Part 7

I always think that there is an ill done to controversy when the lists are unequally chosen. It demands for its proper exercise fairly equal chances for either side. For instance, one man gets up and says that England would be much better off if no foreign goods came into it, whereupon the other man, scenting a controversy from afar, says: "What about tea?" There at once--at the very issue of the bout--you have a knockout, and that spoils sport. Or again, a man says: "If you want to improve the communications of London you must have wider streets, and you cannot have wider streets without interfering with privileged pieces of property." The moment you begin to talk like that controversy is abominably offended. You might as well play chess with a loaded revolver, or come to the football field with a posse of bravoes.

No, the essence of this admirable exercise is a sort of "picking up sides" which balances the argument. You must give reasonable chances for advocacy to either party. Chalk the lists, face the champions square, and then let go.

I notice a very proper contempt for, and sometimes interference with, that party to a controversy who breaks even the less understood and more subtle rules: for instance, dropping the "Mr." in Politics. You may say of a parliamentarian, "Mr. Biggs was committing political murder when he poured his hidden poison into the sleeping ear of Mr. Higgs." That is all right. It means that old Biggs thought he could get more money by abandoning his leader Higgs. The use of the two "Misters" proves that in your heart you care not a dump which gets the salary, contracts, and perks. But if you say "Biggs won't take office under Higgs because he thinks there's no money in it," that is blackguardly: for it spoils sport.

It is thus a breach of the rules to impute what are called "unworthy motives"; that is, serious motives. Both parties must, like the champions of the ring, shake hands; and there are a lot of little phrases (they are kept set up in most newspaper offices, and in some are stereotyped in ready-made bars) which come in most usefully for this purpose. Such are "No-one-can-dispute (Mr. Noggins's) scholarship-or-his-quite peculiar-knowledge-of (Samian ware)," after which you go on to argue that in point of fact Noggins is as ignorant as the beasts that perish, and you support your contention with special pleading.

So deep-rooted is this love of controversy that one of its favourite playing-fields is what one would imagine to be sacred ground, to wit, the security and happiness of one's own country. Jones has only to say that he wants his country to win in some war of life and death, for Brown, tempted by so admirable an occasion, to come up on the other side. But what does Brown do? Do you suppose he says, "I want my country to perish?" Not a bit of it; that would not be controversy at all, and, what is more, it would be an impossible position for Brown to take up, considering that Brown, by the very fact that he is conducting such a controversy, is stamping his chief national characteristic all over himself. So what Brown does is to show how defeat would ultimately enhance the glory and increase the strength of the country. Both parties agree to this special limited area of operations, and within it they spar round and round and round. Meanwhile, the real war goes on, no harm is done at home, and the nation wins or loses without a link between that awful reality of war and the spillikin-match at home.

It is very difficult to define where victory in this game of controversy lies. It depends to some extent, like victory in any other game, upon fatigue, or lack of attention. I had a controversy in the "Times Literary Supplement" many years ago about the Battle of Evesham with another person who apparently knew less about it than I did. After the special pleading and nonsense had gone on through five or six moves I quoted Matthew Paris. My opponent (who wore a mask and a long cloak) came in with a heavy blow, showing that Matthew Paris was dead when the Battle of Evesham was fought. Now, the counter-blow to this was as easy as falling off a log. Your spectator (for whose benefit these newspaper duels are fought) would naturally say, "This is final!" What he did not know was that there is a continuation of Matthew Paris, commonly called under the same name, which _does_ deal with the Battle of Evesham. All I had to do was to write another letter (which I am sure the courteous Editor would have printed, seeing that he got all this for nothing), pointing out with the utmost good feeling, tact, etc., that my opponent was swindling, and, by using a false technical term, deceiving the populace. "Matthew Paris" (I should have said) "is a conventional term for the original chronicle _and its continuation_ as a whole, and it is '_a poor trick of controversy_'" (I love that phrase; it is one of the seasoned and rooted phrases) "to confuse the general reader with false references." Did I make such a reply? Did I write that letter to the "Times Literary Supplement"? Not I! I was smitten with an intense desire to go to Belgium (it was before the war) and study the battlefield of Ramillies, where is sold the worst liquor in the world; and off I went, leaving my opponent the proud and sole victor on that field. I wish to-day I knew who he was. To slay or to be slain by a hooded antagonist is poor fun: it ought to be part of the rules of the theatre for the man to pull off the hood at the end, either from his own glazing eyes or from those of his prostrate victim, whereupon the ladies would recognise to their amazement the features of Sir Guy de Beaurivage or Mr. Hulp, or whoever it might be, and the tourney would end with a feast to the hero after the sentimental burial of the dead.

