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SIDE LIGHTS
By JAMES RUNCIMAN
_WITH MEMOIR BY GRANT ALLEN,
AND INTRODUCTION BY W.T. STEAD.
EDITED BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN_
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
MDCCCXCIII
CONTENTS.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR. BY GRANT ALLEN
AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ABOUT THE BOOK. BY W.T. STEAD
I. LETTER-WRITERS
II. ON WRITING ONESELF OUT
III. THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE
IV. COLOUR-BLINDNESS IN LITERATURE
V. THE SURFEIT OF BOOKS
VI. PEOPLE WHO ARE "DOWN"
VII. ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES
VIII. HAPPY MARRIAGES
IX. SHREWS
X. ARE WE WEALTHY
XI. THE VALUES OF LABOUR
XII. THE HOPELESS POOR
XIII. WAIFS AND STRAYS
XIV. STAGE-CHILDREN
XV. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MORALITY: PAST AND PRESENT
XVI. "RAISING THE LEVEL OF AMUSEMENTS"
XVII. A LITTLE SERMON ON FAILURES
XVIII. "VANITY OF VANITIES"
XIX. GAMBLERS
XX. SCOUNDRELS
XXI. QUIET OLD TOWNS
XXII. THE SEA
XXIII. SORROW
XXIV. DEATH
XXV. JOURNALISM
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR.
BY GRANT ALLEN.
I knew James Runciman but little, and that little for the most part
in the way of business. But no one could know that ardent and eager
soul at all, no matter how slightly, without admiring and respecting
much that was powerful and vigorous in his strangely-compounded
personality. His very look attracted. He had human weaknesses not
a few, but all of the more genial and humane sort; for he was
essentially and above everything a lovable man, a noble, interesting,
and unique specimen of genuine, sincere, whole-hearted manhood.
He was a Northumbrian by birth, "and knew the Northumbrian coast,"
says one of his North-Country friends, "like his mother's face." His
birthplace was at Cresswell, a little village near Morpeth, where he
was born in August, 1852, so that he was not quite thirty-nine when he
finally wore himself out with his ceaseless exertions. He had a true
North-Country education, too, among the moors and cliffs, and there
drank in to the full that love of nature, and especially of the sea,
which forms so conspicuous a note in his later writings. Heather and
wave struck the keynotes. A son of the people, he went first, in his
boyhood, to the village school at Ellington; but on his eleventh
birthday he was removed from the wild north to a new world at
Greenwich. There he spent two years in the naval school; and
straightway began his first experiences of life on his own account as
a pupil teacher at North Shields Ragged School, not far from his
native hamlet.
"A worse place of training for a youth," says a writer in _The
Schoolmaster_, "it would be hard to discover. The building was
unsuitable, the children rough, and the neighbourhood vile--and the
long tramp over the moors to Cresswell and back at week ends was,
perhaps, what enabled the young apprentice to preserve his health of
mind and body. His education was very much in his own hands. He
managed in a few weeks to study enough to pass his examinations with
credit. The rest of his time was spent in reading everything which
came in his way, so that when he entered Borough-road in January,
1871, he was not only almost at the top of the list, but he was the
best informed man of his year. His fellow candidates remember even now
his appearance during scholarship week. Like David, he was ruddy of
countenance, like Saul he towered head and shoulders above the rest,
and a mass of fair hair fell over his forehead. Whene'er he took his
walks abroad he wore a large soft hat, and a large soft scarf, and
carried a stick that was large but not soft."
To this graphic description I will add a second one. "He was a
splendid all-round athlete," says another friend, who knew him at this
time, in the British and Foreign School Society's London college. "Six
feet two or three in height, and with a fine muscular development, he
could box, wrestle, fence, or row with all comers, and beat them with
ridiculous ease. No one could have been made to believe that he would
die, physically worn out, before he was forty. His intellectual
mastery was as unquestioned as his physical superiority; he always
topped the examination lists, to the chagrin of some of the lecturers,
whom he teased sadly by protesting against injustice the moment it
peeped out, by teaching all the good young men to smoke prodigiously,
by scattering revolutionary verses about the college, and finally by
collecting and burning in one grand bonfire every copy of an obnoxious
text-book under which the students had long suffered."
This was indeed the germ of the man as we all knew him long afterwards.
