one subject after another, rapidly, yet more rapidly, tumbling over
himself, desiring to avoid your eye. But he must take breath. You
seize your moment and you say, "And what about that five pounds?"
The "and" makes all the difference. It makes your remark part of the
conversation. A gesture, not a blow.
In the same way you can recall an omitted name. When you have praised
Tom, Dick, Harry, you add gently, "And Jack, what about Jack?" It is
a pleasant, easy reproach or a reminder. Very much nicer than saying,
"Why not a word about Jack?"--which would be brutal.
"And" is also what the older grammarians have called stammerative--that
is, it fills a chasm in the public speeches of public men, though here
it is not so useful as certain other sounds. I have made a study of
the sounds common to politicians in distress. I find that out of one
hundred occasions "er--er" will come in eighty times; "I--I--I" eleven
times; the less graceful "and ..., and ..., and" during periods of
embarrassment only accounts for five. Moreover, the repeated "and"
is hardly ever used in the absolute; by public speakers it is nearly
always used with "er."
"And" also has the value of an affix. It comes before a lot of little
phrases, where it acts like glue, sticking that little phrase on to the
rest--"and" if, "and" even, "and" though; a humble use, but necessary
enough, allowing the mind to work in a soft material.
"And" has various rhetorical uses which are to be admired--you can make
long lists with it.
So attractive is "and" to the human mind that it will often expand
itself, developing like a lot of soap bubbles--"and so," "and
moreover," "and also." But the best of all these phrases--the king
of them--is "and also, what is more." It is the most familiar of
all phrases in the mouths of politicians. Do violence to yourself,
force yourself to listen to a politician making speeches in private
conversation as is the politician's way. You will hear that phrase
repeated. "And also, what is more." It is native to the tub-thumping
fraternity. These things give a sentence the advantage of piling up
wordy wealth, as it were, very satisfactory to the fatigued or the
empty or the hesitant.
Those great men, our fathers, felt about "and" something reverend or
peculiar, so that they hardly thought of it as a word, but as a sort of
symbol. They put it at the end of the alphabet, calling it "ampersand."
It is one of the worst things about our detestable time that this
ancient national thing "ampersand" is forgotten. The old refrain used
to be: a, b, c, ..., x, y, z, _ampersand_--that long word "ampersand,"
that fine ritual title, referred to the symbol "&" which "and" alone
of words possesses. You find it in the old horn books. The children of
England knew it by heart for centuries. But the modern flood came: it
is gone.
The enemies of "and" will have it that a good style in English is to be
obtained by cutting out "and." These are the same people who say that
a good style is to be obtained by cutting out adjectives. There are no
such short cuts. Also, to be an enemy of "and" is to be an enemy of all
good things. It is to fear exuberance, which is the tide of life.
"And" has, again, rhythmical value, as in the ecclesiastical or
liturgical line:
And Parson and Clerk and the Devil and all
--with hosts of other lines which dignify the vast storehouse of the
English lyric.
Of the modern masterpieces there is one--the best known of all,
perhaps--where "and" does an enormous amount of work, which is the poem
of _Innisfree_. It gives the rhythm as well as the mystery. I should
like to see what the fools who are for cutting out "and" would make of
that poem.
But the most sublime use of "and," alas! we have not. It is the "and"
disjunctive; on which turned one of the great moments of history.
For you must know that when the second Council of Nicea finally
condemned the monstrosities of the Iconoclasts, a saintly bishop
from Cyprus wrote his opinion in Greek saying, "I revere, I embrace
the sacred images, [Greek: kai] I give worship to the Life-giving
Trinity"--which is as much as to say, that he would be polite enough
to an image, _but_ his worship he reserved for the only true object of
worship.
Now, this pronouncement was carried to a Council of the West, sitting
at Frankfort, where there were bishops of the Pyrenees, of Gaul, of the
Rhine Valley, of the Low Countries, of the Burgundian Hills, of the
Swiss Mountains--indeed of all parts whatsoever that owed allegiance to
Charlemagne.
