was staying once in a Scotch country-house where, over his bed, hung an
illuminated scroll with the inscription, "Occupy till I come," which, as
Mr. Guthrie justly observes, is an unusually extended invitation, even
for Scottish notions of hospitality. According to the same authority,
the leading citizen of a seaside town erected some iron benches on the
sea front, and, with the view of at once commemorating his own
munificence and giving a profitable turn to the thoughts of the sitters,
inscribed on the backs--
THESE SEATS
WERE PRESENTED TO THIS TOWN OF SHINGLETON
BY
JOSEPH BUGGINS, ESQ.,
J.P. FOR THE BOROUGH.
"THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT."
Nothing is more deeply rooted in the mind of the average man than that
certain well-known aphorisms of piety are to be found in the
Bible--possibly in that lost book the Second Epistle to the Ephesians,
which Dickens must have had in his mind when he wrote in _Dombey and
Son_ of the First Epistle to that Church. "In the midst of life we are
in death" is a favourite quotation from this imaginary Scripture. "His
end was peace" holds its place on many a tomb in virtue of a similar
belief. "He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" is, I believe, commonly
attributed to Solomon; and a charming song which was popular in my youth
declared that, though the loss of friends was sad, it would have been
much sadder,
"Had we ne'er heard that Scripture word,
'Not lost, but gone before.'"
Mrs. Gamp, with some hazy recollections of the New Testament floating in
her mind, invented the admirable aphorism that "Rich folks may ride on
camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye." And
a lady of my acquaintance, soliloquizing on the afflictions of life and
the serenity of her own temper, exclaimed, "How true it is what Solomon
says, 'A contented spirit is like a perpetual dropping on a rainy day'!"
A Dissenting minister, winding up a week's mission, is reported to have
said, "And if any spark of grace has been kindled by these exercises,
oh, we pray Thee, water that spark." A watered spark is good, but what
of a harnessed volcano? When that eminent Civil servant, Sir Hugh Owen,
retired from the Local Government Board, a gentleman wrote to the _Daily
Chronicle_ in favour of "harnessing this by no means extinct volcano to
the great task" of codifying the Poor Law. An old peasant-woman in
Buckinghamshire, extolling the merits of her favourite curate, said to
the rector, "I do say that Mr. Woods is quite an angel in sheep's
clothing;" and Dr. Liddon told me of a Presbyterian minister who was
called on at short notice to officiate at the parish church of Crathie
in the presence of the Queen, and, transported by this tremendous
experience, burst forth in rhetorical supplication--"Grant that as she
grows to be an old woman she may be made a new man; and that in all
righteous causes she may go forth before her people like a he-goat on
the mountains."
Undergraduates, whose wretched existence for a week before each
examination is spent in the hasty acquisition of much ill-assorted and
indigestible knowledge, are not seldom the victims of similar
confusions. At Oxford--and, for all I know, at Cambridge too--a hideous
custom prevails of placing before the examinee a list of isolated texts,
and requiring him to supply the name of the speaker, the occasion, and
the context.
_Question_.--"'My punishment is greater than I can bear.' Who said this?
Under what circumstances?"
_Answer_.--"Agag, when he was hewn in pieces."
One wonders at what stage of the process he began to think it was going
a little too far.
"What is faith?" inquired an examiner in "Pass-Divinity." "Faith is the
faculty by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is not
true," replied the undergraduate, who had learned his definition by
heart, but imperfectly, from a popular cram-book. A superficial
knowledge of literature may sometimes be a snare. "Can you give me any
particulars of Oliver Cromwell's death?" asked an Examiner in History in
1874. "Oh yes, sir," eagerly replied the victim: "he exclaimed, 'Had I
but served my God as I have served my King, He would not in mine age
have left me naked to mine enemies.'"
"Things one would rather have expressed differently" are, I believe, a
discovery of Mr. Punch's. Of course he did not create them. They must be
as old as human nature itself. The history of their discovery is not
unlike that of another epoch-making achievement of the same great
genius, as set forth in the preface to the _Book of Snobs_. First, the
world was made; then, as a matter of course, snobs; they existed for
years and years, and were no more known than America. But
presently--_ingens patebat tellus_--people became darkly aware that
there was such a race. Then in time a name arose to designate that race.