Runciman left the college to take up the mastership of a London Board
School in a low part of Deptford; and here he soon gained an
extraordinary influence over the population of one of the worst slums
in London. Mr. Thomas Wright, the "Journeyman Engineer," has already
told in print elsewhere the story of Runciman's descent into the
depths of Deptford, how he set about humanising the shoeless,
starving, conscience-little waifs who were drafted into his school,
and how, before many months had passed, he never walked through the
squalid streets of his own quarter without two or three loving little
fellows all in tatters trying to touch the hem of his garment, while a
group of the more timid followed him admiringly afar off. From the
children, his good influence extended to the parents; and it was an
almost every-day occurrence for visitors from the slums to burst into
the school to fetch the master to some coster who was "a-killin' his
woman." The brawny young giant would dive into the courts where the
police go in couples, clamber ricketty stairs, and "interview" the
fighting pair. "His plan was to appeal to the manliness of the
offender, and make him ashamed of himself; often such a visit ended in
a loan, whereby the 'barrer' was replenished and the surly husband set
to work; but if all efforts at peacemaking were useless, this new
apostle had methods beyond the reach of the ordinary missionary--he
would (the case deserving it) drop his mild, insinuating, persuasive
tones, and not only threaten to pulp the incorrigible blackguard into
a jelly, but proceed to do it."
Runciman, however, was much more in fibre than a mere schoolmaster. He
worked hard at his classes by day; he worked equally hard by night at
his own education, and at his first attempts at journalism. He
matriculated at London University, and passed his first B.Sc.
examination. At one and the same time he was carrying on his own
school, in the far East End, contributing largely to an educational
paper, _The Teacher_, and writing two or three pages a week in
_Vanity Fair_, which he long sub-edited. His powers of work were
enormous, and he systematically overtaxed them.
It is not surprising that, under this strain and stress, even that
magnificent physique showed signs of breaking down, like every other
writer's. A long holiday on the Mediterranean, and another at Torquay,
restored him happily to his wonted health; but he saw he must now
choose between schoolmastering and journalism. To run the two abreast
was too much, even for James Runciman's gigantic powers. Permanent
work on _Vanity Fair_ being offered to him on his return, he decided
to accept it; and thenceforth he plunged with all the strength and
ardour of his fervid nature into his new profession.
"It was during this period of insatiable greed for work," says the
correspondent of a Nottingham journal, "that I first knew him. You may
wonder how he could possibly get through the tasks which he set
himself. You would not wonder if you had seen him, when he was in the
humour, tramp round the room and pour out a stream of talk on men and
books which might have gone direct into print at a high marketable
value. The London correspondent of a Nottingham paper says that
Runciman was justly vain of the speed of his pen. That is true. He
considered that a journalist ought to be able to dictate an article at
the rate of 150 words a minute to a shorthand writer. I doubt whether
anybody can do that, but Runciman certainly thought he could. He loved
to settle a thing off on the instant with one huge effort. Here is an
authentic story that shows his method. It is a physical performance,
but he tackled journalistic obstacles in the same spirit:
"A parent, who fancied he had a grievance, burst furiously into the
schoolroom one day, and startled its quietness with a string of oaths.
'That isn't how we talk here,' said Runciman, in his quiet way. 'Will
you step into my room if you have anything to discuss?' Another volley
of oaths was the reply, and the unwary parent added that he wasn't
going out, and nobody could put him out. Runciman was not the man to
allow such a challenge of his authority and prowess to be issued
before his scholars and to go unanswered. Without another word, he
took the man by the coat-collar with one hand, by the most convenient
part of his breeches with the other hand, carried him to the door,
gave him a half-a-dozen admonitory shakings, and chucked him down
outside. Then he returned and made this cool entry in the school
log-book: 'Father of the boy ---- came into the school to-day, and was
very disorderly. I carried him out and chastised him.'"
It was while he was engaged on _Vanity Fair_ that I first met
Runciman--I should think somewhere about the year 1880. He then edited
(or sub-edited) for a short time that clever but abortive little
journal, _London_, started by Mr. W.E. Henley, and contributed to
by Andrew Lang, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, and half a dozen
more of us. Here we met not infrequently. I was immensely impressed by
Runciman's vigorous personality, and by his profound sympathy with the
troubles and trials and poverty of the real people. He called himself
a Conservative, it is true, while I called myself a Radical; but,
except in name, I could not see much difference between our democratic
tendencies. Runciman appeared to me a most earnest and able thinker,
full of North-country grit, and overflowing with energy.
His later literary work is well known to the world. He contributed to
the _St. James's Gazette_ an admirable series of seafaring sketches,
afterwards reprinted as "The Romance of the North Coast." He also
wrote "special" articles for the _Standard_ and the _Pall Mall_, as
well as essays on social and educational topics for the _Contemporary_
and the _Fortnightly_. The humour and pathos of pupil-teaching were
exquisitely brought out in his "School Board Idylls" and "Schools and
Scholars"; his knowledge of the sea and his experience of fishermen
supplied him with materials for "Skippers and Shellbacks" and for
"Past and Present." He was always a lover of his kind, so his work has
almost invariably a strong sympathetic note; and perhaps his
best-known book, "A Dream of the North Sea," was written in support of
the Mission to Fishermen. He produced but one novel, "Grace Balmaign's
Sweetheart"; but his latest work, "Joints in our Social Armour,"
returned once more to that happier vein of picturesque description
which sat most easily and naturally upon him.