At that moment Charlemagne was already wishing to be an emperor in the
West. Those who served him were only too glad to find the Empire of the
East--which claimed to be universal--making a howler. But the swarm of
holy and unholy men at Frankfort were abominably ignorant of Greek.
They did not understand the disjunctive value of [Greek: kai]. They
thought it a mere barbaric "and." They translated this famous phrase
"I jumble up in one worship God and images." They rushed out with some
fury against such a doctrine. They registered their hatred of it. On
this point also Gibbon has (as one might expect) abominably falsified
history.... But no matter.
The Bishops of Frankfort said what they had to say. In vain did those
of Rome, who were acquainted with Greek, tell them that they had taken
the sentence exactly upside down--that it meant "I do _not_ worship
the images. I distinguish the observance I give them from the worship
I offer to That which alone is worthy of worship." They still clung
to their primitive error. With difficulty were they led back into the
right fold.
What great consequences their ignorance might have had! We might to-day
be deprived of the Bambino. We might have lost Brou (but not Santiago,
I think; for the Spaniards, and in particular the Galicians, are of a
temper which will stand no nonsense. Though 1462 General Councils had
condemned images, the Spaniard would have had them all the same: in
which I praise him. Honour to the Pilar!).
Now, though it does not concern the little word "and," yet I am
reminded (by this mention of the Second Council of Nicea) of a
certain story which, as you may not previously have heard it, I will
now proceed to relate. With that story I shall conclude; nor will
your prayers and entreaties, however loud and passionate, move me to
continue. I will tell you the story; then I will have done.
The story is this. As the Eastern bishops were travelling to the second
Council of Nicea, the more worldly of them (these were the greater
part) were very much disgusted to meet one particularly good bishop who
had been bred a shepherd. He was poor. His manners were bad. He did
not shave regularly. He was badly dressed. He was what they call in
Birmingham "no class."
They jeered at him a little, but more than their jeering was their
fear lest they should lost caste by entering the Imperial City in such
company. So after this saintly man had made himself quite intolerable
at dinner, they cast up a plot against him.
He had come with only one deacon, sitting each of them upon a mule,
the one a brown mule, the other mottled. The mules were stabled in the
great inn of the village where all were assembled. When the saintly,
but not smart, bishop had gone to his rest, the smart bishops secretly
sent a bravo into the stable to cut off the heads of the two mules. "In
this way," said these wicked, worldly bishops, "we shall be spared the
humiliating presence of the boor when we enter the imperial town; nor
will men ever know that we kept such low company."
Long before it was dawn the poor Bishop's deacon, like a good deacon,
a good rustic deacon, shook himself out of sleep. He went down to the
stable with a lantern to get ready the beasts against the morning
journey. With what horror did he not see there two heads lying upon the
ground! The one was of his own mottled mule, the other of his master's
brown mule. The mottled head lay severed upon the straw beside the
brown head, the headless trunks leaning all collapsed against the stall
sides.
The deacon, rushing up to his master, banged at the door, saying, "My
Lord! My Lord! Evil men have cut off our mules' heads!" The Right
Reverend, only half awake, said, "Sew them on again! When I wake I will
attend to it."
The deacon went down to the stable. With many tears he sewed on the
two heads of the dead mules. The Bishop, when he had risen from sleep,
said his prayers, came down into the stable, where, he having blessed
the two mules, they came to life again in the most natural manner in
the world. When he had breakfasted, he rejoined his deacon. Mounting
the two beasts, they rode out into the break of the day. But, the
light broadening as they approached the city gate, the crowd saw with
astonishment a brown mule with a mottled head abreast of a mottled mule
with a brown head, for the deacon, confused in the half darkness of the
morning, had sewed the wrong heads to the wrong bodies.
Note the effect--as the veracious chronicler gives it. "Thus by that
very action whereby these evil men had hoped to bring their companion
to shame they did but the rather thrust him into glory; for their
cruelty to the dumb beasts did but serve to heighten his holiness,
making proof of God's power through him who could bring the dead to
life."
