Delphi complete works of.., p.798
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 798
And what does the Statute say anyway? It is a riddle of the Sphinx, a Delphic oracle like the American Constitution of the States Rights days. Presumably the British Empire is indissoluble and also any Dominion can get out of it at will. Each Dominion has its own absolute say about the succession to the Throne. In other words, there can be (even without Newfoundland) six Kings at once — more than in poker. The legislative powers of each Dominion are unlimited; they can overlap as much as they like; and they do.
In other words, we have now got the British Empire on exactly what we may call a British footing, like so many other institutions in Great Britain; like the Beef-Eaters who don’t eat beef; like the First Lord of the Treasury, who has nothing to do with it; like the Clerk of the Cheque who doesn’t sign any and the Keeper of the Buck-hounds, who hasn’t got any. Having thus reduced the Empire to an idea (perfectly intelligible to British people), it seems much wiser to leave it at that. At any rate it won’t stand nearer analysis and closer dissection.
Nor do we in my opinion need to vex ourselves with any discussion as to whether the British Empire in the counsels of the newly made world will act and vote as one unit or as five or six, and whether, similarly, Russia will act as one unit or sixteen. All such talk is mere academic chattering. No people with the power to do otherwise are going to stake the vital destiny of their country on a round-the-table majority vote, white, black, brown or yellow, from all over the world. We cannot imagine Canada losing out by one vote and having to accept, let us say, Asiatic immigration. Vital things will be settled in some other way. Hence we do not need to prepare ourselves for such academic emergencies by trying to weld all the empire together with a unit, with a foreign policy settled for all by a joint board. The Empire simply won’t and can’t weld into that. Its different parts have not sufficient contact and relationship.
But in any special emergency all the Dominions of the Empire can endeavour for the sake of common sense to act on common ground in any large world question. They don’t need to bind themselves beforehand. They merely need to “go into a huddle” as do football players in a rugby game. If they can’t agree they must act separately: but in that case a prearrangement wouldn’t have held them anyway.
You cannot visualize the Empire as made up of the United Kingdom and the Dominions each over against the others. It isn’t so. The Dominions are like the spokes of a wheel each centred in the hub. The connections and contacts with one another are, as yet, very slight. What is Newfoundland to New Zealand, or even, what is Australia to Canada? Still more perplexing is the situation if India becomes a Dominion. What is India to Canada? A “Dominion,” whose inhabitants we debar from our country, with whom we do not and cannot intermarry or intermingle, whose system of “caste” and “untouchable” consigns the 50 million people to the gutters of society is repugnant to our thought. Their way is not ours.
Two fixed points, two steady beams of light, enable us to see our onward path into the veiled future of a distressed world. One is our fixed relationship through Great Britain with the group of British Dominions, including Great Britain itself, which make up the British Empire. The other is our firm union of friendship in mind and purpose with the United States. This unity and brotherhood that has come to join the North-American English-speaking continent is one of the few bright spots in a darkened world, one of the few great advances in the destiny of mankind for which the last 50 years can take full credit. This union of hearts does not depend on the pen and ink of treaties, on the guarantees of legislation. It has no connection with the outworn political issues of possible annexation, possible conquest, possible absorption. All that is past. Our relation with the United States is based on the intermingling of the lives of our people, on hundreds of thousands of family relationships, on the common ground of our common education, the interchange of our journals, our art, our letters. With it goes the back and forward import and export of things not to be valued by a customs appraiser; the export of theology from Nova Scotia in carload lots of college principals and city divines balanced against the import of American mining from Pittsburgh. Stronger even than Sunday theology and work-day technical knowledge is our participation in our common holidays, our Thanksgiving turkeys, the roaring stadiums and arenas that echo to our common games. For all this we need no further light nor guide but to keep on as we are, begging the politicians to keep out.