Which reminds me of what a shame it is that so much controversy _should_ be anonymous. It was never meant to be so. After all, controversy is conducted for the amusement of the onlookers as well as for, and more than for, the exercise and moral health of the principals, and there is not much fun in an anonymous combat where, for all you know, the opposing parties may really be one and the same person.

Many a case have I known in London journalism where, as a matter of fact, the opposing parties _were_ one and the same person. There was a man who wrote years ago, during the Boer War, to a pro-Boer daily paper which he disliked, complaining of the way in which the teeth of animalculæ gnawed into the copper sheathing-plates of ships in the South Seas, and ruined them. Then he wrote a letter from another place in another false name to the same paper, saying that the first letter was written by an ignoramus, and describing how the animalculæ should be dealt with. There was a tremendous fight lasting for weeks, and it ended, I remember, by a beautiful description of the great ships built at Solothurn in Switzerland and there launched upon the mighty deep. Even then the editor did not smell a rat. Why should he? Editors cannot always know everything. And he thought (did this editor) that Switzerland lay upon the sea. It was necessary, therefore, for the public to break the ring and burst up the show: which they did, amidst great laughter.

I know another case where a man, being the literary editor of a great daily paper, reviewed one of his own books with the utmost virulence--but anonymously. He showed in this review a very profound knowledge of the tricks lying behind the production of the book and of the charlatanism of it. Then did he, in his own name, write a dignified reply, and there was quite a little commotion.

The reviewer wrote back adding further charges, which were demonstrably true. The author wrote once more saying his dignity forbade his continuing the quarrel, and the next day both of them counted as one in a meaningless division of the House of Commons.

To this day I am never quite certain that the more violent leaders I read in opposing papers are not often written by the same man; at any rate, they are often written in exactly the same style, with the notable exception of one daily paper which, as the atheist said of his unbaptised child, "shall be nameless." All the others (except this notable _one_) have their leaders written in precisely the same manner. That is what makes me think that they are done for the most part by one man--and what an output he must have! And what a lot of money he must earn!--even at two guineas a thousand, the price of prose in these most happy years of peace which have seen the birth of a new Europe and the dawn of The Day of Justice final and secure.

ON INACCURACY

The other day I was writing in other fields than these, ploughing another land (to which, for the honour I bear it, I again give no name), and I had occasion to speak about the Nereids who swim about in the sea. I very pompously announced their appearance in the Sixteenth Book of the Iliad. I should have said the Eighteenth Book.

Why did I say the Sixteenth Book? I cannot tell. I have awaited, since the appearance of that article, letters written to me privately, written to the paper itself, written to other papers, all saying: "Why do you talk about things you know nothing of? You call it the Sixteenth Book; it is the Eighteenth Book."

So far no letters have come either to me or to the paper in question. Nor has any one even written to any of the great daily papers on the subject. So perhaps it will blow over. But my mind returns to the matter. Why did I write "Sixteenth" when I meant "Eighteenth"? What is inaccuracy? What are its sources? Whence does it spring? What makes one man more inaccurate than another, or rather (and much more truly) why is one man inaccurate in some things and another in others? What the devil is it all due to, anyhow?

I know very well why accuracy is such an anxious matter with men. It is because, alone of all the factors of learning, it is easily and mechanically attainable. It is no good a man trying to be just in judgment about a great and broad matter on which he is ignorant. It would be no good, for instance, my trying to look learned through a just judgment of Russian poetry--for I cannot read Russian. No man can mechanically, and as a matter of course, set himself right in the major factors of learning. But both he and others can get references right, now that there are so many printed books of reference. And therefore men study accuracy in published book-details, because they say to themselves: "Fool I may be, and ignorant I may be; but anyhow, I can be accurate--with the help of a public library." And at the same time they say to themselves: "General ignorance it is easy to hide; but if I am inaccurate, the biggest fool born can find me out: with the help of a public library."

So far so good. I know well enough why one bothers so absurdly about accuracy in such details; or, to put it otherwise, why mere slips of the pen and misspellings frighten us so much. But what I do not understand is how and why they take place in subjects which one knows as well as one's own name.

I remember once writing a long book about Paris; a long, long book, to pay my first quarter's rent as a young man. And in that book I found myself perpetually saying "North" when I meant "South" in the matter of the immortal hill--in the matter of the hill of the University. I always talked of going up that hill as going "North," whereas if you go up that hill you walk due South.

And I knew a man once who whenever he went into a shop to buy razor blades for his patent razor always said "railway blades." Yet in other respects he was an ordinary man.

