The final article in the series inspired by Through the Magic Door, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little volume of 12 essays about books, writers and reading, has been outstanding for some time now.
The last in a string of book-inspired posts is often the most difficult to produce; it isn't easy to let a good book go! Then there is the uncomfortable feeling that some key commentary-inspiring material might have been overlooked, which means retaining the book on standby for just one more trawl-through when time permits.
I now feel that enough is enough; at long last the time has come to call it a day. I have made a final journey through the Magic Door for the purpose of producing just one more article, and I found a little more interesting material to highlight.
As previously mentioned, Conan Doyle describes the tempting tub of bargain books that stood outside the door of a bookshop that he used to pass on the way to buy his lunch; each time he went to get something to eat, he had to decide between spending his budgeted threepence on food or doing without and buying a book for the same amount of money instead.
He twice mentions Jonathan Swift's satirical work A Tale of a Tub; this was one of the cheap treasures that he found when digging in the tub!
This reminds me of a similar scene in Dion Fortune's Goat-Foot God. A twopenny bargain bin that stands outside a bookshop tempts a passer-by into looking for gold among the gravel. He finds a good book that 'by chance' was put in the bin by mistake. When he goes inside to pay, a whole new life opens up to him.
Conan Doyle says that Macaulay's Essays opened up a new world to him. He describes how much this book meant to him:
“If I had to choose the one book out of all that line from which I have had most pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder stained copy of Macaulay's "Essays." It seems entwined into my whole life as I look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever take its place for me.“
This reminds me of Alan Quatermain and his copy of the Ingoldsby Legends that accompanied him everywhere.
I wonder how many people still read Macaulay's Essays. I also wonder how many people these days are familiar with Swift's Tale of a Tub and other eighteenth-century books and novelists that Conan Doyle praises.
The reader's dilemma describes how factors such as a lack of time may force people to decide between reading a familiar old friend and trying something new.
Conan Doyle recommends reading new material in order to avoid mental stagnation:
“...as I read them I was pleased to find how open my mind was to new impressions, for one of the greatest mental dangers which comes upon a man as he grows older is that he should become so attached to old favourites that he has no room for the new-comer...”
Conan Doyle is spot on when it comes to describing what it is like to shut out the real world and escape into the world of books and the imagination:
“It is good to have the magic door shut behind us. On the other side of that door are the world and its troubles, hopes and fears, headaches and heartaches, ambitions and disappointments; but within, as you lie back on the green settee, and face the long lines of your silent soothing comrades, there is only peace of spirit and rest of mind in the company of the great dead. Learn to love, learn to admire them; learn to know what their comradeship means; for until you have done so the greatest solace and anodyne God has given to man have not yet shed their blessing upon you. Here behind this magic door is the rest house, where you may forget the past, enjoy the present, and prepare for the future.“
Conan Doyle's final words in the final essay are about having to leave the magical word of books and return to mundane matters:
“For the time the magic door is still shut. You are still in the land of faerie. But, alas, though you shut that door, you cannot seal it. Still come the ring of bell, the call of telephone, the summons back to the sordid world of work and men and daily strife. Well, that's the real life after all—this only the imitation. And yet, now that the portal is wide open and we stride out together, do we not face our fate with a braver heart for all the rest and quiet and comradeship that we found behind the Magic Door?”
While it is very true that the demands of sordid reality can be so unwelcome and difficult to cope with that we try to escape them by reading, it is also true that reading can refresh, restore and inspire people, making them better equipped to deal with the real world.
The essays in Through the Magic Door were originally published in magazines. They can be found on Project Gutenberg in eBook form and on the dedicated Conan Doyle website.
