Hypnotic Bedtime Story: The City of Beautiful Nonsense
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Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Thank you everyone for being here. Um, I just want to say, sounds so corny, but I'm really grateful for every single person who listens to this podcast because as much as I hear you guys talk

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This offer ends August 19th. I'll see you over there at Sleep Magic Premium. Tonight, The City of Beautiful Nonsense. I'd never heard of this book, but I'm constantly trolling the internet for literature in the public domain. And having read from some of the most famous stuff, I've been getting into the less famous stuff.

The City of Beautiful Nonsense was written by British writer Ernest Temple Thurston and published in 1909 and was described as a sentimental novel. It's a simple story in which an impoverished writer gives his last penny to a girl in a church so she can buy a candle. Then they begin meeting in Kensington Gardens. Thurston started writing early and had had two books of poems published by the time he was 16.

It wasn't until The City of Beautiful Nonsense was published, however, that he experienced any financial stability as a writer. But in the end, he wrote a total of 40 books. Not bad. So we're going to be reading from chapters 3 and 4, maybe a little of 5 from this novel, because I find the details in all of them simple and sensuous. I'm sure most writers wouldn't take it as a compliment, but it seems like the perfect stuff to fall asleep to.

So just let Ernest Temple Thurston's words lull you to a different time, a different place, as you drift into your own inner novel. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position, and let's begin. Allow your eyes to close easily and gently. And as always, just bring your awareness to the breath. Nothing fancy.

Nothing woo-woo. We're just taking your awareness, which is like this laser beam that you're moving all around your life all day, and just bringing it back to a spot, to a single spot, which forces it to slow down and just be for a moment. And as your awareness slows down, everything else follows. Now, your awareness doesn't want to hang out in one spot for too long, so...

Let's bring your awareness up into your eyelids now. And let's imagine that your eyelids are feeling heavy, sleepy, relaxed, like you just can't even keep them open. And now I'd like you to accept the suggestion that your eyelids are so relaxed that they will not open. And of course you could open them if you wanted to, but we're pretending now. And I'd like you to test your eyelids to make sure they will not open by wiggling your eyebrows. Just give them a tug.

good, while your eyes remain closed, perfect. Though we've entered your imagination, everything becomes deeper, softer, easier. And that warm relaxation you feel around your eyes, that heaviness around your eyes, let's imagine it moving back, back into your head, like it's dripping relaxation, like stalactites in a cave.

dripping back into your head. Relaxation moving deep into your brain. Now it turns into this lovely mist of relaxation, completely moving through every single cell of your brain. As your head becomes nice and heavy, feel your head getting heavy as you allow your neck to relax. Allow the muscles of your face to soften and let go.

as you're already taking yourself deeper and deeper. And now you imagine warm waves of relaxation lapping up against the beach of your mind. Feel those warm waves of relaxation lapping up against the beach of your mind as all mental tension disappears. Good. And now let's imagine this warmness

Moving down into your neck, your throat. Let's move it down now deep into your chest. This mist of relaxation. So you imagine it circulating in your chest, warming the inside of you, in your ribcage. Imagine this warm mist of relaxation surrounding and supporting your heart. Your heart has participated.

in your life today, not just as an organ, but as a sort of second mind, assessing, receiving, giving, whether you noticed or not. So as your heart is held now in this warm mist, any emotional tension that may have built up over the day has disappeared. And that warm mist of relaxation is moving down now deep,

into your belly, moving down around your middle and lower organs, your gut. Just imagine that mist taking over your whole pelvic area, the muscles of your belly letting go, the muscles of your lower back releasing. And just as your heart has participated in your life today, so has your gut, like a third mind, giving information, receiving information.

communicating with your brain and your heart. And any tension that may have built up in this area of your body today has disappeared. As you imagine that mist of relaxation now moving down your arms, both of your arms becoming heavy, so heavy, like they're made of marble. Feels like you can't lift them. They're so heavy. You know that you could if you really wanted to, but it just feels so nice.

