Part 12

He lived in a little room, a lodging, at the top of an old house overlooking the river. I came across him quite by accident through my habit of writing rhymes--a pastime to which I have been given all my life. These rhymes I often print and sometimes sign; that is how he got hold of my name. He wrote to me and asked me whether I would go and look over some of his rhymes and see whether I thought they suited. When I got his letter I thought he was a poet who wanted advice, so I wrote my regular answer that I knew nothing about poetry and could not give advice. He wrote again imploringly, saying that he was not a poet in the ordinary sense but that in his profession it was necessary to introduce rhymes from time to time, and that my judgment really would be of great service to him, for he was good enough to say that I had quite a knack of rhyming, especially at rhyming words of three syllables, which is difficult. So I went round to see him, and being younger than I am now I was able to enjoy his conversation well enough for half an hour or more. He was very proud of his work, and had round his room autograph letters of congratulation which had been sent to him by the most famous politicians of his time. It was he who invented (it was one of the last of his actions) the tag "We want eight and we won't wait." When he asked me if this could be improved, I suggested "No fleet, no meat." He said this would not go down. I asked him why not. He said, "Because the public could not remember very short rhymes." They had to be rather long to have any effect, but not too long. He told me (and he was very proud of it) that he was also the inventor of "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." "Here," said he proudly to me, "you have a very fine example of irregular rhyme with two balanced statements in opposition and contrast." "The first," he added, "is concrete, the second abstract: the first is purely historical without moral sequence, the second contains the deepest political and moral lesson."

I wish he had lived to the present day. He might have given us something really good and new, which we badly lack.

He also wrote "One tongue, one flag, one throne." He was not so proud of that, because, he said, that some fool had imported it into the United States, where it did not go down. The enthusiasts kept the "one tongue" part, but they did not know what to add, which spoiled the whole show. He did not make up the phrase "blood is thicker than water," but I suggested to him a very good way in which it could be turned into a poem during any one of those recurrent moments (they turn up every ten years or so) when our politicians are morally certain of wangling the American alliance. The rhyme I suggested was this:

Blood is thicker than water-- And so it oughter.

We had a great debate over this, and I fear it was his obstinacy which prevented this really fine rhyme from getting floated. It would have made a great difference, and we might, by this time, have acquired fame between us, had it not been for this silly old man's objections. So true is it that great events spring from small causes!

His objection, oddly enough, was not one of metre but one of grammar; and he added to this what I think another very silly objection, but one you constantly find in critics of good verse. He said "and so it oughter" made bad syntax with the first line. I said it did not: it must be read elliptically. The full sentence would be "And so it ought to be"; and I then pointed out to him that the very greatest poets had used the elliptical form and that it had appeared in a thousand interesting phrases. I cited to him from that splendid twenty-first sonnet:

... I have found a face More beautiful than gardens: More desired Than boys in exile love their native place.

He read this several times and said that it did not parse either. I told him that the form had been used by the poet Homer. This had no effect on him. He said it might be all very well in Asia Minor but it would not go down in England, and so, after quite a long dispute, he refused my version. But there it stands, and I am still proud of it:

Blood is thicker than water-- And so it oughter.

If ever the Anglo-American Alliance _is_ wangled, remember that poem.

I asked him whether he had also produced political tags that did not rhyme, for I had heard a great number in my time, such as "Rome on the Rates." He said he had produced many such pieces of English prose, but that this was not one of them. He wished it had been, for he thought it a very telling phrase, and he could quote me one which had won no fewer than 117 votes. That was not bad in the old days when votes were less common than they are now, and when 117 was worth getting.

He was also very proud of his internal rhymes, particularly of those concerning the land:

Less of a pleasure place for the rich And more of a treasure place for the people.

It was the "pleasure and treasure" rhyme that made the success of that particular tag, he said, and I was quite willing to believe him. But even as he spoke tears came into his eyes, and he added, "You will hardly believe me, sir, when I tell you the agony I have gone through in trying to find a rhyme for 'people.' It is one of the most difficult words in the English language to get a rhyme for. There are many rhymes for the abhorred rich, but none suitable for 'people.' There is 'steeple,' but I think that is about all; and it is dreadfully difficult to work in 'steeple.' I worked at it for three nights and then gave it up in despair. However, the thing in its final form did well enough, as I have told you."

I suggested to him that he might have turned the difficulty by using some other word for "people," as, for instance, hoipolloi, mob, populace, gutter-snipes, boors, dregs, dross, scum and other accurate and suitable words, but he at once stopped me. "None of these will do," he said, "because the People do not like being called those names." "Then," said I, "there is 'citizens,' 'the Britons,' 'Britishers,' and so forth"; but he still wagged his beard from side to side, saying that none of them would fit, "besides which," he added, "they are just as difficult to rhyme to as the other. It can't be done."

