Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Americans that Britain respects are hundred per cent Americans.

The deepest of all bonds between the various commonwealths is religion. It Iwas the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts-what Eng. land calls the S. P. G.-which, as Miss Sebring, the Principal, reminds me, started the St. Agatha School for Girls in New York over two centuries ago.

It is on the King James's Version of the Bible as read by Washington that every President takes the oath of office. In the distribution of the Bible our two nations are intimately associated. It is a work that makes history. Dr. William I. Haven, General Secretary of the American Bible Society, thus writes about it for The Outlook:

Instances of fellowship are worth noting. For example, the new Spanish Version of the New Testament has been produced, after many years, as the co-operative labor of the two Societies in equal shares. In the same way the two Societies (American and British) have worked together in the translation and revision of the Scriptures in Japan, the American Bible Society bearing half the cost and the British and Scotch Societies sharing the other half.

Similar co-operation between the British and American Societies has been maintained all over the world.

All churches-Catholic, Baptist, Quaker, Episcopalian, Methodist-link up the Old World with the New. The historic parish of Trinity, Wall Street, was founded from Bow Church, London. There is a constant interchange of preachers. Dr. Fort Newton occupies the pulpit of the City Temple, and Dr. John Kelman succeeds Dr. Jowett at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Dr. Kelman writes for The Outlook:

The bonds between America and Scotland stretch back through centuries. In older theological tradition the two countries were nearer to each other than either of them was to any other land. The spirit of the Covenanters, with its indomitable fidelity to the highest light which

conscience shed upon the times, was precisely that which inspired the incomparable heroism of the people of Plymouth Rock. To-day the lands are one in the living spirit of faith which is remolding the ancient forms to the new conditions and widening the horizons of religion to every kind of human interest. They stood beside one another and fought to the death in the Great War, and they are one in the highest interpretations and aims of peace.

The Bible came over to the United States in the Mayflower. It was Dwight L. Moody who, more than any popular preacher, brought the Bible back to England again. I am therefore glad to have from Mr. William R. Moody, the President of the Northfield Schools, which his father founded, the following message:

The term "the old country" has only one meaning in America, and that is, Great Britain. However we may differ at times in our point of view and in our policies, in every great moral crisis in the world, I believe, we shall stand together, for the spiritual forces of our two countries are the greatest factors in molding public opinion. What is essential is that there shall be in both our countries a greater spirit of mutual confidence and faith.

From Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the eminent leader of the Free Synagogue in New York, there comes the same general testimony: "There is nothing," he writes, "which lies nearer to my heart than the hope of unshatterable understanding between the two Englishspeaking commonwealths." He adds:

It is undebatable that we have the right to urge the Executive and the Senate to move forward honestly and genuinely on behalf of a disarmament conference with England and Japan. This disarmament conference might not only avail to avert an unthinkable war with Great Britain, but would end the anti-American machinations of those groups of Americans who are not interested in world peace-in the glorious part

that America may have in winning that world peace-but in smashing Japan and in breaking the power of Great Britain.

The one way to end the intolerable and hideous anti-British conspiracy in America is to enter into conference with Great Britain and Japan touching the possibility of a halt in armament building, a conference which may prove to be decisive for world peace.

Finally, I will give an opinion which cost the distinguished and popular writer something more than words. Mr. Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem Steel Works, writes:

The war undoubtedly quickened the friendly feelings between England and America, and there is, as you say, a broad and human basis for further association. While I have no suggestion to offer as to future commercial relations, I am sure they will be frank and fair and trust that they will also be cordial.

Mr. Schwab is a modest man. But his letter-in a concluding sentenceconfirms the fact that he refused during the period of American neutrality in the war a large sum of German moneymany millions of dollars-money offered on condition that he desist from fulfilling certain verbal pledges to supply munitions which he had made to Lord Kitchener.

Of the Young Men's Christian Association, originated by Sir George Williams in England and especially developed in recent years by Dr. John R. Mott in America, and of many similar partnerships in the kingdom of progress and human well-being, I might write at length. The fact that an American, Mr. Gordon Selfridge, has revolutionized the department stores of London and now reigns as his reward in Lansdowne House; that the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was an American woman, Lady Astor (sister of the lady made famous by her husband as the delightful "Gibson Girl"); the fact that Americans and

[graphic][merged small]

SULGRAVE MANOR, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND, PRESERVED AS THE HOME OF THE

ANCESTORS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

British play golf together, race and row against one another, and hammer each other at tennis-all this shows what a disaster it would be if any root of bit

terness were permitted to spring up between us. Over oil, shipping, tariffs, mandates, Ireland, cables, there may be at times little family arguments, but

they should be kept within the family and settled with the good-humored forbearance which cements every welldisposed domestic circle.

