ON EMERSON AND SO ON

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22895, 16 December 1939, Page 16

ON EMERSON AND SO ON

I yield to nobody—if I may coin 7 phrase—in admiration for the ritical and other articles and signed ?views contributed to this page by ' t R. G. C. McNab. But it would e strange if I did not sometime'. ■ iffen my back instead of crooking - ie knee or nodding the head; and "ch a. ‘stiffening occasion he gave "ne, some weeks ago, in a review of , “new collection of pieces from R. V. Emerson. I meant to retort -ooner; it is too late now; but—for . reason that will appear—l shall 0 ahead, all the same. It seems -cssible that Mr McNab has himelf, in the meantime, been visited second and superior thoughts on his subject. Did he not, a week ago, v 7 riting of barber-shop music and opular rights in art and need for - rt, declare that we should have, o-day, another Emerson to lead and ’each us, witli two or three Morises as lieutenants? This cry of his ■a not easy to reconcile with the summary judgment of Emerson as an eloquent but hollow man, a fellow who had nothing to say but said ■’t beautifully, and whose twin disinction it was to raise early peas ~i Concord. I paraphrase roughly hut not unfairly. This bag of sweet wind is surely not to be identified with the strong and wholesome '■oice desiderated by Mr McNab three months later. But it is his business to explain that; mine, to express a reaction to his bold and clever belittlement of Emerson. On Emerson’s Side 1 remembered, when I read it, that Mr Logan Pearsall Smith had. out a dozen passages of Emersorv into his “Treasury of English Prose,” no depository of elegant trifles. I remembered that Christopher Morley, no fool about books, always makes a point of it to find what reading Dr. John Haynes Holmes takes with him on holiday, and that Holmes, also no fool, both a priori and ex facto, last reported to him a long list, from Scott to Steinbeck, from Shakespeare to Edna Millay, and added, “Emerson —always at hand.” I remembered that Sir Charles Oman, in his recent book on history and the writing of it, clearly illustrated the return of historical theory ,to a' position very like the snubbei-off Emerson’s: To my mind, history is not so much a record of Progress, or Evolution, but a series of happenings of various tendency. And so far ‘is it from being an impersonal, logical process that there is more truth in the much-de-cried theory of Thomas Carlyle . . . that it has been largely affected by the working of individual men of mark on their contemporaries. Personalities like Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, ' Mohammed, Charlemagne, Bonaparte, or even Lenin, were not mere typical developments of their generation, but men who turned the course of history from its normal channel because they were abnormal. Who can dare to say that if Alexander or Mohammed had not existed some other Macedonian King or Arabian prophet would have upset the world? .... In short, let us never talk of the worldstream, or of inevitability, but reflect that the human record is illogical, often cataclysmic. I remembered, also, my own absorption in several of Emerson’s major essays—l have read him rarely and fragmentarily—and was unwilling to agree that I had been absorbed by the sham of worth; or that just such another little book of selections as Mr McNab reviewed had tricked me in the same way. And I remembered that it was this little book I had with me, once, when I met a . remarkable man; that he took it from me, looked to see if, certain passages were there, quoted those ‘ that were not. from memory, and spoke of Emerson as a valuable thinker and a gr ;at writer; and that this man was Dr. Leonard Cockayne. Emersdh might take me in with gilt eloquence; not Cockayne. Notes on a Long Talk I pulled that book from its shelf, a while ago, and found what I had forgotten: that after Dr. Cockayne and I parted I had spent some time scribbling ‘ down, on the blank leaves, notes of his conversation, which had filled the hours of a railway journey from Hokitika to Arthur’s Pass. That is the reason why, too late to answer Mr McNab carefully, I answer him sketchily: I am .using him to introduce a lame reconstruction of those notes. I wish I had filled them out, while my memory was still fresh; I wish I had been Boswell, to preserve this fraction, even, of what must have been infinite wealth. For I truly believe that a biography of Leonard Cockayne, on Boswell’s model, *an abundant record of characteristic talk, Would be a treasure to set by Boswell’s. Not before, not since, have I listened to any man with the continuous, various pleasure of that railway journey. Cockayne displayed, without ostentation, a wonderful range of reading and a still more wonderful memory. He said William Watson, the poet, was being allowed to fall into undeserved neglect. (This was years before Watson’s poverty was discovered and charity made some amends for injustice.) Watson had himself to blame, perhaps, because he had thrown his art into the service pf politics and flogged it into poor, rhetorical performances. But he could “see and say”; nobody had said anything truer of Burns than he—“rich in the poorer virtues.” Once, when working at Otira, during days of torrential rain, he had received in the mail a copy of the “Spectator,” containing 'a poem about a torrent. Cockayne; “I walked out of the hut, and there was Watson’s poem oh the hillside. I hadn’t seen it; I had to read it, he had to show me, before I could see it. And it had been plunging over the hill, before my eyes, for days.” He remembered the poem and recited it. He spoke verse with an