I asked him whether he had made Harmsworth's phrase "Rolling the French in mud and blood." He said yes, but he had originally written it with a blank--"Rolling the (blank) in mud and blood," and had hawked it all round London for years according as our foreign policy changed. The mud and the blood made a very good rhyme, and any old nation would do to fit into the blank. He had used the words "Russians" and "Spaniards," and even--I say it with horror--"Yankees," for he was at work as long ago as the Alabama claim, which I wasn't. He only wished he had lived long enough to put "Germans," but it happened just to fit in with the French at the moment he wrote it. He sold it to Harmsworth (he told me), and it came out in his papers, "We will roll the French in mud and blood." It did great service, for it frightened the French to death and kept them out of Morocco in 1899.

I next asked him if he had written the famous rhyme--

We don't want to fight, But by jingo if we do,

--which is one of the happiest memories of my childhood. He was immensely flattered--but had to deny the authorship.

"I only wish I had written it, sir," he said (he called me "sir" the whole time, and it pleases me to remember the honour he paid me). "I only wish I _had_ written it! That was a real corker! None of the others led to anything so big: this one very nearly made a war and moved a whole fleet at immense expense from one part of the Mediterranean to the other. No small feat! But what I did write, sir, if you will believe me--and I never got the credit for it--was a most excellent tag called 'Ninepence for fourpence.' It occurred to me in this way. I was sitting in one of Lockhart's cafés, which I patronised in those days, drinking a stir of brown with a slab of thick." I nodded, for the terms were familiar to me; and he continued: "As I did so a man came in with a shilling and said he would have a scone and a cup of tea and a pat of butter (in those days, sir, we had not the advantage of margarine. You young folks have a better time than ever we had!) The man came in, I say, with a shilling and put it down and said he would have a scone and a cup of tea and a pat of butter, and that was threepence. Then they gave him ninepence change. Then he put it back again and said he had changed his mind (the shilling was still lying on the counter), and asked what he could get for one-and-ninepence. The woman who was serving was very flurried with the crush of people, and she said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'One and ninepence. I have paid threepence--that is one and three and nine, makes ... no, I'll tell you what!'--putting down another shilling--'That makes two and ninepence together. Look here, that's too much.' Then he shifted the coins about a bit while she served other people in her hurry, and then she looked at him again all fussed and said, 'Now then! Make up your mind!' and he said, 'Well, I will tell you what, I think I can afford fourpence. Will you give me a sausage with some bread and a cup of tea?'; and she said, 'Oh, how you do pester!' Then he put down fourpence, picked up the ninepence change and the shillings, and in this way, after he had had his sausage and tea and bread and butter, he won ninepence by risking fourpence. He was a wizened-looking man with a cunning look and a fixed smile. I have always remembered him; and that is how I got my idea of ninepence for fourpence; but if you will believe me, sir, I sent that into the Central Office and they used it and never paid me!"

"What a shame!" said I. "What are you usually paid?" "Why, sir," he answered, "I used to work on a royalty basis, but it was so difficult to keep the accounts when millions and millions of people used the phrase and when it was printed in all sorts of pamphlets, that I changed my contracts and sold out and out. But now," he added sadly, "I cannot sell a thing. It is a terrible thing the way in which a change of custom takes the bread out of an old man's mouth." I said it was, indeed. "And yet," he continued eagerly, "it is an older trade than you think for. Believe me, sir, it has been in our family for generations." I was astonished to hear this, for I believed tags to be quite modern, but he assured me it was not so. "My own great-grandfather," he said, "was the author of 'No taxation without representation,' and that was a stunner. It rhymed and it took root, two things that often go together, and the old man on his death bed told my father, who has told me, how it was done, but you will excuse me if I do not tell you that because it is a secret of the trade; it used to be my livelihood and that livelihood may creep up again." He said these last words rather doubtfully, and was interrupted by a dreadful cough.

I asked him whether he used a rhyming dictionary, like Wordsworth, the great poet. He said, between the intervals of his coughing, "No, sir, no! I find it cramps the style! I ascribe a great deal of Wordsworth's failures to this deleterious habit. I walk the streets, keeping my mind as vacant as possible and then the things occur to me--or rather they did once occur to me," he added sadly. Then he sighed and said, "There is no market any more."

This was years ago. I have hoped against hope that the trick would return, but time has gone by and apparently the market for such things is dead and, as I said before, I think the old man is dead, too. But what a lot of good he did in his time, and how true it is of him, as of many other lesser men, that they achieved far more than they knew, and that their reward was not proportionate to their achievement.

ON "AND"

Dark eyes adventure bring: the blue, serene, Do promise Paradise--and yours are green.

This little jewel--called "The Lover's Complaint"--is ascribed by some to Herrick. They are wrong. It proceeds from a younger but already faltering pen.