Many are the morals of this tale, one of which is that it is silly to
take more trouble than is necessary. For if the wicked Bishops had only
drugged the mules instead of cutting their heads right off there would
have been no miracle, nor glory to their despised colleague. Another is
that if a thing is true you must believe it, however astonishing and
unlikely it may sound in the ear of the unbeliever. Another is that a
bishop has the right to get up rather later than the lower branches of
the hierarchy. There are many other morals; but I will end. For if I go
on I shall certainly bring "and" into my own sentences, _which up to
this point I have managed to avoid_. "And" is not really necessary at
all.
THE CAD'S ENCYCLOPÆDIA
I have a wealthy friend. He made his money by accident during the war.
The Government owed him £500. A careless clerk (who was talking to a
minx at the time) added three noughts without thinking, and on his
modestly pointing out the error, the department wrote back to say they
never made mistakes. And so it rested at that. After long hesitation
how to get rid of all this money, he is at last engaged upon what I
cannot but think a very useful work. I only wish that every rich man
could be inspired by similarly valuable ideas, instead of frittering
away money upon buying newspapers and souls and uneatable food in noisy
restaurants.
This rich friend of mine had always had the idea, when he was poor, of
getting together a Cad's Encyclopædia.
All the publishers whom he approached told him (with truth) that
nothing is more venturesome than an Encyclopædia, and that even when
one is pretty sure of a large public for one's subject the outlay is
very heavy and the risk considerable.
My friend had--in the days of his poverty--prepared a detailed
memorandum in which he urged the advantage of his scheme. He pointed
out that there was an enormous number of Cads in the world, and that
even those who read books and could afford to buy an Encyclopædia
amounted to many millions. He urged the complete novelty of the scheme,
the long-felt want, and all the rest of it. But they replied to him
that a fatal drawback was the name.
"No doubt," said the head of one great firm, "there is a demand, and
Cads naturally desire a book of reference of their own for their
guidance and instruction; even those who are not Cads, but only
interested in the subject of Cads, would also want it for making
research. But few would buy it under that title because it is one which
men avoid applying to themselves and dislike having applied to them by
others. You will have noticed," said the great man genially, "that men
are eager to ascribe to themselves ignorance, fatuous good nature, even
appalling vices, but never Caddishness."
My friend could not but see the justice of the last remark, but he
still maintained that a thing was more successful in the long run under
its true name. He persisted in his idea, and when the accident of which
I speak had suddenly made him rich he proceeded to realise it.
The first volume will be out next October. It will be privately
published by a new firm created for the purpose. I hope I shall receive
no correspondence upon it, because I cannot be bothered to negotiate
its sale, but I shall give my friend the best advice as to how to put
it upon the market in the unavoidable shyness of the usual agents.
This Encyclopædia was not an easy thing to get together, apart from the
expense. First of all there was the difficulty of apportioning space.
That is a difficulty attaching to all Encyclopædias, but particularly
to an Encyclopædia on, and for the use of, and conveying information
upon, Cads. In an Encyclopædia of Agriculture, for instance, the
editors can make a fair guess as to what space will be wanted for
each pest attaching to particular forms of vegetation, but it was
difficult indeed to determine which habits of the Cad would require
most description; what should be set aside for his house, what for his
clothes, what for his manners; how many pages should be allowed to the
Cad in Literature; how many inches to the more exotic types of Cad,
such as the Negroid Cad, the Dago Cad, the International Wagon-lit Cad,
and so on.
Then there was a great debate between my friend and his sister on
the vexed question of the She-Cad. I took part in this and strongly
proclaimed my own opinion, which I have held for years after a very
close examination of the matter, that there is no such thing as a
She-Cad. A Cad is the opposite of a gentleman, just as a civilian is
the opposite of a soldier, or a layman of a cleric. But there are
no She-Gentlemen and therefore there are no She-Cads. To this it
was objected by my friend's sister that she had personally known and
handled several She-Cads, and she began to give examples. But I am glad
to say my friend agreed with me that the type did not exist, and showed
how every example his sister quoted was a false type and no more a
She-Cad than the lemon sole is a sole, or margarine butter.