That name has spread over England like railroads. Snobs are known and
recognised throughout an Empire on which the sun never sets. _Punch_
appeared at the ripe season to chronicle their history, and the
individual came forth to write that history in _Punch_. We may apply
this historical method to the origin and discovery of "Things one would
rather have expressed differently." They must have existed as long as
language; they must have flourished wherever men and women encountered
one another in social intercourse. But the glory of having discovered
them, recognized them, classified them, and established them among the
permanent sources of human enjoyment belongs to Mr. Punch alone.
"He was the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."
Let us humbly follow in his wake.
We shall see later on that no department of human speech is altogether
free from "Things one would rather have expressed differently;" but,
naturally, the great bulk of them belong to social conversation; and,
just as the essential quality of a "bull" is that it expresses
substantial sense in the guise of verbal nonsense, so the social "Thing
one would rather have expressed differently" must, to be really
precious, show a polite intention struggling with verbal infelicity. Mr.
Corney Grain, narrating his early experiences as a social entertainer,
used to describe an evening party given by the Dowager Duchess of S----
at which he was engaged to play and sing. Late in the evening the young
Duke of S---- came in, and Mr. Grain heard his mother prompting him in
an anxious undertone: "Pray go and say something civil to Mr. Grain. You
know he's quite a gentleman--not a common professional person." Thus
instructed, the young Duke strolled up to the piano and said,
"Good-evening, Mr. Grain. I'm sorry I am so late, and have missed your
performance. But I was at Lady ----'s. _We had a dancing-dog there._"
The married daughter of one of the most brilliant men of Queen
Victoria's reign has an only child. An amiable matron of her
acquaintance, anxious to be thoroughly kind, said, "O Mrs. W----, I hear
that you have such a clever little boy." Mrs. W., beaming with a
mother's pride, replied, "Well, yes, I think Roger is rather a sharp
little fellow." "Yes," replied her friend. "How often one sees
that--the talent skipping a generation!" A stately old rector in
Buckinghamshire--a younger son of a great family--whom I knew well in my
youth, had, and was justly proud of, a remarkably pretty and
well-appointed rectory. To him an acquaintance, coming for the first
time to call, genially exclaimed, "What a delightful rectory! Really a
stranger arriving in the village, and not knowing who lived here, would
take it for a gentleman's house." One of our best-known novelists, the
most sensitively courteous of men, arriving very late at a dinner-party,
was overcome with confusion--"I am truly sorry to be so shockingly
late." The genial hostess, only meaning to assure him that he was not
the last, emphatically replied "O, Mr. ----, you can't come too late." A
member of the present[33] Cabinet was engaged with his wife and daughter
to dine at a friend's house in the height of the season. The daughter
fell ill at the last moment, and her parents first telegraphed her
excuses for dislocating the party, and then repeated them earnestly on
arriving. The hostess, receiving them with the most cordial sympathy,
exclaimed, "Oh, it doesn't matter in the least to us; we are only so
sorry for your daughter." An eminent authoress, who lives not a hundred
miles from Richmond Hill, was asked, in my hearing, if she had been to
"write her name" at White Lodge, in Richmond Park (then occupied by the
Duchess of Took), on the occasion of an important event in the Duchess's
family. She replied that she had not, because she did not know the
Duchess, and saw no use in adding another stranger's signature to the
enormous list. "Oh, that's a pity," was the rejoinder; "the Royal Family
think more of the quantity of names than the quality."
In all these cases the courtesy of the intention was manifest; but
sometimes it is less easy to discover. Not long ago Sir Henry Trying
most kindly went down to one of our great Public Schools to give some
Shakespearean recitations. Talking over the arrangements with the Head
Master, who was not a man of felicities and facilities, he said, "Each
piece will take about an hour; and there must be fifteen minutes'
interval between the two." "Oh! certainly," replied the Head Master;
"you couldn't expect the boys to stand two hours of it without a break."
The newly appointed rector of one of the chief parishes in London was
entertained at dinner by a prominent member of the congregation.