M

HOW TO LEARN TO ENJOY
ENJOY MUSIC

SIX DIDACTICS

BY A SELF-MADE MUSIC LOVER

ANY thoughtful people, lacking musical training and inheritance, regard with something of wistful longing the consolations and inspirations to be derived from intelligent hearing of the best music. They would gladly cultivate the art if. they knew how to go about it. With them in mind, these concrete and elementary suggestions are formulated. Accomplished musicians and music tasters will probably spare themselves some pain by reading no further.

The "this-is-the-way-walk-ye-in-it" attitude of the writer will deceive no one of the discerning. It is the result of being for years a schoolmarm. Neither will his claim to being self-made. Of course there is no such animal. But as the result of persisting through some years in the determination to gain by passive listening the discernment that others attain through active education he ventures the following fruits of experience.

1. In the words of Oberlin's President, "stay persistently in the presence of the best." There need be no pretense of denying your frank enjoyment of "rag," or even "jazz" (is it possible?), but hold fast to your belief that there must be far more subtle and satisfying beauties in the music that has lived through generations. Lose no opportunity to hear it.

And do not scorn renditions less than perfect. Victrola records and grill-room orchestras may not show all the finesşe of the Flonzaley Quartette or Caruso in the flesh, but they furnish abundant opportunity to hear much good music acceptably done.

2. Cultivate in general the impersonal attitude toward the performer. For the time being he should be a voice, an automaton, and nothing more. If part of your enjoyment must come from indulging in hero worship, it will be more wholesomely directed if centered on the composer rather than on the interpreter.

3. Try to locate your seats at concerts among sympathetic and appreciative people-not, necessarily, acquaintances. Even within the democracy of art there may be neighbors musically obnoxious. Of course we do not here refer to the crude pest who beats the time of spirited rhythms on the floor or talks an accompaniment. Happily he is obsolescent. But the mere presence in the immediate vicinity of an assertive and blatant personality will seriously interfere with the response of a sensitive soul. It sounds snobbish, pernickety, undemocratic, and unchristian to say so right out loud, but it's true.

4. Get rid of the itch (at least tem. porarily) to be performing yourself. Envy for the achievements of the interpreting artist poisons for many younger listeners what should be pure joy. Remember, "a more tranquil study and possession of the beautiful than are permitted to those who create it" may be yours.

Consider that in building up the musical life of a community intelligent listening is as essential as intelligent playing or singing, and be content with making the less conspicuous contribution.

5. Never forget that music is to be judged by the ear alone, not by the eye. To form the habit of always looking at soloist or conductor will retard rather than hasten attainment to musical appreciation. Impertinent details of dress and manner will inevitably distract attention from the great business of the moment-listening. Actually closing the eyes would probably make most concert-goers decidedly self-conscious. Try letting the eyes wander aimlessly over the programme or a book-not, of course, consciously reading. Any perusal of programme notes should precede or follow, and not accompany, hearing the music.

In fact, I am growing rather skeptical as to the value of such descriptive notes, anyway. The conscientious listener will want to approach the hearing with no preconceived notions, but ready to make his own individual response to any suggestion of the composer.

6. And, finally, but of very first importance, simply listen-intently, with consciously focused attention, resolved to let naught escape you. Listen in season and out of season, to music well done and poorly done, interesting and uninteresting. Get the habit. Make it a sort of daily calisthenic. Practice holding yourself rigidly to attention against annoying distractions-the rustle of an assembling congregation, the clatter of dishes in a restaurant. Learn to listen-it is really all the secret there is.

Try to pick out from the musical chaos bits of melody, musical figures or phrases. Listen for their repetition. They almost always bob up again and again. Practice trying to keep track of two melodies at once. Several "tunes" often thread their way through the jumble at the same time.

In the case of an orchestra, don't be too curious as to just what instrument utters each phrase. Just now your interest is in the musical what rather than the mechanical how-the product rather than the tools. Listen.

It may be well here to remark that, contrasted with this "attentive" listening, there is possible for certain kinds of music another delightful method of appreciation that might well be called "discursive" listening. In the latter the music serves merely as a stimulating background or accompaniment to the listener's stream of consciousness, his own thoughts taking the solo part. Much of our best devotional music was, I imagine, designed to be so heard. But let it not be attempted by the novice until he has attained some proficiency in the more difficult and fundamental "attentive" method.

