B-Berry and I Look Back

by Dornford Yates

  22

  Berry looked at me.

  “Have you thought of a title yet?”

  “For this book of ours? Not yet. It presents difficulty – as our last one did.”

  “The title must be striking,” said Berry. “What about The Rising Gorge?”

  Jonah and I were laughing, but Daphne and Jill, who were outraged, protested violently.

  As the explosion died down–

  “That’s a good selling title,” said Berry. “Right out of the ruck.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Daphne. “Fancy going into a bookshop and asking for The Rising Gorge…”

  “It’s certainly arresting,” I said, “but I fear it would be asking for trouble. The reviewers would simply eat it. I mean, we might as well call the book Stinking Fish and have done with it.”

  “That,” said Berry, “would be vulgar. Now The Rising Gorge—”

  “There’s nothing doing,” I said. “You must have another think.”

  “Well whatever we choose has got to arrest and invite. What about The Capricious Toadstool? Or What the Sundial Saw?”

  Jill put a hand to her head.

  “But – but what do they mean?” she said.

  “There you are,” said Berry. “You buy the book to find out.”

  “But you won’t find out even then.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Berry. “You’ve bought the book.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, laughing, “but the prospect of receiving about five hundred letters all asking me to justify the title is too dreadful. If I’m to buy trouble, it’s got to be worthwhile.”

  “The trouble with you,” said Berry, “is that you’re too old-fashioned. If only you’d move with the times, we should call the book The Careless Nunnery and sell about two hundred thousand before people knew where they were.”

  Even Daphne went down before that.

  When order had been restored –

  “As an old-fashioned author,” I said, “I think we ought to suggest that this book is what it is – that is to say, a sort or kind of sequel to As Berry and I Were Saying. I mean, one must be fair. I don’t want people to buy it in the belief that it is, say, a romance. Which reminds me that one fellow who’d read As Berry and I Were Saying wrote and said that he had enjoyed it very much but that the title had suggested that it was ‘a Berry book’, and that he was surprised that I should have yielded to the temptation to swell its sales in such a questionable way.”

  “He didn’t!” – incredulously, and Daphne and Jill cried out.

  “He did indeed,” I said.

  “Whatever did you reply?”

  “I said I was surprised, too. For I’d had thousands of letters in my time, but that his was the first to accuse me of attempting to obtain money by false pretences.”

  “Very mild,” said Jonah. “As a matter of fact, that was a very good title. And your note on the back of the cover made everything plain.”

  “I agree. But you see how very careful one has to be.”

  “I know,” said Jill, bubbling. “I know. B-Berry and I Look Back.”

  “Very good,” said everyone.

  All things considered, I don’t think it is too bad.

  23

  “Oh, and here’s another thing,” said Berry. “More than once I’ve seen it stated – possibly by way of being humorous – that if ever an author is particularly proud of something which he has written, he may be sure that it is bad and will be well advised to strike it out or tear it up. Do you endorse that statement?”

  “Certainly not as it stands. Let me demolish it in a sentence. Don’t you think Kipling was proud of The Recessional?”

  “Thank you,” said Berry. “If that isn’t an answer, I don’t know what is.”

  “Was he to tear that up, because he was pleased with it? Don’t you think Paul Lamerie was pleased with some of his lovely salvers? Because he was proud of them, was he to cast them into the melting-pot? No. It all depends on what is meant by the word ‘author’. Anyone who writes a book is an author. Well, there are all sorts of authors. Many never have their work published. Many ought not to have had their work published.”

  “There,” said Berry, “I cordially agree.”

  “Some show signs of promise – sometimes great promise, but need experience. And some have learned by experience and have become craftsmen.”

  “Few enough today,” said Jonah.

  “Yes, I’m afraid that’s true. Well, to some of those in the first three classes of authors, the statement Berry’s seen may apply. I can’t be sure. There’s certainly more than one passage in my earlier books that I don’t think much of today. But I don’t remember that I was particularly proud of them. I thought they were all right, or I shouldn’t have let them stand. But I don’t think I was ever proud of anything I had written, until I became a craftsman.”

