Part 9
P.S.--I have been a Cabinet Minister. I send you a circular of our new company. It is a good thing. Push it along.
IV.
The Chaplaincy, Barford College, Old St. Winifred’s Day, 1900.
My dear Mr. Kruger.--Your position is at once interesting and peculiar, and deserves, as you say, my fullest attention. On the one hand (as you well remark) you believe you have a right to your independence, and that our Government has no moral right to interfere in your domestic affairs. You speak warmly of Mr. Chamberlain and describe him as lacking in common morality or (as we put it) in breeding. I think you are hardly fair. Mr. Chamberlain has his own morality, and in that summing up of all ethics which we in England call “manners,” he is indistinguishable from other gentlemen of our class. He has had a great deal to bear and he has latterly borne it in silence. It is hardly the part of a generous foe to taunt him now. I fear you look upon these matters a little narrowly and tend to accept one aspect as the absolute. The truth is that international morality must always be largely Utilitarian, and in a very interesting little book by Beeker it is even doubted whether what we call “ethics” have any independent existence. This new attitude (which we call “moral anarchism”) has lately cast a great hold upon our younger men and is full of interesting possibilities. If you meet Milner you should discuss the point with him. I assure you this school is rapidly ousting the old “comparative-positive” in which he and Curzon were trained. There is a great deal of self-realization going on also. Lord Mestenvaux (whom you have doubtless met--he was a director of the Johannesberg Alcohol Concession) is of my opinion.
Believe me, my dear Mr. Kruger, with the fullest and warmest sympathy for such of your grievances as may be legitimate, and with the ardent prayer that the result of this deplorable quarrel may turn out to be the best for _both_ parties,
Your affectionate Friend of old days, JOSHIA LAMBKIN, M.A., Fellow and Chaplain.
V.
(Telegram.)
Send orders payable Amsterdam immediate, Liberal party clamouring ... (name illegible) risen to ten thousand, market firm and rising. Waste no money on comic paper. Not Read.
(Unsigned.)
Finally this damning piece of evidence must close the terrible series.
VI.
To the Rev. Ebenezer Biggs, Capetown. The House of Commons, April 10th, 1899.
My dear Sir.--You put me in a very difficult position, for, on the one hand, I cannot, and would not, work against the interests of my country, and, on the other hand, I am convinced that Mr. Chamberlain is determined to plunge that country into the war spoken of by John in Revelations ix. Anything I can do for peace I will, but for some reason or other the _Times_ will not insert my letters, though I write to them twice and sometimes thrice in one day. Sir Alfred Milner was once very rude to me. He is a weak man morally, mainly intent upon “getting on;” he has agreed since his youth with every single person of influence (except myself) whom he happened to come across, and is universally liked. I fear that no one’s private influence can do much. The London Press has been bought in a lump by two financiers. Perhaps a little waiting is the best thing. There is sure to be a reaction, and after all, Mr. Chamberlain is a man of a very low order. His mind, I take it, is not unlike his face. He thinks very little and very clearly ... I have really nothing more to say.
Always your sincere friend, EDWARD BAYTON.
No one knew better than Dr. Caliban that a Revelation is but weakened by comment. But the war was at its height, and he could not read without disgust such words, written in such a place by such a man.
He added the note:
“We understand that the law officers of the Crown are debating whether or no the concluding sentences of this disgraceful letter can be made to come within 26 Edward III., cap. 37, defining high treason. It is certainly not a physical attack upon the Person, Consort, or offspring of the Crown, nor is it (strictly speaking) giving aid to the Queen’s enemies. On the other hand, it is devoutly hoped that the attack on Mr. Chamberlain can be made to fall under 32 Henry VIII., 1, whereby it is felony to strike or ‘provoke’ the King’s servants within the precincts of the Palace. The infamous screed was certainly written in a palace, and Mr. Chamberlain is as certainly a servant of the Queen. He certainly was provoked--nay nettled. The latter clauses of the act, condemning those who attack the doctrine of Transubstantiation to be roasted alive, have, of course, fallen into desuetude. The earlier, milder, and more general clauses stand, and _should be enforced_.”
