Tales of St. Austin'sWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
Tales of St. Austin's
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Humorous stories; Schools -- Fiction
indeed, it is of the utmost use in determining your future career. You
will probably remember those Titanic articles that appeared at the
beginning of the war in _The Weekly Luggage-Train_, dealing with
all the crimes of the War Office--the generals, the soldiers, the
enemy--of everybody, in fact, except the editor, staff and office-boy
of _The W.L.T._ Well, the writer of those epoch-making articles
confesses that he owes all his skill to his early training, when, a
happy lad at his little desk in school, he used to write trenchantly in
his note-book on the subject of the authorities. There is an example
for you. Of course we can never be like him, but let, oh! let us be as
like him as we're able to be. A final word to those lost ones who
dictate the notes. Why are our ears so constantly assailed with
unnecessary explanations of, and opinions on, English literature? Prey
upon the Classics if you will. It is a revolting habit, but too common
to excite overmuch horror. But surely anybody, presupposing a certain
bias towards sanity, can understand the Classics of our own language,
with the exception, of course, of Browning. Take Tennyson, for example.
How often have we been forced to take down from dictation the miserable
maunderings of some commentator on the subject of _Maud_. A person
reads _Maud_, and either likes it or dislikes it. In any case his
opinion is not likely to be influenced by writing down at express speed
the opinions of somebody else concerning the methods or objectivity and
subjectivity of the author when he produced the work.
Somebody told me a short time ago that Shelley was an example of
supreme, divine, superhuman genius. It is the sort of thing Mr
Gilbert's 'rapturous maidens' might have said: 'How Botticellian! How
Fra Angelican! How perceptively intense and consummately utter!' There
is really no material difference.
[15]
NOW, TALKING ABOUT CRICKET--
In the days of yore, when these white hairs were brown--or was it
black? At any rate, they were not white--and I was at school, it was
always my custom, when Fate obliged me to walk to school with a casual
acquaintance, to whom I could not unburden my soul of those profound
thoughts which even then occupied my mind, to turn the struggling
conversation to the relative merits of cricket and football.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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