  “And then you were?”

  “And then I was. And I say so without any shame. Wasn’t the experienced silversmith proud of the tankard he’d made? He kept his pride to himself, as a craftsman does; but, because he knew it was good, it warmed his heart. And don’t forget – he’s the best judge. He knows if his tankard’s a good one, and just how good it is. But where the embryo author is concerned, there may be something in the statement which Berry has read.”

  “But you can’t bear it out?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can remember being pleased with – I don’t say ‘proud of’ – two or three passages I wrote thirty-six years ago: but I couldn’t better them today.”

  “Well, I’m much obliged,” said Berry. “I always felt that the statement was too facile, too facetious and too contrary. You know. After Bernard Shaw.”

  “Your bête noire.”

  “I’m afraid so. I shall always consider him a most over-rated man. Now be honest.”

  “I’m bound to admit,” I said, “that in my humble opinion, not much of his work will live.”

  “Meiosis,” said Berry, “Shaw was a charlatan.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I don’t think you can say that. But he got away with a lot, because, as he would have said, most people are fools.”

  “I’m a heretic,” said Berry. “And a lot I care. Barrie was over-rated.”

  “I’m inclined to think he was. He was terribly good, Barrie. In a different class to Shaw. But he was not always as good as he was made out to be.”

  “And Hardy?”

  “Hardy achieved greatness. If today some of his work seems dull, that is the fault of those who find it so; for they are too impatient to give such passages the consideration they deserve. And no one has ever approached Hardy at his best – in his own line.”

  “And Conrad?”

  “Conrad was a wonderful writer. Remember that he was a Pole and that he learned his English before the mast. But I am bound to confess that some of his work is dull. Typhoon, on the other hand, will see out time. I don’t believe anyone else could ever have written such a book. It stands entirely alone. And The Mirror of the Sea is incomparable.”

  “Kipling?”

  “Even Homer nods. Some of his last work was not so good. To the average man some of Debits and Credits and Limits and Renewals is virtually unintelligible. I’m being terribly outspoken; but that is the plain truth. I believe Kipling went on writing after he should have stopped, because writing was his great resource: because, once in his study, he could forget an unkind world and live in one of his own. I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe I am. Thy Servant a Dog – his last book but one – may seem to prove me wrong, but that’s rather in a class by itself and I’m inclined to think that it had been in his mind for years. But this is all surmise, and I may be entirely wrong. But he did drive his wonderful brain extremely hard for more than fifty years.”

  24

  The reading of ‘the news’ ended, and Jill turned the wireless off. Then she resumed her seat and picked up the piece of linen from wh
ich she was drawing some threads.

  Nobody said anything. There was really nothing to be said.

  Presently Berry looked round.

  Then –

  “When,” he said, “wherever you look, what are called ‘world affairs’ are not so much disturbing to the mind as devastating to the senses, I find it a relief to consider some thing or some habit or manner which belonged to happier days. The pictures which such things conjure up can be very restful and the contemplation which they inspire can minister to the mind.”

  “I quite agree,” said Jonah. “What, er, relic have you in mind tonight?”

  “Well,” said Berry, “I was thinking of that curious appendage – that vade-mecum of every English schoolboy for more than two hundred years, the hornbook.

  “Now the hornbook has much to commend it. In the first place, it was essentially English: in the second place, it was a very simple and sensible piece of work: in the third place, it must be the only gadget which served its purpose so well that nobody sought to improve it in all its very long life. But what I shall always find remarkable is that, though hundreds of thousands of hornbooks were made and distributed between about 1570 and 1800, hardly any have survived. Yet it was by no means fragile: indeed, it was made for hard wear. Such hornbooks as have survived are naturally very much prized. There’s one in The Bodleian Library.”

  I nodded.

  “Their almost complete disappearance is very strange and rather pitiful. That Shakespeare learned to read from his hornbook, there can be no doubt.”