It has been said many times above and I repeat it, that in my opinion all our future must depend on the kind of future we deserve to have. The more we study political institutions the more we realize that they are entirely dependent on what we call religion, morality, righteousness. We are not necessarily thinking here of religion, in the sense in which many people use it, to mean the creed and the services of the Church, although for many, perhaps most of us, it is embodied in that outward and approachable form. And indeed for nearly all people of today the moral teachings of Christianity, — the Sermon on the Mount, the sublime ideals of duty and self-sacrifice held up in the New Testament, correspond so entirely with what they feel in their own hearts as to need no other proof.
Seen in this light all political contrivance is vain unless it is based on righteousness. Everything depends on the work of the spirit on the honesty and inspiration of the individual. Without righteousness the richer our country the more rapid our ruin. Give us men of goodwill, whose hearts are in the cause and our happiness is assured.
How to Write
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE. THE DESIRE TO WRITE
CHAPTER TWO. THE LAWS OF GRAMMAR AND FREE SPEECH
CHAPTER THREE. THE MYSTERY AND MAGIC OF WORDS
CHAPTER FOUR. THE COMPLETE THOUGHT CALLED A SENTENCE
CHAPTER FIVE. THE ART OF NARRATION
CHAPTER SIX. GOOD AND BAD LANGUAGE
CHAPTER SEVEN. HOW TO WRITE HISTORY
CHAPTER EIGHT. HOW TO WRITE HISTORICAL NOVELS
CHAPTER NINE. HOW NOT TO WRITE POETRY
CHAPTER TEN. HOW NOT TO WRITE MORE POETRY
CHAPTER ELEVEN. HOW TO WRITE HUMOUR
CHAPTER TWELVE. HOW TO WRITE MORE HUMOUR
PREFACE
IN WRITING THIS book I have endeavoured to avoid as far as possible all reference to authors and books of the immediate hour. Still more have I avoided anything like criticism of them. The reason for this is obvious enough. The purpose of the book is to help people to write and not to offer criticism of authors’ attempts to do so. Our language has come down to us with so little change since the days of Shakespeare that we have a field of three and a half centuries from which to select examples of style, illustrations of method and examples for analysis. It is only in a few aspects, such as in slang and in swearing, that our language of to-day needs discussion by itself.
A further reason for avoiding citation of living authors is found in the growing difficulties which surround literary quotation to-day. In these complicated days of movie and radio production copyrights are so jealously guarded that not even a fragment must be borrowed. There is no longer the free and careless quotation, that was once as open to all as was the old-time apple orchard to the passer-by. One can only borrow with impunity now from those whose rest can no longer be broken by it.
This book is in part the outcome of personal experience and personal sympathy. I did not personally get started writing, except for a few odd pieces, until I was forty years old. Like the milkmaid with a fortune in her face I had a fortune (at least as good as hers) in my head. Yet I spent ten weary years as an impecunious schoolmaster without ever realizing this asset. The fault, like that of Abdul the Bulbul Ameer, was ‘entirely my own.’ I had too little courage, was too sensitive. I had a little initial success with odd humorous writings in the earlier ‘nineties. I can see now that the pro- portion of success I had was exceptionally high and that the rejection of a manuscript should have meant no more than a blow of a feather. Still more did I fail in not knowing where to find material for literary work. It seemed to me that my life as a resident schoolmaster was so limited and uninteresting that there was nothing in it to write about. Later on, when I had learned how, I was able to turn back to it and write it up with great pecuniary satisfaction. But that was after I had learned how to let nothing get past me. I can write-up anything now at a hundred yards.
So for this and that reason my efforts towards humorous writings died away and I lived on in my forsaken garden. Years later I left school teaching, took up graduate study and became a lecturer in political science at McGill University. As years went I decided that if the garden of fancy was not for me, I could at least work underground. So I took my pick and shovel to the college library and in three years I came to the surface with my Elements of Political Science. This book had an outstanding, indeed an ominous, success. It was no sooner adopted as the textbook by the renovated government of China, than the anti-Manchu rebellion swept the former Empire. The Khedive of Egypt’s attempt to use it as the textbook of the Egyptian schools, was followed by the Nationalist outbreak.
