Kenneth Joseph Mortimer
Reading
by K.J. Mortimer
If there is no art in writing, there is no pleasure in reading.
One hears little now of people who are great readers, and by that
I mean people who love to spend their time with a book in their
hands. Now one may blame television, but after all there is nothing
more boring than to sit passively in front of a screen where everything
is shown in detail and there is no stimulus for the imagination.
Yes, there are very occasional programmes where learning about
history, the revelation of the sheer beauty of ballet or a certain
excitement or “suspense” may hold one for a certain time, but
nothing that may grip one for many hours like a good book.
The real reason for the decline in reading is the decline in writing.
Of course, there never has been so much newsprint. When I was
last in London, I saw newsagent’s shops stacked to the ceiling
with what must have been tons of newspapers and magazines. But
after a quick glance I could only regret that all the paper had
not been left as living forest in Scandinavia to host the nesting
birds and the leaping squirrels, somewhere where shafts of sunlight
pierced deep shadow and resinous “incense hung along the bough.”
It is continually dinned into our ears that this is the Information
Age. But it is not the Reading Age. The great books of the past,
books of philosophy, religion, history or science, were also books
of beauty of style. Who, having once read St. Augustine’s Confessions,
can ever forget “Late have I loved thee, Ancient Light!” or “My
prayer used to be, Give me purity Lord – but not yet!” Just you
try putting such thoughts in so few poignant words!
Allow me to expand on my meaning. If I want to enjoy reading,
I might turn to Oscar Wilde’s prose poem The Nightingale and the
Rose. If I want some information about nightingales I will heave
Tome XV of Pierre-P. Grassé’s Traité de zoologie
down from my shelf (good for the muscles) but, although I might
find out I want to know, it is doubtful whether I find the literary
style so deeply touching.
I have in my possession, yellowed and frayed, some cuttings from
The Observer and the Listener that drew my attention anything
between thirty and forty years ago. I read them for the umpteenth
time with pleasure, even an article on such an apparently forbidding
subject as English hedgerows. When I was in London a few years
ago, I bought all the “quality” papers – certainly not the tabloids
in which the most exhaustive research fails to reveal one literate
sentence – but even so I did not find one article that I could
force myself to read to the end. In fact, if any single one of
them had been cut off in the middle, I would not have noticed
it, so poor was the composition.
The blurbs on paperback best-sellers often draw attention to the
lurid sex scenes to be found between the covers – love, one notices,
seems to be out of date. In Kai Lung’s Golden Hours by Ernest
Bramah there is a scene where the story-teller Kai Lung is in
prison, condemned to be tortured to death. Through a tiny hole
high in the wall he speaks with the beautiful Hwa Mei, the Golden
Mouse. Finally by standing on tip-toe they manage to make their
fingers touch. The delicacy of the author’s pen perfectly matches
the sensitivity of the occasion; this is the sort of description
one remembers. When I was sixteen I read that whole book once
a week for a whole year and I have never tired of it. There are
not many TV series that I would like to see from beginning to
end fifty times over.
There are two fairly recent books that I keep by my bedside and
which I savour repeatedly. One is The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick
Forsyth. You may well imagine that I am not the sort of person
who generally devours thrillers, but this is a thriller with a
difference, and the difference is superb writing. The descriptions
are in such English that one’s imagination creates the scenes
in a way far from the passivity of watching TV. Sir Winston Churchill
wrote of General de Gaulle, who in 1943 was on bad terms with
the British and particularly the Americans, who refused to accept
him: “But I always recognised in him the spirit and conception
which, across the pages of history, the word ‘France’ would ever
proclaim. I understood and admired, while I resented, his arrogant
behaviour. Here he was – a refugee, an exile from his country
under sentence of death, in a position entirely dependent upon
the goodwill of the British Government, and now of the United
States. The Germans had conquered his country. He had no foothold
anywhere. Never mind; he defied all.” It was said later that the
trouble when dealing with de Gaulle was that if you disagreed
with him he thought you an idiot and if you agreed with him he
thought you a coward. Correspondents declared that when as President
he was in a palatial hall with other heads of state, one had the
feeling that the whole building was tilting to the side where
he stood. Here is how Forsyth makes you feel the dignity that
surrounded President de Gaulle: “...the usher stood back to let
the minister pass into the Salon des Ordonnances ... the door
closed behind him without a sound and the usher made his stately
way back down the stairs to the vestibule. ... One of the floor-to-ceiling
windows was open and from the palace garden came the sound of
a wood pigeon cooing among the trees. (Minister Frey is then introduced
into the private office of de Gaulle, who receives him with courteous
solemnity and then reads the file the minister presents him.)