The essays which compose the present volume were contributed to the
columns of the _Family Herald_. And this is their history:--For
many years I had answered the correspondence and written the social
essays in that excellent little journal--a piece of work on which I
am not ashamed to say that I always look back with affectionate
pleasure. Several years since, however, I found myself compelled by
health to winter abroad, and therefore unable to continue my weekly
contributions. Who could fill up the gap? Who answer my dear old
friends and questioners? The proprietor asked me to recommend a
substitute. I bethought me instinctively at once of Runciman. The work
was, indeed, not an easy one for which to find a competent workman. It
needed a writer sufficiently well educated to answer a wide range of
questions on the most varied topics, yet sufficiently acquainted with
the habits, ideas, and social codes of the lower middle class and the
labouring people to throw himself readily into their point of view on
endless matters of life and conduct. Above all, it needed a man who
could sympathise genuinely with the simplest of his fellows. The love
troubles of housemaids, the perplexities as to etiquette, or as to
practical life among shop-girls and footmen, must strike him, not as
ludicrous, but as subjects for friendly advice and assistance. The
fine-gentleman journalist would clearly have been useless for such a
post as that. Runciman was just cut out for it. I suggested the work
to him, and he took to it kindly. The editor was delighted with the
way he buckled up to his new task, and thanked me warmly afterwards
for recommending so admirable and so gentle a workman. Those who do
not know the nature of the task may smile; but the man who answers the
_Family Herald_ correspondence, stands in the position of confidant
and father-confessor to tens of thousands of troubled and anxious souls
among his fellow-countrymen, and still more his fellow-countrywomen.
It is, indeed, a _sacerdoce_. The essays are usually contributed by
the same person who answers the correspondence; and the collection of
Runciman's papers reprinted in this little volume will show that they
have often no mean literary value.
For many years, however, Runciman had systematically overworked, and
in other ways abused, his magnificent constitution. The seeds of
consumption were gradually developed. But the crash came suddenly.
Early in the summer of 1891, he broke down altogether. He was sent to
a hydropathic establishment at Matlock; but the doctors discovered he
was already in a most critical condition, and four weeks later advised
his wife to take him back to his own home at Kingston. His splendid
physique seemed to run down with a rush, and when a month was over, he
died, on July --th, a victim to his own devouring energy--perhaps,
too, to the hardships of a life of journalism.
"This was a man," said his friendly biographer, whom I have already
quoted. No sentence could more justly sum up the feeling of all who
knew James Runciman. "Bare power and tenderness, and such sadly human
weakness"--that is the verdict of one who well knew him. I cannot
claim to have known him well myself; but it is an honour to be
permitted to add a memorial stone to the lonely cairn of a
fellow-worker for humanity.
G.A.
AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ABOUT THE BOOK.
BY W.T. STEAD.
James Runciman was a remarkably gifted man who died just about the
time when he ought to have been getting into harness for his life's
work. He had in him, more than most men, the materials out of which
an English Zola might have been made. And as we badly need an English
Zola, and have very few men out of whom such a genius could be
fashioned, I have not ceased to regret the death of the author of
this volume. For Zola is the supreme type in our day of the
novelist-journalist, the man who begins by getting up his facts at
first-hand with the care and the exhaustiveness of a first-rate
journalist, and who then works them up with the dramatic and literary
skill of a great novelist. Charles Reade was something of the kind in
his day; but he has left no successor.
James Runciman might have been such an one, if he had lived. He had
the tireless industry, the iron constitution, the journalist's keen
eye for facts, the novelist's inexhaustible fund of human sympathy. He
was a literary artist who could use his pen as a brush with brilliant
effect, and he had an amazing facility in turning out "copy." He had
lived to suffer, and felt all that he wrote. There was a marvellous
range in his interests. He had read much, he improvised magnificently,
and there was hardly anything that he could not have done if only--but,
alas! it is idle mooning in the land of Might-Have-Beens!
The collected essays included in this volume were contributed by Mr.
Runciman to the pages of _The Family Herald_. In the superfine
circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread.
For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional
critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or
demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The
same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best
work and thought into each, but if he sends one to _The Saturday
Review_ and the other to _The Family Herald_, those who relish
and admire his writing in-the former would regard it as little less
than a _betise_ to suggest that the companion article in _The
Family Herald_ could be anything but miserable commonplace, which
no one with any reputation to lose in "literary circles" would venture
to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the
supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in
other penny miscellanies of popular literature. They richly deserve
the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott
inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising Coleridge's poetry
in Coleridge's presence. "One gentleman had been extravagantly
extolling Coleridge, until many present felt a little uncomfortable.
Scott said, 'Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper some
verses which I think better than most of their sort.' He then recited
the lines 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter' which are now so famous. The
eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit. To Scott
he addressed a series of questions--'Surely you must own that this is
bad?' 'Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?' At length
Coleridge quietly broke in, 'For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!
