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IF the reader be assured that
the word Representation, which has caught his eye on glancing at the title
of this essay, has nothing earthly to do with the Elective Franchise,
whether in boroughs or counties. Not a syllable will be found upon the
following pages bearing directly or indirectly upon any New Reform Bill. I
do not care a rush who is member for this county. I have no doubt that all
members of Parliament are very much alike. Everybody knows that each
individual legislator who pushes his way into the House is actuated solely
by a pure patriotic love for his country. No briefless barrister ever got
into Parliament in the hope of getting a place of twelve hundred a-year. No
barrister in fair practice ever did so in the hope of getting a silk gown,
or the Solicitor-Generalship, or a seat on the bench. No merchant or
country-gentleman ever did so in the hope of gaining a little accession of
dignity and influence in the town or county in which he lives.
All these things are universally understood; and they are mentioned here
merely to enable it to be said, that this treatise has' nothing to do with
them.
Edgar Allan Poe, the miserable genius who died in America a few years ago>
declared that he never had the least difficulty in tracing the logical steps
by which he chose any subject on which he had ever written, and matured his
plan for treating it And some readers may remember a curious essay,
contained in his collected works, in which he gives a minute account of the
genesis of his extraordinary poem, The Raven. But Poe was a humbug; and it
is impossible to place the least faith in anything said by him upon any
subject whatever. In his writings we find him repeatedly avowing that he
would assert any falsehood, provided it were likely to excite interest and
“create a sensation.” I believe that most authors could tell us that very
frequently the conception and the treatment of their subject have darted on
them all at once, they could not tell how. Many clergymen know how strangely
texts and topics of discourse have been suggested to them, while it was
impossible to trace any link of association with what had occupied their
minds the instant before. The late Douglas Jerrold relates how he first
conceived the idea of one of his most popular productions. Walking on a
winter day, he passed a large enclosure full of romping boys at play. He
paused for a minute; and as he looked and mused, a thought flashed upon him.
It was not so beautiful, and you would say not so natural, as the
reflections of Gray, as he looked from a distance at Eton College. As
Jerrold gazed at the schoolboys, and listened to their merry shouts, there
burst upon him the conception of Mrs Caudlds Curtain Lectures! There seems
little enough connexion with what he was looking at; and although Jerrold
declared that the sight suggested the idea, he could not pretend to trace
the link of association. It would be very interesting if we could accurately
know the process, by which authors, small or great, piece together their
grander characters. How did Milton pile up his Satan % how did Shakspeare
put together Hamlet or Lady Macbeth % how did Charlotte Bront6 imagine
Rochester? Writers generally keep their secrets, and do not let us see
behind the scenes. We can trace, indeed, in successive pieces by Sheridan,
the step-by-step development of his most brilliant jests, and of his most
gushing bursts of the feeling of the moment No doubt Lord Brougham had tried
the woolsack to see how it would do, before he fell on his knees upon it (on
the impulse of the instant) at the end of his great speech on the Reform
Bill. But of course Lord Brougham would not tell us; and Sheridan did not
intend us to know. Even Mr Dickens, -when, in his preface to the cheap
edition of Pickwick, he avows his purpose of telling us all about the origin
of that amazingly successful serial, gives us no inkling of the process by
which he produced the character which we all know so well. He tells us a
great deal about the mere details of the work: the pages of letter-press,
the number of illustrations, the price and times ot publication. But the
process of actual authorship remains a mystery. The great painters would not
tell where they got their colours. The effort which gives a new character to
the acquaintance of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen, shall be concealed
beneath a decorous veil All that Mr Dickens tells us is this: “I thought of
Mr Pickwick, and wrote the first number.” And to the natural question of
curiosity, “How on earth did you think of Mr Pickwick?” the authors silence
replies, “I don’t choose to tell you that!”
And now, courteous reader, you are humbly asked to suffer the writer’s
discursive fashion, as he records how the idea of the present discourse,
treatise, dissertation, or essay flashed upon his mind. Yesterday was a most
beautiful frosty day. The air was indescribably exhilarating: the cold was
no more than bracing; and as I fared forth for a walk of some miles, I saw
the tower of the ancient church, green with centuries of ivy, looking
through the trees which surround it, the green ivy silvered over with
hoar-frost The hedges on either hand, powdered with rime, were shining in
the cold sunshine of the winter afternoon. First, I passed through a thick
pine-wood, bordering the road on both sides. The stems of the fir-trees had
that warm rich colour which is always pleasant to look at; and the green
branches were just touched with frost
One undervalues the evergreens in summer: their colour is dull when compared
with the fresher and brighter green of the deciduous trees; but now, when
these gay transients have changed to shivering skeletons, the hearty firs,
hollies, and yews warm and cheer the wintry landscape. Not the wintry, I
should say, but the winter landscape, which conveys quite a different
impression. The word wintry wakens associations of bleakness, bareness, and
bitterness; a hearty evergreen tree never looks wintry, nor does a landscape
to which such trees give the tone. Then emerging from the wood, I was in an
open country. A great hill rises just ahead, which the road will skirt by
and by: on the right, at the foot of a little cliff hard by, runs a shallow,
broad, rapid river. Looking across the river, I see a large range of nearly
level park, which at a mile’s distance rises into upland; the park shews
broad green glades, broken and bounded by fine trees, in clumps and in
avenues. In summertime you would see only the green leaves: but now, peering
through the branches, you can make out the outline of the gray turrets of
the baronial dwelling which has stood there—added to, taken from, patched,
and altered, but still the same dwelling—for the last four hundred years.
And on the left, I am just passing the rustic gateway through which you
approach that quaint cottage on the knoll two hundred yards off—one story
high, with deep thatch, steep gables, overhanging eaves, and veranda of
rough oak—a sweet little place, where Izaak Walton might successfully have
carried out the spirit of his favourite text, and “ studied to be quiet” All
this way, three miles and more, I did not meet a human being. There was not
a breath of air through the spines of the firs, and not a sound except the
ripple of the river. I leant upon a gate, and looked into a field. Something
was grazing in the field; but I cannot remember whether it was cows, sheep,
oxen, elephants, or camels; for as I was looking, and thinking how I should
begin a sermon on a certain subject much thought upon for the last
fortnight, my mind resolutely turned away from it, and said, as plainly as
mind could express it, For several days to come I shall produce material
upon no subject but one,—and that shall be the comprehensive, practical,
suggestive, and most important subject of the Art of Putting Things!
And, indeed, there is hardly a larger subject, in relation to the social
life of the nineteenth century in England; and there is hardly a practical
problem to the solution of which so great an amount of ingenuity and
industry, honest and dishonest, is daily brought, as the grand problem of
setting forth yourself, your goods, your horses, your case, your plans, your
thoughts and arguments—all your belongings, in short—to the best advantage.