I introduce it only at the head of this to illustrate the singular depth, the weight, the value of the word "and." Even in the English tongue, the noblest vehicle of expression (but in this point weak), the word "and" plays its subtle parts.

We lack the double "and" of antiquity--that subtle repetitive effect in which the classics abound. We have no "_que_" to our "_et_"; we have no [Greek: te] to our [Greek: kai] we have only our plain "and." But even so, our plain "and" has much diversity about it: a versatile, mercurial word: a knight in the chess play of prose.

"How is this?" you say. "'And' would seem to be but a redundant word to express some addition already apparent."

"'He was drunk, disorderly!' 'And' would seem to be stuck in between the two affirmations from a sort of laziness of the mind."

You are wrong. It is a great pleasure to me to tell you that you are wrong.

Even if "and" only pursued this function of letting the mind repose it might be welcomed as a bed; but it does much more. It introduces emphasis, as in the poignant sentence: "Their choice was turbot--and boiled." It also has an elevating effect, hooking up something to the level of the rest; as where it is written:

Nibbity, bibbity, bobbity bo!-- _And_ the little brown bowl-- We'll drink to the Barley Mow!

The little brown bowl would have come in absurdly: it would have jolted the mind like a bump in the road, were it not for that precious little "and," which catches it neatly up, putting upon one level that which goes before with that which comes after.

"And" is also indicative. Thus a man whom you meet talks glibly upon one subject after another, rapidly, yet more rapidly, tumbling over himself, desiring to avoid your eye. But he must take breath. You seize your moment and you say, "And what about that five pounds?" The "and" makes all the difference. It makes your remark part of the conversation. A gesture, not a blow.

In the same way you can recall an omitted name. When you have praised Tom, Dick, Harry, you add gently, "And Jack, what about Jack?" It is a pleasant, easy reproach or a reminder. Very much nicer than saying, "Why not a word about Jack?"--which would be brutal.

"And" is also what the older grammarians have called stammerative--that is, it fills a chasm in the public speeches of public men, though here it is not so useful as certain other sounds. I have made a study of the sounds common to politicians in distress. I find that out of one hundred occasions "er--er" will come in eighty times; "I--I--I" eleven times; the less graceful "and ..., and ..., and" during periods of embarrassment only accounts for five. Moreover, the repeated "and" is hardly ever used in the absolute; by public speakers it is nearly always used with "er."

"And" also has the value of an affix. It comes before a lot of little phrases, where it acts like glue, sticking that little phrase on to the rest--"and" if, "and" even, "and" though; a humble use, but necessary enough, allowing the mind to work in a soft material.

"And" has various rhetorical uses which are to be admired--you can make long lists with it.

So attractive is "and" to the human mind that it will often expand itself, developing like a lot of soap bubbles--"and so," "and moreover," "and also." But the best of all these phrases--the king of them--is "and also, what is more." It is the most familiar of all phrases in the mouths of politicians. Do violence to yourself, force yourself to listen to a politician making speeches in private conversation as is the politician's way. You will hear that phrase repeated. "And also, what is more." It is native to the tub-thumping fraternity. These things give a sentence the advantage of piling up wordy wealth, as it were, very satisfactory to the fatigued or the empty or the hesitant.

Those great men, our fathers, felt about "and" something reverend or peculiar, so that they hardly thought of it as a word, but as a sort of symbol. They put it at the end of the alphabet, calling it "ampersand." It is one of the worst things about our detestable time that this ancient national thing "ampersand" is forgotten. The old refrain used to be: a, b, c, ..., x, y, z, _ampersand_--that long word "ampersand," that fine ritual title, referred to the symbol "&" which "and" alone of words possesses. You find it in the old horn books. The children of England knew it by heart for centuries. But the modern flood came: it is gone.

The enemies of "and" will have it that a good style in English is to be obtained by cutting out "and." These are the same people who say that a good style is to be obtained by cutting out adjectives. There are no such short cuts. Also, to be an enemy of "and" is to be an enemy of all good things. It is to fear exuberance, which is the tide of life.

"And" has, again, rhythmical value, as in the ecclesiastical or liturgical line:

And Parson and Clerk and the Devil and all

--with hosts of other lines which dignify the vast storehouse of the English lyric.

Of the modern masterpieces there is one--the best known of all, perhaps--where "and" does an enormous amount of work, which is the poem of _Innisfree_. It gives the rhythm as well as the mystery. I should like to see what the fools who are for cutting out "and" would make of that poem.

But the most sublime use of "and," alas! we have not. It is the "and" disjunctive; on which turned one of the great moments of history.

For you must know that when the second Council of Nicea finally condemned the monstrosities of the Iconoclasts, a saintly bishop from Cyprus wrote his opinion in Greek saying, "I revere, I embrace the sacred images, [Greek: kai] I give worship to the Life-giving Trinity"--which is as much as to say, that he would be polite enough to an image, _but_ his worship he reserved for the only true object of worship.