I wrote the poem'" (p. 39).
Such lessons are more needed now than ever. Only by stripes can the
vulgar pseudo-cultured be taught their folly.
The post of father-confessor and general director to the readers of
_The Family Herald_ which Mr. Runciman filled in succession to
Mr. Grant Allen is one which any student of human nature might envy.
There is no dissecting-room of the soul like the Confessional, where
the priest is quite impalpable and impersonal and the penitent secure
in the privacy of an anonymous communication. The ordinary man and
woman have just as much of the stuff of tragedy and comedy in their
lives as the Lord Tomnoddy or Lady Fitzboodle, and as there are many
more of them--thank Heaven!--than the lords and ladies, the masses
afford a far more fertile field for the psychological student of life
and character than the classes. They are, besides, much less
artificial. There are fewer apes and more men and women among people
who don't pay income tax than among those who do. As Director-General
of the Answers to Correspondents column of _The Family Herald_
Mr. Runciman was brought into more vitalising touch with the broad and
solid realities of the average life of the average human being, with
all its wretched pettiness and its pathetic anxieties, its carking
cares and its wild, irrational aspirations, than he would have been if
he had spent his nights in dining out in Mayfair and lounged all day
in the clubs of Pall Mall.
The essays which he contributed to _The Family Herald_ were therefore
adjusted to the note which every week was sounded by his innumerable
correspondents. He was in touch with his public. He did not write above
their heads. His contributions were eminently readable, bright,
sensible, and interesting. He always had something to say, and he said
it, as was his wont, crisply, deftly, and well. And through the chinks
and crevices of the smoothly written essay you catch every now and then
glimpses of the Northumbrian genius whose life burnt itself out at the
early age of thirty-nine.
For James Runciman was anything but a smug, smooth, sermonical
essayist. He was a Berserker of the true Northern breed, whose fiery
soul glowed none the less fiercely because he wore a large soft hat
instead of the Viking's helmet and wielded a pen rather than sword or
spear. Like the war-horse in Job, he smelled the battle afar off, the
thunder of the captains and the shouting. His soul rejoiced in
conflict, in the storm and the stress of the struggle both of nature
and of man. It was born in his blood, and what was lacking at birth
came to him in the north-easter which hurled the waves of the Northern
Sea in unavailing fury against the Northumbrian coast. He lived at a
tension too great to be maintained without incessant stimulus. It was
an existence like that of the heroes of Valhalla, who recruited at
night the energies dissipated in the battles of the day by quaffing
bumpers of inexhaustible mead. In these essays we have the Berserker
in his milder moods, his savagery all laid aside, with but here and
there a glint, as of sun-ray on harness, to remind us of the sinking
in the glory and pride of his strength.
The essays abound with traces of that consummate mastery of English
which distinguished all his writings. He, better than any man of our
time, could use such subtle magic of woven words as to make the green
water of the ocean surge and boil into white foam on the printed page.
As befitted a dweller on the north-east coast, he passionately loved
the sea. The sea and the sky are the two exits by which dwellers in
the slums of Deptford and in North Shields can escape from the inferno
of life. He was a close observer of nature and of men. In his pictures
of life in the depths he was a grim and uncompromising realist, who,
however, was kept from pessimism by his faith in good women and his
knowledge of worse men in the past than even "the Squire" and the
valet-keeping prize-fighters of our time.
There was a sensible optimism about James Runciman, Conservative
though he styled himself,--although there are probably few who would
suspect that from such an essay as the bitter description of English
life in "Quiet Old Towns" or his lamentation over the unequal
distribution of wealth. His sympathy with the suffering of the
poor--of the real poor--was a constant passion, and he showed it quite
as much by his somewhat Carlylean denunciation of the reprobate as by
his larger advocacy of measures that seemed to him best calculated to
prevent the waste of child-life.
More than anything else there is in these essays the oozing through of
the bitter but kindly cynicism of a disillusionised man of the world.
His essay, for instance, entitled "Vanity of Vanities," is full of the
sense of vanity of human effort. And yet against the whole current of
this tendency to despondency and despair, we have such an essay as
"Are we Wealthy?" in which he declared the day of declamation has
passed, but that all things are possible to organisation. "In many
respects it is a good world, but it might be made better, nobler,
finer in every quarter, if the poor would only recognise wise and
silent leaders, and use the laws which men have made in order to
repair the havoc which other men have also made." But he reverts to
the note of sad and kindly cynicism as he contemplates this supreme
ironic procession of life with the laughter of gods in the background,
even although he hastens to remind us that much may be made of it if
we are wise.