Conversation turned on the use of stimulants as an aid to intellectual
and physical effort, and Mr. Gladstone's historic egg-flip was cited.
"Well, for my own part," said the divine, "I am quite independent of
that kind of help. The only occasion in my life when I used anything of
the sort was when I was in for my tripos at Cambridge, and then, by the
doctor's order, I took a strong dose of strychnine, in order to clear
the brain." The hostess, in a tone of the deepest interest, inquired,
"How soon did the effect pass off?" and the rector, a man of academical
distinction, who had done his level best in his inaugural sermons on the
previous Sunday, didn't half like the question.
Not long ago I was dining with one of the City Companies. On my right
was another guest--a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers. We
had a long and genial conversation on topics relevant to Smithfield,
when, in the midst of it, I was suddenly called on to return thanks for
the visitors. The chairman, in proposing the toast, was good enough to
speak of my belongings and myself in flattering terms, to which I hope
that I suitably responded. When I resumed my seat my butcher friend
exclaimed, with the most obvious sincerity, "I declare, sir, I'm quite
ashamed of myself. To think that I have been sitting alongside of a
gentleman all the evening, and never found it out!"
The doorkeepers and attendants at the House of Commons are all old
servants, who generally have lived in great families, and have obtained
their places through influential recommendations. One of these fine old
men encountered, on the opening day of a new Parliament, a young sprig
of a great family who had just been for the first time elected to the
House of Commons, and thus accosted him, with tears in his eyes: "I am
glad indeed, sir, to see you here; and when I think that I helped to put
your noble grandfather and grandmother both into their coffins, it makes
me feel quite at home with you." Never, surely, was a political career
more impressively auspicated.
These Verbal Infelicities are by no means confined to social
intercourse. Lord Cross, when the House laughed at his memorable speech
in favour of Spiritual Peers, exclaimed in solemn remonstrance, "I hear
a smile." When the Bishop of Southwell, preaching in the London Mission
of 1885, began his sermon by saying, "I feel a feeling which I feel you
all feel," it is only fair to assume that he said something which he
would rather have expressed differently. Quite lately I heard an Irish
rhetorician exclaim, "If the Liberal Party is to maintain its position,
it must move forward." A clerical orator, fresh from a signal triumph at
a Diocesan Conference, informed me, together with some hundreds of
other hearers, that when his resolution was put "quite a shower of hands
went up;" and at a missionary meeting I once heard that impressive
personage, "the Deputation from the Parent Society," involve himself
very delightfully in extemporaneous imagery. He had been explaining that
here in England we hear so much of the rival systems and operations of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Missionary
Society that we are often led to regard them as hostile institutions;
whereas if, as he himself had done, his hearers would go out to the
mission-field and observe the working of the societies at close
quarters, they would find them to be in essential unison. "Even so," he
exclaimed; "as I walked in the beautiful park which adjoins your town
to-day, I noticed what appeared at a distance to be one gigantic tree.
It was only when I got close to it and sat down under its branches that
I perceived that what I had thought was one tree was really two
trees--as completely distinct in origin, growth, and nature as if they
had stood a hundred miles apart." No one in the audience (besides
myself) noticed the infelicity of the illustration; nor do I think that
the worthy "Deputation," if he had perceived it, would have had the
presence of mind to act as a famous preacher did in like circumstances,
and, throwing up his hands, exclaim, "Oh, blessed contrast!"
But it does not always require verbal infelicity to produce a "Thing one
would rather have expressed differently." The mere misplacement of a
comma will do it. A distinguished graduate of Oxford determined to enter
the Nonconformist ministry, and, quite unnecessarily, published a
manifesto setting forth his reasons and his intentions. In his
enumeration of the various methods by which he was going to mark his
aloofness from the sacerdotalism of the Established Church, he wrote; "I
shall wear no clothes, to distinguish me from my fellow-Christians."
Need I say that all the picture-shops of the University promptly
displayed a fancy portrait of the newly fledged minister clad in what
Artemus Ward called "the scandalous style of the Greek slave," and
bearing the unkind inscription--"The Rev. X.Y.Z. distinguishing himself
from his fellow-Christians"? If a comma too much brought ruin into Mr.