I will not attempt to solve the problem. It is not fatigue that does it, still less is it real ignorance; for you will notice that a man is inaccurate about things he knows thoroughly well, and that the mistakes he makes are always of an absurd kind which he would be the first to spot in others; for instance, calling Nottingham Northampton, and the other way about. All one can say is that it happens as variations happen in the generation of animals, or as any other fluke happens. Some God guides it.

Inaccuracy is a very fruitful and powerful creator of things. It not only creates legends, it creates words. There are hosts and crowds of words which have come in through the talent of men for inaccuracy and through the inspiration of inaccuracy, which is blown into men by this God of whom I speak. Hence what is called _metathesis_, the very fruitful parent of many admirable words from Turmut to Hercules. Hence also the naturalisation of French and other foreign words. It is a pity, I think, that so much printing, and the foolish pride of those who can read, checks the process nowadays. I live in hopes that it will not check the process for long, and that our coming barbarism will return to these popular words.

"Chauffeur" should be "shover," and "asparagus"--which I like to hear called "grass"--has, I hope, taken root forever as "sparrow-grass"--a very good name for it; for it is a grass and sparrows have no particular bond with it. They well might have, if they only knew how good it was; but they are stupid little beasts, and good for nothing. And if you tell me that thus to branch off upon the matter of sparrows is disturbing to the reader, and that one ought to keep the main thread of one's discourse, I answer you with a book always well praised and in parts quite on the highest level, called "The Book of Job." If you will read "The Book of Job" you will find that, in the catalogue of strange beasts which the writer brings forward in defence of the majesty of God, he gets to the ostrich. But hardly has he mentioned the ostrich when the inane habits of that enormous fowl prove too much for him. He forgets all about God and creation and the rest of it, and allows himself a little separate diatribe against the idiocy of the ostrich before getting back to his theology. So I with sparrows.

And now that I have taught you this lesson from Job I will return to the matter of inaccuracy.

Inaccuracy is also the breeder not only of good native phrases, but of excellent tales, like the well-rubbed, polished, ancient, and now immutable story of the boy in buttons who got nervous at the grandeur of the bishop, and said, when the sleepy bishop asked who was knocking: "It's the Lord, my boy."

And inaccuracy is the parent also of that still older and still more immutable story about the Pyramids of Egypt and their builders, which I cannot print here.

It was inaccuracy which made the guide-book man so angry at the phrase, "Our Lord God, the Pope," his translation of "Divus Papa," put before the title of some canonised pope of the past.

And it was inaccuracy that made the mediæval story-teller talk of the "Emperor Pliny" and of Virgil's brazen tower. And what a picture I get of the Emperor Pliny sending for the Magician Virgil who builds the brazen tower! Inaccuracy is a mighty mother of works.

It pleases me also especially in this, that you cannot teach it; you cannot make a man inaccurate. There is no way of becoming inaccurate by industry, and if you deliberately try to be inaccurate you fail. Inaccuracy is perhaps the most spontaneous and the freest of the gifts offered by the Spirit to the wit of man. It is even more spontaneous and more free than the gift of writing good verse, or that rarer gift which I have also written of here--the gift of writing abominably bad verse; exceptionally bad verse; criminally bad verse; execrable verse.

And inaccuracy is a great leveller--like Love and Death and other less commonly quoted levellers--like Wine and War and Repentance.

For there is no one, whoever he may be, however learned or however ignorant, who may not suddenly be found inaccurate. And, what is more, the same man will be inaccurate in one period and accurate in another, entirely as the Spirit chooses and not as _he_ chooses.

Lastly, inaccuracy has this great and noble quality attached to it, that it breeds real tragedy; and that is a finer thing than breeding mere stories or even noble words. Try shouting "port" down the decks when you mean "starboard," in some narrow crowded fairway against a racing tide, and you will find out what I mean. Or again, inaccuracy in the setting of a range; repeating (as I heard a man do at Châlons) 113 millimetres for 13 millimetres--and they plugged a village church miles and miles outside the camp.

In these matters, that which was but a trifle or a comic accident takes on majesty. Inaccuracy becomes a solemn thing.

And of all the forms by which inaccuracy builds up tragedy the best I know is that form whereby the God causes two letters to be put each into the envelope meant for the other. Out of one such error as that you might get another Trojan War!

ON TECHNICAL WORDS

Be you technical and all the other learning shall be added unto you.

This commandment is not one revealed to man; yet need it not be painfully learnt. It is so true that it is part of man's nature. The mind accepts it at once, instinctively. All men who would display learning, however really learned they may be, cannot but fall at once into the happy use of technicalities.

Now there is a good and solid reason for this. For a technical word takes the place of long explanation. If you do not use technical words you have to replace them by clumsy, roundabout phrases. You lose your direct effect. Technical words arise of themselves in any science or art, and there is no force, even of a god, that could keep them out. But that is only their genesis. Their true use is to bamboozle, and, my word! how well they do it!