These prose sermons by a tamed Berserker remind us somewhat of a
leopard in harness. But they are good sermons for all that, veritable
_tours de force_ considering who is their author and how alien to
him was the practice of preaching. His essay entitled "A Little Sermon
on Failures" might be read with profit in many a pulpit, and "Vanity
of Vanities" would serve as an admirable discourse on Ecclesiastes.
They illustrate the manysidedness of their gifted author not less than
his sympathetic treatment of distress and want in "Men who are Down."
These fragments snatched from the mass of his literary output need no
introduction from me. Mr. Grant Allen has written with friendly
appreciation of the man. I gladly join him in paying a tribute of
posthumous respect and admiration to James Runciman and his work.
W.T.S.
SIDE LIGHTS.
I.
LETTER-WRITERS.
Since old Leisure died, we have come to think ourselves altogether too
fine and too busy to cultivate the delightful art of correspondence.
Dickens seems to have been almost the last man among us who gave his
mind to letter-writing; and his letters contain some of his very best
work, for he plunged into his subject with that high-spirited
abandonment which we see in "Pickwick," and the full geniality of his
mind came out delightfully. The letter in which he describes a certain
infant schoolboy who lost himself at the Great Exhibition is one of
the funniest things in literature, but it is equalled in positive
value by some of the more serious letters which the great man sent off
in the intervals of his heavy labour. Dickens could do nothing by
halves, and thus, at times when he could have earned forty pounds a
day by sheer literary work, he would spend hours in answering people
whom he had never seen, and, what is more remarkable, these
"task"-letters were marked by all the brilliant strength and
spontaneity of his finest chapters. He was the last of the true
correspondents, and we shall not soon look upon his like again. With
all the contrivances for increasing our speed of communication, and
for enabling us to cram more varied action into a single life, we have
less and less time to spare for salutary human intercourse. The
post-card symbolises the tendency of the modern mind. We have come to
find out so many things which ought to be done that we make up our
minds to do nothing whatever thoroughly; and the day may come when the
news of a tragedy ruining a life or a triumph crowning a career will
be conveyed by a sixpenny telegram. In the bad old days, when postage
was dear and the means of conveyance slow, people who could afford to
correspond at all sat down to begin a letter as though they were about
to engage in some solemn rite. Every patch of the paper was covered,
and every word was weighed, so that the writer screwed the utmost
possible value for his money out of the post-office. The letters
written in the last century resembled the deliberate and lengthy
communications of Roman gentlemen like Cicero: and there is little
wonder that the good folk made the most of their paper and their time.
We find Godwin casually mentioning the fact that he paid twenty-one
shillings and eightpence for the postage of a letter from Shelley;
readers of _The Antiquary_ will remember that Lovel paid twenty-five
shillings postage for one epistle, besides half a guinea for the
express rider. _Certes_ a man had good need to drive a hard bargain
with the Post Office in those pinching times! Of course the "lower
orders"--poor benighted souls--were not supposed to have any
correspondence at all, and the game was kept up by gentlemen of
fortune, by merchants, by eager and moneyed lovers, and by stray
persons of literary tastes, who could manage to beg franks from
members of Parliament and other dignitaries. One gentleman, not of
literary tastes, once franked a cow and sent her by post; but this
kind of postal communication was happily rare. The best of the
letter-writers felt themselves bound to give their friends good worth
for their money, and thus we find the long chatty letters of the
eighteenth century purely delightful. I do not care much for Lord
Chesterfield's correspondence; he was eternally posing with an eye on
the future--perhaps on the very immediate future. As Johnson sternly
said, "Lord Chesterfield wrote as a dancing-master might write," and
he spoke the truth. Fancy a man sending such stuff as this to a raw
boy--"You will observe the manners of the people of the best fashion
there; not that they are--it may be--the best manners in the world,
but because they are the best manners of the place where you are, to
which a man of sense always conforms. The nature of things is always
and everywhere the same; but the modes of them vary more or less in
every country, and an easy and genteel conformity to them, or rather
the assuming of them at proper times and proper places, is what
particularly constitutes a man of the world, and a well-bred man!" All
true enough, but how shallow, and how ineffably conceited! Here is
another absurd fragment--"My dear boy, let us resume our reflections
upon men, their character, their manners--in a word, our reflections
upon the World." It is quite like Mr. Pecksniff's finest vein. There
is not a touch of nature or vital truth in the Chesterfield letters,
and the most that can be said of them is that they are the work of a
fairly clever man who was flattered until he lost all sense of his
real size. If we take the whole bunch of finikin sermons and compare
them with the one tremendous knock-down letter which Johnson sent to
the dandy earl, we can easily see who was the Man of the pair. When we
return to Walpole, the case is different. Horace never posed at all;
he was a natural gentleman, and anything like want of simplicity was
odious to him. The age lives in his charming letters; after going
through them we feel as though we had been on familiar terms with that
wicked, corrupt, outwardly delightful society that gambled and drank,
and scandalised the grave spirits of the nation, in the days when
George III. was young. Horace Walpole was the letter-writer of
letter-writers; his gossip carries the impress of truth with it; and,
though he had no style, no brilliancy, no very superior ability, yet,
by using his faculties in a natural way, he was able to supply
material for two of the finest literary fragments of modern times. I
take it that the most stirring and profoundly wise piece of modern
history is Carlyle's brief account of William Pitt, given in the "Life
of Frederick the Great." Once we have read it we feel as though the
great commoner had stood before us for a while under a searching
light; his figure is imprinted on the very nerves, and no man who has
read carefully can ever shake off an impression that seems burnt into
the fibre of the mind. This superlatively fine historic portrait was
painted by Carlyle solely from Walpole's material--for we cannot
reckon chance newspaper scraps as counting for much--and thus the
gossip of Strawberry Hill conferred immortality on himself and on our
own Titanic statesman. But Walpole's influence did not end there.
