traveler in Little Things

A Traveler in Little Things At the beginning of the twentieth century the English writer W. H. Hudson spent a night in a commercial hotel in Bristol. The next morning he ate in the hotel’s coffee shop. A manufacturer’s representative joined him, assuming Hudson was also a commercial traveler. The man was successful. He wore fine linen and gold-rimmed glasses. His clothes were stitched from the “blackest broadcloth,” and from a heavy gold watch chain seals waved like flags atop a circus tent. Hudson and the man chatted. While the conversation ranged over politics and trade, Hudson said little. Only after the man brought up agriculture, saying things that were incorrect, did Hudson speak. “I perceive you know a great deal more about the matter than I do,” the man said, “and I will now tell you why you know more. You are a traveler in little things—in something very small—which takes you into the villages and hamlets, where you meet and converse with small farmers, inn keepers, labourers and their wives, with other persons who live on the land.” I have long been a traveler in little things. The biblical tale of loaves and fishes is not about feeding a multitude. Instead the story celebrates making do with small things, a fist of bread and a hunk of fish. The little appointments of ordinary life are about all most of us have, but they are also the best we have. Alas, glittering seals sometimes lead people astray, and they neglect the ordinary. This morning as I strolled up Newington toward the institute, I heard someone whistling. The melody was gay and bouncy and was the first whistling I’d heard in Scotland. 72 Edinburgh Days Parked by the curb on East Preston was a hearse, the lid to the trunk raised. Along the windows in the back of the hearse, an undertaker was arranging flowers, whistling as if he were in a garden. The man wore a black suit. Clearly he enjoyed life because he’d gained weight since purchasing the suit and his stomach spilled over his belt, pushing a white shirt out of his trousers into loose and lively furrows. “Good morning,” I said. “Good morning to you,” he answered, standing up and smiling. The door to the funeral home was open, and I looked inside. Atop a table sat four diminutive coffins. “For ashes,” the man said. “Aren’t they something?” “Really something,” I said, thinking how much I’d like to have one for my desk at the institute. I’d bury all matter of things in it, pens, tape, rubber bands, and braces of paper clips. “Oh, well,” I thought, crossing the street to Bonningtons to buy an almond croissant, all the while blowing air between my teeth, unconsciously piping “Dixie.” When people ramble about content to savor moments, they discover that things they once ignored as scraps—fish and bread—are wonderfully satisfying. Scraps nourish the spirit, and suddenly one hears whistling and realizes life is a gift. “Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration ,” Ralph Waldo Emerson reported in “Nature.” I travel widely in books, practically every day roaming the byways of the university library, perusing volumes that have so slipped from popularity that they have been consigned to stacks dusty with “the rarely borrowed .” I enjoy the society of books more than that of people. I can take my leave at a whim. Ritual does not matter. I can return at a moment’s notice, as I do at night, reading in bed until I fall asleep, then waking later and reading once more until I slip into sleep again. When books are my company, I do not fret about dress. Food matters little. A Scotch egg, a pot of tea, and a book furnish a banquet. I can escape the yoke of manners. I do not have to be sympathetic. I talk only to myself and do not feel obligated to shape my conversation to the needs of others. Ceremony does not compel me to genuflect before people’s superstitions, be they religious or social. I can be ornery and contemplate the unacceptable . I have given up believing man can be improved. Instead of sitting beneath candelabra and telling sad stories of the deaths of kings, I can lean back...