Jottings
Rose By Any Other Name
A common press gambit is to jeer at celebrities for naming offspring outlandishly. It’s not confined to celebrities – we lesser folks can do it too – and it’s hardly a new phenomenon; the Victorians were much given to the practice: think of William Makepeace Thackeray. Long before the 19th century we can stumble across the most extraordinary confections. The Puritans, denied so many other pleasures, took to naming their children in whole sentences, rather than mere words: Praise-God Barebones became a prominent member of Parliament. And the Roundheads included in their ranks more than one child named Hew-Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord.
True.
In the early 19th century, after Wellington’s victory, we saw a flurry of young Napoleons – who at school probably fought with boys more patriotically named Horatio. Later, there was a Benjamin Disraeli Smith and a William Ewart Gladstone Barter. Any number of young royalist Victorias, of course, and Alberts (and Albertinas), and quite a few infants saddled with the forenames of all the little princesses: May I introduce Miss Alice Maud Mary Louise Jenkinson?
One poor child I found in the 19th century registers was born Matilda French Onion (her parents were Onions, perhaps from Leek), and Miss Emma Tuesday Taylor was, of course, born on Tuesday (as Aprils are born in April, and Mays in May). Noels and Junes are common names still. But to return to Victorian paternalism: I did find a married couple, not so young, who when finally blessed with a child, named the poor mite Appendix. Within a year or so came another child: they named that one Addenda.
Daft? Well, a damned sight wittier than the current habit of naming lads after the entire England football team, thus guaranteeing a lifetime of disappointment.
Do Critics Know Best?
Once upon a time many an author railed against the critics (and, two centuries ago, an author had good reason, as many if not most reviews – which in those days were conveniently anonymous – were astoundingly hostile, amounting to little more than exercises in invective spewed from the guts of jealous competitors). Nowadays an author is glad to be reviewed at all.
But do we need reviews? Do the opinions of others have any merit? Edward Gibbon (he of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) felt one should have the confidence to review one’s own work – not in public: some modern writers have been known to submit favourable reviews of their work under another name – but as a matter of private study. Who, he asked, can review a work more thoroughly than its author?
“The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; no one has so deeply meditated on the subject; no one is so sincerely interested in the event.” He discarded even the responses of his friends: “I was soon disgusted with the modest practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some will praise from politeness, and some will criticise from vanity.” (In the 18th century, when he wrote, far fewer books were written, and the practice of reading to one’s friends was more conventional.)
Gibbon was, perhaps, especially fitted to the task of critical self-analysis: a formidably well-read and capable writer (he had been the classic sickly child, left to find his own way through his father’s library) he grew up proud, strong-minded and supremely confident. Yet even he was taken aback by the success of his greatoeuvre: “I am at a loss to describe the success of the work, without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days; the second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand,” he writes in his Autobiography. “My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette.”
So was he right when he says ‘To hell with the opinions of others. Trust only in yourself.’ Is that not better than trying to bend your work to others’ whims?
At the age of twenty, one year is a tenth, perhaps, of the time which has elapsed within our consciousness and memory: at the age of fifty it is no more than the fortieth, and this relative value continues to decrease till the last sands are shaken by the hand of death.
This reasoning may seem metaphysical; but on a trial it will be found satisfactory and just. The warm desires, the long expectations of youth, are founded on the ignorance of themselves and of the world: they are gradually damped by time and experience, by disappointment and possession; and after the middle season the crowd must be content to remain at the foot of the mountain; while the few who have climbed the summit aspire to ascend or expect to fall.
In old age, the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children; the faith of enthusiasts, who sing Hallelujahs above the crowds; and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
Okay, that’s it for Gibbon. No more. Promise.
Colour Prejudice
Why do we writers have such a problem with colour? Why are we so negative about it? Think how unthinkingly we use colour as a term of disparagement. Whenever a writer uses colour metaphorically it is in a disparaging way. The countryside is gorgeously green but we’re green with envy about the rural rich. The summer sky is blue but we’re in a blue mood in spite of it. The sun is yellow, as are buttercups, but we insist our enemies are yellow with cowardice. We sneer at bureaucrats for being grey. I could get red with fury about this, or black with despair. No wonder I feel blue.
Colours are beautiful; we aspire to a colourful life among colourful people. We love colour. So why don’t we use colours to describe joyous emotions? Why aren’t we pink or yellow with happiness; why isn’t love blue? We say that love’s opposite, hate, is black, but what colour is love? It can’t be black’s opposite, white, for that’s reserved for fear. What colours are used for virtues? Bravery has no colour, nor does truth, generosity or chastity (though is that still a virtue?) Perhaps we should say someone is violet with loyalty – why not? Because violet’s near neighbour, purple, is reserved for fury again – we can be red, black or purple with anger, white with rage. Crimson and scarlet ; rage again. Our anger has so many colours, although orange, perhaps, we cannot use; to me, orange is a foolish colour. I’d want to say, ‘orange with foolishness.’
It seems to me that we writers are like graphic artists deliberately limiting ourselves to a restricted palette. We use all our colours to represent unpleasant emotions. And I’m feeling browned off about it.
I Beg to Differ – In Fact, I Insist, I Damned Well Insist on Disagreeing
Sometimes I think I’m far too peaceable; I prefer to smooth ruffled feathers rather than wring a bird by the neck, when I might have got a lot further in life if I’d argued a damned sight more. Back in the 1920s Robert Lynd pointed out: ‘There is nothing like a quarrel for attracting our attention. The ordinary man does not realize the importance of anything, indeed, till somebody has begun to quarrel about it. Who knows whether Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman who ever lived? Yet we find it difficult not to think so merely because she was the occasion of the most beautiful quarrel in legend or history. It is possible that more beautiful women have lived than any that ever got into the histories, but men did not lose their tempers and their lives over them, they were happily married, and their names have perished.’
Lynd pointed out the huge debt literature owes to quarrels and argument – can there be a story if there is no conflict? Even if there is nothing to argue about we can make one up: look at Don Quixote, famous for his quarrel with a windmill. ‘Literature,’ says Lynd, ‘is for the most part an idealization of quarrels. Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.’ He quotes an old Irish proverb that was new to me; ‘Contention is better than loneliness.’ (He should know; he was an Irishman.) For, as he says, ‘Contention may also be better than stagnation. It is said to be healthier to breathe bad air that circulates than to breathe good air that is perfectly still.’
If you know Lynd’s work you’ll find this a curious argument, coming from him. He was such an equable essayist; one can’t imagine him arguing with anyone, and yet . . . He had a long and successful career from writing, so perhaps a degree of argument was the secret of his success. It makes me wonder whether, in all these years when I’ve been nice to people, I have been too polite for my own good.
