What do you do when you find yourself imprisoned in your room for six weeks? Xavier de Maistre, a 27-year-old Frenchman found himself in this uneasy situation when he was arrested in Turin after a duel, in the Spring of 1790. But with only a butler and a dog for company, Xavier de Maistre managed to fill his time by embarking on a journey around his bedroom, later writing an account of what he had seen. Whether venturing from his bed to his sofa, or even to his mirror, he wears his "travelling outfit", his favorite pink and blue pajamas.
Not owning any pajamas, let alone pink and blue ones, I have nevertheless been forced to stay indoors for the last three days with a raging cold and so much time on my hands that I picked up Xavier de Maistre's book Voyage autour de ma Chambre.
I read it in Alain de Botton's translation, A Journey Around My Room, who explains in his introduction that, "wrapped in his dressing gown, satisfied by the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we've already seen".
Someone else (or was it Xavier de Maistre?) once wrote that the wise traveller travels only in his imagination. Those are the best journeys, the journeys that you can take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your illusions.
Well, until my raging cold has subsided, I shan't lose any of my illusions and take my short postman's holiday in my imagination only (although, tentatively, I have rebooked my disillusionment for the 3rd of May).