  “Dare I ask,” said Daphne, “what a hornbook was?”

  “It was a primer,” said Berry: “an elementary school-book for teaching children to read. But, although it was called a hornbook, it wasn’t a book. It was a small sheet of stout paper or parchment, stuck on to a bat.”

  “A bat?” cried Jill.

  “Well, it was almost exactly like those things, which were sold in pairs, that pats of butter used to be made with.”

  “We used to call them the butter-pats,” said Daphne. “Like table-tennis bats, only oblong instead of round. And, of course, they were grooved.”

  “Well, the hornbook was rather bigger, but it was the same shape. And the paper or parchment was stuck on to the blade. On the paper were written or printed the alphabet in small letters and capitals, the vowels, a few simple combinations of letters, the Invocation of the Trinity (which is always used today by a priest before his sermon), and, finally The Lord’s Prayer. To preserve the paper, a framed sheet of transparent horn was laid over it and the frame was fastened to the bat with studs. And the horn, of course, gave it its name.

  “Now every English school-boy had his own hornbook, which he always took with him to and from school. And from that, he learned to read for more than two centuries. As far as I know, its text was never altered and I am quite sure that it could not have been improved. For what was more proper than that the first thing the child learned to read should be The Lord’s Prayer?”

  “If,” said Jonah, “they learned it properly, as I’ve no doubt they did, they could give points to some clerks in holy orders today. I’m tired of hearing ‘who art’ for ‘which art’ and ‘on earth’ for ‘in earth’.

  “Am I with you?” said Berry. “I find such ‘improvements’ offensive beyond belief. But let it go.

  “The hornbook was a great institution. It was thanks to the hornbook that one summer’s day Samuel Pepys found a little child reading the Bible to an old shepherd whilst he was watching his sheep.”

  “What a charming picture,” said Daphne.

  “So Pepys found it, my darling, three hundred years ago.”

  “When you say ‘horn’,” said Jill…

  “I mean horn,” said Berry. “The horns of animals. When cattle were slaughtered, the horns and hooves were sold to a bloke called a horner, who melted them down and produced sheets of horn of various thicknesses. Before glass came into England, windows were made of horn. And lanterns were furnished with horn to protect the candle’s flame. People even wore horn spectacles, though whether these helped their eyes, I beg leave to doubt.

  “Well, there we are. The hornbook had a great run. It was the urchin’s text-book from the time of Elizabeth to that of George the Third. It is part of the history of England. And it was so English, so homely and so personal that nothing that I can think of recalls for me more vividly those old and handsome days. Little boys used it, hit one another over the head with it and lost it while Naseby was being fought: mothers found it and washed it and dried it during the battle of the Nile: fathers, who could not read, stared with awe at its symbols on the days on which the Spanish Armada was smashed. Human nature being what it is, perhaps I should value it less if more had survived.”

  “Well, I did enjoy that,” said Daphne.

  “My sweet, you’re easy to please.”

  “Not at all. I found it most refreshing.”

  “I loved it,” said Jill. “And I’ll bet no other country can show a thing like that.”

  “Only the English,” said Berry, “could have produced and adopted so precious a document. ‘Train up a child,’ you know.”

  25

  “If,” I said, “I may comment upon the excellent monograph on hornbooks which you gave us last night, I can’t help feeling that the ‘horn spectacles’ to which you referred must have been glasses framed in horn. I mean, the magnifying-glass was known in the thirteenth century, and we do speak of ‘steel spectacles’, when we are referring to lenses framed in steel. Mark you, I’m by no means sure that you’re not right. But Pepys tells us that he was using green spectacles in the hope of helping his eyes. Well, they were clearly of glass, and, on reflection, I think it quite likely that they were framed in horn.”

  “What about silver?” said Jonah.

  “I admit that that’s equally likely. But, looking the facts in the face, surely lenses of horn could only embarrass the eyes. And glass was made in England in the sixteenth century – and imported much earlier. However, I’m only groping.”