Z.'s allocution, a comma too little was the undoing of a well-remembered
advertisement. "A PIANO for sale by a lady about to leave England in an
oak case with carved legs."
An imperfect sympathy with the prepossessions of one's environment may
often lead the unwary talker to give a totally erroneous impression of
his meaning. Thus the Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford once brought an
Indian army chaplain to dine at the high table of Oriel, and in the
common room after dinner the Fellows courteously turned the conversation
to the subject of life and work in India, on which the chaplain held
forth with fluency and zest. When he had made an end of speaking, the
Professor of Anglo-Saxon, who was not only a very learned scholar but
also a very devout clergyman, leaned forward and said, "I am a little
hard of hearing, sir, but from what I could gather I rejoice to infer
that you consider the position of an army chaplain in India a hopeful
field." "Hopeful field indeed," replied the chaplain; "I should rather
think so! You begin at £400 a year."
A too transparent honesty which reveals each transient emotion through
the medium of suddenly chosen words is not without its perils. None that
heard it could ever forget Norman Macleod's story of the Presbyterian
minister who, when he noticed champagne-glasses on the dinner-table,
began his grace, "Bountiful Jehovah!" but, when he saw only
claret-glasses, subsided into, "We are not worthy of the least of Thy
mercies." I deny the right of Bishop Wilberforce in narrating this story
in his diary to stigmatize this good man as "gluttonous." He was simply
honest, and his honesty led him into one of those "Things one would
rather have expressed differently." But, however expressed, the meaning
would have been the same, and equally sound.
Absence of mind, of course, conversationally slays its thousands, though
perhaps more by the way of "Things one would rather have left unsaid"
than by "Things one would rather have expressed differently." The late
Archbishop Trench, a man of singularly vague and dreamy habits, resigned
the See of Dublin on account of advancing years, and settled in London.
He once went back to pay a visit to his successor, Lord Plunket. Finding
himself back again in his old palace, sitting at his old dinner-table,
and gazing across it at his old wife, he lapsed in memory to the days
when he was master of the house, and gently remarked to Mrs. Trench, "I
am afraid, my love, that we must put this cook down among our failures."
Delight of Lord and Lady Plunket!
Medical men are sometimes led by carelessness of phrase into giving
their patients shocks. The country doctor who, combining in his
morning's round a visit to the Squire and another to the Vicar, said
that he was trying to kill two birds with one stone, would probably have
expressed himself differently if he had premeditated his remark; and a
London physician who found his patient busy composing a book of
Recollections, and asked, "Why have you put it off so long?" uttered a
"Thing one would rather have left unsaid." The "donniest" of Oxford dons
in an unexampled fit of good nature once undertook to discharge the
duties of the chaplain of Oxford Jail during the Long Vacation.
Unluckily it so fell out that he had to perform the terrible office of
preparing a criminal for execution, and it was felt that he said a
"Thing one would rather have expressed differently," when, at the close
of his final interview, he left the condemned cell, observing, "Well, at
eight o'clock to-morrow morning, then."
The path of those who inhabit Courts is thickly beset with pitfalls.
There are so many things that must be left unsaid, and so many more that
must be expressed differently. Who does not know the "Copper Horse" at
Windsor--that equestrian statue at the end of the Long Walk to which
(and back again) the local flyman always offers to drive the tourist?
Queen Victoria was entertaining a great man, who, in the afternoon,
walked from the Castle to Cumberland Lodge. At dinner her Majesty, full,
as always, of gracious solicitude for the comfort of her guests, said,
"I hope you were not tired by your long walk?" "Oh, not at all, thank
you, ma'am. I got a lift back as far as the Copper Horse." "As far as
what?" inquired her Majesty, in palpable astonishment. "Oh, the Copper
Horse, at the end of the Long Walk!" "That's not a copper horse. That's
my grandfather!"
A little learning is proverbially dangerous, and often lures vague
people into unsuspected perils. One of the most charming ladies of my
acquaintance, remonstrating with her mother for letting the fire go out
on a rather chilly day, exclaimed, "O dear mamma, how could you be so
careless? If you had been a Vestal Virgin you would have been bricked
up." When the London County Council first came into existence, it used
to assemble in the Guildhall, and the following dialogue took place
between a highly cultured councillor and one of his commercial
colleagues.