From the Prime Minister, who exerts all his wonderful skill and eloquence to
put his policy before Parliament and the country in the most favourable
light, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who does his very best to cast a
rosy hue even upon an income-tax, down to the shopman who arranges his
draperies in the window against market-day in that fashion which he thinks
will prove most fascinating to the maid-servant with her newly-paid wages in
her pocket, and the nurse who in a most lively and jovial manner assures a
young lady of three years old that she will never feel the taste of her
castor-oil,—yea, even to the dentist who with a joke and a smiling face
approaches you with his forceps in his hand:— from the great
Attorney-General seeking to place his view of his case with convincing force
before a bewildered jury, (that view being flatly opposed to common sense,)
down to the schoolboy found out in some mischievous trick and trying to
throw the blame upon somebody else: almost all civilised beings in Great
Britain are from morning to night labouring hard to put things in general or
something in particular in the way that they think will lead to the result
which best suits their views;—are, in short, practising the art of
representing or misrepresenting things for their own advantage. Great skill,
you would say, must result from this constant practice: and indeed it
probably does. But then, people are so much in the habit of trying to put
things themselves, that they are uncommonly sharp at seeing through the
devices of others. “Set a thief to catch a thief,” says the ancient adage:
and so, set a man who can himself tell a very plausible story without saying
anything positively untrue, to discover the real truth under the rainbow
tints of the plausible story told by another.
But do not fancy, my kind reader, that I have any purpose of making a
misanthropical onslaught upon poor humanity. I am very far from desiring to
imply that there is anything essentially wrong or dishonest in trying to put
things in the most favourable light for our views and plans. The contrary is
the case. It is a noble gift, when a man is able to put great truths or
momentous facts before our minds with that vividness and force which shall
make us feel these facts and truths in their grand reality. A great evil, to
which human beings are by their make subject, is, that they can talk of
things, know things, and understand things, without feeling them in their
true importance— without, in short, realising them. There appears to be a
certain numbness about the mental organs of perception; and the man who is
able to put things so strikingly, clearly, pithily, forcibly, glaringly,
whether these things are religious, social, or political truths, as to get
through that numbness, that crust of insensibility, to the quick of the mind
and heart, must be a great man, an earnest man, an honest man, a good man. I
believe that any great reformer will find less practical discouragement in
the opposition of bad people than in the inertia of good people. You cannot
get them to feel that the need and the danger are so imminent and urgent;
you cannot get them to bestir themselves with the activity and energy which
the case demands. You cannot get them to take it in that the open sewer and
the airless home of the working man are such a very serious matter; you
cannot get them to feel that |he vast uneducated masses of the British
population form a mine beneath our feet which may explode any day, with God
knows what devastation. I think that not all the wonderful eloquence,
freshness, and pith of Mr Kingsley form a talent so valuable as his power of
compelling people to feel what they had always known and talked about, but
never felt And wherein lies that power, but just in his skill to put
things—in his power of truthful representation?
Sydney Smith was once talking with an Irish Roman Catholic priest about the
proposal to endow the Romish Church in Ireland. “We would not take the Saxon
money,” said the worthy priest, quite sincerely; “we would not defile our
fingers with it. No matter whether Parliament offered us endowments or not,
we would not receive them.” “Suppose,” replied Sydney Smith, “you were to
receive an official letter that on calling at such a bank in the town three
miles off, you would hereafter receive a hundred pounds a-quarter, the first
quarter’s allowance payable in advance on the next day; and suppose that you
wanted money to do good, or to buy books, or anything else, do you mean to
say you would not drive over to the town and take the hundred pounds out of
the bank!” The priest was staggered. He had never looked at the thing in
that precise light He had never had the vague distant question of endowment
brought so home to him. He had been quite sincere in his spirited
repudiation of Saxon coin, as recorded above; but he had not exactly
understood what he was saying and doing. “Oh! Mr Smith,” he replied, “you
have such a way of putting things!” What a triumph of the Anglican’s art of
truthful representation!
One of the latest instances of skill in putting things, which I remember to
have struck me, I came upon, where abundance of such skill may be found—in a
leading article in the Times. The writer of that article was endeavouring to
shew that the work of the country clergy is extremely light Of course he is
sadly mistaken; but this by the way. As to sermons, said the lively writer,
(I don’t pretend to give his exact words,) what work is there in a sermon?
Just fancy that you are writing half-a-dozen letters of four pages each, and
crossed! The thing was cleverly put; and it really came on me with the force
of a fact, a new and surprising fact Many sermons has this thin right hand
written; but my impression of a sermon, drawn from some years’ experience,
is of a composition very different from a letter—something demanding that
brain and heart should be worked to the top of their bent for more hours
than need be mentioned here; something implying as hard and as exhausting
labour as man can well go through. Surely, I thought, I have been working
under a sad delusion! Only half-a-dozen light letters of gossip to a friend:
that is the amount of work implied in a sermon! Have I been all these years
making a bugbear of such a simple and easy matter as that. Here is a new and
cheerful way of putting the thing! But unhappily, though the clever
representation would no doubt convey to some thousands of readers the
impression that to write a sermon was a very simple affair after all, it
broke down, it crumpled up, it went to pieces when brought to the test of
fact. When next morning I had written my text, I thought to myself, Now here
I have just to do the same amount of work which it would cost me to write
half-a-dozen letters to half-a-dozen friends, giving them our little news.
Ah, it would not do 1 In a little, I was again in the struggle of mapping
out my subject, and cutting a straight track through the jungle of the world
of mind; looking about for illustrations, seeking words to put my meaning
with clearness and interest before the simple country-folk I preach to. It
was not the least like letter-writing. The clever writer’s way of putting
things was wrong; and though I acquit him of any crime beyond speaking with
authority of a thing which he knew nothing about, I must declare that his
representation was a misrepresentation. If you have sufficient skill, you
may put what is painful so that it shall sound pleasant; you may put a
wearisome journey by railway in such a connexion with cozy cushions, warm
rugs, a review or a new book, storm sweeping the fields without, and warmth
and ease within, that it shall seem a delightful thing. You may put work, in
short, so that it shall look like play. But actual experiment breaks down
the representation. You cannot change the essential nature of things. You
cannot make black white, though a clever man may make it seem so.