Under V. (a volume which we hope to reach--if the next great war can
be staved off--round about 1930) we have, I am glad to say, a long and
valuable article on the Virtues of Cads. This article is from various
pens. All the introductory part has been written by an expert at party
headquarters, and the diagrams have been drawn by a diner-out who has
always got on well with Cads and has an exhaustive knowledge of their
habits. There is a special division on the financial virtues of Cads by
a banker and on the spiritual virtues of Cads by a divine of modernist
complexion. But the subject is so large that we have a reference in
small capitals at the end of the article to other special articles in
the same department, and especially to what may be called the Calendar
of Saints among Cads, that is, short biographies of Cads who have
excelled in one or other of the virtues.
Among the special articles, that devoted to the Literary Cad is treated
in two aspects--one by an opponent of such Cads, the other by an
eminent writer who is himself a Cad. Under the same letter "L," we
have a biography and bibliography of the Cad's Laureate who--thank
Heaven--is still with us.
"C," which will appear in the second volume, due next December, will
have under the heading "Candour" an article where the necessary
presence of candour in Caddishness is developed in a masterly fashion
by a psychological expert, and the fatal effect upon Caddishness of
worldly wisdom and subtlety is conclusively proved by an aged novelist.
No one can be a Cad (it is there clearly proved) who has not a simple
heart. Under the same letter, at the word "Concert" we have "The Cads'
Concert"; a full description, with a detailed bibliography of the
latest development in Cad literature, which is the publication to the
whole world of everything told one in private, and a great deal that
has not been told one at all.
Under "I" there will be an equally interesting and lengthy article
upon the Iconography of Cads, with a list of their principal portraits
and busts, including public statues of London and other great cities;
and under "T" a short, but very illuminating, essay upon the Theology
of Cads, illustrated by experts from the whole range of apologetics,
beginning with the opinions of the Early Fathers on the matter, and
ending, at any rate for the moment, with those of Mr. Wells.
A number of details which would hardly occur to the general reader
have been picked out with singular accuracy of judgment by my friend,
whose industry and zeal I cannot over-praise. For instance, he himself
deals, under "S," with the Cad and Spurs--showing why Cads hate Spurs
when they do not wear them themselves, and why when they do wear them
themselves they wear them too often and in incongruous surroundings.
Similarly we have the Cad and Checks--divided into cheques on a bank
and checks which you wear, the latter coming first for alphabetical
reasons. This should, perhaps, appear in the article on Cads and
Apparel, under "A," but though the article "Apparel" is exhaustive in
its way, readers are referred to special departments of this sort for
more detailed acquaintance with their subject. Among other points the
famous sentence: "_In colour he affected the maroon, in pattern a quiet
check_," is exhaustively discussed by various hands and its disputed
authorship finally established.
Under "A," by the way, we also have Cad's Architecture--a very
difficult subject--and a more general psychological and medical heading
of Animosity in Cads. The colouring of Cads, natural and artificial,
we have, after some debate, put forward to the letter "P" under
Pigment, because "C" was getting unwieldy. But Cad Catching or the art
of hunting and tracking down a Cad will be included in its natural
place with many diagrams and a list of the principal drugs, wines and
tobaccos used in the trade.
Cad Curing, on the other hand--that is, the art of curing a Cad of his
Caddishness--has been rejected from the heading "C" under the very just
decision that it is a false category. There is, properly speaking, no
curing of a Cad, because Caddishness is not a disease but a condition
which we are perfectly open to accept and even to admire if we please.
The whole subject has therefore been relegated to "E," where it is
dealt with under the rubric "Elimination." It also appears in the first
volume briefly by way of cross-reference under Auto-suggestion with
formulæ for daily repetition, such as "_Whatever else I am, I am a
gentleman_," or again, "_It is all imagination. I didn't really offend
them at all._" In this department we have valuable exercises described,
one of the most original of which is the setting apart of certain
streets in London of a particular length (among others, Gower Street
and the Cromwell Road) down which the patient is advised to walk at his
ordinary gait, repeating the formula, over and over again just after he
has paid a call at some house where he found himself coldly received.