to let them be heavy. And as your arms get heavier and even heavier, you bring your awareness to any sounds going on around you. Notice the sounds in your environment. Maybe you hear birds or cars or people in other rooms of your home or neighbors or a partner next to you. Allow those sounds to just, and from this moment on,

No sound that you hear will bother or disturb you in any way. In fact, from this moment on, any sound that you hear will actually take you deeper and deeper into relaxation. So bring your awareness to them now and let them take you deeper. Good. The only sound you're paying any attention to is the sound of my voice and as I read the story tonight, my voice will take you deeper and deeper.

until you're no longer listening to my voice. It's just sounds in the background as the mist of relaxation moves down into your legs now and your legs are feeling heavy like they too are made of marble and you've simply led for the day. The day is done. Chapter 3. The Greengrocers. Fetter Lane. Two or three years ago, there was a certain greengrocer shop in Fetter Lane.

The front window had been removed to better expose the display of fruits and vegetables, which were arranged on gradually ascending tiers, completely obstructing your vision into the shop itself. Oranges, bananas, potatoes, apples, dates, all pressed together in the condition in which they had arrived at the London docks, ballast for the good ship that brought them.

Carrots and cauliflowers, all in separate little compartments, were huddled together on the ascending rows of shelves like colors that a painter leaves negligently upon his palette. At night, a double gas jet blew in the wind just outside, deepening the contrasts. The oranges with the dull earth brown of the potatoes,

the bright yellow bananas with the sheen of blue on the green cabbages. Oh, that sheen of blue on the green cabbages. It was all the more beautiful for being an effect rather than a real color. How an artist would have loved it. These greengrocers' shops and stalls are really most picturesque. So much more savory, too, than any other shop, except a chemist's.

Of course, there's nothing to equal that wholesome smell of brown Windsor soap which pervades even the most cash of all cash chemists. An up-to-date fruiterer's in Piccadilly may have as fine an odor, perhaps, but then an up-to-date fruiterer is not a greengrocer. He does not dream of calling himself such. They are greengrocers in Federlane, greengrocers in the Edgware Road,

Greengrocers in Old Drury, but fruiterers in Piccadilly. Compared, then, with the ham and beef shop, the fishmongers, and the inevitable oil shop, where, in such neighborhoods as these, you buy everything, this Greengrocers was a welcome oasis in a desert of unsavory smells and gloomy surroundings. The colors it displayed were

The brilliant flame of that pyramid of oranges, those rosy cheeks of the apples, that glaring yellow cluster of bananas hanging from a hook in the ceiling, and the soft green background of cabbages, cauliflowers, and every other green vegetable which chanced to be in season, with one last touch of all, some beetroot, cut and bleeding, color that an emperor might wear.

Combined to make that little greengrocer's shop in Fetter Lane the one saving cause in an otherwise dreary scheme. It cheered you as you passed it by. You felt thankful for it. Those oranges looked clean and wholesome. They shone in the light of that double gas jet. They had every reason to shine.

Mrs. Meekin rubbed them with her apron every morning when she built up that perilous pyramid. She rubbed the apples, too, until their faces glowed, glowed like children ready to start for school. When you looked at them, you thought of the country, the orchards where they'd been gathered, and Federlane, with all its hawkers' cries and screaming children, vanished from your senses.

You do not get that sort of impression when you look in the window of a ham and beef shop. A plate of sliced ham, on which two or three flies crawl lazily. A pan of sausages, sizzling in their own fat, bear no relation to anything higher than the unfastidious appetite of a hungry man. That sort of shop you pass by quickly.

But even if you'd not wish to buy anything, you might have hesitated, then stopped before Mrs. Meekins' little greengrocer's stall in Fetter Lane. Mrs. Meekins was very fat. She had a face like an apple. Not an apple just picked, but one that had been lying on the straw in a loft through the winter.

well preserved, losing none of its flavor, but the skin of which is wrinkled and shriveled with age. On a wooden chair without any back to it, she sat in the shop all day long, inhaling that healthy, clean smell of good Mother Earth which clung about the sacks of potatoes. Here it was she waited for the advent of customers. Whenever they appeared at the door, she paused for a moment.

judging from their attitude the likelihood of their custom. Then, slapping both hands on her knees, she would rise slowly to her feet. She was a good woman of business, was Mrs. Meakin, with a capable way of explaining how poor the season was for whatever fruit or vegetable her customers wished to purchase.

