Meaning of "all shelves about me towards the worse"?
"Here am I now upon my high place," he said to himself. "Life may be no better; this is the mountain top; and all shelves about me towards the worse. For the first time I will light up the chambers, and bathe in my fine bath with the hot water and the cold, and sleep alone in the bed of my bridal chamber." The Bottle Imp by R.L. Stevenson, 1895
I simply can't figure out what this sentence means.
From context, what I'm getting is that the subject is at the peak of what's good for his life, from here, his life can only get worse.
I believe the shelf he is talking about is a ridgeline or a cliff top or similar:
In this context, I think either he's using shelve as:
- a verb, in the sense of 'a ridgeline (a shelf) extends along'.
- a plural noun, in the sense that there are lots of these ridges. But in this case the sentence is gramatically incorrect, the sentence should be something like "all shelves about me [are pointed] towards the worse"
ie. He's at the top of the mountain at life, now all he can do is walk along these shelves towards a worse life.
Shelving is usually something you say about a beach, It slopes evenly down from the high tide line into the water, so you quickly get to swimming depth without stumbling.
This poor misery is on top of a metaphorical mountaintop that shelves away on each side. He has everything (including hot and cold running water ! (in 1895) ) so what is there left to hope for.
SHELVING (noun) Merriam-Webster
1 : a sloping surface or place
2 : the state or degree of sloping
Here's the verb, just as it occurs in the book:
Shelve (verb: 2) [origin obscure]
intr. Of a surface: To slope gradually 1652.
[obelised] to have an inclined position -1763.
trans. to tilt.
source:Shorter Oxford 1933