Let me not be misunderstood. I think it was an error to pen that comment. Strong expressions, used in a time of high party feeling, may look exaggerated when they survive into quieter times. But if it was an error, it was the only error that can be laid to the charge of a just and great man in the whole course of forty years, during which period he occasionally edited as many as five journals at a time.
SPECIAL PROSE.
SPECIAL PROSE.
Mrs. Caliban begged me to add a few words on “Special Prose,” and to subjoin an example of that manner. She has suggested for the latter purpose Mrs. Railston’s “Appreciation of William Shakespeare,” written as a preface for the Charing Cross Shakespeare in 1897. She has even been at the pains of asking Mrs. Railston’s leave to have it included in this volume, a permission that was at once granted, accompanied with the courteous request that Mrs. Railston’s name, address, and private advertisement should accompany the same.
Were I dependent upon my own judgment alone, the wisdom of adding such a division at the close of these essays might seem doubtful. Special Prose is an advanced kind of literature, too great an attraction to which might at first confuse rather than aid the student; and I should hardly make a place for it in a straightforward little Text-book.
Mrs. Caliban’s wishes in all matters concerning this work must be observed, and I have done what she desired me, even to the degree of printing Mrs. Railston’s advertisement, though I am certain that great Authoress does herself harm by this kind of insistence ... It is no business of mine....
It is only fair to add that prose of this sort _is_ the highest form of our Art, and should be the ultimate goal of every reader of this Guide. If, however, the student is bewildered in his first attempt to decipher it (as he very well may be), my advice to him is this: let him mark the point to which he has persevered, and then put the whole thing aside until he has had some little further practice in English letters. Then let him return, fresh from other work, some weeks later, and see if he cannot penetrate still further into the close-knit texture. Soon he will find it almost like his own tongue, and will begin to love and to understand.
Not many months will pass before it will mean to him something more than life, as he once imagined, could contain.
Having said so much, let me hasten to obey Mrs. Caliban’s command.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
_An Appreciation._
BY MARGARET RAILSTON.
How very manifestly well did not Montaigne (I think it was) say in his essay upon Value that the “inner part of Poesy is whilom hid, whilom bare, and it matters little whether it be bare or hidden.” That was a sentence such as our Wordsworth might have quoted at the high court of Plato when the poets were arraigned as unworthy to be rooted in his Republic. For the most part these dear poets of our tongue will rather have it bare than hidden, leaving the subtleties of “The Misanthrope” to another race, and themselves preferring the straight verbal stab of “The Idiot Boy” or “Danny Deever;” so that many of us see nothing in the Rhymed Heroics of the Grand Siècle. Yet Molière also had genius.
“Molière a du génie et Christian été beau.”
That sentence given nasally by a Coquelin to a theatre-full of People of the Middle-Class should convince also us of the Hither-North that flowers may blow in any season and be as various as multiplicity may.
William Shakespeare, without all question and beyond any repining, is--or rather was--the first of our Poets, and was--or rather is--the first to-day. So that, with him for a well and the Jacobean Bible for a further spring of effort, our English Poets make up (“build” Milton called it) the sounding line. But William Shakespeare also is of us: he will have it on the surface or not at all; as a man hastening to beauty, too eager to delve by the way. And with it all how he succeeds! What grace and what appreciation in epithet, what subtle and sub-conscious effects of verb! What resonant and yet elusive diction! It is true Shakespeare, that line--
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.”
And that other--
“Or stoops with the Remover to remove.”
And these are true Shakespeare because in each there is we know not what of ivory shod with steel. A mixture of the light and the strong, of the subtle and the intense rescues his simple words from oblivion. But another, not of our blood, would have hidden far more; he shows it all, frankly disdaining artifice.