The Encyclopædia can be bought at a reduction of 20 per cent. by those
who pay for the whole twelve volumes in advance. My friend, who has
already learned the elements of finance (he got his fortune a full
six years ago), has calculated that at the present rate of 7 per cent.
which any fool can obtain upon good security to-day, he is up about
13_s._ 2_d._ a copy on each subscriber who falls into the trap. He
is preparing a cheaper edition to appear immediately after the lists
of the first expensive edition are closed. This cheaper edition will
consist of the unsold sheets of the first, cut down and put into new
cases. I forgot to add that there are a certain number of coloured
plates in each volume and a very thorough and exhaustive index, on
the new American system, known technically as "The Labyrinth." There
is also a number of very handsome maps showing the geographical
distribution of Cads and elaborate curves, giving their vital
statistics, growth and decay. Every set has attached to it a general
"All In" policy of insurance with two new clauses specially drawn up,
one for the use of Cads threatened by the various dangers peculiar
to their rank, and the other for Non-Cads, ensuring them against the
various dangers peculiar to the Cad's approach and neighbourhood. All
this insurance is free.
ON THE MELTING OF THE ICE
I wish I had been there when the ice melted; in the days when the
great river valleys were formed, when the rich meadows were laid down
from the mud of the flooded rivers, and when the gravels were rolled
along, forming beaches one below the other as the waters subsided, when
Northern Europe was carved.
Men were there and saw it. Some say it was so little a while ago that
the great monarchies of the hot places, Egypt and Assyria, were in
their splendour, and there is something to be said for that saying.
It was an Englishman, spontaneous, individual, but at the same time
exact, who started that hare. And the hare may be more than a phantasm.
When you read the arguments it looks as though he were right. And if he
were right, what an explanation of history!... The Ice Melting but 5 or
6,000 years ago.
Then indeed could we explain how it is that the North was unheard of
during all these early centuries, and how it was that an increasing
field increasingly breeding men, expanded towards the North, and how
it is that you have no records of the North before the first movements
of tribes 3,000 years ago, and their greater movement 2,000 years
ago, and then at last the very late story of the brief Scandinavian
adventure with its marvellous epics. And it would explain also the
very small numbers of the North and the way in which the North got its
language so largely from the South--for what we call the "Teutonic
languages" to-day (of which we have no appreciable record till about
Charlemagne's time), turn out to be for half their matter at least
(and research will increase the proportion) built up of words from the
Mediterranean. [Read Wiener, his revolutionary book and the collapse of
the "Early Gothic" fraud.]
But apart from what it would explain in history, what a vision it must
have been whenever it took place! For the melting of the ice was very
rapid. The geologists do not always use their eyes. Look at those great
scoops in the chalk hills shorn out by the water as it swung from left
to right through the valleys, and see those enormous floods racing down.
See how those huge stones were rolled along which form the gravels of
the higher levels, and ask yourselves in what a current they drove! Or
wonder at the great sawings through the rock which unite and drain the
old lakes of the Pyrenees! That was a sight to see! It is just possible
that some one recorded it. Some traveller thrust up northward by exile
or by avarice may have come with his slaves and his retinue to the
edges of the enormous thing. He may have seen the Rhone tumbling like
a sea released through the gap of the Jura. Or he may have seen the
white seething at the mouths of the river which laid down the Camargue.
We see no such things nowadays.
Imagine yourself in a galley bowling westward under the Levanter
compelled to go further north than you had wished: the wind dropping.
Then your hanging about all night off the coast of what is now the
Stes. Maries, and then at morning hearing with fright, but with wonder,
on your starboard beam to the North, the enormous noise of waters, and
seeing the flecks of foam go by you, and catching on the horizon a sort
of low tumble or cataract or flood reaching the sea over twenty miles
of beach and carrying with it half a county of stones from the hills.
There the stones are to this day--a vast plain of sterile pebbles from
a fist to a pea. The ancients said that Hercules once passed that way.
Or think what it must have been to stand on the Ventoux and see the
melting of the ice from Auvergne. Or to stand driven upward on to the
hills of the Artois, and to see the waters rising in the Dover strait
below.
For the thing went very quickly, make no doubt of that.