Still, we all have a great love for trying to put any hard work or any
painful business, which it is certain we must go through, in such a light as
may make it seem less terrible. And it is not difficult to deceive ourselves
when we are eager to be deceived. No one can tell how much comfort poor
Damien drew from the way in which he put the case on the morning of his
death by horrible tortures: “The day will be long,” he said, “but it will
have an end.” No one can tell what a gleam of light may have darted upon the
mind of Charles I. as he knelt to the block, When Bishop Juxon put
encouragingly the last trial the monarch had to go through: “One last stage,
somewhat turbulent and troublesome, but still a very short one” No one can
tell how much it soothed the self love of Tom Purdie, when Sir Walter Scott
ordered him to cut down some trees which Tom wished to stand, and positively
commanded that they should go down in spite of all Tom’s arguments and
expostulations, and all this in the presence of a number of gentlemen before
whom Tom could not bear any impeachment of his woodcraft; no one, I say, can
tell how much it soothed the worthy forester’s self love when after
half-an-hour’s sulky meditation he thought of the happy plan of putting the
thing on another footing than that of obedience to an order, and looking up
cheerfully again,-said, “As for those trees, I think I'll take your advice,
Sir Walter!” Would it be possible, I wonder, thus pleasantly to pit the
writing of an article so as to do away the sense of the exertion which
writing an article implies? Have we not all little tricks which we play upon
ourselves, to make our labour seem lighter, our dignity greater, our whole
position jollier, than in our secret soul we know is the fact! Think, then,
thou jaded man, bending over the written page which is one day to attain the
dignity of print in Fraser or Blackwood, how in these words thou art
addressing many thousands of thy enlightened countrymen and thy fair
countrywomen, and becoming known (as Fielding puts it in one of his simply
felicitous sentences) “to numbers who otherwise never saw or knew thee, and
whom thou shalt never see or know.” Think how thou shalt lie upon massive
library-tables, in substantially elegant libraries, side by side perhaps
with Helps, Kingsley, or Hazlitt; how thou shalt lighten the cares of
middle-aged men, and (if thou art a writer of fiction) be smuggled up to
young ladies’ chambers; who shall think, as they read thy article, (oh, much
mistaken!) what a nice man thou art! Alas! all that way of putting things is
mere poetry. It won’t do. It still remains, and always must remain, the
stretch and strain of mind and muscle, to write. Let not the critic be
severe on people who write ill: they deserve much credit and sympathy
because they write at all. But though these grand and romantic ways of
putting the writing of one’s article will not serve, there are little
prosaic material expedients which really avail to put it in a light in which
it looks decidedly less laborious. Slowly let the large drawer be pulled out
wherein lies the paper which will serve, if we are allowed to see them, for
many months to come. There lies the large blue quarto, so thick and
substantial; there the massive foolscap, so soft and smooth, over which the
pen so pleasantly and un-scratchingly glides; that is the raw material for
the article. Draw it forth deliberately: fold it accurately: then the ivory
stridently cuts it through. Weigh the paper in your hand; then put the case
thus: “Well, it is only covering these pages with writing, after all; it is
just putting three-and-twenty lines, of so many words each on the average,
upon each of these unblotted surfaces.” Surely there is not so much in that.
Do not think of all the innumerable processes of mind that go to it; of the
weighing of the consequences ot general propositions; of the choice of
words; of the pioneering your track right on, not turning to either hand; of
the memory taxed to bring up old thoughts upon your subject; of the clock
striking unheard while you are bent upon your task, so much harder than
carrying any reasonable quantity of coals, or blacking ever so many boots,
or currying ever so many horses. Just stick to this view of the matter, just
put the thing this way—that all you have to do is to blacken so many pages,
and take the comfort of that way of putting it.
To such people as we human beings are, there is hardly any matter of greater
practical importance than what we have called the Art of Putting Things.
For, to us, things are what they seem. They affect us just according to what
we think them. Our knowledge of things, and our feeling in regard to things,
are all contingent on the way in which these things have been put before us;
and what different ways there are of putting every possible doctrine, or
opinion, or doing, or thing, or event! And what mischievous results,
colouring all our views and feelings, may follow from an important subject
having been wrongly, disagreeably, injudiciously put to us when we were
children! How many men hate Sunday all their lives because it was put to
them so gloomily in their boyhood; and how many Englishmen, on the other
hand, fancy a Scotch Sunday the most disagreeable of days because the case
has been wrongly put to them, while in truth there is, in intelligent
religious Scotch families, no more pleasant, cheerful, genial, restful,
happy day. And did not Byron always hate Horace, put to him in youth with
the associations of impositions and the birch? There is no more sunshiny
inmate of any home than the happy-tempered one who has the art of putting
all things in a pleasant light, from the great misfortunes of life down to a
broken carriage-spring, a servant’s failings, a child’s salts and senna. You
are extremely indignant at some person who has used you ill; you are worried
and annoyed at his misconduct; it is as though you were going about with a
mustard blister applied to your mind: when a word or two from some genial
friend puts the entire matter in a new light, and your irritation goes, the
blister is removed, your anger dies out, you would like to pat the offending
being on the head, and say you bear him no malice. And it is wonderful what
a little thing sometimes suffices to put a case thus differently. When you
are complaining of somebody’s ill-usage, it will change your feeling and the
look of things, if the friend you are speaking to does no more than say of
the peccant brother, “Ah! poor fellow!” I think that every man or woman who
has got servants, and who has pretty frequently to observe (I mean to see,
not to speak of) some fault on their part, owes a deep debt of gratitude to
the man, whoever he w-as, who thus kindly and wisely gave us a forbearing
stand-point from which to regard a servant’s failings, by putting the tiling
in this way, true in itself though new to many, that you cannot expect
perfection for fourteen, or even for fifty pounds a-year. Has not that way
of putting things sometimes checked you when you meditated a sharp reproof,
and allayed anger which otherwise would have been pretty hot? Even when a
rogue cheats you, (though that, I confess, is a peculiarly irritating
thing,) is not your wrath mollified by putting the thing thus: that the poor
wretch probably needed very much the money out of which he cheated you, and
would not have cheated you if he could have got it honestly? When a
horse-dealer sells you, at a remarkably stiff figure, a broken-winded steed,
do not yield to unqualified indignation. True, the horse-dealer is always
ready to cheat, but feel for the poor fellow, every man thinks it right to
cheat him; and with every man’s hand against him, what wonder though his
hand should be against every man! Everything, you see, turns on the way in
which you put things. And it is so from earliest youth to latest age. The
old scholar, whose delight is to sit among his books, thus puts his
library:—
“My days among the dead are pass’d:
Around me I behold,
Where’er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old :
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse night and day.”
You see the library was not mere shelves of books, and the books were not
mere printed pages. You remember how Robinson Crusoe, in his cheerful moods,
put his island home. He sat down to his lonely meal, but that was not how he
put things. No. “Here was my majesty, all alone by myself, attended by my
servants:” his servants being the dog, parrot, and cat I remember how a
-wealthy merchant, a man quite of the city as opposed to the country, once
talked of emigrating to America, and buying an immense tract of land, where
he and his family should lead a simple, unartificial, innocent life. He -was
not in the least cut out for such a life, and would have been miserable in
it, but he was fascinated with the notion because he put it thus:—“I shall
have great flocks and herds, and live in a tent like Abraham.” And that way
of putting things brought up before the busy man of the nineteenth century I
know not what sweet picture of a primevally quiet and happy life. I can
remember yet how, when I crept about my father’s study, a little boy of
three years old, I felt the magic of the art of putting things. All children
are restless. It is impossible for them to remain still, and we all know how
a child in a study worries the busy scholar. All admonitions to keep quiet
failed; it -was really impossible to obey them. Creep, creep about; upset
footstools; pull off table-covers; upset ink. But when the thing was put in
a different way; -when the kind voice said, “Now, you’ll be my little dog:
creep into your house there under the table, and lie quite still,” there was
no difficulty in obeying that command: and, except an occasional bow-wow’,
there was perfect stillness. The art of putting things had prevailed. It Was
necessary to keep still; for a dog in a study, I knew, must keep still, and
I was a dog.