  “I think,” said Berry, “that you must be right. I mean, I know that the world is much more than half full of fools, but that anyone who felt that his eyes required assistance should deliberately purchase and employ spectacles whose lenses were made of horn is almost incredible. I mean, such behaviour belongs to The Stolen March. Pouch would never have been without them.”

  “Well, that’s what gets me,” I said, laughing. “All the same, it is curious that, after rejecting horn frames in favour of gold or silver or steel, we should have returned to horn, in the shape of tortoise-shell.”

  The thing was too hard for us, and we left it there.

  26

  “You say,” said Berry, “you allege that the cask of your legal memories has run dry. I hope and believe you’re wrong. Any way, I feel that if we were to ask you some questions relating to legal affairs, one or more questions might get the cask going again.”

  “I agree,” said Jonah. “Let Daphne begin.”

  “There’s one thing,” said my sister, “I’ve always wanted to know. Supposing an engagement is broken off: in the ordinary way, the girl returns the ring. Supposing she doesn’t return it… Can the man demand it by law?”

  “I believe the answer is that he can, if it was she that broke the engagement off. But not otherwise.”

  “How would he proceed?”

  “He would bring an action for recovery – I think that’s right.”

  “Supposing he broke it off, but the ring was an heirloom.”

  “I don’t know what the procedure would be in such a case. The man would have to offer to buy it back; and if she refused to sell, then he’d have to take her to court in some other way. Possession’s nine points of the law, but if the compensation was fair, I think he’d find some way of making her give it back.”

  “Breach of promise,” said Berry. “Were you ever concerned in such a case?”

  “I’m glad to say that I
wasn’t.”

  “Why d’you say ‘glad’?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. But such actions have been brought by way of blackmail. I mentioned one in As Berry and I Were Saying. The most impudent one I remember was brought by a beautiful, but notorious divorcée. Unhappily for her, she was unable to deny that at the time at which the promise was made the man in question was married to somebody else. Which meant, of course, that the promise was bad in law.”

  “Libel,” said Jonah. “If a man thinks that he has been libelled, he can bring an action against the culprit, can’t he? Very well. But in certain cases, he can prosecute instead. Am I right?”

  “Yes, indeed,” I said. “I can’t remember off-hand in what cases he can prosecute: but I can tell you this – that to an action for libel, truth is an absolute defence: but to a prosecution for libel, it is not. That, I believe, is the origin of the cryptic saying, ‘The greater the truth, the greater the libel.’”

  “Sorry,” said Daphne, “but I can’t follow that.”

  “I shouldn’t think anyone could,” said Berry. “And if that’s the sort of wash you talked when you were up on your feet, I don’t wonder you never got a red bag. A brown-paper one full of gooseberries would have been more appropriate.”

  “You wicked liar,” cried Jill. “Boy never talks wash. And I’ll bet you wouldn’t have got a red bag. Someone might have sent you a sack.”

  As the laughter died down –

  “Good for you, sweetheart,” said Berry. “I take it all back. But the points he makes are usually very clear, and so I’ve got spoiled. Perhaps, if you asked him nicely, he’d give it to us with a spoon.”

  “It’s very confusing,” I said. “And that cursed motto troubled me for years.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” said Berry.

  “Look at it this way,” I said. “X writes a letter to the papers in which he declares that ten years ago Y was sent to prison for obtaining money by false pretences. Well, Y brings an action against X, claiming heavy damages. Now, if X can prove that in fact ten years ago Y was sent down for fraud – well, there’s an end of the case. Y’s action will be dismissed with costs. What Y should have done was to prosecute X. Then the fact that what X wrote was true is no defence: and unless X can satisfy the jury that it was in the public interest that Y should be exposed as an ex-convict, X will go down. One can conceive cases in which so to expose Y would have served no purpose at all and only have been a very cruel thing to do. And then the motto comes in – ‘The greater (or more bitter) the truth, the greater (or more savage) the libel’. And X may well go to prison as a result.”