A friend gave me recently a book published in 1922 by a publishing company called Orchard Hill Press that operated just a few miles from where I live today. At first sight the book seemed unexceptional. A faded, slightly tatty hardcover with an inscription from 1923, Blossomed Hours is what publishers used to call a miscellany: a collection of essays, poems, and reflections by Edward Howard Griggs. Griggs (1868-1951) was a university teacher who, according to the little information I could find on the web, delivered more than 13,000 lectures to more than 8 million people during his lifetime, mostly on subjects such as philosophy, history and culture.

I dipped into the book expecting to put it aside quickly, but found myself drawn in, initially by what The New York Times in 1903 called Griggs’s “easy flowing style, rich in imagery”. But the deeper I read, the more resonances I heard with today’s world. How about this?

Men need today, as every yesterday/To be called back from the senseless rush for gold/And fashion, dissipation – all the way/That dulls the heart of life and makes it cold/Back to love, work and simple, joyous play/Of those emotions that can ne’er grow old.

And this reflection on traveling seemed especially poignant in the lock-down imposed on us all by the pandemic:

To the man of thought, already cosmopolitan, the chief value of travel is in tremendously stimulating the flow of ideas and in contributing a wealth of illustrations. One may travel also through books and reflections. If the stimulation is less acute than that through the outer senses, it is wider in range and more fully at one’s command, without the waste and strain of movement from place to place. There are advantages to the stay-at-home, as well as for the traveller. If one opportunity is denied, use the other more sacredly.

Never judge a book by its (faded) cover.