Part 34

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."

But if journalistic reporting, on which some care and thought are bestowed, sometimes proves misleading, common rumour is far more prolific of things which would have been better expressed differently. It is now (thank goodness!) a good many years since "spelling-bees" were a favourite amusement in London drawing-rooms. The late Lady Combermere, an octogenarian dame who retained a sempiternal taste for les petits jeux innocents kindly invited a young curate whom she had been asked to befriend to take part in a "spelling-bee." He got on splendidly for a while, and then broke down among the repeated "n's" in "drunkenness." Returning crestfallen to his suburban parish, he was soon gratified by hearing the rumour that he had been turned out of a lady's house at the West End for drunkenness.

Shy people are constantly getting into conversational scrapes, their tongues carrying them whither they know not, like the shy young man who was arguing with a charming and intellectual young lady.

Charming Young Lady. "The worst of me is that I am so apt to be run away with by an inference."

Shy Young Man. "Oh, how I wish I was an inference!"

When the late Dr. Woodford became Bishop of Ely, a rumour went before him in the diocese that he was a misogynist. He was staying, on his first round of Confirmations, at a country house, attended by an astonishingly mild young chaplain, very like the hero of The Private Secretary. In the evening the lady of the house said archly to this youthful Levite, "I hope you can contradict the story which we have heard about our new bishop, that he hates ladies." The chaplain, in much confusion, hastily replied, "Oh, that is quite an exaggeration; but I do think his Lordship feels safer with the married ladies."

Let me conclude with a personal reminiscence of a "Thing one would rather have left unsaid." A remarkably pompous clergyman who was an Inspector of Schools showed me a theme on a Scriptural subject, written by a girl who was trying to pass from being a pupil-teacher to a schoolmistress. The theme was full of absurd mistakes, over which the inspector snorted stertorously. "Well, what do you think of that?" he inquired, when I handed back the paper. "Oh," said I, in perfectly good faith, "the mistakes are bad enough, but the writing is far worse. It really is a disgrace." "Oh, my writing!" said the inspector; "I copied the theme out." Even after the lapse of twenty years I turn hot all over when I recall the sensations of that moment.

FOOTNOTES:

1897.

XXX.

THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS.

It was "A.K.H.B.," if I recollect aright, who wrote a popular essay on "The Art of Putting Things." As I know nothing of the essay beyond its title, and am not quite certain about that, I shall not be guilty of intentional plagiarism if I attempt to discuss the same subject. It is not identical with the theme which I have just handled, for "Things one would rather have expressed differently" are essentially things which one might have expressed better. If one is not conscious of this at the moment, a good-natured friend is always at hand to point it out, and the poignancy of one's regret creates the zest of the situation. For example, when a German financier, contesting an English borough, drove over an old woman on the polling-day, and affectionately pressed five shillings into her hand, saying, "Never mind, my tear, here's something to get drunk with," his agent instantly pointed out that she wore the Blue Ribbon, and that her husband was an influential class-leader among the Wesleyans.

But "The Art of Putting Things" includes also the things which one might have expressed worse, and covers the cases where a dexterous choice of words seems, at any rate to the speaker, to have extricated him from a conversational quandary. As an instance of this perilous art carried to high perfection, may be cited Abraham Lincoln's judgment on an unreadably sentimental book--"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like"--humbly imitated by two eminent men on this side of the Atlantic, one of whom is in the habit of writing to struggling authors--"Thank you for sending me your book, which I shall lose no time in reading;" while the other prefers the less truthful but perhaps more flattering formula--"I have read your blank verse, and much like it"

The late Mr. Walter Pater was once invited to admire a hideous wedding-present, compact of ormolu and malachite. Closing his eyes, the founder of modern aesthetics leaned back in his chair, and waving away the offending object, murmured in his softest tone, "Oh, very rich, very handsome, very expensive, I am sure. But they mustn't make any more of them."

Dexterities of phrase sometimes recoil with dire effect upon their author. A very popular clergyman of my acquaintance prides himself on never forgetting an inhabitant of his parish. He was stopped one day in the street by an aggrieved parishioner whom, to use a homely phrase, he did not know from Adam. Ready in resource, he produced his pocket-book, and, hastily jotting down a memorandum of the parishioner's grievance, he said, with an insinuating smile, "It is so stupid of me, but I always forget how to spell your name." "J--O--N--E--S," was the gruff response; and the shepherd and the sheep went their several ways in mutual disgust. Perhaps the worst recorded attempt at an escape from a conversational difficulty was made by an East-end curate who specially cultivated the friendship of the artisans. One day a carpenter arrived in his room, and, producing a photograph, said, "I've brought you my boy's likeness, as you said you'd like to have it."

