Voyage round 'ITB-approved' room leads to gloom

I have not read Alain de Botton's latest book, The Art of Travel , but going by reviews it appears to be a quasi-philosophical…

I have not read Alain de Botton's latest book, The Art of Travel, but going by reviews it appears to be a quasi-philosophical treatise about the innumerable disappointments of travel, and the impossibility (yet necessity) of leaving one's own "self" at home, writes Brendan Glacken.

Hold on a minute, it gets less technical. When de Botton went on holiday to the Caribbean with his partner, he apparently ended up bickering with his partner at the dinner table over who should have the larger portion of crème caramel: sadly, he concluded that "I had inadvertently brought myself with me".

We aren't told how this went down with the partner (or, more to the point, who actually got the bigger dessert), but as an excuse, it sounds somewhat self-pitying.

I am less interested in this sort of philosophical rambling - the aeroplane, apparently, is "a symbol of worldliness, carrying within itself a trace of all the lands it has crossed" - than in his reference to a very fine travel book, or booklet, written by a young Frenchman, Xavier de Maistre, in the 18th century.

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It seems that de Maistre became a writer by chance. Arrested for duelling while a young officer in Piedmont, he was sentenced to remain in his quarters for 42 days. And it was during this time he composed A Voyage Round My Room.

Within the confined space, de Maistre has his dog, Rosine, as a companion, while a servant attends to his daily needs. He leads the reader about the room at a suitably leisurely pace, describes the pictures on the walls, and points out various objects and vistas. Chapter Five, for example, begins: "Heading north from my armchair, we discover my bed, which sits at the back of the room and creates a most agreeable perspective - it is most felicitously situated, receiving the morning sun's first rays as they shine through my curtain."

The whole thing is an exercise in unhurried movement and contemplation, the polar opposite of modern travel. There are a few flights of fancy, but for the most part de Maistre concentrates on what is within the four walls of his room, on what he has hitherto never noticed before. And so he finds new ways of seeing things, in this small room - "that enchanted realm containing all the wealth and riches of the world".

Unfortunately de Maistre spoiled the whole thing a few years later with a sequel, Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room, in which he actually ventured out on to the window ledge. This inadvisable excursion might well be blamed for the great glut of travel books trundled out ever since.

Travelling today is such an enormous hassle that family members who propose it should be similarly confined to their rooms for 42 days and obliged to describe their surroundings in print, before being allowed to mention the subject again. Perhaps they might also be obliged to write out, 42 times, Pascal's dictum that "All of man's unhappiness stems from not being able to remain quietly in his room".

There are rooms and rooms. Imagine my joy in recent times on finding a room in one of those traditional Irish bed-and-breakfast establishments which has steadfastly refused to submit to the so-called "improvement" regime imposed by the Celtic Tiger (with the aid of the Irish Tourist Board).

A "Voyage Round My Room" revealed such quaint delights as an ancient swirly-patterned carpet which the National Museum would be delighted to get its hands on; wallpaper which appeared to swirl in the opposite direction, drawing the viewer into a swoon; a black-and-white push-button television, circa 1960, receiving only Network 2, and a collection of three beds, none of them remotely comfortable, and all fitted with sheets so thin as to be see-through.

As a sort of mocking tribute to the "ITB Approved" sign hanging outside, the room was "en-suite". The shower head, held up and held together with insulating tape, was delightfully idiosyncratic in that whatever way one turned it, a jet of water shot over the door and on to one's towel. The shower door laughed squeakily at all attempts to close it, and the entire cubicle had enough mastic sprayed about it liberally, though quite ineffectually, to seal a nuclear bunker.

A kettle was supplied for tea-making purposes. What carefree memories I have of strolling about the room for half-an-hour without finding somewhere to plug it in. What a sense of adventure I had when, finally, I boldly plugged it in to an already overloaded socket, and positioned the kettle precariously on the TV. But as for getting carried away in the manner of Xavier de Maistre, and travelling right out to the window-ledge, sadly that was not possible, as every window was sealed shut: to keep people in, or out, I shall never know.