Public School Magazine, February 1901
“Of all forms of lettered effusiveness, that which exploits the original work of others and professes to supply us with right opinions thereanent is the least wanted.”—Kenneth Grahame.
IT has always seemed to me one of the worst flaws in our mistaken social system that absolutely no distinction is made between the master who forces the human boy take down notes from dictation and the rest of mankind. I mean that, if in a moment of righteous indignation you rend such an one limb from limb, you will almost certainly be subjected to the utmost rigour of the law, and you will be lucky if you escape a heavy fine of five or even ten shillings, exclusive of the costs of the case. Now, this is not right on the face of it. It is even wrong. The law should take into account the extreme provocation which led to the action. Punish if you will the man who travels second-class with a third-class ticket, or who borrows a pencil and forgets to return it, but there are occasions when justice should be tempered with mercy, and this murdering of pedagogues is undoubtedly such an occasion.
It
should be remembered, however, that there are two varieties of notes. The
printed notes at the end of your Thucydides or Homer are distinctly useful when
they aim at acting up to their true vocation, namely, the translating of
difficult passages or words. Sometimes, however, the author will insist on
airing his scholarship, and instead of translations he supplies parallel
passages, which neither interest, elevate, nor amuse the reader.
This, of course, is mere vanity. The author, sitting in his comfortable chair with
something short within easy reach, recks nothing of the misery he is inflicting
on hundreds of people who have done him no harm at all. He turns over the pages
of his book of “Familiar Quotations” with brutal callousness, and for every
tricky passage in the work which he is editing finds and makes a note of three
or four even trickier ones from other works. Who has not in his time been
brought face to face with a word which defies translation? There are two
courses open to you on such an occasion, to look the word up in the Lexicon or
in the notes. You, of course, turn up the notes, and find: “See line 80.”
You look up line 80, hoping to see a translation,
and there you are told that a rather similar construction occurs in
Xenophades’ “Lyrics from a Padded Cell.” On this, the craven of spirit will
resort to the Lexicon, but the man of mettle will close his book with an
emphatic bang, and refuse to have anything more to do with it. Of a different
sort are the notes which simply translate the difficulty and subside. These
are a boon to the scholar. Without them it would be almost impossible to
prepare one’s work during school, and we should be reduced to the prosaic
expedient of working in prep. time. What we want is the commentator who
translates mensa as “a table” without giving a
page and a half of notes on the uses of the table in ancient Greece, with an
excursus on the habit common in those times of retiring underneath it after
dinner, and a list of the passages in Apollonius Rhodius where the word “table” is mentioned.
These
voluminous notes are apt to prove a nuisance in more ways than one. Your
average master is generally inordinately fond of them, and will frequently ask
some member of the form to read his note on so-and-so out to his fellows.
This sometimes leads to curious results, as it is hardly to be expected that the youth
called upon will be attending, even if he is awake, which is unlikely. On one
occasion an acquaintance of mine, “whose name I am not at liberty to divulge,”
was suddenly aware that he was being addressed, and, on giving the matter his
attention, found that it was the form-master asking him to read out his note on
Ecce aer est! My friend is a kind-hearted youth and of an obliging
disposition, and would willingly have done what was asked of him, but there
were obstacles, first and foremost of which ranked the fact that, taking
advantage of his position on the back desk (whither he thought the basilisk eye
of Authority could not reach), he had substituted “Bab Ballads”
for the works of Virgil, and was engrossed in the contents of that modern
classic. The subsequent explanations lasted several hours. In fact, it is
probable that the Master does not understand the facts of the case thoroughly
even now. It is true that he called him a “loathsome, slimy, repulsive toad,”
but even this seems to fall short of the grandeur of the situation.
Those
notes, also, which are alas! only too common now-a-days, that deal with
peculiarities of grammar, how supremely repulsive they are!
It is impossible
to glean any sense from them, as the Editor mixes up Nipperwick’s view with
Sidgedey’s reasoning and Spreckendzedeutscheim’s surmise with
Donnerundblitzendorf’s conjecture in a way that seems to argue a thorough
unsoundness of mind and morals, a cynical insanity combined with a blatant
indecency. He occasionally starts in a reasonable manner by giving one view as
(1) and the next as (2). So far everyone is happy and satisfied. The trouble
commences when he has occasion to refer back to some former view, when he will
say: “Thus we see (1) and (14) that” etc. The unlucky student puts a finger on
the page to keep the place, and hunts up view one. Having found this and marked
the spot with another finger, he proceeds to look up view fourteen. He places
another finger on this, and reads on, as follows: “Zmpe, however, maintains
that Schrumpff (see 3) is practically insane, that Spleckzh (see 34) is only a
little better, and that Rswkg (see 97 a (b) c3) is so far from being right that
his views may be dismissed as readily as those of Xkryt (see 5x).”
At this point brain-fever sets in, the victim’s last
coherent thought being a passionate wish for more fingers. A friend of mine
who was the wonder of all who knew him, in that he was known to have
scored ten per cent. in one of these papers on questions like the
above, once divulged to an interviewer the fact that he owed his success to his
methods of learning rather than his ability. On the night before an exam. he
would retire to some secret, solitary place, such as the boot-room, and
commence learning these notes by heart. This, though a formidable task, was not
so bad as the other alternative. The result was that, although in the majority
of cases he would put down for one question an answer that would have been
right for another, yet occasionally, luck being with him, he would hit the
mark. Hence his ten per cent.
Another
fruitful source of discomfort is provided by the type of Master who lectures on
a subject for half an hour, and then, with a bland smile, invites, or rather
challenges, his form to write a “good, long note” on the quintessence
of his discourse. For the inexperienced this is an awful moment.