And for you, my friend, may the reward come quickly-the memorable occasion when, for the first time, a symphony opens its soul to you! Gone now all the hard-willed attention. The first few measures grip you in the belief that here is a composer with a message for you, for you. Quickly he confides his plans, shows the blue-prints and sketches, as it were. Then begins to build. After burrowing deep for solid foundation, the big granite blocks swing soundlessly into place. Before your eyes the temple grows-fluted columns, marble floors, with shafts of sunshine slanting through the vistas. Then, perhaps, the architect with a friendly arm across your shoulders strolls with you around the growing building, pointing out the subtler beauties, flutings and scrolls on frieze and capital. And the gargoyles, yes, don't miss the gargoyles -the funny, grinning, friendly faces that make you want to laugh aloud for joy.

Then comes the dedication-crowds of happy men and women, troops of children singing, and flowers, flowers everywhere. As through the chanting music seem to come the words of dedication, suddenly with a rush the realization comes that not only has the great architect here builded a thing of exquisite and haunting beauty, but of service; that to it, reared anew through succeeding generations, shall come other troops of tired men and women to find peace and cleansing of the soul and courage for their tasks.

Mind, I do not say you are to try to imagine you see all this. That way lies musical perdition. You may, perhaps, feel as if you experienced it.

And as you reach for your hat and slip quietly out beneath the friendly stars, fail not, my brother, to raise a humbly thankful heart-you are of the Sons of God.

[merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

STYLE FROM SEVERAL ANGLES

I

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

HAT I have ever striven for as a writer is not a style of my own, not the acquiring of a distinctive and individual way of expressing myself, but the attainment of clarity. A precious compliment was paid to Macaulay when the proof-reader of his history told him that it had not been necessary to read any sentence twice to grasp its meaning. Of course this compliment is also a criticism, in its implication that Macaulay's thoughts were never so deep-or, if you please, so abstruse-as to demand concentrated effort for their apprehension.

The first duty of the writer is to make the path easy for the reader-to grade the right of way so that the train of thought, heavy or light as the load may be, shall go on its course without annoying applications of the emergency brake. It is as true in this twentieth century as it was in the eighteenth, when Sheridan said it, that "easy writing is cursed hard reading." It is true also that style, in its masterly manifestationsthe soaring eloquence of Burke, for example, and the severe elevation of Newman-is the lofty privilege of the gifted only; and those of us who are not gifted cannot achieve it by taking thought. But there are lowlier virtues which the humblest of us may attain.

Clarity, for example, does not vaunt itself; but its value is inestimable; and it is within the reach of the least gifted. In fact, it can be had for the asking, or at least it can be bought with a price. It may demand infinite care, protracted training, hard labor-what matter, if it is worth what it costs? When the British bard flattered Washington Irving by the assertion that the American author had "added clarity to the English language," he must for the moment have forgotten Bunyan and Defoe, Swift and Franklin, whose meaning is always unerringly apprehensible. Even if the poet was complimenting a newcomer in the field of letters at the expense of certain of his forerunners, he was none the less emphasizing the value of one of the most obvious qualities of Irving's work. Behind and beneath the charm and the grace of Thackeray's writing, and of Howells's no less, there is an easy transparency by which their readers profit even if they fail to remark it.

The clarity of Irving and Thackeray and Howells is not so uncompromising as that of Macaulay. They do not argue with us; they only tell us; whereas Macaulay insists on driving home his points with repeated taps of the tackhammer, and to avoid any possible confusion he does not shrink from the repetition of the essential words-a repetition which at times is almost tautology. Freeman said that he had learned from Macaulay "never to be afraid of using the same word or name over and over again, if by that means anything could

be added to clearness or force." And in the same essay Freeman declared that "it is for others to judge whether I learned from Macaulay the art of being clear; I at least learned from him the duty of trying to be clear."

The difference between Macaulay and

Freeman is that between a brilliant cavalry charge-"marshaled battalions bright in burnished steel" and the lumbering advance of a train of heavy artillery. It is a difference so wide that Freeman's style can scarcely be called a style; rather is it a stolid manner which fatigues far more quickly than Macaulay's rapidity. Stevenson plainly goes too far when he calls Macaulay "an

Courtesy Charles Scribner's Sons

BRANDER MATTHEWS

incomparable dauber," and when he suggests that it was probably for a "barbaric love of repeating the same sound rather than from any design of clearness" that Macaulay "acquired his irritating habit of repeating words." The artifice of Macaulay's antithesis and alliteration thrusts itself upon the reader's notice. Macaulay is not a dauber; he is an artist; but his brushwork is so bold that it obtrudes itself and he fails to conceal his art as well as he might. His is not "that exquisite something caned style," which, SO Lowell declared, "like the grace of perfect breeding, everywhere pervasive and nowhere emphatic, makes itself felt by the skill with which it effaces itself, and masters us at last with a sense of indefinable completeness."

