Sir Walter Raleigh and the Air History: A Personal RecollectionJones, H. A. (Henry Albert)
History
Sir Walter Raleigh and the Air History: A Personal Recollection
Jones, H. A. (Henry Albert)
Raleigh, Walter, 1861-1922. War in the air. Volume 1
But June came and he was still working away with pain. “I feel I owe
you an apology, yet I am doing what I can. It’s the most difficult
thing yet--wireless, I mean. It is coming into shape, but there is
something absurd about sandwiching it in as an afterthought. It’s of
first-rate importance, and I fear it may delay us a little.” Then on
June the 12th:
“I shall come on Monday next week, latish morning, _with Chapter V_.
Not content or pleased. That wireless insertion has put the chapter out
of gear, and lots of small things, later on, seem clumsy. One can’t
write a book backwards. But I think we can patch it to look all right.
I depend on you and the office to go through my revised Chapter V in
the interests of consistency rather than of truth. I think the facts
are right now, and the chapter is like a plain-faced clumsy person
celebrated for saying true things in the wrong time and in the wrong
place.”
“Exam papers are pouring in in large bundles. I grudge every minute to
them.... I hope and believe that there won’t be another Chapter V.”
Chapter V was sent to the printers for proofs. In the meantime Sir
Walter had sent the chapter to one or two people to read over the
wireless portion. Sir Richard Glazebrook sent him some valuable notes.
“I have just got the proofs of Chapter V. I am an unnatural parent--I
yawn over them. But I could do something to them while I am in the
country and thus break the tedium of a holiday, if I might have the
Glazebrook notes.” He could not take--what he badly needed--a real
carefree holiday. “I am taking down Chapter VI for a week into the
country, where American and other visitors to Oxford can’t call on me
at 11 a.m. I hope to finish it.”
At last came the Preface.
“I am drafting a Preface. What is our office called?... The Preface, I
think, will be very brief, and will try to avoid the sin of prefaces,
which mostly speak with the voice of a hen when she has laid an egg....
Some civilians must be mentioned. C. G. Grey certainly, and I should
like your opinion on the others....”
The question of names in the Preface was debated. Wherever possible
they were instead acknowledged in the text.
“I enclose a draft Preface. Will you see what you think of it? It gets
into a flowing style before it ends, but the important thing is--does
it say all it ought to say?
“I am jolly glad to be relieved of the necessity of giving long lists
of helpers’ names. They only cumber a book, and are tombstones that are
read by none but the corpse.”
There were still a few outstanding questions. The index was one which
caused a certain amount of discussion. He was anxious not to have an
index for each volume. He contended that there must eventually be a
final index and that this could only be made by combining the indexes
from each volume which he thought was clumsy. So it was decided not to
have an index, but instead to have rather full summaries of each
chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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