But for me the writing of it had a peculiar effect. I found that again and again I wanted to put something funny into it. I was sure I could describe much better the nature of British government if I were allowed to put in a dialogue between the Keeper of the Swans and the Clerk of the Cheque, or the Master of the Blood Hounds. I refer of course to all those queer officials in England who sound like a winning hand at poker. In them really lies the essence of British Government, British character and British success.
So when the Political Science was done I tried again. I gathered up the bygone manuscripts and wrote some new ones and sent them out as Literary Lapses. After that it was all easy. I was like Artemus Ward’s weary prisoner, behind his locked door, who opened the window and got out. But meantime I was forty years old.
I say all this not for the pleasure of writing about myself, although that is considerable, but in the hope that it may be of use to other, younger, people. No matter how restricted your life is (I am speaking to them now personally) there is plenty of material in it and around you to write about. Your father, for instance, couldn’t you do something with him?... or, if not your father, then, at any rate, Uncle Joe, because everybody says he’s a regular character?...
And with that I put the book into your hands with my best wishes.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL October 1942
CHAPTER ONE. THE DESIRE TO WRITE
WRITING MEANS THINKING — Consider, William, take a month to think — The desire to write a natural impulse like wanting to be a policeman — Inspiration versus Effort — This came to me, says the poet — learning to see and learning to say what you see — Unwritten masterpieces of non-starters.
THE bygone humorist Bill Nye once inserted in his column of Answers to Correspondents an enthusiastic item which read, ‘You write a splendid hand, you ought to write for the papers.’ The wilful confusion of mind as to what writing means is very funny. But the confusion is no hazier than that of many young people who ‘want to write.’ Bill Nye would have told them that the best writing is done straight from the elbow. It is the purpose of this book to show that it originates in the brain. Writing is thinking.
This confusion between writing as a form of activity and as a form of thought came down to us from the long years during which the mechanical art of writing seemed of itself scholarship. In our immediate day, very brief in comparison, the art of writing has become practically universal among the nations called civilized. If that were all that were needed, everyone might be an author. Indeed it is hard to realize for us now how very few people in past ages knew how to write. Charlemagne (742-814) who founded schools of learning in his great empire couldn’t read and write. He tried to learn but he never succeeded. He used to carry with him, so wrote a monk who was his friend and biographer, tablets and note-books, in the hope that he might find time and opportunity to learn. But it was beyond him. It seems strange to imagine his great frame (he was nearly eight feet high) bent over his copy-book as he breathed hard in his stubborn effort. It was his own inability to read that led him to found schools for others. There is something pathetic in this ambition of the greatest towards a thing now possessed by the humblest. It has the same human quality in it as when with us a millionaire, debarred from education in his own youth, founds a university and whenever he learns of something new that he doesn’t know, founds a Chair in it.
This general inability to read and write lasted for centuries after Charlemagne. Henry the First of England was called beau-clerc, the ‘fine scholar,’ presumably merely because he could read and write in Latin: he had no further title to scholarship except that he started the first menagerie: but a little went a long way in those days. The barons of the Magna Carta signed with their seals not their signatures. They couldn’t read it. Even in the England of Queen Victoria’s early reign over sixty per cent, of the young women of the working class who got married signed the marriage register with their mark. For years after that in the country part of England a ‘scholar’ meant a person who could read and write as opposed to the generality who couldn’t.
It is worth while to make this reference to the ability to write, to the mechanical art of writing and its relative rarity in bygone times, and indeed till yesterday. For to this fact is partly due the rather distorted view frequently taken as to what writing means. It is still thought of as if it meant stringing words together; whereas in reality the main part of it is ‘thinking.’ People don’t realize this. A student says ‘I want to write’; he never says ‘I want to think.’ Indeed nobody deliberately wants to think except the heroine in a problem play, who frequently gasps out ‘I must think,’ a view fully endorsed by the spectators. ‘Let me think!’ she says; indeed she probably has to go away, to the Riviera, ‘to think.’ When she comes back we learn that she is now looking for some way to ‘stop thinking’ — to prevent her from going mad.
