A Writer's Notebook (87 page)

I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common-sense to God.

When I was young I pretended to know everything. It often got me into trouble and made me look a fool. I think one of
the most useful discoveries I ever made was how easy it is to say: “I don't know.” I never noticed that it made anyone think the worse of me. The only inconvenience is that there are people who have nothing better to do than to tell you at tedious length all about something of which you have confessed your ignorance. But there are quite a number of things that I don't
want
to know about.

The subjunctive. American writers use the subjunctive much more than we do. I suppose they are used to it and so it seems natural to them—to us it has always a slightly pedantic look—but I haven't noticed that they use it in conversation, and I suppose it is their teachers who teach them to use it in writing. I surmise that the primness of language which teachers inculcate is forced upon them by the general slovenliness and incorrectness of speech common to their pupils. They are kicking against the pricks; the subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible. After all, writing is founded on common speech, and there's no reason to forget that out of the slovenliness and incorrectness which offend the pedagogue apt phrases and picturesque idioms arise. No American, either man or boy, would say: “I'll come to see you if I be in town;” he'd say: “I'll come and see you if I'm in town.” It's much better that he should write it too.

Of course there's a certain difficulty in deciding when you should drop a word or an expression that is correct in favour of one that is in common use. Lunch is the verb, luncheon the noun. But common usage has made lunch a noun too. No one would ask you to have luncheon with him unless he remembered that it was correct; he would naturally ask you to have lunch with him. I think the sensible writer will use the shorter word and let the other fall into desuetude. There are still people who will refuse to talk of a bus and insist on calling it an
omnibus, but when they want a cab it never occurs to them to ask for a cabriolet.

I read somewhere that Rogers, the banker poet who was celebrated for his breakfast parties, said he hoped never to have at his table someone who spoke of balcŏny instead of balcōny.

Unless a novelist makes you believe in him he is done, and yet if he is entirely believable he may very well be dull. That (complete verisimilitude) is at least one reason why people turn to detective fiction. It has suspense, it excites their curiosity, it gives them a thrill; and in return for so much they make no great demand that it should be probable. They want to know who done it, and they are willing to accept the most unlikely and inadequate motive for who done it having done it.

There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.

We were spending the night at a small town in Texas. It was a convenient stopping-place for people driving across the continent, and the hotel was full. Everyone went to bed early. At ten o'clock a woman in one of the rooms put in a call to Washington, and in the frame house you could hear plainly every word she said. She wanted a Major Tompkins, but she didn't know his number; she told the operator that he was in the War Department. Presently she got on to Washington, and when the operator told her that she couldn't trace him, flew into a temper and said that everyone in Washington knew Major Tompkins. It was very important, she said, and she
had
to speak to him. She was cut off and in a few minutes tried again. She tried every quarter of an hour. She abused the local
operator, what sort of a one-horse dump is this? She abused the Washington operator. She made more and more noise. Nobody could sleep. Indignant guests rang down to the office, and the night manager came up and tried to get her to be quiet. We listened to her angry replies to his mild expostulation and when, defeated, he left her she started once more to ring the exchange. She rang and rang. She shouted. Furious men in their dressing-gowns, dishevelled women in wrappers, went into the passage and banged on her door telling her to stop making so much noise so that they could sleep. She told them to go to hell with such variety of language as to excite the outraged indignation of the ladies. The manager was again appealed to and at his wit's end sent for the sheriff. The sheriff came, but he was no match for her and not knowing what else to do sent for a doctor. Meanwhile she rang and rang, screaming obscenities at the operator. The doctor came, saw her, shrugged his shoulders and said he could do nothing. The sheriff wanted him to take her to the hospital, but for some reason I couldn't understand, something to do with her being a transient from another state, and if she was crazy, as all these frantic people insisted, she might become a charge on the county, the doctor refused to act. She went on telephoning. She screamed that she must get Major Tompkins; it was a matter of life and death. At last she got him. It was four in the morning and no one in the hotel had shut an eye.

“Have you got Major Tompkins?” she asked the operator. “You're quite sure you've got him? Is he on the line?” Then with concentrated fury, spacing out her words to make them more emphatic: “Tell—Major—Tompkins—that—I don't—want—to speak—to him.”

With that she banged the receiver down on to the cradle.

There is one queer thing about patriotism: it is a sentiment that doesn't travel. Many years ago I wrote a play called
Cœsar's Wife
which was a success in England, but a failure
elsewhere. It wasn't a bad play. To the inhabitants of other countries it seemed improbable and faintly absurd that English people should sacrifice themselves to what they considered was their duty to their country. I have noticed the same thing in the war plays of the present time. Granted that there is a lot of hokum in all of them, American audiences will swallow it when it deals with the heroism and self-sacrifice of Americans, but the same heroism, the same self-sacrifice in the English excite their ridicule rather than their sympathy. They are impatient with the courage of the English during the bombing of London; their discomfiture in Greece, a discomfiture expected by all who took part in the expedition, their hopeless stand in Crete, only excited their irritation.

South Carolina. The moan of the wind in the pine trees was like the distant singing of the coloured people, singing their sad song to a heedless or a helpless God.