Whoever wants to read a very good and charming work should not miss
seeing Sir George Trevelyan's "Life of Charles James Fox." To praise
this book is almost an impertinence. I content myself with saying that
those who once taste its fascination go back to it again and again,
and usually end by placing it with the books that are "the bosom
friends" of men. Now the grim Scotchman lit up Horace's letters with
the lurid furnace-glow of his genius; Sir George held the serene lamp
of the scholar above the same letters, and lo, we have two pieces that
can only die when the language dies! What a feat for a mere
letter-writer to achieve! Let ambitious correspondents take example by
Horace Walpole, and learn that simplicity is the first, best--nay, the
only--object to be aimed at by the letter-writer.
We have forgotten the easy style of Walpole; we do not any longer care
much for Johnson, though his letters are indeed models; we have no
time for lovely whimsical elaborations like those of Cowper or Charles
Lamb; but still some of us--persons of inferior mind perhaps--do
attempt to write letters. To these I have a word to say. So far as I
can judge, after passing many, many hundreds and thousands of letters
through my hands, the best correspondents nowadays are either those
who have been educated to the finest point, and who therefore dare not
be affected, or those who have no education at all. A little while ago
I went through a terrific letter from a young man, who took up
seventeen enormous double sheets of paper in trying to tell me
something about himself. The handwriting was good, the air of educated
assurance breathed from the style was quite impassive, and the total
amount of six thousand eight hundred words was sufficient to say
anything in reason. Yet this voluminous writer managed to say nothing
in particular excepting that he thought himself very like Lord Byron,
that he was fond of courting, and that his own talents were supreme.
Now a simple honest narrative of youthful struggles would have held me
attentive, but I found much difficulty in keeping a judicial mind on
this enormous effusion. Why? Because the writer was a bad
correspondent; he was so wrapped up in himself that he could not help
fancying that every one else must be in the same humour, and thus he
produced a dull, windy letter in spite of his tolerable smattering of
education. On the other hand, I often study simple letters which err
in the matter of spelling and grammar, but which are enthralling in
interest. A domestic servant modestly tells her troubles and gives the
truth about her life; every word burns with significance--and
Shakespeare himself could do no more than give music of style and
grave coherence to the narrative. The servant writes well because she
keeps clear of high-sounding phrases, and writes with entire
sincerity. It is the sincerity that attracts the judicious reader, and
it is only by sincerity that any letter-writer can please other human
creatures. Beauty of style counts for a great deal; I would not
sacrifice the exquisite daintiness of epistolary style in Lamb or
Coleridge or Thackeray or Macaulay for gold. But style is not
everything, and the very best letter I ever read--the letter which
stands first in my opinion as a model of what written communications
should be--is without grammar or form or elegance. It is simply a
document in which the writer suppresses himself, and conveys all the
intelligence possible in a limited space. To all letter-writers I
would say, "Let your written words come direct from your own mind. The
moment you try to reproduce any thought or any cadence of language
which you have learned from books you become a bore, and no sane man
can put up with you. But, if you resolve that the thought set down
shall be yours and yours alone, that the turns of phrase shall be such
as you would use in talking with your intimates, that each word shall
be prompted by your own knowledge or your belief, then it does not
matter a pin if you are ignorant of spelling, grammar, and all the
graces; you will be a pleasing correspondent." Look at the letters of
Lady Sarah Lennox, who afterwards became the mother of the brilliant
Napiers. This lady did not know how to put in a single stop, and her
spelling is more wildly eccentric than words can describe, yet her
letters are enthralling, and natural fire and fun actually seem to
derive piquancy from the schoolgirlish errors. If you sit down to
write with the intention of being impressive, you may not make a fool
of yourself, but the chances are all in that direction; whereas, if
you resolve with rigid determination to say something essential about
some fact and to say it in your own way, you will produce a piece of
valuable literature. Of course there are times when dignity and
gravity are necessary in correspondence, but even dignity cannot be
divorced from simplicity. Supposing that, by an evil chance, a person
finds himself bound to inflict an epistolary rebuff on another, the
rebuff entirely fails if a single affected word is inserted. The most
perfect example of a courteous snub with which I am acquainted was
sent by a master of measured and ornamental prose. Gibbon, the
historian, received a very lengthy and sarcastic letter from the
famous Doctor Priestley, of Birmingham. Priestley blamed Gibbon for
his covert mode of attacking Christianity, and observed that Servetus
was more to be admired for his courage as a martyr than for his
services as a scientific discoverer. Now Gibbon knew by instinct that
the historic style would at once become ludicrous if used to answer
such a letter; so he deserted his ordinary majestic manner, and wrote
thus--
"SIR--As I do not pretend to judge of the sentiments or intentions
of another, I shall not inquire how far you are inclined to suffer
or inflict martyrdom. It only becomes me to say that the style
and temper of your last letter have satisfied me of the propriety
of declining all further correspondence, whether public or private,
with such an adversary."
