XI.

On Style.

On the subject of style, the authors of books telling how to write, flounder solemnly. They remind me very much of Van Vechten’s tale of the rather massive female who tried to explain a cubistic production to an outspoken doubter and coming a cropper in the effort, proved that she knew nothing about the subject. The said doubter had declared that “There’s always a lot of talk, but nothing is clear.” And it is exactly so when self appointed instructors arise to explain “style” in literature.

Perhaps if you get this into your mind it will serve. To tell a story, two persons are involved--a writer and a reader. It is the business of the writer to win, _to persuade the reader_. All the rest follows. The writer must choose the clearest way, the nearest way, the most pleasant way. His manner of doing that is his style.

Next, how shall style be attained? Take Thoreau for your teacher in this. He said: “If you have anything to say it will fall from you as a stone falls from your hand.” You know that is true. Of course, different men will have different ways of expressing themselves just as they have mannerisms in their daily acts. But we must remember that one man’s style will not fit another man. Imitation is idle. That is all I can tell you about style. I could wrap what I have said above into a cloak of ornamental language or cover it layer upon layer with elaborations as the layers of an onion are about a central core, but could say nothing else of value. Still, as many books have been written on the subject by master minds, and as I have those books on my shelves, I shall give you in the paragraph that follows, some idea of what stylists have to say, and, that being done, shall copy for you certain passages from books not very popular and therefore hard to get at, so that for yourself you may see the extraordinary differences in style.

Take Schopenhauer’s view. It is to be found in his _Parerga_.

“Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style.... If they would go honestly to work, and say, quite simply, the things they have really thought, and just as they have thought them, these writers would be readable and, within their own proper sphere, even instructive.

“But instead of this they try to make the reader believe that their thoughts have gone much further and deeper than is really the case. They say what they have to say in long sentences that wind about in a forced and unnatural way; they coin new words and write prolix periods which go round and round in the thought and wrap it up in a sort of disguise. They tremble between the two separate aims of communicating what they want to say and of concealing it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look learned and deep, in order to give people the impression that there is very much more than for the moment meets the eye.” And again: “The first rule for good style is that the author should have something to say.”

The English novelist, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a lecture delivered at the University of Cambridge, has this to say: “As technically manifested in literature it (style) is the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of human thought or emotion.”

Next take the Frenchman, Comte de Buffon. It was he who said: “The style is the man himself.” I think you will understand and enjoy the passage that follows:

“But when he has made a plan, when once he has brought together and put in order all the thoughts essential to his subject, he will see easily the instant when he ought to take up his pen, he will feel with certainty that his mind is ready to bring forth, he will be pressed to give birth to his ideas, and will find only pleasure in writing; his ideas will succeed each other easily, and the style will be natural and ready; the warmth born of this pleasure will diffuse itself everywhere and give life to each expression; the animation will become higher and higher; the tone will become exalted; objects will take on color; and feeling blended with intellect will increase the warm glow, will carry it farther, will make it pass from that which one says to that which one is about to say, and the style will become interesting and luminous.”

I cull this for you from John Ruskin:

“So long as no words are uttered but in faithfulness, so long the art of language goes on exalting itself; but the moment it is shaped and chiselled on external principles, it falls into frivolity, and perishes.”... “No noble nor right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart.”... “No man is worth reading to form your style, who does not mean what he says; nor was any great style ever invented but by some man who meant what he said.”

Now here Thoreau again:

“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the school.”

Reading that, consider Jack London the virile, Robert Burns the boy on the stone bruised farm, John Bunyan the tinker, Masefield the sailor and bartender, W. H. Davies the hobo, Caradoc Evans the boy who was always hungry and tired. The last named mastered English through the study of the Bible. The passage below is taken from his book, “My Neighbors.” Except perhaps Bunyan, no better example could be given of sheer force and precision of style.

“Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He comes to deliver us a sermon, we shall have made a hole in the roof and take down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike the Father Christmas of picture books. Often He lies on his stomach on the Heaven’s floor, an eye at one of his myriad of peep holes watching that we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar and a black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath He preaches to the congregation of Heaven.

“Heaven is a Welsh chapel: but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls, pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock--which marks the days of the month as well as the hours of the day--are glass. The inhabitants are clothed in white shirts in which they were buried and in which they arose at the Call: and the language of God and his angels and of the Company of the Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah.

“It is no miracle that we are religious. Our God is just behind the preacher, and He is in the semblance of the preacher and we believe in Him truly. It is no miracle that we are prayerful. Our God is by us in our hagglings and cheatings. Bacca Pehffos prays that the dealers’ eyes are closed to the disease of her hen; Shon Porth asks the Big Man to destroy his pregnant sister into whose bed Satan enticed him; Ianto Tybach says: ‘Give me a nice bit of haymaking weather, God bach. Strike my brother Enoch dead or blind and see I have his fields without any old bother. A champion am I in the religious and there’s gifts I give the preacher. Ask Him. That’s all.”

Now consider a very different style. It is from Charles Lamb who came nearer achieving perfection than anyone in literature. His art is so cunningly concealed that it has the appearance of almost careless discourse.

“I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer’s flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C---- holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust for me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts.”

At this point I spent a full half hour trying to hit upon a paragraph for reproduction here from Stevenson’s “Virginibus Puerisque.” But without success. You can no more tear a paragraph from that admirable essay than you can take a jewel from its setting and have the thing as it was. So you must turn to his essay for yourself. You should also read his “Travels with a Donkey.” And, while you are about it, do not forget to read much of De Quincey, and also of Goldsmith.