Page:Hubert W. Peet - 112 Days' Hard Labour, Being Some Reflections On the First of My Sentences as a Conscientious Objector - 1917.pdf/10

 allowed during the first month. The difficulty, however, at Wormwood Scrubs was that the presence of the objectors meant demand for books in this category that the library was not used to and could not stand. I personally was particularly lucky in being given Boswell’s Johnson on entry, but when I applied to the chaplain for it to be changed all I could get was a school prize volume, “Brave Deeds by Brave Men,” which I would rather have titled “Treachery by Traitors.” Other men whispered, however, that all they had, for instance, was a historical reader or a mental arithmetic! Conditions were better at Wandsworth, as the proportion of C.O.’s to ordinary prisoners was far less, and there was some chance of getting eventually books one applied for after making a choice in the catalogue which one is allowed to see.

The range shown in the latter was extensive and peculiar, and I was somewhat amused to notice that all Miss Braddon’s books were available except one entitled “Her Convict”! During the second month, besides the educational book—if the library has one left—you may have a work of fiction. In the third month and onwards there may be two novels, though on request a volume of poetry or essays may be substituted for one of the latter, while, on the other hand, instead of two books, a bound magazine volume may be had—and is, I believe, the choice. The last allowance may sound quite generous, but it must be remembered that reading at meal times alone would occupy three hours a day, or at least eighteen hours a week, not counting the work-free hours of Sunday. On the other hand, it must be remembered that reading or meditation is the sole manner of recreation, and one can absorb a great deal. My library list varied considerably in quantity and quality. For instance, for a week in the second month I had a volume of seventeen short stories of a “Tit-Bits” variety, by G. R. Sims, and no educational book; once in the third month I had A. E. W. Mason’s “Broken Road,” our grandmother’s favourite “The Wide, Wide World,” with a text and a tear in every line, and volume four of Gibbons’ “Rome”; whilst once in the fourth stage I had “Captains Courageous,” Taine’s Notes sur l’Angleterre, Prothero’s “Psalms in Human Life,” and George Fox’s Journal; the latter had been sent in to me, with Home Office permission, as a devotional book, on condition it afterwards became prison property. The Librarian expressed his surprise at such a volume being allowed, though he assured me he knew and had read it, “and,” he added, “I’ve also read his book of Martyrs”!

Such a varied selection at one time was of course, exceptional, and it must be remembered that the currency of all except the fiction was at least a fortnight, and might be a month, while the long-delayed arrival of Fox, applied for when only allowed one book, was under the circumstances an “embarrass de richesse.” Of all the volumes I had in prison, however, the one I got most enjoyment from was Froude's “Literary and Historical Essays.” They were indeed a spring of water in a thirsty land.