A perfect sneer, a perfectly guarded and telling rebuff. But I do not
care to speak about the literature of quarrels; my concern is mainly
with those readers who have relatives scattered here and there, and
who try to keep up communications with the said relatives. Judging
from the countless letters which I see, only a small percentage of
people understand that the duty of a correspondent is to say something.
As a general rule, it may be taken for granted that abstract
reflections are a bore; and I am certain that an exiled Englishman
would be far more delighted with the letter of a child who told him
about the farm or the cows, or the people in the street, or the
marriages and christenings and engagements, than he would be with
miles of sentiment from an adult, no matter how noble might be the
language in which the sentiment was couched. Partly, then, as a hint
to the good folk who load the foreign-bound mails, partly as a hint to
my own army of correspondents,[1] I have given a fragment of the
fruits of wide experience. Remember that stately Sir William Temple is
all but forgotten; chatty Pepys is immortal. Windy Philip de Commines
is unread; Montaigne is the delight of leisurely men all the world
over. The mighty Doctor Robertson is crowned chief of bores; the
despised Boswell is likely to be the delight of ages to come. The
lesson is--be simple, be natural, be truthful; and let style, grace,
grammar, and everything else take care of themselves. I spoke just now
of the best letter I have ever read, and I venture to give a piece of
it--
[1] Written when Mr. Runciman answered correspondents of the
_Family Herald_.
"DEAR MADAM,--No doubt you and Frank's friends have heard the sad
fact of his death here, through his uncle or the lady who took his
things. I will write you a few lines, as a casual friend that sat
by his death-bed. Your son, Corporal Frank H. ----, was wounded
near Fort Fisher. The wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. On
the 4th of April the leg was amputated a little above the knee;
the operation was performed by Dr. Bliss, one of the best surgeons
in the Army--he did the whole operation himself. The bullet was
found in the knee. I visited and sat by him frequently, as he was
fond of having me. The last ten or twelve days of April I saw that
his case was critical. The last week in April he was much of the
time flighty, but always mild and gentle. He died 1st of May.
Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical
treatment, nursing, &c. He had watchers most of the time--he was
so good and well-behaved and affectionate. I myself liked him very
much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by
him and soothing him; and he liked to have me--liked to put his
arm out and lay his hand on my knee--would keep it so a long
while. Towards the last he was more restless and flighty at
night--often fancied himself with his regiment, by his talk
sometimes seemed as if his feelings were hurt by being blamed by
his officers for something he was entirely innocent of--said, 'I
never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and never
was.' At other times he would fancy himself talking, as it seemed,
to children and such like--his relatives, I suppose--and giving
them good advice--would talk to them a long while. All the time he
was out of his head not one single bad word or idea escaped him.
It was remarked that many a man's conversation in his senses was
not half so good as Frank's delirium. He seemed quite willing to
die--he had become weak and had suffered a good deal, and was
quite resigned, poor boy! I do not know his past life, but I feel
as if it must have been good; at any rate, what I saw of him here
under the most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, and
among strangers, I can say that he behaved so brave, so composed,
and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpassed.... I
thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your
son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while,
for I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to
lose him."
The grammar here is all wrong, but observe the profound goodness of
the writer; he hides nothing he knows that bereaved mother wants to
know about her Frank, her boy; and he tells her everything essential
with rude and noble tenderness, just as though the woman's sorrowing
eyes were on his face. It is a beautiful letter, bald as it is, and I
commend the style to writers on all subjects, even though a
schoolmaster could pick the syntax to pieces.
II.
ON WRITING ONESELF OUT.
Lord Beaconsfield once compared his opponents on the Treasury Bench to
a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were
full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all
sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait,
supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political
pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men;
and there are certain symptoms which cause expert persons to say, "Ah,
poor Blank seems to have written himself out!" I have occasionally
alluded to this most distressing topic, but I have never discussed it
fully.
