"In the early 1870s, the London and South-Western Railway announced plans to run a line right through the heart of the Stonehenge site. When people complained, a railway official countered that Stonehenge was 'entirely out of repair, and not the slightest use to anyone'".
Slightly pompous, dry and sarcastic in a very English way (though by birth an American), occasionally falling too much under the spell of his own research yet always able to give good anecdote... At Home is pretty much everything you'd expect from Bill Bryson. It purports to take a tour round the author's home, a 19th century rectory in rural Norfolk, using each room as a springboard for a 'history of domestic life'. Of course, being Bryson it soon rambles way off message, to the point where certain chapters manage to get by almost without ever mentioning the room they're supposed to be focused on. (The quote above comes from the chapter on 'The Attic' - don't ask me why.)
So 'The Nursery' deals at length with infant and adult mortality in days gone by and doesn't tell us anything about where cots came from or who first came up with those nursery-rhyme playing mobiles people use to distract babies to sleep. On the other hand, we do get the life story of the man who invented the mousetrap (James Henry Atkinson) in the chapter on 'The Study' - because that's where Bryson fights his own battles with vermin. A typical Bryson anecdote follows, telling how smart rats steal eggs from a poultry market without breaking them...
"...one rat would embrace an egg with all four legs, then roll over onto its back. A second rat would then drag the first rat by its tail to their burrow, where they could share their prize in peace."
Occasionally Bryson becomes so wrapped up in the life of a particular architect, designer or historical figure that he might well be writing their biography, but mostly he boils these characters down to their most fascinating and amusing traits. It's always dangerous skipping a Bryson paragraph, even the boring ones, because you might miss a gem.
Some rooms give him far more to write about than others, particularly the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom... which proves most revealing on how the prudish Victorians dealt with sexual arousal. Who doesn't want to find out more about that?
"A sample of Ice Cream sold in London in 1881... was found to contain human hair, cat hair, insects, cotton fibres and several other insalubrious constituents"
"'Wash your hands often, your feet seldom and your head never' was a common English proverb."
"...the Penile Pricking Ring... was slipped over the penis at bedtime and was lined with metal prongs that bit into any penis that impiously swelled beyond a very small range of permissible deviation."
There. That'll keep my blog blocked on certain search engines for "sexual material". Gotta maintain my sordid reputation...