It must be a worrying thing for a great warrior or statesman, fighting a
great battle, or introducing a great legislative measure, to remember that
the estimation in which he is to be held in his own day and country, and in
other countries and ages, depends not at all on what his conduct is in
itself, but entirely on the way in which it shall be put before mankind—
represented, or misrepresented, in newspapers, in rumours, in histories. How
very unlikely it is that history will ever put the case on its real merits:
the characters of history will either be praised far above their deserts, or
abused far beyond their sins. “Do not read history to me,” said Sir Robert
Walpole, “for that\ I know, must be false.” History could be no more than
the record of the way in which men had agreed to put things; and those
behind the scenes, the men who pull the wires which move the puppets, must
often have reason to smile at the absurd mistakes into which the
history-writing outsiders fall. And even apart from ignorance, or bias, or
intention to deceive, what a fearful thought it must be to a great man
taking a conspicuous part in some great solemnity, such as the trial of a
queen, or the impeachment of a governor-general, to reflect that this great
solemnity, and his own share in it, and how he looked, and what he said, may
possibly be put before mankind by the great historian Mr Wordy! One can
enter into Johnson’s feeling when, on hearing that Boswell intended to write
his biography, he exclaimed, in mingled terror and fury—“If I thought he
contemplated writing my life, I should render that impossible by taking
his!” It was something to shudder at, the idea of going down to posterity as
represented by a Boswell! But the great lexicographer was mistaken: the
Dutch painter like biography shewed him exactly as he was, the great,
little, mighty, weak, manly, babyish mind and heart. And not great men
alone, historical personages, have this reason for disquiet and
apprehension. Don’t you know, my reader not unversed in the ways of life,
that it depends entirely on how the story is told, how the thing is
represented or misrepresented, whether your conduct on any given occasion
shall appear heroic or ridiculous, reasonable or absurd, natural or
affected, modest or impudent: and don’t you know, too, what a vast number of
ill-set people are always ready to give the story the unfavourable turn, to
put the matter in the bad light; and how many more, not really ill-set, not
really with any malicious intention, are prompted by their love of fun, in
relating any act of any acquaintance, to try to set it in a ridiculous
light? Your domestic establishment is shabby or unpretending, elegant or
tawdry, just as the fancy of the moment may lead your neighbour to put the
tiling. Your equipage is a neat little turn-out or a shabby attempt, your
house is quiet or dull, yourself a genius or a blockhead, just as it may
strike your friend on the instant to put the thing. And don’t we all know
some people—not bad people in the main—who never by any chance put the
tiling except in the un favourable way? I have heard the self-same house
called a snug little place and a miserable little hole; the same man called
a lively talker and an absurd rattlebrain; the same person called a
gentlemanlike man and a missy piece of affectation; the same income called
competence and starvation; the same horse called a noble animal and an old
white cow:—• the entire difference, of course, lay in the fashion in which
the narrator chose, from inherent bonhomie or inherent verjuice, to put the
thing. While Mr Bright probably regards it as the most ennobling occupation
of humanity to buy in the cheapest and sell in the. dearest market, Byron
said,' as implying the lowest degree of degradation.
"Trust not for freedom to the Franks—
They have a king who buys and sells!"
And it is just the two opposite ways of putting the same admitted fact, to
say that Britain is the first mercantile community of the world, and to say
that we are a nation of shopkeepers. One-way of putting the fact is the
dignified, the other is the degrading. If a boy plays truant or falls asleep
in church, it just depends on how you put it, or how the story is told,
whether you are to see in all this the natural thoughtlessness of boyhood,
or a first step towards the gallows. “Billy Brown stole some of my apples,”
says a kind-hearted man; “well, poor fellow, I daresay he seldom gets any.”
“Billy Brown stole my apples,” says the severe man; “ah, the vagabond, he is
born to be hanged.” Sydney Smith put Catholic Emancipation as common justice
and common sense; Dr M'Neile puts it as a great national sin, and the origin
of the potato disease. John Foster mentions in his Diary, that he once
expostulated with a great hulking, stupid bumpkin, as to some gross
transgression of which he had been guilty. Little effect was produced on the
bumpkin, for dense stupidity is a great duller of the conscience. Foster
persisted: “Do not you think,” he said, “that the Almighty will be angry at
such conduct as yours 1” Blockhead as the fellow was, he could take in the
idea of my essay; he replied, “That \s just as A tak’s ut!” But what struck
little Paul Dombey as strange, that the same bells rung for weddings and for
funerals, and that the same sound was merry or doleful just as we put it, is
true of many things besides bells. The character of everything we hear or
see is reflected upon it from our own minds. The sun sees the earth look
bright because it first made it so. You go to a public meeting, my friend.
You make a speech. You get on, you think, uncommonly well. When your auditor
Mr A or Miss B. goes home, and is asked there what sort of appearance you
made, don’t you fancy that the reply will be affected in any appreciable
degree by the actual fact! It depends entirely on the state of the relator’s
nerves or digestion, or the passing fancy of the moment, whether you shall
be said to have done delightfully or disgustingly; whether you shall be said
to have made a brilliant figure, or to have made a fool of yourself. You
never can be sure, though you spoke with the tongue of angels, but that
ill-nature, peevishness, prejudice, thoughtlessness, may put the case that
your speech was most abominable. Do you fancy that you could ever say or do
anything that Mr Snarling could not find fault with, or Miss Limejuice could
not misrepresent?
Years ago, I was accustomed to frequent the courts of law, and to listen
with much interest to the great advocates of that time, as Follett, Wilde,
Thesiger, Kelly. Nowhere in the world, I think, is one so deeply impressed
with the value of tact and skill in putting things, as in the Court of
Queen’s Bench at the trial of an important case by a jury. Does not all the
enormous difference, as great as that between a country bumpkin and a hog,
between Follett and Mr Briefless, lie simply in their respective powers of
putting things ? The actual facts, the actual merits of the case, have very
little indeed to do with the verdict, compared with the counsel’s skill in
putting them; the artful marshalling of circumstances, the casting weak
points into shadow, and bringing out strong points into glaring relief. I
remember how I used to look with admiration at one of these great men when,
in his speech to the jury, he was approaching some circumstance in the case
which made dead against him. It was beautiful to see the intellectual
gladiator cautiously approaching the hostile fact; coming up to it, tossing
and turning it about, and finally shewing that it made strongly in his
favour. Now, if that was really so, why did it look as if it made against
him? Why should so much depend on the way in which he put it? Or, if the
fact was in truth one that made against him, why should it be possible for a
man to put it .so that it should seem to make in his favour, and all without
any direct falsification of facts or arguments, without any of that mere
vulgar misrepresentation which can be met by direct contradiction? Surely it
is not a desirable state of matters, that a plausible fellow should be able
to explain away some very doubtful conduct of his own. and by skilful
putting of things should be able to make it seem even to the least
discerning that he is the most innocent and injured of human beings. And it
is provoking, too, when you feel at once that his defence is a mere
intellectual juggle, and yet, with all your logic, when you cannot just on
the instant tear it to pieces, and put the thing in the light of truth.
