THE EQUIVOCAL TYPEWRITER

Evening Star, Issue 19776, 28 January 1928, Page 17

THE EQUIVOCAL TYPEWRITER

[Written by C, R. Allen, for the ‘Evening Star.’] Variations upon the theme of typing errors are without number. Professor Saintsbury, in his monograph on Matthew Arnold, tells how a typewriter he knew was apt to write “Brutish public” for “British public,” with picturesque results. _ This slip is easily explicable by the juxtaposition of “i” and “u ” on the standard keyboard. Mr Chesterton, as a younger man, had a besetting fondness for the word “cosmic.” Often as not the typewriter or the printer preferred “ comic,” which may explain Mr Chesterton’s undeserved reputation for flippancy. Readers of that_ charming American novel, 1 Queed,’ will remember how the pedantic little man once indited an article upon some obscure matter of international politics, in which he wrote of “ a procession of pleas,” which should have called up association with Magna Charta. But the printer had it “ a procession of fleas,” which called up association less dignified. To come nearer home, the present writer ventured into verse in tho course of a consideration of New Zealand authorship in last Saturday’s ‘Star.’ A perverted inverted comma changed one line from “ and laughter lingered on the ’best of pain,” a quite passable conceit, into “ and laughter lingered on the chest of pain,” which suggests a mustard plaster. There is a story that a newspaper intended to refer to a certain Colonel Smith as “ the battle-scarred veteran,” but the linotypist dropped an “ r,” with the result that the colonel found himself named “tho battle-scared veteran.” Next day there appeared what Mr Punch would call “another impending apology.” But again the printer blundered, and the paragraph ran: “We regret that through a printer’s error we referred to Colonel Smith as ‘the battle-scared veteran.’ The phrase should have read ‘ the bottle-scarred veteran.’ ” We are not told whether the printer displayed the indomitable will of Robert Bruce’s spider, and tried again or whether the colonel, like Mr Queed, visited the office to get his apology by word of mouth. I have no doubt that someone has already organised a competition for the best collection of typographical errors. It was a clerical error which made Selwyn bishop of Melanesia as well as of New Zealand, but that is another matter. The ordinary man would have regarded the clerk in the Colonial Office who misnumberecl the longitude and latitude of the bishop’s new diocese as an unconscious humorist. But the bishop took this latitude in grim earnest. However, that has nothing to do with the ways that are strange of a typewriter. The typewriter, like the young British soldier’s Martini in Mr Kipling’s ballad, is human, and liable to error. If John Milton had possessed one it would not have necessary for him to bully his nieces into acting as his amanuenses. It is probable that she would have played him some tricks. Anyone with a taste for ribaldry might take a copy of ‘ Paradise Lost ’ and note the passages where the typewriter could have spelled disaster in more senses of the phrase than one. However, the nieces could have been requisitioned as proof readers. If Cowper had possessed a typewriter it is possible that Lady Austen might have indicated it as the starting point for, his opus, instead of the sofa. I. do not think that ‘ The Task ’ has ever presented itself as a proposition to such a finished parodist as Mr Max Beerbohm. He could mako excellent sport of it. By way of coda to this rambling disquisition I append some lines to a typewriter. If the machine suffer misrepresentation, its blood be on its own head.

Levers and springs, Strange crooked things, Carriage and slot, Spools and what not, Mysterious agents each bound to fuifil . Its part in the play of a Lilliput will. The talcs discoursive that I write, Though they may never see the light Of printer’s ink and comely board, Creative thrills to mo afford; And you have limned with every ke5 r Those puppets that are part of me. For me no more the running quill. The darkness closes round me still. I need you as the candle dies, And fingers do the task of eyes. Your asterisks shall be my stars To twinkle through the prison bars. Levers and springs, Strange crooked things, Carriage and slot, Spools and what not, Mysterious agents, each bound to fulfil Its part in the play of a Lilliput will.