Also the great Elizabethan needs room for his giant limbs, for his frame of thought and his thews of diction. Cite him just too shortly, choose but a hair’s breadth too mickle an ensample of his work, and it is hardly Poesy, nay, hardly Prose. Thus you shall have Othello--the Moor they call him--betrayed and raging, full of an African Anger. What does he say of it? Why very much; but if you are of those that cut out their cameos too finely; you slip into quoting this merely:--
_Oth._ Hum! Hum!
And that is not our Shakespeare at all, nor e’en our Othello. Oh! no, it is nothing but a brutish noise, meaning nothing, empty of tragedy, unwished for.
It was Professor Goodle who said that “none needed the spaces of repose more than Shakespeare,” and taught us in these words that the poet must have hills and valleys; must recline if he is to rise. But does not Shakespeare, even in his repose, seem to create? The Professor will indeed quote to us the mere sprawling leisure of Stratford, and shame us with such lines as--
MAC.--The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon, Where got’st thou that goose look?
Which is Shakespeare at full length. But we also, that are not over sure of Shakespeare’s failing, can answer him with such excerpts as these:--
HEN.--Therefore do thou, stiff-set Northumberland, Retire to Chester, and my cousin here, The noble Bedford, his to Glo’ster straight And give our Royal ordinance and word That in this fit and strife of empery No loss shall stand account. To this compulsion I pledge my sword, my person and my honour On the Great Seal of England: so farewell. Swift to your charges: nought was ever done Unless at some time it were first begun.
This also is Shakespeare in his repose, but a better Shakespeare than he whom the Professor would challenge. For though there is here no work or strain in the thing, yet it reeks of English. It is like the mist over our valleys at evening, so effortless is it and so reposeful, and yet so native. Note the climax “On the Great Seal of England” and the quaint, characteristic folk-lore of the concluding couplet, with its rhyming effect. Note also how sparing is William Shakespeare of the strong qualificative, however just it may be. For when our moderns will speak hardly of “the tolerant kine” or “the under-lit sky,” or of “the creeping river like a worm upturned, with silver belly stiffened in the grass,” though they be by all this infinitely stronger, yet are they but the more condensed and self-belittled. Shakespeare will write you ten lines and have in all but one just and sharp adjective--“stiff-set;” for the rest they are a common highway; he cares not.
And here he is in the by-paths; a meadow of Poesy. I have found it hidden away in one of the latter plays; the flowers of his decline:--
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Now thine earthly task is done, Thou’rt gone home and ta’en thy wages. Golden lads and lasses must, Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”
There is in that a line I swear no one but Shakespeare would have dared. “Thou’rt gone home and ta’en thy wages.” Commonplace? A text on the wall? A sermon-tag? All you will, but a _frame for glory_.
This then is William Shakespeare in a last word. A man at work full of doing; the Ϝ ἔργον: glad if you saw the mark of the chisel; still more glad if you did not see it. And if it be queried why are such things written of him? Why do we of the last and woful days turn and return the matter of our past? We say this. _Vixere Fortes_; that is, no fame were enduring save by continued iterance and echo of similar praise, nor any life well earned in the public sheets that dared not touch on any matter and remodel all. It is for ourselves and for William Shakespeare that these things are done. For ourselves, that is a private thing to hide under the veil of the Home-lofe. For William Shakespeare, that is the public duty, that his fame may not fail in the noise of new voices. And we can borrow from him and return to him what he said of another with such distinction of plane and delicate observance of value:--
“So long as men shall breathe and eyes can see, This lives, and living, this gives life to thee.”
[_Notices in this manner can be furnished at reasonable notice upon any poet, preferably a young or a modern poet, on the usual terms. The style is produced in seven distinct sizes, of which this is No. 3. Please state No. when ordering. All envelopes to be addressed._
Mrs. MARGARET RAILSTON, c/o Charlie Bernberg, 48, Upper Gannimore Gardens, Shepherd’s Bush, W.
_All envelopes to be marked “Appreciation.” Accounts monthly. All cheques to be crossed “Becker, Becker, & Bernberg.”_]
APPENDIX
PRICES CURRENT.