Indeed, so well is it understood that by tact and addiess you may so put
things as to mike the worse appear the better reason, that the idea
generally conveyed, when we talk of putting things, is, that there is
something wrong, something to be adroitly concealed, some weak point in
regard to which dust is to be thrown into too observant eyes. There is a
common impression, not one of unqualified truth, that when all is above
board, there is less need for skilful putting of the case. Many people
think, though the case is by no me^ns so, that truth may always be depended
on to tell its own story and produce its due impression. Not a bit of it.
However good my case might be, I should be sorry to intrust it to Mr
Numskull, with Sir Fitzroy Kelly on the other side.
It is a coarse and stupid expedient to have recourse to anything like
falsification m putting things as they would make best for yourself, reader.
And there is no need for it. Unless you have absolutely killed a man and
taken his watch, or done something equally decided, you can easily represent
circumstances so as to throw a favourable light upon yourself and your
conduct. It is a mistake to fancy that in this world a story must be either
true or false, a deed either right or wrong, a man either good or bad. There
are few questions which can be answered by Yes or No. Almost all actions and
events are of mingled character; and there is something to be said on both
sides of almost every subject which can be-debated. Who does not remember
how, when he was a boy, and had done some mischief which he was too honest
to deny, he revolved all he had done over and over, putting it in many
lights, trying it in all possible points of view, till he had persuaded
himself that he had done quite right, or at least that he had done nothing
that was so very wrong, after all? There was a lurking feeling, probably,
that all this was selfdeception; and oh! how our way of putting the case, so
favourably to ourselves, vanished into air when our teacher and governor
sternly called us to account! All those jesuitical artifices were forgotten,
and we just felt that we had done wrong, and there was no use trying to
justify it.
The noble use of the power of putting things, is when a man employs that
power to give tenfold force to truth. When you go and hear a great preacher,
you sometimes come away wishing heartily that the impression he made on you
would last: for you feel that though what struck you so much was not the
familiar doctrine which you knew quite well before, but the way in which he
put it, still that startling view of things was the right view. Probably in
the pulpit more than anywhere else, we feel the difference between a man who
talks about and about things, and another man who puts them so that we feel
them. And when one thinks of all the ignorance, want, and misery which
surround us in the wretched dwellings of the poor, which we know all about
but take so coolly, it is sad to remember that truth does not make itself
felt as it really is, but depends so sadly for the practical effect upon the
skill with which it is put—upon the tact, graphic power, and earnest purpose
of the man who tells it A landed proprietor will pass a wretched row of
cottages on his estate daily for years, yet never think of making an effort
to improve them: who, when the thing is fairly put to him, will forthwith
bestir himself to have things brought into a better state. He will wonder
how he could have allowed matters to go on in that unhappy style so long;
but wall tell you truly, that though the thing was before his eyes, he
really never before thought of it in that light.
Some people have a happy knack for putting in a pleasant way everything that
concerns themselves. Mr A.’s son gets a poor place as a bank clerk; his
father goes about saying that the lad has found a fine opening in business.
The young man is ordained, and gets a curacy on Salisbury Plain; his father
rejoices that there, never seeing a human face, he has abundant leisure for
study, and for improving his mind. Or, the curacy is in the most crowded
part of Man* Chester or Bethnal Green; the father now rejoices that his son
has opportunities of acquiring clerical experience, and of visiting the
homes of the poor. Such a man’s house is in a well-wooded country-; the
situation is delightfully sheltered. He removes to a bare district without a
tree,—ah! there he has beautiful pure air and extensive views. It is well
for human beings when they have the pleasant art of thus putting things; for
many, we all know, have the art of putting things in just the opposite way.
They look at all things through jaundiced eyes; and as things appear to
themselves, so they put them to others. You remember, reader, how once upon
a time David Hume the historian kindly sent Rousseau a present of a dish of
beef-steaks. Rousseau fired at this; he discerned in it a deep-laid insult;
he put il that Hume, by sending the steaks, meant to insinuate that he,
Rousseau, could not afford to buy proper food for himself. Ah, I have known
various Rousseaus! They had not the genius, indeed, but they had all the
wrong-headedness.
Who does not know the contrasted views of mankind and of life that pervade
dl the writings of Dickens and of Thackeray! It is the same world that lies
before both, but how differently they put it! And look at the accounts in
the Blue and Yellow newspapers respectively, of the borough member's speech
to his constituent^ last night in the Com Exchange. Judge by the account in
the one paper, and he is a Burke for eloquence, a Peel for tact, a Shippen
for incorruptible integrity. Judge by the account in the other, and you
would wonder where the electors caught a mortal who combines so remarkably
ignorance, stupidity, carelessness, inefficiency, and dishonesty. As for the
speech, one journal declares it was fluent, the other that it was
stuttering; one that it was frank, the other that it was trimming; one that
it was sense, the other that it was nonsense. Nor need it be supposed that
cither journal intends deliberate falsehood. Each believes his own way of
putting the case to be the right way; and the truth, in most instances,
doubtless lies midway between. But in fact, till the end of time, there will
be at least two ways of putting everything. Perhaps the M.P. warmed with his
subject, and threw himself heart and soul into his speech. Shall we say that
he spoke with eloquent energy, or shall we put it that he bellowed like a
bull? Was he quiet and correct? Then we may choose between saying that he is
a classical speaker, and that he was as stiff as a poker. He made some
jokes, perhaps: take your choice whether you shall call him clever or
flippant, a wit or a buffoon. And so of everybody else. You know a clever,
well-read young woman; you may either call her such, or talk sneeringly of
blue-stockings. You meet a lively, merry girl, who laughs and talks with all
the frankness oi innocence. You would say of her, my kindly reader,
something like what I have just said; but crabbed Mrs Backbite will have it
that she is a romp, a boisterous hoyden, of most unformed manners. Perhaps
Mrs Backbite, spitefully shaking her head, says she trusts, she really
hopes, there is no harm in the girl; but certainly no daughter of hers
should be allowed to associate with her. And not merely does the way,
favourable or unfavourable, in which the thing shall be put, depend mainly
on the temperament of the person who puts it, so that you shall know
beforehand that Mr Snarling will always give the unfavour able view, and Mr
Jollikin the favourable; but a further element of disturbance is introduced
by the fact, that often the narrator’s mood is such, that it is a toss-up,
five minutes before he begins to tell his story, whether he shall put the
conduct of his hero as good or bad.
Who needs the art of putting things more than the painter of portraits? Who
sees so much of the littleness, the petty vanity, the silliness of mankind?
It must be hard for such a man to retain much respect for human nature. The
lurking belief in the mind of every man that he is remarkably good-looking,
concealed in daily intercourse with his fellows, breaks out in the painter’s
studio. And without positive falsification, how cleverly the artist often
contrives to put the features and figure of his sitter in a satisfactory
fashion! Have not you seen the portrait of a plain, and even a very ugly
person, which was strikingly like, and still very pleasant-looking and
almost pretty? Have not you seen things so skilfully put, that the little
snob looked dignified, the vulgar boor gentlemanlike, the plain-featured
woman angelic —and all the while the likeness was accurately preserved?