From the top pocket of his jacket Charles de Gaulle took his reading
glasses, put them on, spread the folder on his desk, and started
to read. The pigeon had stopped cooing as if appreciating that
this was not the moment.” What a wonderful touch! But Forsyth
brings all the scenes of rural France and of Paris to life with
the same dexterity.
Another book into which I am ever dipping for the sheer delight
of its style is Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie, about
the last czar and czarina of Russia. Whether Massie describes
the beauty of palace gardens or the dazzling but empty display
of the court life of Imperial Russia, one is there! “... in an
atmosphere thick with the aroma of steaming clothes and boiling
tea, the peasants sat around their huge clay stoves and pondered
the dark mysteries of nature and God. In the country, the Russian
people lived their lives under a blanket of silence.” “Over the
years, the shrubs had grown into lush and fragrant jungles. When
the spring rain fell, the sweet smell of wet lilacs drenched the
air.” What is more, the literary style of the diplomats and of
others surrounding the czar is no less impressive. Something has
gone out of this world.
Decline in writing has been accompanied by a decline of speech.
In 1850, Foreign Secretary Palmerston made a speech that held
Parliament in Westminster spellbound for five whole hours. Remember
that in the British Parliament a member may refer to notes but
may not read his speech. What was the subject? The people of Athens
had refused to pay damages after burning down the house of a Portuguese
Jew who, having been born in Malta, claimed British citizenship,
so Palmerston had sent the British fleet to bombard the city.
Queen Victoria, Parliament and public could not help feeling that
this was going rather far, but in his famous speech starting with
St. Pauls “Cives Romanus sum – I am citizen of no mean city,”
Palmerston triumphantly vindicated himself.
Frankly,
I would need a more interesting subject to be carried away by
enthusiasm after hearing President George Bush or Prime Minister
Blair speak for five hours. At the same time, one does not have
to go back two centuries to find great oratory. I remember how
we were electrified by Churchill’s speeches in 1940 and his War
Memoirs give fine examples of discourse by other Members of Parliament.
It is not only English that has languished. I have old French
magazines with articles about the death of Lally-Tollendal or
some obscure crime in the court of a 17th-century Hanoverian prince,
stories in which I really feel no personal involvement. But once
again it is the excellent writing by people of real culture that
makes the articles impossible to put down before one has finished.
On the other hand, when last year I spent a few days in hospital,
I was brought a current copy of a French history magazine where
there was an article about the Allied landings in Normandy in
1944. Here I did feel personal involvement, because I was eighteen
years old at the time and following the news and also because
Churchill’s War Memoirs is another literary masterpiece which
I never tire of re-reading. But simply, all was “information”,
with inserts listing the horsepower of German tanks and other
details, which I no more enjoyed reading than I would have enjoyed
learning about the length, weight in grammes, etc., of the sword
that hacked off Lally-Tollendal’s head. Not being a professional
student of military history, I want my information to be served
up in a way that makes pleasurable reading. Incidentally, I very
much fear that the concern with scientific accuracy rather than
style has spoilt the pleasure of reading the Holy Bible. (Query:
why isn’t the King James Version obligatory study in all courses
of English literature throughout the world? In content and style
it has had far more influence than any other book, not even excepting
Shakespeare.)
Enough! Now I want to pick up Immortal Poems of the English Language,
The Day of the Jackal, Nicholas and Alexandra or Churchill.
Reproduced by kind permission of NDU Spirit, Notre Dame
University, Louaize.
