Morning Read: Well, and so?
And so we resume the Morning Read. In future, the “season” will begin with the new year, and not in the autumn. (That gives me even more time to wade through the watery deserts of Moby-Dick. A mixed blessing.)
¶ Lord Chesterfield’s letter of 10 May 1748 is yet another keeper. In it, the noble lord warns his son away from “commonplace observations.” In our world, these would concern baseball teams and women drivers, and they are just as annoying as the attacks on the clergy and against matrimony upon which Chesterfield heaps scorn.
These and many other commmonplace reflections upon nations or professions in general (which are at least as often false as true) are the poor refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their own, but endeavour to shine in company by second- hand finery. I always put these pert jackanapes out of countenance, by looking extremely grave, when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so; as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come.This disconcerts them; as they have no resxources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.
(Of course, you had better be a grandee of Chesterfield’s altitude before trying this one on your acquaintance.) Also important:
Falsehood and dissimulation are certainly to be found at courts; but where are they not to be found? Cottages have them, as well as courts; only with worse manners. A couple of neighbouring farmers in a village will contrive and practise as many tricks to overreach each other, at the next market, or to supplant each other in the favour of the squire, as any two courtiers can do to supplant each other in the favour of their prince.
And I can’t resist this sterling observation about scholars:
They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the fellows of their college. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin, but not one word of modern history, or modern languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad, as they call it; but, in truth, they stay at home all that while; for being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good; but dine and sup with one another only at the tavern.
¶ In Moby-Dick, I ran through two chapters with a common subject, viz ships meeting at sea. The first, “The Albatross,” is very short, curtailed as much by Ahab’s impatience for news of the White Whale as by any stylistic consideration; I should have suggested putting the chapter after the one that follows. “The Gam” describes how civilized whalers encounter one another. There are times when it seems that Melville can’t have read anything but the Bible and a heap of encyclopedia entries.
¶ Now, let me see. Who is “the captive” who commences the telling of the second “exemplary novel” in Don Quixote? It has been so long since I picked up the book that I don’t rightly recall. The naval Battle of Lepanto, in which Cervantes himself fought, is mentioned but not named. It is almost refreshing to hear of actual battles, fought by real soldiers without the help or hindrance of sorcerers.
¶ Barry Day’s Noël Coward: must we? If I had nothing else to do, I would pick apart the first part of Chapter 17, which to my ear is deaf to the tonal difference between matters of state and matters of state dinners. Several paragraphs after a thumbnail account of Dunkirk, and a glance at Roosevelt, “visibly moved by the epic adventures” in that evactuation — paragraph later, I say, we get an almost fatuous letter from Alexander Woollcott dated 4 January 1940, presented as if in temporal order.