(SPICIALLT WHITTEN FOB THE PRESS.) [By J.H.E.S.]

exact but easy regard for its metrical build and rhythmical life. Perhaps he did this instinctively; but he had thought about versemaking and verse-speaking. He said that he admired Bridges’s remark on speech-stress rhythms in poetry, that the advantage of them was their “making excellence difficult.” I said that he had evidently not suffered Darwin’s misfortune of losing the love of poetry. Cockayne: “Darwin was never a lover of poetry. Look at his greedy novel reading. Look'at his letters. There’s no love of poetry there. Darwin was greasing a little.” But he spoke of Darwin with the warmth of veneration: “Darwin was great in assembling great quantities of facts and in comprehending them. In botany he opened up new line after new line, all of them good.” I asked him how he accounted for the frequent, if general, anticipations of evolutionary theory in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.” Evolution, he said, was “in the air” before Darwin. “Lamarck. Cuvier, Chambers —they all had a little of it, but in Tennyson it was clearest, because he had the most imagination.” The Worst Wickedness It was in this context that Dr. Cockayne began to speak about scientific integrity. He said something about shifting conceptions of evolution, about gaps in the evidence or uncertainties in its interpretation. Cockayne: “If I were young and a villain, what a fortune I could make, lecturing against evolution! . . , But what a wicked thing, what a wicked thing! I’m a liar. I ailow myself a lie or two in a speech. But not in science: the worst wickedness is to lie in science, which is truth. And the next worst thing is to be. careless, because the result is the same.” ~ ■ . He mentioned a well-known botanical book: “It was revised, but so carelessly that it contradicts on page 32 what it says on page 8. He mentioned, also, a man of science who made some valuable investigations, satisfied himself upon his conclusions, but withheld them from publication. . Cockayne: “He though he might he wrong, after all, and someone would upset him. A man has no right to be timid, when he has satisfied himself. Publish, and be damned to it! Now Tillyard was a brave man. Think of him, working for three years with a hole in his belly, to get finished before he died. He was greater in that than in entomology. He discovered some fossa dragon-flies; that’s his real there, ■ but all the talk is that he killed out the prickly pear in Australia with insects. The prickly pear is not being killed by. insects; it is being killed by arsenic spraying. He said that “disgraceful and futile work was commonly done in American laboratories. “What senseless experiments! They are investigating somewhere the influence of some rare chemical on rootlets —a chemical that’s never found, or possible to find, in soil!” The Converted Larrikins He reverted to the question of scientific credit. Cockayne: “A man is right to want recognition and to seek it. Von Haast’s letters about Muller were harsh and unfair. It’s only by recognition that a man can know he is on the right lines. He must risk being proved wrong, once he is sure he is right, and if he is right it should b 3 made known. Science should have the result and he should have the credit. But the false motive can turn into the worthy one. . . . Two young men [he named men who have achieved distinction in botany] wrote to me to learn howto get plants . named -after them. Wickedness, that! I told them , so; I told them they were only larrikins. They’re converted larrikins now. They’ve given up bowls, given up football, for botanical work, and useful work. too. They call themselves ‘The Finn.’ Hill knows them [Sir Arthur Hill, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew], and others in his class. There is some healthy larrikin in them yet, though. When Hill was in New Zealand they left a parcel marked ‘Weedkiller’ on his seat in the railway carriage!. It was whisky. ... A man without humour to sweeten his work had better commit suicide.” Sham Philosophy Cockayne had been reading Lord Birkenhead’s speculations upon the future of civilisation. He poohpoohed them. , Cockayne: “These fellows think and talk of .the year 2030 as if things go on and on. They go to a point only and then are nullified. ’ He illustrated this bv reference to the advance from the first photographic plate to the moving and talking picture, from the first vacuum cell to the radio telegraph; but my notes do not piece together well enough. “When a man gets to 75 and hears girls swearing that long skirts will never be worn again, he knows that their granddaughters will be wearing crinolines. Sham nhilosophy is as bad as sham science. I hate gardeners who jabber about flora when they mean flowers, and think that antirrhinum sounds better than snapdragon. . . . There’s poetic genius in the popular names of some New Zealand plants. Spaniard: it hints at the poniard. Wild Irishman: ‘Will ye th-read on the tail o’ me coat?’ Lawyet: all'.the nrickly points and tenacity of the law, when it gets hold of you. But that fellow —— [he named a poet], he couldn’t see any of it. He wrote it down that the origin of thdse names was ‘wrapped in obscurity.’ He’s a poet without poetic imagination. _ His poetry wants alcoholic stimulation.” Sham Apple Fie Cockayne showed his zest for life in talking well of food and drink. Like Johnson, he would have said, no doubt, that the man who did not mind his belly would hardly mind anything else. The Channel Islands, he said, were the best place in the