It seems to me that in the case of many of those fine things which stir the
heart and bring moisture to the eye, it depends entirely on the way in which
they are put, whether they shall strike us as pathetic or silly, as sublime
or ridiculous. The venerable aspect of the dethroned monarch, led in the
triumphal procession of the Roman emperor, and looking indifferently on the
scene, as he repeated often the words of Solomon, “Vanity, vanity, all is
vanity!" depends much for the effect it always produces on the reader upon
the stately yet touching fashion in which Gibbon tells the story. So with
Hazlitfs often-recurring account of Poussin’s celebrated picture, the Et in
Arcadia Ego. As for Burke flinging the dagger upon the floor of the House of
Commons, and Brougham falling on his knees in the House of Peers, what a
ridiculous representation Punch could give of such things! What shall be
said of Addison, often tipsy in life, yet passing away with the words
addressed to his regardless step-son, “See in what peace a Christian can
die!” We need not think of things which are essentially ridiculous, though
their perpetrators intended them to be sublime: as Lord Ellen-borough’s
proclamation about the Gates of Somnauth, Sir William Codrington’s despatch
as to the blowing-up of Sebastopol, and all the grand passages in the
writings of Mr Wordy. Let me confess that I think it a very unhealthy sign
of the times, this love which now exists of putting grave matters in a
ridiculous light, which produces Comic Histories of England, Comic
Blackstones, Comic Parliamentary Delates, Comic Latin Grammars, and the
like. Dreary indeed must be the fun of such books; but that, is not the
worst of them. Yet one cannot seriously object to such a facetious serial as
Punch, which represents the funny element in our sad insular character.
Punch lives by the art of putting things, and putting them in a single way;
but how wonderfully well, how successfully, how genially, he puts all things
funnily! But to burlesque Macbeth or Othello, to travesty Virgil, to parody
the soliloquy in Hamlet; though it may be putting things in a novel and
amusing way, approaches to the nature of sacrilege. Sometimes, indeed, the
ludicrous way of putting things has served an admirable purpose; as in the
imitations of Southey’s Sapphics and Kotzebue’s morality in the Poetry of
the Anti-jacobin. And the ludicrous way of putting things has sometimes
brought them much more vividly home to “men’s business and bosoms,” as in
Sydney Smith’s description of the possible results of a French invasion. Nor
has it failed to answer the end of most cogent argument, as in his
description of Mrs Partington sweeping back the Atlantic Ocean.
Do not fancy, my friend, that you can by possibility so live that
ill-natured folk will not be able to put everything you do unfavourably. The
old man with the ass was a martyr to the desire so to act that there should
be no possibility of putting what he did as wrong. And when John Gilpin’s
wife, for fear the neighbours should think her proud, caused the chaise to
draw up five doors off, rely upon it Some of the neighbours would say she
did so in the design of making her carriage the more conspicuous. When you
give a dinner-party, and after your guests are gone, sit down and review the
progress of the entertainment, thinking how nicely everything went on, do
you remember, madam, that at that same moment your guests are seated at
their own homes, putting all the circumstances in quite a different way:
laughing at your hired greengrocer, who (you are just saying) looked so like
a butler; execrating your champagne, which (you are this moment flattering
yourself) passed for the product of the grape and not of the gooseberry; and
generally putting yourself, your children, your house, your dinner, your
company, your music, into such ridiculous lights, that, if you knew it,
(which happily you never will,) you would wish that you had mingled a little
strychnine with the vintage so vilified. Still, it is pleasant to believe
that there is no real malice in the way in which most people cut up their
friends behind their backs. You really have a very kindly feeling towards Mr
A. or Mrs B., though you do turn them into ridicule in their absence. After
laughing at Mr A. to Mrs B., you are quite ready to laugh at Mrs B. to Mr A.
The truth appears to be, that all this is an instance of that reaction which
is necessary to human beings. In people’s presence politeness requires that
you should put everything that concerns them in the most agreeable and
favourable way. Impatient of this constraint, you revenge yourself upon it
whenever circumstances permit, by putting things in the opposite fashion. I
feel not the least enmity towards Mr Snooks for saying behind my back that
my essays are wretched trash. He has frequently said in my presence that
they are far superior to anything ever written by Macaulay, Milton, or
Shakspeare. I knew that after my dear friend’s civility had been subjected
to so violent a strain as was implied in his making the latter declaration,
it would of necessity fly back, like a released bow, whenever he left me;
and that the first mutual acquaintance he met would have the satisfaction of
hearing the case put in a very different way. And no doubt, if my dear
friend were put upon his oath, his true opinion of me would transpire as
nearly midway between the two ways of putting it respectively before my face
and behind my back.
You are a country clergyman, let us say, my reader, with a small parish; and
while you do your duty faithfully and zealously, you spend a spare hour now
and then upon a review or a magazine article. You like the thought that
thus, from your remote solitude, you are addressing a larger audience than
that which you address Sunday by Sunday. You think that reasonable and
candid people would say that this is an improving and pleasant way of
employing a little leisure time, instead% of rusting into stupidity, or
mooning about blankly, or smoking yourself into vacancy, or reading novels,
or listening to and retailing gossip, or hanging about the streets of the
neighbouring county town, or growing sarcastic and misanthropic. But don’t
you remember, my dear friend, that although you put the case in this way, it
is highly probable that some of your acquaintances, whose proffered
contributions to the periodical with which you are supposed to be connected
have been “declined with thanks,” and whom malignant editors exclude from
the opportunity of enlightening an ungrateful world, may put the matter very
differently indeed? True, you are always thoroughly prepared with your
sermon on Sundays, you are assiduous in your care of the sick and the aged,
you have cottage lectures here and there throughout the parish, you teach
classes of children and young people, you know familiarly the face and the
circumstances of every soul of your population, and you honestly give your
heart and strength to your sacred calling, suffering nothing whatever to
interfere with that: but do you fancy that all this diligence will prevent
Miss Lemonjuice and Mr Flyblow from exclaiming, “All, see Mr Smith; isn’t it
dreadful? See how he neglects his proper work, and spends his time, his
whole time, in writing articles for the Quarterly Review I It’s disgraceful!
The bishop, if he did his duty, would pull him up!”
A striking instance of the effect of skilfully putting things may be found
in the diary of Warren Hastings. The great Governor-General always insisted
that his conduct of Indian affairs had been just and beneficent, and that
the charges brought by Burke and Sheridan were without foundation in truth.
He declared that he had that conviction in the centre of his being; that he
was as sure of it as of his own existence. But as he listened to the opening
speech of Burke, he tells us he saw things in a new light. He felt the spell
of the way in which the great orator put things. Could this really be the
right way? “For half-an-hour,” says Hastings, “I looked up at Burke in a
reverie of wonder, and during that time I actually felt myself the most
guilty being upon earth!” But Hastings adds that he did what the boy who has
played truant does —he took refuge in his own way of putting things. “I
recurred to my own heart, and there found what sustained me under all this
accusation.”