Curate (rapturously). "How awfully good of you to remember! What a capital likeness! Where is he?"

Carpenter. "Why, sir, don't you remember? He's dead."

Curate. "Oh yes, of course, I know that. I mean, where's the man that took the photograph?"

The art of disguising an unpleasant truth with a graceful phrase was well illustrated in the case of a friend of mine, not remarkable for physical courage, of whom a tactful phrenologist pronounced that he was "full of precaution against real or imaginary danger." It is not every one who can tell a man he is an arrant coward without offending him. The same art, as applied by a man to his own shortcomings, is exemplified in the story of the ecclesiastical dignitary who gloried in his Presence of Mind. According to Dean Stanley, who knew him well, he used to narrate the incident in the following terms:--

"A friend invited me to go out with him on the water. The sky was threatening, and I declined. At length he succeeded in persuading me, and we embarked. A squall came on, the boat lurched, and my friend fell overboard. Twice he sank; and twice he rose to the surface. He placed his hands on the prow and endeavoured to climb in. There was great apprehension lest he should upset the boat. Providentially, I had brought my umbrella with me, I had the presence of mind to strike him two or three hard blows over the knuckles. He let go his hold and sank. The boat righted itself, and we were saved."

The art of avoiding conversational unpleasantness by a graceful way of putting things belongs, I suppose, in its highest perfection, to the East. When Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of India, he had a "shikarry," or sporting servant, whose special duty was to attend the visitors at the Viceregal Court on their shooting excursions. Returning one day from one of these expeditions, the shikarry encountered the Viceroy, who, full of courteous solicitude for his guests' enjoyment, asked: "Well, what sort of sport has Lord----had?" "Oh," replied the scrupulously polite Indian, "the young Sahib shot divinely, but God was very merciful to the birds." Compare this honeyed speech with the terms in which an English gamekeeper would convey his opinion of a bad shot, and we are forced to admit the social superiority of Lord Salisbury's "black man."

If we turn from the Orient to the Occident, and from our dependencies to the United Kingdom, the Art of Putting Things is found to flourish better on Irish than on Scotch or English soil. We all remember that Archbishop Whately is said to have thanked God on his deathbed that he had never given a penny in indiscriminate charity. Perhaps one might find more suitable subjects of moribund self-congratulation; and I have always rejoiced in the mental picture of the Archbishop, in all the frigid pomp of Political Economy, waving off the Dublin beggar with "Go away, go away; I never give to any one in the street," and receiving the instantaneous rejoinder, "Then where would your reverence have me wait on you?" A lady of my acquaintance, who is a proprietress in County Galway, is in the habit of receiving her own rents. One day, when a tenant-farmer had pleaded long and unsuccessfully for an abatement, he exclaimed as he handed over his money, "Well, my lady, all I can say is that if I had my time over again it's not a tenant-farmer I'd be. I'd follow one of the learn'd professions." The proprietress gently replied that even in the learned professions there were losses as well as gains, and perhaps he would have found professional life as precarious as farming. "Ah, my lady, how can that be then?" replied the son of St. Patrick. "If you're a lawyer--win or lose, you're paid. If you're a doctor--kill or cure, you're paid. If you're a priest--heaven or hell, you're paid." Who can imagine an English farmer pleading the case for an abatement with this happy mixture of fun and satire?

"Urbane" is a word which etymologically bears witness that the ancient world believed the arts of courtesy to be the products of the town rather than of the country. Something of the same distinction may occasionally be traced even in the civilization of modern England. The house-surgeon of a London hospital was attending to the injuries of a poor woman whose arm had been severely bitten. As he was dressing the wound he said, "I cannot make out what sort of animal bit you. This is too small for a horse's bite, and too large for a dog's." "O sir," replied the patient, "it wasn't an animal; it was another lydy." Surely the force of Urbanity could no further go. On the other hand, it was a country clergyman who, in view of the approaching Confirmation, announced that on the morning of the ceremony the young ladies would assemble at the Vicarage and the young women at the National School.

