At Home: A Short History Of The Private Life by Bill Bryson

Author:Bill Bryson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-10-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Study

I

IN 1897 A YOUNG ironmonger in Leeds named James Henry Atkinson took a small piece of wood, some stiff wire and not much else, and created one of the great contraptions of history: the mousetrap. It is one of several useful items — the paper clip, zip and safety pin are among the many others — that were invented in the late nineteenth century and were so nearly perfect from the outset that they have scarcely been improved upon in all the decades since. Atkinson sold his patent for 1,000, a very considerable sum for the time, and went on to invent other things, but nothing that secured him more money or immortality.

His mousetrap, manufactured under the proprietary name Little Nipper, has sold in the tens of millions, and continues to dispatch mice with brisk and brutal efficiency all over the world. We own several Little Nippers ourselves, and hear the dreadful snap of a terminal event far more often than we would wish to. Two or three times a week in winter we catch them, nearly always in the same place, in this bleak, small room at the end of the house.

Although 'study' makes it sound like a significant space, it is really just a glorified storeroom, too dark and cold even in mild months to encourage much lingering. This is another room that doesn't appear on Edward Tull's original plans. Presumably Mr Marsham had it added because he needed an office in which to write his sermons and receive parishioners — particularly, I daresay, the more unrefined and muddy-booted of them; the squire's wife would almost certainly have been invited into the more comfortable parlour next door. These days the study is the final refuge of old furniture and pictures that one member of the marriage partnership admires and the other would happily see on a bonfire. Almost the only reason we go in there now is to check the mousetraps.

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