A young lad’s choice of a profession depends mainly upon the way in which
the life of that profession is put before him. If a boy is to go to the bar,
it will be expedient to make the Chancellorship the prominent feature in the
picture presented to him. It will be better to keep in the background the
lonely evenings in the chambers at the Temple, the weary backbenches in
court, the heart-sickening waiting year after year. And the first
impression, strongly rooted, will probably last I love my own profession. I
would exchange its life and its work for no other position on earth; but I
feel that I owe part of its fascination to the fragrance of boyish fancies
of it which finger yet Blessed be the kind and judicious parent or
preceptor, whose skilful putting of things long ago has given to our
vocation, whatever it may be, a charm which can overcome the disgust which
might otherwise come of the hard realities, the little daily worries, the
discouragements and frustrated hopes! How much depends on first
impressions—on the way in which a man, a place, a book is put to us for the
first time! Something of cheerlessness and dreariness will always linger
about even the summer aspect of the house which you first approached when
the winter afternoon was closing in, dark, gusty, cold, miserable-looking.
What a difference it makes to the little man who is to have a tooth pulled
out, whether the dentist approaches with a grievous look, in silence, with
the big forceps conspicuous in his hand; or comes up cheerfully, with no
display of steel, and says, with a smiling face, “Come, my little friend, it
will be over in a moment; you will hardly have time to feel it; you will
stand it like a brick, and mamma will be proud of having such a brave little
boy!” Or, if either man or boy has a long task to go through, how much more
easily it will be done if it is put in separate divisions than if it is set
before one all in a mass! Divide et impera states a grand principle in the
art of putting things. If your servant is to clear away a mass of snow, he
will do it in half the time and with twice the pleasure if you first mark it
out into squares, to be cleared away one after the other. By the make of our
being we like to have many starts and many arrivals: it does not do to look
too far on without a break. I remember the driver of a mail-coach telling
me, as I sat on the box through a sixty-mile drive, that it would weary him
to death to drive that road daily if it were as straight as a railway: he
liked the turnings and windings, which put the distance in the form of
successive bits. It was sound philosophy in Sydney Smith to advise us,
whether physically or morally, to “take short views.” It would knock you up
at once if, when the railway carriage moved out of the station at Edinburgh,
you began to trace in your mind’s eye the whole route to London. Never do
that. Think first of Dunbar, then of Newcastle, then of York, and, putting
the thing thus, you will get over the distance without fatigue of mind. What
little child would have heart to begin the alphabet, if, before he did so,
you put clearly before him all the school and college work of which it is
the beginning? The poor little thing would knock up at once, wearied out by
your want of skill in putting things. And so it is that Providence, kindly
and gradually putting things, wiles us onward, still keeping hope and heart,
through the trials and cares of life. Ah, if we had had it put to us at the
outset how much we should have to go through, to reach even our present
stage in life, we should have been ready to think it the best plan to sit
down and die at once ! But, in compassion for human weakness, the Great
Director and Shower of events practises the Art of Putting Things. Might not
we sometimes do so when we do not? When we see some poor fellow grumbling at
his lot, and shirking his duty, might not a little skill employed in putting
these things in a proper light serve better than merely expressing our
contempt or indignation? A single sentence might make him sec that what was
complaining of was reasonable and right. It is quite wonderful from what odd
and perverse points of view people will look at things: and then things look
so very different The hill behind your house, which you have seen a thousand
times, you would not know if you approached it from some unwonted quarter.
Now, if you see a man afflicted with a perverse twist of mind, making him
put things in general or something in particular in a wrong way, you do him
a much kinder turn in directing him how to put things rightly, than if you
were a skilful surgeon and cured him of the most fearful squint that ever
hid behind blue spectacles.
Did not Franklin go to hear Whitefield preach a charity sermon resolved not
to give a penny; and was he not so thoroughly overcome by the great
preacher’s way of putting the claims of the charity which he was advocating,
that he ended by emptying his pockets into the plate? I daresay Alexander
the Great was somewhat staggered in his plans of conquest by Parmenio’s way
of putting things. “After you have conquered Persia, what will you do?”
“Then I shall conquer India.” “After you have conquered India, what will you
do?” “Conquer Scythia.” “And after you have conquered Scythia, what will you
do?” “Sit down and rest.” “Well,” said Parmenio to the conqueror, “why not
sit down and rest now?” I trust young Sheridan was proof against his
father’s way of putting things, when the young man said he meant to go down
a coal-pit “Why go down a coal-pit?” said Sheridan the elder. “Merely to be
able to say I have been there.” “You blockhead,” replied the high-principled
sire, “what is there to keep you from saying so without going?”
I remember witnessing a decided success of the art of putting things. A
vulgar rich man who had recently bought an estate in Aberdeenshire,
exclaimed, “It is monstrous hard! I have just had this morning to pay forty
pounds of stipend to the parish minister for my property. Now I never enter
the parish church,” (nor any other, he might have added,) “and why should I
pay to maintain a church to winch I don’t belong?” I omit the oaths which
served as sauce. Now, that was Mr Oddbody’s way of putting tilings, and you
would say his case was a hard one. But a quiet man wiio wras present changed
the aspect of matters. “Is it not true, Mr Oddbody,” he said, “that when you
bought your estate its rental was reckoned after deducting the payment you
mention; that the exact value of your annual payment to the minister was
calculated, and the amount deducted from the price you paid for the
property? And is it not therefore true, that not a penny of that forty
pounds really comes out of your pocket?” Mr Oddbod/s face elongated. The
bystanders unequivocally signified what they thought of him; and as long as
he lived he never failed to be remembered as the man who had tried to extort
sympathy by false pretences.
To no man is tact in putting things more essential than to the clergyman. An
injudicious and unskilful preacher may so put the doctrines which he sets
forth as to make them appear revolting and absurd. It is a fearful thing to
hear a stupid fellow preaching upon the doctrine of Election. He may so put
that doctrine that he shall fill every clever young lad who hears him with
prejudices against Christianity, which maj last through life. And in
advising one’s parishioners, especially in administering reproof where
needful, let the parish priest, if he would do good, call into play all his
tact. With the best intentions, through lack of skill in putting things, he
may do great mischief. Let the calomel be concealed beneath the jelly. Not
that I counsel sneakiness; that is worse than the most indiscreet honesty.
There is no need to put things, like the dean immortalised by Pope, who when
preaching in the Chapel Royal, said to his hearers that unless they led
religious lives they would ultimately reach a place “which he would not
mention in so polite an assembly.” Nor will it be expedient to put things
like the contemptible wretch who, preaching before Louis XIV., said, Nous
mour rons tous; then, turning to the king, and bowing humbly, presque tous.
And it is only in addressing quite exceptional congregations that it would
now-a-days be regarded as a piece of proper respect for the mighty of the
earth, were the preacher, in stating that all who heard him were sinners, to
add, by way of reservation, all who have less than a thousand a-year.