yvorld for onion soup. He hated “sham apple pie”—stewed apple with a triangle of pastry laid on top: “If I go anywhere to eat and they tell me I can have apple pie, I always ask if it is real apple .pie or sham apple pie, and they don’t know what I .mean.” New Zealanders, made a .great mistake in despising eel, he said; it was “better than trumpery trout.” As for lamb’s fry, everyone had forgotten what it was. Cockayne: “It isn’t liver and bacon. It’s liver and sweetbreads and”—he named a seldom-named part of the lamb’s anatomy. “In the north of England they used to get over that in a delicate way. The proper way to be sure of getting them at the butcher’s was to ask for ‘lamb’s appurtenances.’ Lamb’s appurtenances!” Four Rich Things He spoke a little of his age. He had heard Dickens read the trial scene from “Pickwick,” he had heard the elder Boucicauit sing “The Wearing of the Green,” he had seen Irving act “before he was Irving, ’ and he had watchod Grace make a’ century. . . . “Four rich things for an old man.” I make no attempt to picture Dr. Cockayne or to characterise him. His own words will have to suggest the vigour, the raciness, the independent thrust of mind behind them: but the laughing, itiercmg eyes, the taut rig of his fighter s head, the set of his shoulders, there is no sight of these in his words and mine cannot produce it. Yet he was as memorable a man to see as to hear. He impressed himself _ totally and harmoniously. I met him this once only. When he left the tram at Arthur’s Pass, it was to take some records of an experiment m plant regeneration after fire on the hillsides. He had laid down the plan of this experiment or survey 25 years before; he had instructed a young successor, who would see to its carrying on and its completion. perhaps 25 years hence. Science would- have the result; no> matter that he cculd not see it. “There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism m the performer,” said Emerson. He would have respected this old man of science, who had a respect for him. . _ THE LIGHTER SIDE OF CRICKET Silly Point. By Arthur Clitheroe. Duckworth. 88 pp. (5s net.) This is one of a series of books containing stories connected with sport, and in this volume the subject is cricket. Many of the anecdotes are associated with wellknown personalities of the game, mostly Englishmen. For example, under the heading of Barracking this appears: Herbert Sutcliffe was the target in this case. • Everyone knows how immaculate Herbert always is. Well, in one innings the spikes of his boots became clogged with mud and, he asked one of the umpires to remove-fit. A man in the crowd roared: ‘.‘Now, brush his b hair.” Others, again, illustrate the weaknesses and the enthusiasms often found among players, umpires, and spectators. A story is told of a country umpire who, as the bowler stepped over his crease, called, “No ball.” ‘‘Wide,” he, added, as the ball appeared to be so. But the batsman reached out and struck the ball. “Well hit!” shouted the umpire, and “Well caught!” as a fieldsman brought off a . catch. “Hout! Hover!” The book contains much that is old, much that lacks point; but enthusiastic cricketers will be pleased to have this collection illustrating the lighter side of the game.