In all ordinary lines Prices were well maintained and rising at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. They rose sharply thenceforward till the second week of the war in South Africa, since which date they have been sagging, touching bed rock in the spring of this year (March, 1903). There has been a slight reaction since the beginning of the season, but it is not supported, and the market is still extremely dull. Patriotic Poems have fallen out of sight, and Criticism is going begging: in some offices books are no longer given to their reviewers: sub-editors have latterly been asked to bring their own suppers. The pinch is being felt everywhere. Police reports are on piece-work and the Religious Column is shut down to half shifts. Leader writers have broken from 1100 a year to 300. Editors have suffered an all-round cut in wages of 25 per cent. Publishers’ carrying-over days are more anxious than ever. Several first-class houses were hammered on the last contango, and the Banks are calling in loans. Private capital can hardly be obtained save for day-to-day transactions, and even so at very high rates of interest. The only lines that are well maintained are City Articles and Special Prose. Snippets are steady.
The following list is taken from Hunter’s Handbook, and represents Prices at the close of May:--
PROSE.
(_Prices in shillings per thousand words_).
RISE OR FALL. Special Prose 30/- 35/- Unchanged. Street Accidents 10/- 12/- - 5/- Reviews 7/6 10/- - 20/- Police Court Notices 15/- 18/- - 5/- Guaranteed Libels 25/- 30/- - 3/- Unguaranteed ditto 5/- 7/- + 2/- Deferred ditto 14/- 16/- + 4/- Pompous Leaders 8/- 10/- - 25/-! Smart Leaders 9/- 11/6 + 3/- Ten-line Leaderettes 10/- 12/- Unchanged. Political Appeals 15/- 17/- - 30/- Attacks on Foreign Nations 3/- 3/6 - 48/-!! Dramatic Criticism 20/- 25/- Unchanged. Historical Work -- 6d.? (Practically no demand). Religious Notes 12/- 18/- - 8/- Attacks upon Christianity 4/- 4/6 - 5/- (A very heavy fall for this kind of matter).
VERSE.
(_Prices in pence per line_).
Bad Verse No price can be given--very variable. Good minor Verse. 3d. (much the same as last year). Special Verse 1/- (a heavy fall).
READY RECKONER.
_This Table does not profess any minute accuracy; it will, however, be found amply sufficient for all practical purposes._
PENCE SHILLINGS PER SHILLINGS PER POUNDS PER PER LINE. LONG COLUMN. SHORT COLUMN. THOUSAND Pica. Minion.[18] Pica. Minion.[18] WORDS. Bourgeois. Bourgeois.
¼_d._ 3/9 4/3 5/- 3/- 3/9 4/6 £0·16378.[19] ½_d._ 7/6 8/6 10/- 6/- 7/6 9/- £0·32757. ¾_d._ 11/3 12/9 15/- 9/- 11/3 13/6 £0·49135. 1_d._[20] 15/- 17/- 20/- 12/- 15/- 18/- £0·65514. 1½_d._ 22/6 25/6 30/- 18/- 22/6 27/- £0·98270.[21] 2_d._[22] 30/- 34/- 40/- 24/- 30/- 36/- £1·31028. 2½_d._ 37/6 42/6 50/- 30/- 37/6 45/- £1·63705.
No prices superior to this last for Prose.
Verse up to 1/- a line. See preceding page, not reckoned in cols. or 1000 words.
(The Sections dealing with “THE DETECTION OF CLASSICAL AUTHORS” and “THE VIVID PRESENTATION OF HISTORY,” have been omitted by request of the Family. It is perhaps as well.)
NOTE ON TITLES.
The young journalist will never make an error as to the title of an individual, and his proper style and address, if he will but learn to trust the books of reference provided by the office.
They are far more accurate than other works of the kind.[23] Contrast, for instance, Bowley’s _Peerage and Baronetage_ with Bowley’s _Register of Events during the past year_.
