STYLE AND BANALITY

STYLE AND BANALITY

STYLE AND BANALITY

AN ignorant schoolmaster taught me in my boyhood, in the course of some absurd lessons on English composition, to model my style on Macaulay. I speak from memory, and I think it was Macaulay, but it may have been William Shakespeare, and in any case it does not seem to me to matter very much. I am thankful to say that this is one of the many lessons that I never learned. Style must be the reflection of the personality of the writer. The second-hand clothes of the great men will not fit you. Let them alone.

Perhaps there are few beginners nowadays who would consciously model their style on anybody. We may not have got far, but we

have got a little beyond that. But another piece of advice, which is frequently given, is not without its dangers, because at first sight it looks almost intelligent. I refer to that piece of advice which instructs beginners to write exactly as they would if they were writing a letter to an intimate friend.

Let us think about this a little. Your intimate friend knows you thoroughly : the public knows you not at all. In your letter to your intimate friend you can take much for granted : in your story for the public you can take nothing. You may possibly permit yourself in such a letter a certain slovenliness of writing, clumsy and obscure sentences, a tiresome repetition of words, a free use of slang : all this must be corrected if you are writing for print. That free use of slang, for instance, which may seem genial in conversation, and pardonable in a letter to a familiar friend, in cold print looks merely vulgar. Remember that in print you are speaking, or trying to speak, to a great number of strangers, among whom there are

some who may be your equals, or even your superiors. There is no necessity to be formal

and stilted, but you should behave properly. It is purely a question of manners. Perhaps

the reason for our dislike of the button-holing, confidential style, into which Thackeray sometimes lapses, is to be found here. I pick up a volume ofVanity Fair and find the following in the first few chapters :

Certainly (for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs. —Chap. iii.

At this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley looked at her husband and laughed. —Chap. iv.

We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable people practising the moral virtues there, and travel back to London to inquire what has become of Miss Amelia. ' We do not care a fig for her, ' writes some unknown correspondent. . . . — Chap. xii.

It is all very sly and chatty, but perhaps it was as much the fault of the times as of the great man. (` Alas, ' writes John Morley in hisVoltaire, ' why, after all, should men,

from Moses downwards, be so cheerfully ready to contemplate the hinder parts of their divinities. ')

In so far then as that advice tells you to write in the way which comes most naturally to you, and without literary selfconsciousness, it is good advice ; but you must keep the test of the printed page and of the unknown readers constantly before you.

There are fashions in style. At the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, many people tried to write like Dr. Johnson, and succeeded in a way that was perfectly appalling. Those majestic, not to say elephantine, periods are gone from us. At the moment we are likely to fall into a contrary extreme. Our sentences are short and snappy. An article written in that style at its worst suggests the ataxic jumps of an intoxicated monkey. For years certain descriptive writers in newspapers tried to write like the late G. W. Stevens, and committed horrid excesses in consequence.

The modern historical novel makes, as a rule, a shameless exhibition of the influence of R. L. Stevenson. It is much given to the italicised introduction which generally runs something like this : I have to tell the story of a brave woman and of the three men that loved her; of great happenings both by land and sea ; of the hurt of them that won, and of the exceeding profit of them that (in the common eye) lost. In this year of our Lord 1807 it cannot be but plain to—' If I stop there it is not because I could not go on with it. Italics used in this way are, to ordinary print, very much what intoning is to speaking. There is a pleasing solemnity about them until one sees and knows the trick, and then they become wearisome. Another recent style, which has proved to be shockingly infectious, is mostly known as the precious style. You write it on tiptoe in a whisper. It is purring and plaintive. Everybody can see the immense trouble you are taking to pick out dear, simple, beautiful words that just fit. But as your own

head is well down in the sand, you do not realise that you are detected. If you have the slightest temptation to a style of this kind, you should be on your guard and keep out of the zone of infection. Avoid, for instance, anything like a translation of Maeterlinck.

In most cases it is better to conform to any fashion, because it avoids trouble and talk, but when one comes to write, one must have more conscience. Fashion must have nothing whatever to do with it. It is sometimes no bad thing for a beginner to avoid books written in his own language. If selfexamination reveals to him that he is very much under the influence of some other author, he may, of course, avoid reading that author, but this will not blot out his recollection of what he has read already or lessen the danger of its unconscious influence on his work. A better way in this case is for him to write a deliberate parody of the author in question. If this is done with care and skill he will discover some of the

tricks of his master, and tricks discovered are tricks discarded. Intentional imitation is no bad remedy against unconscious imitation.

An advertisement poster on the hoardings shows a terrier climbing up on the table towards a glass of stout and asking : ' What is it that master likes so much ? ' Well, when the dog knows, he will leave it alone.

Put briefly, write as your heart pleases, correcting as your mind pleases, and you will not go very far wrong.

A word must be said on the subject of banality, even if it has often been said before. You will get no style until you are rid of overworked, broken down phrases. If, in looking through your work, you find even one of them, it should give you a feeling approaching to nausea. In one short story by an amateur I found the following : ' Happy hunting-ground '—' The live-long day '—' On shopping intent ' — ' Swelled the ranks ' — ' Centre of attraction '—' Victorious career'—

' Donning the garb '—' Wresting the palm ' --' Fresh young beauty '—' Blush suffused '— ' Rubbed elbows with '—' Lie direct. '

The vice can easily be cured if you are on the lookout for it, but it must be cured. These stale and offensive weeds must be cleared away that your own individual style may have room to grow. The same amateur who crowded all the above abominations and several others into one short story is now practically free from the disease. A good, honest hatred of banality in style is of the greatest value to the young writer. For the purposes of convenience one may make arbitrary distinctions of different sections in the art of story-writing, but there are no sections really, and one thing runs into another. If you hate banality in style you will also hate banality in incident, banality in the invention and presentation of characters. It is the first necessary step, and when you have taken that, you are in an absolutely sure way to a considerable improvement. It will mean that you have begun to approach this work

of story-writing in a good and right spirit, that you are freeing yourself from the influence of books and newspapers that you have read, that you are getting pluck enough to let yourself be yourself and nobody else.