It must not be supposed that under this pretense she demanded higher prices than were being asked elsewhere. No, not at all. Honesty was written in her face. It was only that she succeeded in persuading her customers that under the circumstances they got their vegetables at a reasonable price and, going away contented, they were willing to return again. But what in the name

even of everything that is unreasonable, have the green grocery business and the premises of Mrs. Meekin to do with the city of beautiful nonsense? Is it part of the nonsense to jump from a trade in candles before the altar of St. Joseph to a trade in oranges in Fetter Lane? Yet there is no nonsense in it. In this fairy story, the two are intimately related. This is how it happens. The house

in which Mrs. Meekins' shop was on the ground floor, was three stories high. And on the first floor, above the shop itself, lived John Gray, the journalist, the writer, the driver of the pen.

the at-present unexplained figure in this story who offered his gift of generosity to St. Joseph, in order that the other as-yet-unexplained figure of the lady in the heavy fur coat should gratify her desire to light the last candle and place it in the sconce, a seal upon the deed of her supplication.

So then it is we have dealings with Mrs. Meakin and her green grocery business in Fetter Lane. This little shop, with such generous show of brilliant colors in the midst of its drab gray surroundings, is part of the atmosphere. All part of this fairy tale romance which began on the 18th of March, oh, how many years ago? Before Kingsway was built.

before Holywell Street bit the dust in which it had grovelled for so long. And so I venture that it is well you should see this small shop of Mrs. Meekins, with its splashes of orange and red, its daubs of crimson and yellow. See it in your mind's eye. See it when the shadows of the houses fall on it in the morning, when the sun touches it at midday.

when the double gas jet illuminates it at night, for you will never see it in real life now. Mrs. Meekin gave up the business a year or so ago. She went to live in the country, and there she has a kitchen garden of her own. There she grows her own cabbages, her own potatoes, and her own bean. And her face is still like an apple, an older apple to be sure, an apple...

that has lain in the straw in a large roomy loft, lain there all through the winter, and, been forgotten, left behind. Chapter Four. What to Call a Hero. John Gray is scarcely the name for a hero, not the sort of name you would choose of your own free will, if the telling of a fairy story was placed unreservedly in your hands. If every latitude were offered you,

Quite possibly you would select the name of Raoul or Rudolph, some name at least that had a ring in it as it left the tongue. They say, however, that by any other name a rose would smell as sweet, but I cannot believe that is true. Good heavens! Think of the pleasure you would lose if you had to call it a turnip. And yet I lose no pleasure. No sense of mine is jarred when I call my hero John Grey."

But if I do lose no pleasure, it is with a very good reason. It is because I have no other alternative. John Gray was a real person. He lived, he lived, too, over that identical little greengrocer's shop of Mrs. Meekins in Fetter Lane. And, though there was a private side entrance from the street, he often passed through the shop in order to smell the wholesome smell of good Mother Earth tea.

to look at the rosy cheeks of the apples, to wish he was in the country, and to say just a few words to the good lady of the shop. To the rest of the inhabitants of the house, even to Mrs. Meekin herself, he was a mystery. They never quite understood why he lived there. The woman who looked after his rooms...

waking him at nine o'clock in the morning making his cup of coffee, lingering with the duster in his sitting room until he was dressed, then lingering over the making of the bed in the bedroom until it was eleven o'clock, the time of her departure. Even she was reticent about him. There is a reticence amongst some people which is a combination of ignorance of facts and a supreme lack of imagination. This was the reticence of Miss Rouse.