They must write something—but what? For the last half hour
they have been trying to impress the Master with the fact that
they belong to the class of people who can always listen best
with their eyes closed. Nor poppy, nor mandragora, nor all
the drowsy syrups of the world can ever medicine them to that sweet sleep that
they have just been enjoying. And now they must write a “good, long note.” It
is in such extremities that your veteran shows up well. He does not betray any
discomfort. Not he. He rather enjoys the prospect, in fact, of being permitted
to place the Master’s golden eloquence on paper. So he takes up his pen with
alacrity. No need to think what to write. He embarks on an essay concerning
the Master, showing up all his flaws in a pitiless light, and analysing his
thorough worthlessness of character. On so congenial a subject he can, of
course, write reams, and as the Master seldom, if ever, desires to read the
“good, long note,” he acquires a well-earned reputation for attending in school
and being able to express himself readily with his pen.
Vivat floreatque.
But all these forms of notes are as nothing compared with the notes that youths even in this our boasted land of freedom are forced to take down from dictation. Of the “good, long note” your French scholar might well remark: “C’est terrible,” but justice would compel him to add, as he thought of the dictation note: “mais ce n’est pas le diàble. For these notes from dictation are, especially on a warm day, indubitably le diàble.
Such
notes are always dictated so rapidly that it is impossible to do anything
towards understanding them as you go. You have to write your hardest to keep up.
The beauty of this from one point of view is that, if you miss a sentence,
you have lost the thread of the whole thing, and it is useless to attempt to
take it up again at once. The only plan is to wait for some perceptible break
in the flow of words and dash in like lightning. It is much the same sort of
thing as boarding a ’bus when in motion. And so you can take a long rest,
provided you are in an obscure part of the room. In passing, I might add that a
very pleasing indoor game can be played by asking the Master, “what came after
so-and-so,” mentioning a point of the oration some half-hour back. This
always provides a respite of a few
minutes while he is thinking of some bitter repartee worthy of the occasion,
and if repeated several times during an afternoon may cause much innocent
merriment.
Of course, the real venom that lurks
hid within notes from dictation does not appear until the time for examination arrives.
Then you find yourself face to face with sixty or seventy closely and
badly written pages of a note-book, all of which must be learnt by heart if you
would aspire to the dizzy heights of half-marks. It is useless to tell your
examiner that you had no chance of getting up the subject. “Why,” he will
reply, “I gave you notes on that very thing myself.” “You did, sir,” you say,
as you advance stealthily upon him, “but as you dictated those notes at the
rate of two hundred words a minute, and as my brain, though large, is not
capable of absorbing sixty pages of a note-book in one night, how the
suggestively asterisked aposeiopeses do you expect me to know them? Ah-h-h!”
The last word is a war-cry, as you fling yourself bodily on him, and tear him
courteously, but firmly, into minute fragments. Experience, which, as we all
know, teaches, will in time lead you into adopting some method by which you may
evade this taking of notes. A good plan is to occupy yourself with the
composition of a journal, an unofficial magazine not intended for the eyes of
the profane, but confined rigidly to your own circle of acquaintances. The
chief advantage of such a work is that you will continue to write while the
notes are being dictated. To throw your pen down with an air of finality and
begin reading some congenial work of fiction would be a gallant action, but
impolitic.
No, writing of some sort is essential, and as it is out of the
question to take down the notes, what better substitute than an unofficial
journal could be found? To one whose contributions to the School magazine are
constantly being cut down to mere skeletons of their former brilliant selves by
the hands of censors, there is a rapture otherwise unattainable in a page of
really scurrilous items about those in authority. Try it yourselves, my lads.
Think of something really bad about somebody. Write it down and gloat over it.
Sometimes, indeed, it is of the utmost use in determining your future career.
You will probably remember those Titanic articles that appeared at the
beginning of the war in “The Weekly Luggage-Train,” dealing with all the crimes
of the War Office—the generals, the soldiers, the enemy—of everybody, in
fact, except the editor, staff, and office-boy of “The W.L.-T.”
Well, the writer
of those epoch-making articles confesses that he owes all his skill to his
early training, when, a happy lad at his little desk in school, he used to
write trenchantly in his note-book on the subject of the authorities. There is
an example for you. Of course we can never be like him, but let, oh! let us be
as like him as we’re able to be. A final word to those lost ones who dictate
the notes. Why are our ears so constantly assailed with unnecessary
explanations of and opinions on, English literature? Prey upon the Classics if
you will. It is a revolting habit, but too common to excite overmuch horror.
But surely anybody, presupposing a certain bias towards sanity, can understand
the Classics of our own language, with the exception, of course, of Browning.
Take Tennyson, for example. How often have we been forced to take down from
dictation the miserable maunderings of some commentator on the subject of “Maud.”
A person reads “Maud” and either likes it or dislikes it. In any case his
opinion is not likely to be influenced by writing down at express speed the
opinions of somebody else concerning the methods or objectivity and
subjectivity of the author when he produced the work.
Somebody told me a short time ago that Dickens was an example of supreme, divine, superhuman genius. It is the sort of thing Mr. Gilbert’s “rapturous maidens” might have said: “How Botticellian! How Fra Angelican! Perceptively intense and consummately utter!” There is really no material difference.
Note:
“Lyrics from a Padded Cell,” by the fictitious Greek author Xenophades; his cohorts Apollonius Rhodius, Nipperwick, and the German scholars Sprechendzedeutscheim and Donnerundblitzendorf. He includes a mangled quotation from Othello: “Nor poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world can ever medicine them to that sweet sleep that they have just been enjoying” . . . concludes with a quote from Patience.
—John Dawson
Magazine clearly reads le diàble twice, but Diego Seguí informs us that in proper French that should be simply le diable without an accent. The error has been allowed to stand in the transcription in case it was deliberate.