Any man who approaches the matter with a candid spirit, must be much struck
by the difference between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic wrays of
putting the points at issue between the twro great Churches. The Roman
prayers are in Latin, for instance. A violent Protestant says that the
purpose is to keep the people in ignorance. A strong Romanist tells you that
Latin was the universal language of educated men when these prayers were
dnnvn up; and puts it that it is a fine thing to think that in all Romish
churches over Christendom the devotions of the people are expressed in the
selfsame words. Take keeping back the Bible from the people. To us nothing
appears more flagrant than to deprive any man of God’s written Word. Still
the Romanist has something to say for himself. He puts it that there is so
much difficulty in understanding much of the Bible—that such pernicious
errors have followed from false interpretations of it. Think, even, of the
dogma of the infallibility of the Church. The Protestant puts that dogma as
an instance of unheard of arrogance. The Romanist puts it as an instance of
deep humility and earnest faith. He says he docs not hold that the Church,
in her own wisdom, is able to keep infallibly right; but he says that he has
perfect confidence that God will not suffer the Church deliberately to fall
into error. Here, certainly, we have two very different ways of putting the
same things.
But who shall say that there are no more than two ways of putting any
incident, or any opinion, or any character? There are innumerable ways—ways
as many as are the idiosyncrasies of the men that put them. You have to
describe an event, have you? Then you may put it in the plain matter-of-fact
way, like the Time? reporter; or in the sublime way, like Milton and Mr
Wordy; or in the ridiculous way, like Punch (of design) and Mr Wordy
(unintentionally); or in the romantic way, like Mr G. P. R. James; or in the
minutely circumstantial way, like Defoe or Poe; or in the affectedly simple
way, like Peter Bell; or in the forcible, knowing way, like Macaulay; or in
the genial, manly, good-humoured way, like Sydney Smith; or in the flippant
way, like Mr Richard Swiveller, who when he went to ask for an old
gentleman, inquired as to the health of the “ancient buffalo;" or in the
lackadaisical way, like many young ladies; or in the whining, grumbling way,
like many silly people whom it is unnecessary to name; or in the
pretentious, lofty way, introducing familiarly many titled names without the
least necessity, like many natives of beautiful Erin.
What nonsense it is to say, as it has been said, that the effect of anything
spoken or written depends upon the essential thought alone! Why, nine-tenths
of the practical power depends on the way in which it is put Somebody has
asserted that any thought which is not eloquent in any words whatever, is
not eloquent at all. He might as well have said that black was white. Not to
speak of the charm of the mere music of gracefully modulated words, and
felicitously arranged phrases, how much there is in beautifully logical
treatment, and beautifully clear development, that will interest a
cultivated man in a speech or a treatise, quite irrespective of its subject!
I have known a very eminent man say that it was a delight to him to hear
Follett make a speech, he did not care about What. The matter was no matter;
the intellectual treat was to watch how the great advocate put it And we
have all read with delight stories with no incident and little character,
yet 'which derived a nameless fascination from the way in which they were
told. Tell me truly, my fair reader, did you not shed some tears over
Dickens’s story of Richard Doubledick? Could you have read that story aloud
without breaking down? And yet, was there ever a story with less in it? But
how beautifully Dickens put what little there was, and how the melody of the
closing sentences of the successive paragraphs lingers on the ear! And you
have not forgotten the exquisite touches with which Mrs Stowe put so simple
a matter as a mother looking into her dead baby’s drawer. I have known an
attempt at the pathetic made on a kindred topic provoke yells of laughter;
but I could not bear the woman, and hardly the man, who could read Mrs
Stowe’s putting of that simple conception without the reverse of smiles.
Many readers, too, will not forget how much more sharply they have seen many
places and things, from railway-engine sheds to the Britannia Bridge, when
put by the graphic pen of Sir Francis Head. That lively baronet is the
master of clear, sharp presentment
I have not hitherto spoken of such ways of putting things as were practised
in King Hudson’s railway reports, or in those of the Glasgow Western Bank,
cooked to make things pleasant by designed misrepresentation. So far we have
been thinking of comparatively innocent variations in the ways of putting
things —of putting the best foot foremost in a comparatively honest way. But
how much intentional misrepresentation there is in British society! How few
people can tell a thing exactly as they saw it! It goes in one colour, and
comes out another, like light through tinted glass. It is rather amusing, by
the way, when a friend corties and tells you a story which he heard from
yourself, but so put that you hardly know it again. Unscrupulous putters of
things should have good memories. There is no reckoning the ways in which,
by varying the turn of an expression, by a tone or look, an entirely false
view may be given of a conversation, a transaction, or an event. A lady says
to her cook, You are by no means overworked. The cook complains in the
servants’ hall that her mistress said she had nothing to do. Lies, in the
sense of pure inventions, are not common, I believe, among people with any
claim to respectability; but it is perfectly awful to think how great a part
of ordinary conversation, especially in little country towns, consists in
putting things quite differently from the actual fact; in short, of wilful
misrepresentation. Many people cannot resist the temptation to deepen the
colours, and strengthen the lines, of any narration, in order to make it
more telling. Unluckily, things usually occur in life in such a manner as
just to miss what would give them a point and make a good story of them; and
the temptation is strong to make them, by the deflection of a
hair’s-breadth, what they ought to have been.
It is sad to think, that in ninety-nine out of every hundred cases in which
things are thus untruly put, the representation is made worse than the
reality. Few old ladies endeavour, by their imaginative putting of things,
to exhibit their acquaintances as wiser, better, and more amiable, than the
fact An exception may be made whenever putting her friends and their affairs
in a dignified light would reflect credit upon the old lady herself. Then,
indeed, their income is vast, their house is magnificent, their horses are
Eclipses, their conversation is brilliant, their attention to their friends
unwearying and indescribable. Alas for our race: that we lean to evil rather
than to good, and that it is so much more easy and piquant to pitch into a
man than to praise him!
Let us rejoice that there is one happy case in which the way of putting
things, though often false, is always favourable. I mean the accounts which
are given in country newspapers of the character and the doings of the great
men of the district. I often admire the country editor’s skill in putting
all things (save the speech of the opposition M.P., as already mentioned) in
such a rosy light; nor do I admire his genial bon-homie less than his art.
If a marquis makes a stammering speech, it is sure to be put as most
interesting and eloquent. If the rector preaches a dull and stupid charity
sermon, it is put as striking and effective. A public meeting, consisting
chiefly of empty benches, is put as most respectably attended. A gift of a
little flannel and coals at Christmas-time, is put as seasonable
munificence. A bald and seedy building, just erected in the High Street, is
put as chaste and classical; an extravagant display of gingerbread
decoration, is put as gorgeous and magnificent. In brief, what other men
heartily wish this world were, the conductors of local prints boldly declare
that it is. Whatever they think a great man would like to be called, that
they make haste to call him. Happy fellows, if they really believe that they
live in such a world and among such beings as they put! Their gushing heart
is too much for even their sharp head, and they see all things glorified by
the sunshine of their own exceeding amiability. -
The subject greatens on me, but the paper dwindles: the five-and-forty fair
expanses of foolscap are darkened at last It would need a volume, not an
essay, to do this matter justice. Sir Bulwer Lytton has declared, n pages
charming but too many, that the world’s great question is, What will he do
with It? I shall not debate the point, but simply add, that only second to
that question in comprehensive reach and in practical importance is the
question—How will he put It? |
