Lalage, who lives with me, is occasionally moved to bitter
lamentations. Anyone who lived with me would lament bitterly
on occasion. As a philosopher I can realize this without undue
heartburning. But I claim that Lalage is unreasonable in doing this,
because she does not lament those things that are really lamentable.
Her chief cause of complaint is that my library contains no works of
reference. In vain I tell her that I have a dictionary, the finest
of all dictionaries. She only asks me coldly to produce it, and I--I
cannot. And she will not accept my unsupported word. I am unable to
produce the evidence because of all my books that dictionary is the
most butterfly-like. It settles now here, now there, and remains so
short a time in each place that Lalage, who has lived with me for eight
months, claims with apparent sincerity that she has never seen it. When
I have seen it myself I cannot say that I have paid much attention to
it except to experience a pleasantly possessive thrill. I never consult
it. I never need to. Usually I can grasp the meaning of an unfamiliar
word by the context and as for spelling--well, I am a good speller.
On those rare occasions when I really need to look up a word, my
dictionary being so much the will-o’-the-wisp, I have a better and more
informative way of looking it up. I take some book that I feel sure
will somewhere or other contain the word and I read through it until
my search is rewarded. In this way I refresh my memory of books that I
have read and even sometimes read books that otherwise I never should
have read.
Recently I have been informed that this practice of mine is one of the
many admirable methods of the Chinese. To find the proper use of a word
they search the classics. If that word does not appear in the classics,
so much the worse for the word. It dies.
From the actual use I have made of my dictionary I have got little but
sorrow. Many excellent words are ruined by too definite a knowledge
of their meaning. There is the tragic case of “hectic”. I had always
considered it a highly expressive word. I had used it joyously for
years to mean a convenient combination of “nervous”, “excitable”,
“feverish”. One ill-starred day I looked it up and I have never been
able to use it since. Its actual meaning is so far removed from its
meaning as used by me and the vulgar generally that I cannot even
remember what it was. No one could be expected to remember it. It
simply has nothing to do with the case.
But it is not only a dictionary that Lalage would have me possess. She
thinks I should have an encyclopædia. Now this is really the height of
folly. She knows that I have not sufficient room for those books that
I already own. An encyclopædia is ugly and cumbersome. Also it is an
expensive thing.
And to an encyclopædia there is the same serious objection that applies
to most works of reference. It is too practical and too detailed. What
information the average human mind might conceivably be able to grasp
is smothered under a mass of technicalities and so lost.
I have, for instance, read the article on navigation in an
encyclopædia. It was, doubtless, sound and, as such articles go, well
constructed. Far be it from me to offer any impertinent, half baked
criticism upon it. But the fact remains that not one shred of it clung
in my mind. What knowledge I have of seamanship, and it is ample for
my needs, I got from “The Hunting of the Snark”. From a work like that
you learn indelibly. You learn with the Bellman. In company with that
intelligent but untrained gentleman, I never knew whether an east wind
blew from the east or to the east. It is not a thing one can easily
inquire about. One might safely guess at it if it were not for the
technical terms. The phrase “due east” is certainly confusing if not
deliberately misleading. But after one reading of “The Hunting of the
Snark” the truth is fixed in your mind.
I do not think I am peculiar in this. Is there anyone who has not
learned more history from historical romances than from the pages of
histories themselves? I believe not.
It might be possible, with a little research, to draw up a list of
such substitutes to fill the places of all dull reference books on
library shelves. Dozens of delectable ones flash into my mind. But I
hold my hand because if I presented this list I should then be in the
despicable position of having perpetrated a work of reference. This I
have vowed I shall never do.
So I claim that Lalage is unreasonable. But I think privately that
it is better so. Unreason never annoys me. I have with it unfailing
patience. If Lalage came to me and complained that my housekeeping
compared unfavorably with that of Mrs. Jellyby--if in these benighted
days there are many who do not recognize Mrs. Jellyby I am glad of
that, because they won’t know what I mean--if she pointed out that I
begin a thousand things that I never finish, if she showed me that
though I am potentially a capable person I never accomplish anything,
she would be perfectly right. Reason would be all on her side. But then
I should be very angry.
_Floyd Dell_
Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois; but literary Chicago claims
him as her own. He is a slight, shy, sensitive man, essentially the
poet in temperament; but turned irrevocably novelist. His education,
which was never formal after early high school days, is broad, and
in some respects, deep. A voracious reader, he has taught himself
what many academicians do not know how to teach: the ability to think
constructively. His training as a writer began with reporting days in
Davenport, Iowa. Later, in Chicago, he became associate, then editor of
the Literary Page of the Chicago “Evening Post.” Since then he has been
connected in one way or another with “The Masses” and “The Liberator”
but he likes to feel that his active editorial days are past, and that
practically all of his time can now be devoted to work on his novels.
His critical viewpoint is well shown by the essay I use here. As a
novelist he is more emotional. Any one of his three stories displays
that. He is a conservative by nature, I believe, but intellectually
a radical. He believes, however, that “politics have nothing to do
with letters”. For that reason he has turned his political ideas into
channels of literary criticism. Dell is keen, fearless and just. For a
time he was somewhat biased by his great interest in psychoanalysis;
but even this is wearing off and he has again become the thoroughly
tolerant and wise young man. He is a born parent, and though he has his
own son to instruct, he still enjoys the rôle of preceptor. To this
position, however, he does not elect himself, and those who seek his
advice are fortunate.