The French people, who (as Cæsar pointed out) are very keen upon the military affair, first applied to the actions of armies the very simple words of every day. If men were walking all in a line and were then spread out the French said that the formation was "unfolded." The progress of soldiers upon their feet from one place to another was called "walking." When their formation was broken in defeat they were said to be "thrust off the road," that is, bereft of their principal method of progression and continuity; for it is by roads that armies are maintained. A force which lost its power was said to be "undone." The various positions of the sword were called "the first," "the second," "the third," "the fourth," "the fifth," "the sixth." You could not have it simpler! But the Technical Spirit was waiting for its prey, and very rapidly those simple words became in another language "deploy," "march," "rout," "tierce," "quarte," and the rest of it.

Quite lately, this necessary disease spread with peculiar exuberance into the untouched fields of painting and of music. Even those of my age can remember the advent of most of them. Time was when the critic of art said that a picture was very like the thing it was meant to represent, or that it was very unlike it. I can remember the older generation which talked like this. But to-day they might as well be teaching infants in words of one syllable. You have a whole army of words from "technique," which is very old, down to "square touch," which has not yet got a white beard but a long one, and you have "planes," and you have "values," and you have hundreds of others which, as it is not my trade, I shall not pretend to catalogue. But this I know, that no one can write art criticism at 1s. 6d. the inch until he has mastered the terms, and I know still better that having mastered the terms any one whatsoever, though he be colour-blind, cross-eyed, and quite indifferent to proportion, can write the very best art criticism in the world. For criticism is good in proportion to the awe which it excites. For the function of the critic (says Aristotle) is to criticise, that is, to pull the leg of the middle classes.

As for music, the victory of the thing is now insolent. It has triumphantly beaten out of the field all ordinary men. There is still a sturdy phalanx of purchasers who buy a picture because they like it, or who will tell you boldly that a picture is like or unlike the thing which it pretends to record. There is still a gallant remaining little force of merchants, most of them elderly, who think that a sky should be blue, and grass green, and bricks red, and all the rest of it, and who will _not_ buy a picture to hang on the walls of the Detached House in its Own Grounds unless it is beautiful and true. But in the matter of music the miserable reactionaries, the old simpletons, have had the life beaten out of them. There is now no one left alive who dares say that he dislikes a complicated modern volume of noise. Music has become a thing altogether apart, like Sanscrit. On the one hand you have the huge mass of mankind still delighted with good tunes (I use the word "good" in fear and trembling. I mean, for instance, "Oh! Mr. Porter," the "Marseillaise," the "Dies Iræ," and "Auprès de ma Blonde"), and on the other you have the Sacred Initiate, who commune only with one another; save when they stand at the door of the Temple and with great contempt drop some few phrases of an unintelligible language to the gaping crowd without.

But I think that neither the adepts of art-critic-technicalities, nor even those of music-technicalities, will fully learn their trade till they study the kings and masters of the whole profession, which kings and masters are the writers upon women's fashions. Any one, as I have said, can become an art critic, and a good one, by learning a hundred words or so by heart and knowing where to stick them in; and though not any one, yet a fair proportion of boys and girls can become music-critics by getting parrot-like in the enormous terms of their apparatus. But it is of public knowledge that the being who can write about women's dresses is one in a thousand.

Now why should this be? I do not know, but it is so. I am assured by those who have gone into the matter that most of these writers are men and not women, but there are, of course, women adepts too. Their occult vocabulary is twenty times more rich than the vocabularies of their concert-going and picture-gazing brothers, and it is not only rich, it is also accurate and determined. The terms used in booming a picture or a great complexity of noise have something floating about them. They can be applied contradictorily, one critic saying that a line is "amusing," and another saying that it "lacks touch." There is room apparently for licence, and, therefore (I hesitate to hint it), room for the charlatan. I do not mean of course that any art or music critic _is_ a charlatan. No! Not for one moment! I only mean that he might be one; that it is possible to conceive of a charlatan using these solemn terms. But no charlatan could use technical terms about the fashions--women's fashions, at least--without being discovered at once. The Fashion-writers' Guild is a strict confraternity and an honourable one, demanding a severe and long apprenticeship and always certain of its instrument. If I read (of course I should never read anything of the sort--I am only giving it as an illustration) "the foundation is of chinchilla draped _en échelon_ and caught up with pompoms of crapeaumort," I am reading about some one quite definite kind of ornament which everybody who has learnt the language will at once realise. I could not apply it vaguely to a black silk skirt or a velvet Medici collar, and therein I think the technicians of fashion are wholly superior to all their parallels.