"Let us distinguish," said the philosopher, and certainly the arbitrary use of the term "lady" and "gentleman" suggests some curious studies in the Art of Putting Things. A good woman who let furnished apartments in a country town, describing a lodger who had apparently "known better days," said, "I am positive she was a real born lady, for she hadn't the least idea how to do hanything for herself; it took her hours to peel her potatoes." Carlyle has illustrated from the annals of our criminal jurisprudence the truly British conception of "a very respectable man" as one who keeps a gig; and similarly, I recollect that in the famous trial of Kurr and Benson, the turf-swindlers, twenty years ago, a witness testified, with reference to one of the prisoners, that he had always considered him a "perfect gentleman;" and, being pressed by counsel to give his reasons for this view, said, "He had rooms at the Langham Hotel, and dined with the Lord Mayor."

On the other hand, it would seem that in certain circles and contingencies the "grand old name of Gentleman" is regarded as a term of opprobrium. The late Lord Wriothesley Russell, who was for many years a Canon of Windsor, used to conduct a mission service for the Household troops quartered there; and one of his converts, a stalwart trooper of the Blues, expressing his gratitude for these voluntary ministrations, and contrasting them with the officer-like and disciplinary methods of the army chaplains, genially exclaimed, "But I always say there's not a bit of the gentleman about you, my lord." When Dr. Harold Browne became Bishop of Ely, he asked the head verger some questions as to where his predecessor had been accustomed to sit in the Cathedral, what part he had taken in the services, and so on. The verger proved quite unable to supply the required information, and said in self-excuse, "Well, you see, my lord, his late lordship wasn't at all a church-going gentleman;" which, being interpreted, meant that, on account of age and infirmities, Bishop Turton had long confined his ministrations to his private chapel.

Just after a change of Government not many years ago, an officer of the Royal Household was chatting with one of the Queen's old coachmen (whose name and location I, for obvious reasons, forbear to indicate). "Well, Whipcord, have you seen your new Master of the Horse yet?" "Yes, sir, I have; and I should say that his lordship is more of an indoors man." The phrase has a touch of genial contempt for a long-descended but effete aristocracy which tickles the democratic palate. It was not old Whipcord, but a brother in the craft, who, when asked, during the Jubilee of 1887, if he was driving any of the Imperial and Royal guests then quartered at Buckingham Palace, replied, with calm self-respect, "No, sir; I am the Queen's Coachman. I don't drive the riff-raff." I take this to be a sublime instance of the Art of Putting Things. Lingering for a moment on these back stairs of History, let me tell the tragic tale of Mr. and Mrs. M----. Mr. M---- was one of the merchant princes of London, and Mrs. M---- had occasion to engage a new housekeeper for their palace in Park Lane. The outgoing official wrote to her incoming successor a detailed account of the house and its inmates. The butler was a very pleasant man. The chef was inclined to tipple. The lady's-maid gave herself airs; and the head housemaid was a very well principled young woman--and so on and so forth. After the signature, huddled away in a casual postscript, came the damning sentence, "As for Mr. and Mrs. M----, they behave as well as they know how." Was it by inadvertence, or from a desire to let people know their proper place, that the recipient of this letter allowed its contents to find their way to the children of the family?

As incidentally indicated above, a free recourse to alcoholic stimulus used to be, in less temperate days, closely associated with the culinary art; and one of the best cooks I ever knew was urged by her mistress to attend a great meeting for the propagation of the Blue Ribbon, to be held not a hundred miles from Southampton, and addressed by a famous preacher of total abstinence. The meeting was enthusiastic, and the Blue Ribbon was freely distributed. Next morning the lady anxiously asked her cook what effect the oratory had produced on her, and she replied, with the evident sense of narrow escape from imminent danger, "Well, my lady, if Mr. ---- had gone on for five minutes more, I believe I should have taken the Ribbon too; but, thank goodness! he stopped in time."

So far, I find, I have chiefly dealt with the Art of Putting Things as practised by the "urbane" or town-bred classes. Let me give a few instances of "pagan" or countrified use. A village blacksmith was describing to me with unaffected pathos the sudden death of his very aged father; "and," he added, "the worst part of it was that I had to go and break it to my poor old mother." Genuinely entering into my friend's grief, I said, "Yes; that must have been terrible. How did you break it?" "Well, I went into her cottage and I said. 'Dad's dead.' She said, 'What?' and I said, 'Dad's dead, and you may as well know it first as last.'" Breaking it! Truly a curious instance of the rural Art of Putting Things.