II

Has Dr. Johnson a style? Or is his manner of writing only a mannerism, not natural to him, and deliberately adopted? Certainly it is everywhere emphatic and nowhere pervasive. Once upon a time, when Canon Farrar had captured the unthinking with the pro

truded rhetoric of his "Life of Christ," a lady who was an enthusiastic admirer of his was taken in to dinner by Dr. Thompson, the Master of Trinity. She sang Canon Farrar's praises, and at last she reached her climax: "And then, Master, Canon Farrar has so much taste!" To which the exasperated Dr. Thompson promptly retorted: "He has indeed, madam, and all of it so bad!" That the style of the great lexicographer was all of it so bad was also the opinion of a later dictionary maker, Noah Webster, who declared in his "Dissertations" that "the benefit derived from his [Johnson's] morality and his erudition will hardly counterbalance the mischief done by his manner of writing."

Dr. Johnson's sesquipedalian ponderosity was imposed on him by his mistaken understanding of the demands of the dignity of literature. He did not talk as he wrote-nobody ever did; and this is the reason why he lives as a talker in Boswell's pages, while his own writings are now read by title only. Yet unattractive as he is in his works, with their persistent and insistent balance of polysyllabic noun with polysyllabic noun and of polysyllabic adjective with polysyllabic adjective, he is at least clear. We know what he means, and he makes us know it, even if we are not interested. He parades his machinery, but the wheels do go round, even if they revolve slowly.

I remember my mother's telling me that in her school days, now fourscore years ago, she had been taught that the opening sentence of "Rasselas" was esteemed the most beautiful in the language. Here is that sentence: "Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia."

Recalling the hatred the author of "Taxation No Tyranny" had for Americans, I feel that there is a certain piquancy in companioning this quotation from the most honored of British authors at the end of the eighteenth century with a quotation from an American author honored at the beginning of the twentieth century. After recording his pure bliss in the endeavor to transmute a German or Italian lyric into English verse, Howells went on to say that he sometimes thought there was "a finer pleasure in divining the subtle offices, the exquisite potentialities of prose. It is like walking in a fair country over a path that wanders at will among waving fields, beside rambling brooks, through shadowy woods and sunny openings, all under a blue sky; and the birds flute and trill on every side; and when you will them, the shy words come trooping, come flying, and settle in their chosen places as of their own accord, with no rythmic compulsion and no metrical con

[graphic]

mand. Prose, when it is perfected, will be as sweet as the talk of graciousminded women, as simple and strong as the parlance of serious men; and it will not have to hide the art of its construction, for it will be a thing born, not made, and will live from the pen as it lives from the lips."

If the thought in the opening sentence of "Rasselas" had occurred to Howells and it is one of the eternal commonplaces which any essayist might find at the tip of his pen-with what delicate and delightful words would he have phrased it! And if Johnson had wanted to say what Howells has here uttered with his customary felicity, the burly Briton would have swathed it in cumbrous robes, whereby it would have lost its lightness and its ease, its grace and its charm. There would be no insuperable difficulty in turning Johnson's sentence into Macaulay, or Howells's into Thackeray; but Howells's lovely phrases refuse absolutely to be translated into Johnsonese.

This impossibility is what Walter Bagehot made plain when he asserted that "if you will endeavor to write an imitation of the thoughts of Swift in a copy of the style of Addison you will find that not only is it hard to write Addison's style, from its intrinsic excellence, but also that the more you approach to it the more you lose the thought of Swift; the eager passion of the meaning beats upon the mild drapery of the words."

Probably no two writers who were contemporaries had styles more sharply dissimilar than Cicero and Cæsar. Both of these Romans had sat at the feet of the Greeks, and had mastered the complex technic of Attic rhetoric; both had to deal with matters of state; and, while Cicero elaborated and decorated with unfailing certainty of effect, Cæsar willfully achieved a stark simplicity. Nobody has more aptly characterized Cicero's ornate method than Goumy in his posthumous essays on "Les Latins:" Cicero's is "an enchanting prose, which shows no effort nor tension nor shirking, as clear as the day, as harmonious as music, flowing with the full majesty of a great river, and as it flows rolling all the riches of a superb language." On the other hand, Cæsar's "Commentaries on the Gallic War" has the stern concision of "a military report, sent back by a democratic general to the people from whom he derived his powers," as Mommsen put it; and Cicero called it a work of high value resembling "a beautiful, antique statue, as stript of ornaments as that is of garments, and owing its beauty and its grace to its nudity."