Now, this pronouncement was carried to a Council of the West, sitting at Frankfort, where there were bishops of the Pyrenees, of Gaul, of the Rhine Valley, of the Low Countries, of the Burgundian Hills, of the Swiss Mountains--indeed of all parts whatsoever that owed allegiance to Charlemagne.

At that moment Charlemagne was already wishing to be an emperor in the West. Those who served him were only too glad to find the Empire of the East--which claimed to be universal--making a howler. But the swarm of holy and unholy men at Frankfort were abominably ignorant of Greek. They did not understand the disjunctive value of [Greek: kai]. They thought it a mere barbaric "and." They translated this famous phrase "I jumble up in one worship God and images." They rushed out with some fury against such a doctrine. They registered their hatred of it. On this point also Gibbon has (as one might expect) abominably falsified history.... But no matter.

The Bishops of Frankfort said what they had to say. In vain did those of Rome, who were acquainted with Greek, tell them that they had taken the sentence exactly upside down--that it meant "I do _not_ worship the images. I distinguish the observance I give them from the worship I offer to That which alone is worthy of worship." They still clung to their primitive error. With difficulty were they led back into the right fold.

What great consequences their ignorance might have had! We might to-day be deprived of the Bambino. We might have lost Brou (but not Santiago, I think; for the Spaniards, and in particular the Galicians, are of a temper which will stand no nonsense. Though 1462 General Councils had condemned images, the Spaniard would have had them all the same: in which I praise him. Honour to the Pilar!).

Now, though it does not concern the little word "and," yet I am reminded (by this mention of the Second Council of Nicea) of a certain story which, as you may not previously have heard it, I will now proceed to relate. With that story I shall conclude; nor will your prayers and entreaties, however loud and passionate, move me to continue. I will tell you the story; then I will have done.

The story is this. As the Eastern bishops were travelling to the second Council of Nicea, the more worldly of them (these were the greater part) were very much disgusted to meet one particularly good bishop who had been bred a shepherd. He was poor. His manners were bad. He did not shave regularly. He was badly dressed. He was what they call in Birmingham "no class."

They jeered at him a little, but more than their jeering was their fear lest they should lost caste by entering the Imperial City in such company. So after this saintly man had made himself quite intolerable at dinner, they cast up a plot against him.

He had come with only one deacon, sitting each of them upon a mule, the one a brown mule, the other mottled. The mules were stabled in the great inn of the village where all were assembled. When the saintly, but not smart, bishop had gone to his rest, the smart bishops secretly sent a bravo into the stable to cut off the heads of the two mules. "In this way," said these wicked, worldly bishops, "we shall be spared the humiliating presence of the boor when we enter the imperial town; nor will men ever know that we kept such low company."

Long before it was dawn the poor Bishop's deacon, like a good deacon, a good rustic deacon, shook himself out of sleep. He went down to the stable with a lantern to get ready the beasts against the morning journey. With what horror did he not see there two heads lying upon the ground! The one was of his own mottled mule, the other of his master's brown mule. The mottled head lay severed upon the straw beside the brown head, the headless trunks leaning all collapsed against the stall sides.

The deacon, rushing up to his master, banged at the door, saying, "My Lord! My Lord! Evil men have cut off our mules' heads!" The Right Reverend, only half awake, said, "Sew them on again! When I wake I will attend to it."

The deacon went down to the stable. With many tears he sewed on the two heads of the dead mules. The Bishop, when he had risen from sleep, said his prayers, came down into the stable, where, he having blessed the two mules, they came to life again in the most natural manner in the world. When he had breakfasted, he rejoined his deacon. Mounting the two beasts, they rode out into the break of the day. But, the light broadening as they approached the city gate, the crowd saw with astonishment a brown mule with a mottled head abreast of a mottled mule with a brown head, for the deacon, confused in the half darkness of the morning, had sewed the wrong heads to the wrong bodies.

Note the effect--as the veracious chronicler gives it. "Thus by that very action whereby these evil men had hoped to bring their companion to shame they did but the rather thrust him into glory; for their cruelty to the dumb beasts did but serve to heighten his holiness, making proof of God's power through him who could bring the dead to life."

Many are the morals of this tale, one of which is that it is silly to take more trouble than is necessary. For if the wicked Bishops had only drugged the mules instead of cutting their heads right off there would have been no miracle, nor glory to their despised colleague. Another is that if a thing is true you must believe it, however astonishing and unlikely it may sound in the ear of the unbeliever. Another is that a bishop has the right to get up rather later than the lower branches of the hierarchy. There are many other morals; but I will end. For if I go on I shall certainly bring "and" into my own sentences, _which up to this point I have managed to avoid_. "And" is not really necessary at all.

THE CAD'S ENCYCLOPÆDIA