The subject of brain-exhaustion has a very peculiar interest for the
public as well as for the professional penman; half the slovenly prose
which ordinary men use in their correspondence is due to the bad
models set by written-out men, and the agonising exhibitions made by
some thousands of public speakers in this devoted and long-suffering
land are also due to the purblind weakness of the exhausted man. The
wrought-out writer is not permitted to cease from work; he goes on
droning out his fixed quantity of mortal dreariness day by day and
week by week until his mind spins along a particular groove, and he
probably repeats himself every day of his life without being aware
that he is anything but brilliantly original. I am obliged to study
many novels, and I know many most successful workers who at this
present time are turning out the same fiction under varied names with
monotonous regularity. They are not quite like an old hand whom I knew
long ago, who used to promote the characters in novelettes of his own
and turn them on to the market again and again; the effusions of this
genius were not of sufficient importance to attract attention from
folk with clear memories, and I believe that he escaped detection in a
miraculous way. His untitled country gentleman became a baronet, the
injured heroine was similarly moved up on the social scale, and the
noble effort came forth with a fresh name, while the knowing old
impostor chuckled in his garret and pouched his pittance. I believe
the funny soul has passed away; but really there are many very
pretentious persons who do little more than vary his methods
unconsciously. Poor James Grant delighted many a schoolboy, and
perhaps his best work was never quite so much appreciated as it ought
to have been. "The Black Dragoons," "The Queen's Own," and "The
Romance of War" all contained good work, and many gallant lads
delighted their hearts with them; I know that one youth at least
learned "The Black Dragoons" by heart, and amused the people in a
lonely farm-house by reciting whole chapters on winter nights, and I
have some reason to believe that the book gave the boy a taste for
literature which ended in his becoming a novelist. But, as Grant went
on with machine-like regularity, how curiously similar to each other
his books became! Narvaez Cifuentes, in "The Romance of War," is the
type of all the villains; the young dragoons were all alike; the
wooden heroines might have been chopped out by a literary carpenter
from one model; the charges, the escapes, the perils of the hero never
varied very much from volume to volume; and the fact was obvious that
the brain had ceased to develop any strikingly original ideas and only
the busy hand worked on. A very sarcastic personage once observed that
"it is better for literary men to read a little occasionally." To
outsiders the advice may seem like a piece of grotesque fun; but those
who know much of literary work are well aware that a writer may very
easily become possessed by a sick disgust of books which never leaves
him. He will look at volumes of extracts, he will skim poetry, he will
read eagerly for a few days or weeks in order to get up a subject; but
the pure delight in literature for its own sake has left him, and he
is as decidedly prosaic a tradesman as his own hosier. Such a man soon
joins the written-out division, and, unless he travels much or has a
keenly humorous eye for the things about him, he runs a very good
chance of becoming an intolerable bore. He forgets that the substance
of his brain is constantly fading, and that he needs not only to
replenish the physical substance of the organ by constant care, but to
replenish all his dwindling stores of knowledge, ideas, and even of
verbal resources. Among the older authors there were some who offered
melancholy spectacles of mental exhaustion; and the practised reader
knows how to look for particular features in their work, just as he
looks for Wouvermans' white horse and Beaumont's brown tree. These
literary spinners forget the example of Macaulay, who was quite
contented if he turned out two foolscap pages as his actual completed
task in mere writing for one day. He was never tired of laying in new
stores, and he persistently refreshed his memory by running over books
which he had read oftentimes before. The books and manuscripts which
Gibbon read in twenty years reached such an enormous number that, when
he attempted to form a catalogue of them, he was compelled to give up
the task in despair; he was constantly adding to the enormous
reservoir of knowledge which he had at command, and thus his work
never grew stale, and he was ready instantly with a hundred
illustrative lights on any point which chanced to crop up either in
conversation or in the course of his reading. The cheap and flashy
writer is inclined to disdain the men who are thorough in their
studies; but, while his work grows thin and poor, the judicious
reader's becomes marked by more and more of richness and fulness.
Burke kept his vast accumulations of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I
notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in
his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he
actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his
prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows
how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his
originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an
antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest of brains. Sir Walter
Scott was building up his brain until he was forty years old; then we
had the Homeric strength of "Marmion," the perfect art of the
"Antiquary," the unequalled romantic interest of "Guy Mannering," "Rob
Roy," "Ivanhoe," "Quentin Durward." The long years of steady
production drained that most noble flood of knowledge and skill until
we reached the obvious fatuity of "Count Robert" and the imbecilities
of "Castle Dangerous." Any half-dozen of such books as "Redgauntlet,"
"The Pirate," and "Kenilworth" were sufficient to give a man the
reputation of being great--and yet even that overwhelming opulence was
at last worn down into mental poverty. Poor Scott never gave himself
time to recover when once his descent of the last perilous slope had
begun, and he suffered for his folly in not resting.