No doubt Cicero could have attained bare directness had he so desired, and Cæsar could have been luxuriant; but each of them had an excellent reason for his choice. Cæsar was clear because he was simple, and Cicero was clear even if he was not simple. Either of them would have betrayed himself if he had tried to employ the method of the other; and it would be as unprofit

able to transmogrify Cæsar into Ciceronian or Cicero into Cæsarese as to transfer the thought of Swift into the style of Addison. After all, style is the man; and when it is not the fruit of his own spirit it is illegitimate. It is then not good writing, it is only "fine writing." And fine writing is the abomination of desolation.

III

The fine writers who insist on tying pink bows to all their thoughts fell under the displeasure of Sir Philip Sidney more than three centuries ago; he said they were like the Indians, because they were "not content to wear earrings at the fit and natural place of the ears, but they will thrust jewels through their noses and lips because they will be sure to be fine."

As I copy this out I am reminded of a kindred figure of speech to be found in an uncollected essay of Henry James's, in which he says that Swinburne's style is "without measure, without discretion, without sense of what to take and what to leave; after a few pages, it becomes intolerably fatiguing" because "it is always listening to itself— always turning its head over its shoulders to see its train flowing behind it. The train shimmers and tumbles in a very gorgeous fashion, but the rustle of its embroidery is fatally importunate." And in another of his discarded criticisms he expressed his deep admiration for George Eliot's "perfect solid prose; brilliant and lax as it was in tissue, it seemed to contain very few of the silken threads of poetry; it. lay on the ground like a carpet, instead of floating in the air like a banner."

Here James's own style displays its silken threads, and has the immitigable clarity which is ever the essential element of perfect solid prose-the very element which disappears in his later works, wherein we grope in a distilled darkness with never a thread, silken or hempen, to guide us out of the labyrinth. The early James seems to have been a fairly simple creature, whereas the later James was the most complicated of mortal men. Again style is the man himself. How can it ever be anything else and still be sincere? And the puzzle remains that a writer who had mastered modern French literature, who followed in the footsteps of Turgenev, and who appreciated the sturdy vigor of Maupassant, an American who had lovingly but disinterestedly appreciated Hawthorne, could ever have been tempted to the raveling of hesitating convolutions. In his "Recollections" Lord Morley records George Meredith's assertion that some pages in Charlotte Brontë's "Villette" and some in Hawthorne's "Marble Faun" are "the highwater mark of English prose in our time."

Hawthorne and Charlotte Brontë are a strange couple; and yet their respective styles have this in common-that they obey what Havelock Ellis has called "the law of the logic of thought." And the shrewd British critic declared

that "all the conventional rules of the construction of speech may be put aside if a writer is thereby enabled to follow more closely the form and process of his thought. It is the law of that logic that he must forever follow, and in attaining it alone find rest. . . . The simple and naked beauty of Swift's style, sometimes so keen and poignant, rests absolutely on this truth to the logic of thought." And here we discover another reason why Swift cannot be translated into Addisonian.

It may be doubted whether Swift or Addison, Charlotte Brontë or Hawthorne, ever worried their heads about style. They sought clarity and directness and simplicity. They seemed to have recognized that style is a little like happiness in that it is likely to evade those who seek it too strenuously or too openly. Certainly they did not wrestle with the angel of the Lord as Carlyle did, panting with the fierce exertion. It would be amusing if we could have Swift's or Hawthorne's opinion of the hectic rhetoric of Ruskin and of the epicene fastidiousness of Pater.

Not only do the masters of style write with an apparently effortless ease, but they have often had to wait for the full recognition of their mastery. In reading the work of those who have clarity and directness, who match manner and matter, who obey the law of the logic of the thought, we are so satisfactorily carried along that at first we lack leisure to remark the sober artistry of their verbal craftsmanship. In their closely woven fabric there are no purple patches to take the eye and to demand instant acclamation. It was long years after John Bunyan was laid to rest that his command over our stubborn tongue began to receive the praise it deserved. And even now there are not so many as there might be who have discovered that the unassuming Benjamin Franklin had a style of his own, as clear as Irving's or Addison's, easy and unobtrusive, and completely adequate to the expression of his common

sense.

Probably Franklin and Bunyan would not quite know what to make of an often-quoted passage in Stevenson's highly technical and therefore suggestive and stimulating study of "Style in Literature." Often quoted this passage has been; and yet it must here be quoted once more if only to bring to a sonorous finish this medley of quotations:- "We begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure. From the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarcely a faculty in man but has been exercised. Не need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer."

« AnteriorContinuar »