THE BIOGRAPHICAL FAMILIARITY.

Otago Witness, Issue 4048, 13 October 1931, Page 64

THE BIOGRAPHICAL FAMILIARITY.

Should biographers call their subjects by their Christian names? This is a question to which a leader writer in The Times of London has just solicited the world’s attention. Some biographers apparently have begun to call 'Matthew Arnold “Matt,” and Horace Walpole “ Horry.” But this is not all. Certain people have been known, . with “ incredible rudeness,” to refer to Miss Austen as “Jane.” Decidedly, The Times does not like this kind of thing. Familiarity breeds contempt. But, after all (says the Christian Science Monitor) there is another side to the case. The old biographies, which were so scrupulously polite to those whose stories they were telling, were often also formal, lifeless and dull. Frequently their central figure w'as nothing more than a dignified automaton performing a series of meaningless evolutions. The modern biography, with its intimate air, often has reality and vigour. Moreover, are there not sound artistic reasons for sometimes using the Christian name? Jane Austen was not always a prim, demure young lady with a premature Early Victorian appearance, as the formal “ Miss Austen ” would suggest. On the contrary, she was frequently light-hearted, gay, even flirtatious —in fact, certain phases of her character positively demand that her biographer should sometimes call her “ Jane.’’ It is the. same with Dr Johnson, whom the “ Thunderer ” does not like to think of as “ Sam.” On certain occasions, the great lexicographer was undoubtedly “ Dr Johnson,” dignified, ponderous, overwhelming, as, for example, in his sledgehammer retorts to Boswell.and his famous reply to Lord Chesterfield. At other times, as when, for instance, roused by Topham, Beauclark and Langford, he once appeared at his door in a nightshirt and wearing a black wig, with a poker in his hand, to announce that he was ready for a frolic even though it was 3 in the morning, he was no less obviously “ Sam.” Indeed, in the future one of the tests of a good biographer will be his ability to see where “Dr Johnson” ends and “ Sam ” begins.