What may be called “derivative titles” differ in the most complicated manner according to the rank of the parent. It would be quite impossible for the journalist to attempt to learn them. He had far better write plain “Lord” and “Lady” where he has occasion to, and on all other occasions whatsoever, “Mr.” or, if he prefer the term, “Esquire.” In conversation no Lord should be addressed as “My Lord,” but a Bishop should always be so addressed; no Duke should be called “Your Grace” to his face, but it is courteous to bestow this honour upon an Archbishop. It is still more important to avoid the term “milady” in speaking to the consorts of the above named, especially in the case of bishops’ wives, to whom the title does not apply. Baronets, on the other hand, must always be addressed as “Sir,” followed by a Christian name. The omission to do this has led to grievous trouble. The principal English titles are, Prince, Duke, Marquis, Marquess (a more recent creation), Earl, Baron; then comes a division; then Irish Peers, Baronets, Knights, and finally Members of the Victorian Order.
The principal foreign titles are Count, Viscount (which by the way is also an English title, but I forgot it), Vidame, Chevalier, Excellency, Graf, Furst, Margrave, Baron, Boyar, Monsignor, and Grandee--the latter used only in Spain, Ceuta, and the other Spanish dominions beyond the seas.
Imperial titles are:--the Maharajah, the Maharanee, the Akon of Swat, the Meresala of Baghirmi, the Oyo of Oya, the Allemami of Foutazallam, the Ameer, the Emir, the Bally-o-Gum of Abe-o-Kuta,[24] and others too numerous to mention. All these should, in general, be addressed as Your Highness.
Colonials are called “The Honourable.”
NOTE ON STYLE.
One does well to have by one a few jottings that will enable one to add to one’s compositions what one calls style in case it is demanded of one by an editor.
I would not insist too much upon the point; it is simple enough, and the necessity of which I speak does not often crop up. But editors differ very much among themselves, and every now and then one gets a manuscript returned with the note, “please improve style,” in blue pencil, on the margin. If one had no idea as to the meaning of this a good deal of time might be wasted, so I will add here what are considered to be the five principal canons of style or good English.
The first canon, of course, is that style should have _Distinction_. Distinction is a quality much easier to attain than it looks. It consists, on the face of it, in the selection of peculiar words and their arrangement in an odd and perplexing order, and the objection is commonly raised that such irregularities cannot be rapidly acquired. Thus the Chaplain of Barford, preaching upon style last Holy Week, remarked “there is a natural tendency in stating some useless and empty thing to express oneself in a common or vulgar manner.” That is quite true, but it is a tendency which can easily be corrected, and I think that that sentence I have just quoted throws a flood of light on the reverend gentleman’s own deficiencies.
Of course no writer is expected to write or even to speak in this astonishing fashion, but what is easier than to go over one’s work and strike out ordinary words? There should be no hesitation as to what to put in their place. Halliwell’s “Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words” will give one all the material one may require. Thus “lettick” is charming Rutlandshire for “decayed” or “putrescent,” and “swinking” is a very good alternative for “working.” It is found in Piers Plowman.
It is very easy to draw up a list of such unusual words, each corresponding with some ordinary one, and to pin it up where it will meet your eye. In all this matter prose follows very much the same rules as were discovered and laid down for verse on page 86.
The second canon of style is that it should be _obscure_, universally and without exception. The disturbance of the natural order of words to which I have just alluded is a great aid, but it is not by any means the only way to achieve the result. One should also on occasion use several negatives one after the other, and the sly correction of punctuation is very useful. I have known a fortune to be made by the omission of a full stop, and a comma put right in between a noun and its adjective was the beginning of Daniel Witton’s reputation. A foreign word misspelt is also very useful. Still more useful is some allusion to some unimportant historical person or event of which your reader cannot possibly have heard.
As to the practice, which has recently grown up, of writing only when one is drunk, or of introducing plain lies into every sentence, they are quite unworthy of the stylist properly so called, and can never permanently add to one’s reputation.
The third canon of style is the _occasional omission_ of a verb or of the predicate. Nothing is more agreeably surprising, and nothing more effective. I have known an honest retired major-general, while reading a novel in his club, to stop puzzling at one place for an hour or more in his bewilderment at this delightful trick, and for years after he would exclaim with admiration at the style of the writer.