Here and there perhaps are a few other cases of the desire to think. There is a famous statue by Rodin, a statue of a primitive man — with a massive jaw and narrow forehead — seated with his head in his hands, his gaze fixed, his face rigid with an effort toward something still beyond his primitive powers. Yet in his fixed gaze is the hope of the centuries. Rodin called his figure ‘The Thinker.’ Yet he might equally well have called him the ‘Writer,’ or even ‘The Editor’ — or no, perhaps not the Editor; he’s different.
Take another random illustration. We find in Tennyson’s works a poem dealing with the rural England of his day in which a farmer, in urging a marriage on his son, says ‘Consider, William, take a month to think.’ Tennyson’s accurate knowledge of the English countryside has been much admired. He probably timed this to a day. The advice would have been equally appropriate if William had been wanting to write.
All these references are made in order to stress the simple fact that writing is essentially thinking, or at least involves thinking as its first requisite. All people can think, or at least they think they think. But few people can say what they think, that is, say it with sufficient power of language to convey it to the full. Even when they have conveyed it, it may turn out to be not worth conveying. But there are some people whose thoughts are so interesting that other people are glad to hear them, or to read them. Yet even these people must learn the use of language adequate to convey their thoughts; people may sputter and gurgle in a highly interesting way but without the full equipment of acquired language their sputters won’t carry far. This, then, is what is meant by writing — to have thoughts which are of interest to other people and to put them into language which reveals the thoughts. These thoughts may come in part from native originality, in part from deliberate search and reflection. In all that concerns writing, spontaneous originality, what we call native gift, is mingled with the result of conscious effort. The threads are interwoven in the cloth, till they blend and often seem indistinguishable.
It is the affectation of many authors to lay stress on the spontaneity of their thought. ‘This came to me,’ says such a one, striking a pose, ‘came to me one day in the woods.’ Poets have always loved to compare themselves to birds, singing untaught and unrewarded. Orators persuade themselves that they speak best on the spur of the moment. The truth is otherwise. The bird spends its life in practice: the orator has agonized at home.
Now and again indeed the sheer reach of genius may attain a sudden vision beyond precise calculation. Thus Charles Dickens in recounting the origin of his most immortal creation said with a sublime simplicity, ‘Then I thought of Mr. Pickwick.’ But this is only the case where the simplicity of the genius matches the affectation of pretence. It is hard to see how anyone could have thought out Mr. Pickwick, gaiter by gaiter and spectacle by spectacle. He had to come with an illumination as sudden as flashlight: but behind the most instantaneous flashlight is an intricate chemical preparation.
It is proper to lay stress on this for those who wish to write. They are apt to be fascinated with what seems to be spontaneous. They like to think of ‘dashing things off,’ of ideas coming ‘like a flash.’ They read how Rouget de Lisle composed the Marseillaise at one sitting, words, music and all, the sitting being held on the stool in front of a little spinnet in an upstairs room in Strasbourg in April 1792. They read how Beckford wrote Vathek all at one sitting: how Bret Harte, so Mark Twain said, wrote his marvellously successful story, Thankful Blossom, all in one single upstairs session in Mark Twain’s house — interrupting it only with calls for more whisky.
Such legends multiply and colour the thought of the aspirant; all that is needed, it seems, is to be original enough and quick enough and drunk enough — and you can write anything. Beside this, plodding industry and deliberate effort seem dull stuff. In fact the notion that a thing has been produced by hard work seems to cheapen it. Take this queer illustration. All of us from our earliest childhood recall the song ‘Way Down upon the Swanee River, and have felt the peculiar yearning to get to the Swanee River and stay there: yet when the song was written there wasn’t any Swanee River in it, as its composer, Stephen Foster, had never heard of the Swanee River. ‘I want,’ he said to his friends, ‘to get hold of the name of a river with two syllables that will fit into the words “‘way down upon the-something- river.” ‘So they dug up the Swanee off a map. The knowledge of this seems to take some of the wistful yearning out of the song. It’s as if the composer of John Brown’s Body lies a-mouldering in the Grave, had got a grave and got a body and only needed John Brown.
