nearing completion. The next effort was revision. This effort was
almost as worrying as the original writing. The records are often
contradictory and sometimes a whole day was spent trying to check some
small fact which eventually was cut out of the book.
Perhaps the greatest trouble when revising was given by the question of
wireless. Sir Walter was a man of letters. He was intensely interested
in anything and everything, however, and was not content to accept any
technical facts. He wanted to understand them. He was a constant
interrogative. Indeed it seemed sometimes as he curled his long body
into curious shapes in his chair that he formed a note of
interrogation. This question of the why? was no new developed one. He
once told me that when as a small boy he was sent to a governess, he
was given a Latin grammar and severely told to learn the first
declension. The word meant nothing to him. “Please what’s a
declension?” he asked. “_That’s_ a declension, and you just learn it,”
was the reply. But the answer was inadequate and Sir Walter took no
further interest in the lesson. He could not learn where he was not
interested. It was no use talking to him about “coherers” and
“microhenries.” His only comment would be that “microhenries” were far
better called “harries” for short.
So when after Chapter V had been written Captain Morris found new and
interesting information on the use of wireless telegraphy in aircraft
in the days before the war, the whole of this difficult chapter had to
be reopened for new patching. “In regard to wireless,” he wrote, “I am
like a blind man who has never talked to painters employed to write a
critique of a picture exhibition. It’s paralysing. The only escape is
to keep on broad lines. Every one knows that wireless sends messages. I
shall be happier when _events_ begin again.”
“I think I had better come up for a day and have a long talk with you
instead of writing what will have to be rewritten.” But he got to work
on wireless, and on May the 9th, “I have written about twenty or more
of my pages on wireless. I believe I have made it much clearer and
simpler _than it is_. I have arranged to come to London on Monday, June
20, bringing Chapter V (which is the devil) and as much more as I can.
VI will be plainer sailing.” But before he came to London he struggled
on with the wireless history. On May the 24th he wrote, “I fear I shall
make you impatient. I can go on, if I have to, and copy the statements
I have. But if I were a reader of the book, it would annoy me by
avoiding the questions that naturally suggest themselves to an
intelligent reader who has had no technical education,” and two days
later, “I know from long experience that any one who attempts
accurately to repeat what he does not understand never repeats it
accurately.... If I could get my brain tuned to the wave-lengths of all
these papers, something would begin to come through. All the
oscillations of my mind are strongly damped, but I hope soon to get an
oscillating current of high frequency.... After all it’s very little I
need write about the process and instruments.... What is Rouzet’s full
name?”
But June came and he was still working away with pain. “I feel I owe
you an apology, yet I am doing what I can. It’s the most difficult
thing yet--wireless, I mean. It is coming into shape, but there is
something absurd about sandwiching it in as an afterthought. It’s of
first-rate importance, and I fear it may delay us a little.” Then on
June the 12th:
“I shall come on Monday next week, latish morning, _with Chapter V_.
Not content or pleased. That wireless insertion has put the chapter out
of gear, and lots of small things, later on, seem clumsy. One can’t
write a book backwards. But I think we can patch it to look all right.
I depend on you and the office to go through my revised Chapter V in
the interests of consistency rather than of truth. I think the facts
are right now, and the chapter is like a plain-faced clumsy person
celebrated for saying true things in the wrong time and in the wrong
place.”
“Exam papers are pouring in in large bundles. I grudge every minute to
them.... I hope and believe that there won’t be another Chapter V.”