THE ART OF RUDE LETTER WRITING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3774, 13 July 1926, Page 74

THE ART OF RUDE LETTER WRITING.

We are often blamed as a mealy-mouthed generation who do not dare to express in print our hearty dislike of each other’s work (says a writer in John O. London s Weekly). Indeed, uncomplimentary criticism does seem unhealthily rare. To judge by the recent exchange of letters between a Scottish peer and a parish minister, the great civilised art of dignified rudeness has fallen on evil times. For civilised it is, to spike your enemy on your wit or indignation \ such a manner that he shall be remembered for all time—deservedly or undeservedly—as having offended against an important canon of taste or conduct; far more civilised than to hit him on the head or paint his work green, and be reported in what the French call the Faits Divers. * * * Samuel Johnson's letters to James Macpherson and Lord Chesterfield are, of course, the most celebrated rude letters in the English language. Macpherson had startled the world in 1760 by claiming the discovery of many old Gaelic epics and plays dating from the fourth century a.d. The novelty of his mysterious “Ossian” translations took the world by storm. Johnson vigorously asserted that he was a forger—which he was in many points—and an angry interchange of letters was closed by the Doctor thus: I received your and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what 1 cannot do for myself the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian. . . . What I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. You may print this if you will. •* ' # Johnson s letter to Chesterfield was even more effective. The latter had accepted the dedication of the great dictionary’s prospectus; seven years passed, during which Johnson laboured at his terrific task, and Chesterfield did nothing for him. On the eve of its publication, however, the Earl wrote two articles in its praise, hoping, Johnson thought, to win thus the dedication of the dictionary itself. Chesterfield received for his pains a letter which ended as follows: Seven* years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, without one act of assistance. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. . . . Is not a patron, my lord, one who lookß with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it. . . . Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learnI shall bs disappointed if I conclude it, if less bs possible, with less. # # * Johnson, of course, never wasted words; but he belonged to a leisurely century in which there was time to state a theme in full. A more modern artist broke his relatione with a too presumptuous patron thus curtly: Dear Sir, My dear Sir! Yourt vary sinsorely, X.Y. TOris deserves to be compared with Landor’s abrupt rebuke to the Marquis of Normanby. “You are, Sir,’* he wrote, "by the favour of a ministry, the Mar-

quis of Normanby; I am, by the grace of God, Walter Savage Landor.” Sheer abupe is very difficult to write in a way that will carry with it the sympathies of a strange reader. The Methodist preacher, for instance, who wrote an open letter denouncing Sterne fßf~ his “Tristram Shandy,” opened an eloauent paragraph with the words, “0 Sterne, thou art scabby,” and makes us laugh against, not with him. But Henry James, senior, father of the philosopher and the novelist, wrote a letter of this kind which not only carries us with him at once, but shows such bonhomie that even the recipient can. not have been offended. * * * A Swedenborgian himself, James none the less found the Swedeuborgianism of -most of his co-religionists very difficult to stomach. The editor of a New* York paper devoted to the views of the sect had sent it to him free for some time. Henry James at last replied:— I thank you for your kindness, but my conscience refuses any longer to sanction its taxation is this way, as I have nevei* been able to read the paper with any pleasure, nor therefore with any profit. I presume its editorials are by you, and while I willingly seized upon every evidence they display of an enlarged spirit, I yet find the general drift of the paper so povertystricken in a spiritual regard, as to make it absolutely the least attractive reading 1 know. The old sectß are notoriously bad enough, but your sect compares with them ,yery much as a heap of dried cod on Long \V harf in Boston compares with the same fish while still enjoying the freedom of the Atlantic Ocean. . . . I really know nothing so sad and spectral in the shape of literature. It seems composed by skeletons and intended for readers Tyho are content to disown their good flesh and blood, and be moved by some ghastly mechanism. It cannot but prove to be very unwholesome to you spiritually, to be so nearly connected with’all that sadness and silence, where nothing more musical is heard than the jostling of bore by bone. Do come out of it before you wither as an autumn leaf. . . . Pardon my freedom. . . Consider me as having any manner and measure of disrespect for your ecclesiastical pretensions, but as being personally, yours cordially, H. James. One would rather be abused like that than be praised by most of one's acquaintance. It is little wonder that James had two sons of genius.