NOTES iif 



to the easy percolation of the air through the meshes of the fabric. It might be 

 well if persons who can afford to do so would sleep in the open air in England 

 also, and in order to inquire whether this can be done, not only with impunity 

 but with advantage to health, we have asked Sir William Lever, who adopts the 

 practice, to give us his experiences for the benefit of our readers. He writes to 

 us as follows.) 



You have asked me to give in as few words as possible my experience of 

 sleeping in the open air. It is now some ten or more years ago, at the time of 

 a very hot spell in the summer, when, noting the delicious coolness of an open- 

 air bathroom and gymnasium that I had built on a flat portion of the roof at 

 Thornton Manor in such a position as to be entirely free from any possibility of 

 being overlooked (one end being roofed over in such a way as to protect it 

 from sudden showers whilst in no way taking away from its open-air character), 

 my wife and myself decided to have the bed put out there and to try sleeping in 

 the open-air. We found it so full of comfort and so beneficial to our health that 

 this open-air bedroom has continued ever since, and in arranging my bedroom at 

 The Hill, Hampstead, I was able to make a similar open-air bedroom — as also at a 

 bungalow I have on the moors near Bolton. 



Sleeping in the fresh air, with ample but not excessive bedclothes, I find the 

 sensation of warmth is greater than with a similar amount of bedclothes in an 

 ordinary bedroom even with the window as wide open as possible. I am 

 convinced that it is the fact of passing the night in the open air that enables me 

 to manage to maintain health, though passing the daytime in close confinement 

 at business ; and I am convinced, seeing that it is impossible for me to spend 

 much time in the open air except on rare occasions, that it is essential for 

 me to sleep in the open air at night, and that the latter is a most excellent 

 substitute when the former is impossible. I am wonderfully free from colds and I 

 attribute this to sleeping in the open air. 



I know that the comic artist has turned himself loose in ridiculing open-air 

 sleeping, and generally depicts the face of the sleeper and the bedclothes covered 

 with flakes of soot, with music coming from a glee-party of cats, and, occasionally, 

 with the head of the sweep's boy coming up out of a neighbouring chimney. 

 And in these war times he varies the fun by depicting a G.R. Volunteer training- 

 man practising sleeping in the open air for the sake of military efficiency, and 

 being called for breakfast by the housemaid in a pouring shower of rain. He 

 sometimes extends this idea and depicts a sleeper in the open air some wet 

 night shouting for whisky without water as he had plenty of water near the bed. 

 But any one who has enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in the open air will not 

 begrudge this ridicule ; and after all it is better to laugh than to frown, and 

 are we not told that " he laughs loudest who laughs last," and this last laugh will 

 be with the open-air sleeper. 



(It would be quite possible to put open-air bedrooms on the roofs of many 

 houses in England. Indeed, we think that much house-reform is required in this 

 country, and have long been of the opinion that the upper stories might be built 

 almost entirely of glass to allow as much light as possible within the rooms. 

 It would be an excellent thing if some society were to take up the whole subject 

 of house-building. The public and the architects are very slow to make changes, 

 and even the best modern houses might probably be greatly improved in the 

 interests of the public. Windows are still often made too small ; hot and cold 

 water are seldom laid on to all the bedrooms— a practice which would save much 

 domestic labour ; and hot-air ventilation is rare.) 

 21 