She knew nothing. She could invent nothing. So she said nothing. They plied her with questions, in vain. "He received a lot of letters," she said, "some with crests on the envelopes." She used to look at these and wonder before she brought them into his bedroom. They might have been coronets for the awe in which she held them, but in themselves they explained nothing.

merely added, in fact, to the mystery which surrounded him. Who was he? What was he? He dressed well. Not always, but the clothes were there, had he liked to wear them. Three times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, he donned evening dress, stuck an opera hat on his head, and Mrs. Meekin would see him pass down the lane in front of her shop. If she went to the door to watch him, which quite frequently she did,

It was ten chances to one that he would stop a passing handsome, get into it, and drive away. The good lady would watch it with her eyes as it wheeled round into Holborn, and then, returning to her backless chair, exclaim, Well, my word, he is a puzzle, he is. There's no telling what he mightn't be in disguise. By which she conveyed to herself and anyone who was there to listen, so rapt,

so entangled, a sense of mystery, as would need the entire skill of Scotland Yard to unravel. Then, finally, the rooms themselves, which he occupied, their furnishing, their decoration, the last incomprehensible touch was added with them. Mrs. Meekin, Mrs. Brown, the wife of the theater cleaner on the second floor,

Mrs. Morell, the wife of the plumber on the third floor. They had all seen them, all marveled at the rows of brass candlesticks, the crucifixes, and the brass incense burners, the real pictures on the walls, pictures, mind you, that were painted, not copied, the rows upon rows of book, the collection of old glass on the mantelpiece, the collection of old china on the piano,

the cart, real velvet pile, and the furniture all solid oak with old brass fittings which, so Mrs. Rouse told them, he insisted on having kept as bright as the brass candlesticks themselves. They had seen all this, and they had wondered, wondered why a gentleman who could furnish rooms in such a manner, who could put on evening dress at least three times a week,

evening dress, if you please, that was not hired, but his own, who could as often drive away in a handsome, presumably up-west, why he should choose to live in such a place as Fetter Lane, over a greengrocer's shop, in rooms the rent of which could not possibly be more than thirty pounds a year. To them, it remained a mystery, but surely to you who read this, it is no mystery at all.

John Gray was a writer, a journalist, a driver of the pen, a business which brings with it more responsibilities than its remuneration can reasonably afford. There is no real living to be made by literature alone, if you have any ambitions and any respect for them. Most people certainly have ambitions, but their respect for them is so inconsiderable when compared with their desire of reward.

that they only keep them alive by talking of them. These are the people who know thoroughly the meaning of that word "art" and can discuss it letter for letter, beginning with the capital first. But to have ambitions and live up to them is only possible to the extreme idealist, a man who, seeing God in everything, the world has not yet learnt or perhaps forgotten to cater for.

So far everything is utilitarian, supplying the needs of the body which can only see God in consecrated wine. And so it is that wise men build churches for fools to pray in. The wise man in this world being he who grows rich. This then is the solution to the mystery of John Gray. He was an idealist, the very type of person to live in a city of beautiful nonsense.

where the rarest things in the world cost nothing and the most sordid necessities are dear. For example, the rent of number 39 was a gross exactment upon his purse. He could ill afford that 30 pounds a year. He could ill afford the meals which sometimes hunger compelled him to pay for. But when he bought a piece of brass, the little brass man, for example, an old seal,

that was of no use to anybody in the world, and only stood passively inert upon his mantelpiece. The price of it was as nothing when compared with the cheap and vulgar necessities of existence. But it must not be supposed that Federlane and its environs constitute the spires, the roofs, and the domes of that city of beautiful nonsense. It is not so. Far away east,

On the breast of the Adriatic, that wonderful city lies. And we shall come to it. We shall come to it all too soon. Chapter 5. The Balladmonger. Federlane. In Kensington Gardens, you will find romance. Many a real, many a legendary person has found it there. It will always be found there. So long as this great city of London remains.

remains a hive for the millions of human bees that pass in and out of its doors, swarming or working, idling or pursuing in silent and unconscious obedience to a law which not one of them will ever live to understand. Why it should be Kensington Gardens, more than any other place of the kind, is not quite possible of explanation.

Why not Regent's Park or St. James Park? Why not those little gardens on the embankment where the band plays in the late mornings of summer and romances certainly do find a setting? Why not any of those? But no, Kensington Gardens rule par excellence and there is no spot in this vast acreage of humanity to touch them.