_Cultured Councillor_. "The acoustics of this place seem very bad."
_Commercial Councillor (sniffing)_. "Indeed, sir? I haven't perceived
anything unpleasant."
A well-known lady had lived for some years in a house in Harley Street
which contained some fine ornamentation by Angelica Kauffmann, and, on
moving to another quarter of the town, she loudly lamented the loss of
her former drawing-room, "for it was so beautifully painted by Fra
Angelico."
Mistakes of idiom are the prolific parents of error, or, as Mrs.
Lirriper said, with an admirable confusion of metaphors, breed fruitful
hot water for all parties concerned. "The wines of this hotel leave one
nothing to hope for," was the alluring advertisement of a Swiss
innkeeper who thought that his vintages left nothing to be desired. Lady
Dufferin, in her Reminiscences of Viceregal Life, has some excellent
instances of the same sort. "Your Enormity" is a delightful variant on
"Your Excellency;" and there is something really pathetic in the Baboo's
benediction, "You have been very good to us, and may Almighty God give
you tit for tat." But to deride these errors of idiom scarcely lies in
the mouth of an Englishman. A friend of mine, wishing to express his
opinion that a Frenchman was an idiot, told him that he was a
"cretonne." Lord R----, preaching at the French Exhibition, implored his
hearers to come and drink of the "eau de vie;" and a good-natured
Cockney, complaining of the incivility of French drivers, said, "It is
so uncalled for, because I always try to make things pleasant by
beginning with 'Bon jour, Cochon.'" Even in our own tongue Englishmen
sometimes come to grief over an idiomatic proverb. In a debate in
Convocation at Oxford, Dr. Liddon, referring to a concession made by the
opposite side, said, "It is proverbially ungracious to look a gift horse
_in the face._" And, though the undergraduates in the gallery roared
"Mouth, sir; mouth!" till they were hoarse, the Angelic Doctor never
perceived the unmeaningness of his proverb.
Some years ago a complaint of inefficiency was preferred against a
workhouse-chaplain, and, when the Board of Guardians came to consider
the case, one of the Guardians, defending the chaplain, observed that
"Mr. P---- was only fifty-two, and had a mother running about."
Commenting on this line of defence, a newspaper, which took the view
hostile to the chaplain, caustically remarked:--"On this principle, the
more athletic or restless were a clergyman's relatives, the more
valuable an acquisition would he himself be to the Church. Supposing
that some Embertide a bishop were fortunate enough to secure among his
candidates for ordination a man who, in addition to 'a mother running
about,' had a brother who gained prizes at Lillie Bridge, and a cousin
who pulled in the 'Varsity Eight, and a nephew who was in the School
Eleven, to say nothing of a grandmother who had St. Vitus's Dance, and
an aunt in the country whose mind wandered, then surely Dr. Liddon
himself would have to look out for his laurels."
The "Things one would rather have expressed differently" for which
reporters are responsible are of course legion. I forbear to enlarge on
such familiar instances as "the shattered libertine of debate," applied
to Mr. Bernal Osborne, and "the roaring loom of the _Times_" when Mr.
Lowell had spoken of the "roaring loom of time." I content myself with
two which occurred in my own immediate circle. A clerical uncle of mine
took the Pledge in his old age, and at a public meeting stated that his
reason for so doing was that for thirty years he had been trying to cure
drunkards by making them drink in moderation, but had never once
succeeded. He was thus reported:--"The rev. gentleman stated that his
reason for taking the Pledge was that for thirty years he had been
trying to drink in moderation, but had never once succeeded." Another
near relation of mine, protesting on a public platform against some
misrepresentation by opponents, said:--"The worst enemy that any cause
can have to fight is a double lie in the shape of half a truth." The
newspaper which reported the proceedings gave the sentiment thus:--"The
worst enemy that any cause can have to fight is a double eye in the
shape of half a tooth." And, when an indignant remonstrance was
addressed to the editor, he blandly said that he certainly had not
understood the phrase, but imagined it must be "a quotation from an old
writer."