Our Daily Bill: Norway

[tealin]

While staying with family in Gloucestershire, in anticipation of heading to Davos to treat his TB, Wilson was invited to take the fresh air with some friends-of-friends in Norway. He did not stay home like a good invalid but went crawling all over the mountains and fjords, sketching and collecting and reflecting on all the new sights and experiences on offer there. His observations range from the artistically sublime, regarding the environment:

Last night there were showers of rain flying about, and a rainbow, and the whole of heaven was a rosy orange blaze, and one of the mountains caught the light and was flooded with a brilliant scarlet haze.—I covered seven bits of paper with red and orange and purple paint, but oh! they’re so ghastly and insufficient, and yet I couldn’t tear them up because they are all one has to help one’s memory.

– Edward Wilson of the Antarctic, pg 59

... to the prosaic, regarding the bugs:

The bite is like a drawing pin and itches like the devil. I use a clothes brush for the itching and then hazeline. I have tried vaseline and turps and the cleanings of a foul pipe rubbed all over my stocking, but there is nothing like a clothes brush for real happiness . . .

– pg 49

Exciting as the new locale was, though, his heart still belonged to home ...

If one could plant The Crippetts up here as far as this from towns and conventions and night, and shift the mosquitoes, I wouldn't grumble at it for an eternal heaven.

– Cheltenham in Antarctica, pg 44