69 October 21
In Erewhon, apologise by saying you have the socks and everyone will understand.
I have added a new post to the Copy Book, On Having the Socks.
This is a passage from Erewhon (1872), Samuel Butler’s instant bestseller telling of a strange, hidden land and its people much in the spirit of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Both tales are satires on English society in their author’s day, and both worlds have aspects of utopia and dystopia.
In this extract, the subject is crime and sickness. The Government in Erewhon, we gather, ruthlessly prosecuted the sick, the jobless and the depressed, as harmful to society, but treated thieves, robbers and conmen with sympathy, as the victims of forces beyond their control. Butler’s tale is perhaps better known today for the chapter in which he imagined that dumb machines might one day evolve into thinking machines by a process akin to Natural Selection. That was whimsy too, but in both instances the whimsy is beginning to look more like prophecy.
Erewhon made Butler’s name, but he was never able to recapture its popularity in his later work. He himself believed that the sequel, Erewhon Revisited, was a superior piece of writing but he acknowledged that it had not been a great success. One thing we do learn from it, however, is that the narrator of Erewhon, who in that tale is not named, should be called Higgs.
Erewhon, Butler tells us, should be pronounced as three short syllables, e-re-won. It is an anagram of ‘nowhere’.
Copy Book Posts (45)
70 October 20
A little fable about a cat, a chicken and some wasted words.
I have added a new post to the Copy Book, Cat and Cook, a fable by Russian fabulist Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (1769-1844).
Krylov found his true calling when he was forty. In 1809, he published a collection of fables which at once captured the Russian public’s imagination. More fables followed, and he became something of a celebrity. He was friendly with Emperor Nicholas I, and was one of a handful of literary figures honoured with a place on the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod, unveiled on September 8th, 1862.
The translator, Englishman (John) Henry Harrison (1829-1900), was an English teacher living in St Petersburg. He admired Krylov’s “ardent patriotism, his sound judgment, his fearless exposure of all abuses, and his sympathy, though belonging, by his education and literary connections, to what may be called ‘the old school’, with all really great reforms; witness his advocacy of the rights of the serfs.” Harrison was also something of a conservative, who denounced Tolstoy as ‘a dangerous and revolutionary socialist whose theories were anti-religious’. He protested loudly when British-American actor Ira Aldridge brought The Merchant of Venice to St Petersburg and, in addition to littering his speeches with German words and breaking up Shakespeare’s carefully crafted speech-rhythms with emotional pauses and histrionic gestures, dropped the whole of the fifth act. “His Shylock is just a vulgar moneylender,” grumbled Harrison, though the St Petersburg intelligentsia was charmed by Aldridge, who was indeed most gracious, “not the person represented by Shakespeare as persecuted by Christianity”. It is easy to see why Krylov, as a patriotic reformer with a strong sense of Russia’s heritage, so appealed to him.
The fable of the Cat and the Cook dates from 1812.
Acknowledgements to ‘Ira Aldridge: The Last Years, 1855-1867’ (2015) by Bernth Lindfors.
Copy Book Posts (45)
71 October 20
Fill the empty boxes with letters, using the clues to help you find the right ones.
A new crossword for the collection.
Fill the empty boxes with letters to make words running across and down. Use the numbered clues to help you find the right words. Click any box to get started.
3 across Consume greedily and noisily. 6 letters
5 across Irritable and argumentative. 5 letters
1 down Soft paste used to seal around the edges of windows. 5 letters
2 down A large group of similar things; a collective noun for a group of roe deer, quails, or larks. 4 letters
4 down Outer, coloured rind of a lemon, with an invigorating flavour; enthusiasm. 4 letters
Crosswords (5)
72 October 19
Report this short conversation, without using the speakers’ exact words.
Reported or indirect speech is speech that is given in summary form rather than transcribed word for word and placed between quotation marks. For example, this speech from Tolstoy’s War and Peace
“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince Hippolyte “— so dull.”
may be reported as
Prince Hippolyte said that he was very glad that he had not gone to the Ambassador’s, as it would have been so dull.
Read this exchange from the same novel:
Anna Pávlovna: “Do you know the Abbé Morio? He is a most interesting man.”
Monsieur Pierre: “Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very interesting but hardly feasible.”
See if you can report the substance of the conversation in the same fashion as the example above. You may wish to begin with something like
Anna asked Pierre...
Exercises (19)
73 October 19
In August, 1775, King George III responded to the news of rebellion in the American colonies.
I have added a new post to the Copy Book: Traitorous Designs.
It is the text of the proclamation issued by King George III on August 23rd, 1775, in response to the growing rebellion in Britain’s colony in Massachusetts. The Proclamation reminded the colonists of the British government’s legal claims on their obedience, and of the colonists’ moral duty to the State that protected them. The King regretted to say that the colonists had been led astray by British activists, and called upon both law enforcement and the general public to find these men and turn them in.
The weakness in the King’s argument, as critics pointed out at the time, was that he thought solely in terms of his legal right to territories and the obedience of the people who lived on them, and ignored the rights of his subjects and what they could expect from their Government. The Americans were Englishmen like any others, but the King who claimed to protect them had not only refused them democratic representation, he had sent his troops against them. His angry proclamation did not convince vocal critics such as Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox, who went on speaking out despite the King’s attempted censorship, and it did not convince the Englishmen of America, who declared their independence on July 4th, 1776.
Copy Book Posts (45)
74 October 18
How briefly can you explain just why these were silly things to do?
In Think and Speak (1929), NL Clay asked his students questions such as:
Why was it stupid of the nurse to wake up her patient to give him a sleeping draught?
This is not as trivial as it sounds: it is an exercise in constructing various kinds of clause, especially causal and conditional. Try answering the question, and you’ll soon see.
This kind of humour was very popular with the ancient Greeks. Some examples were translated for us by American clergyman Charles Clinch Bubb (1876-1036), from a collection credited to Hierocles of Alexandria (5th century AD). The role of the addlepated nurse was taken by the stock character of the Pedant, someone who was just too literal-minded for his own good.
Why was it stupid? ...
1 A pedant whilst swimming almost choked to death. He made an oath that he would not go into the water again until he had first learned to swim well.
2 One of twin brothers died and a pedant meeting the survivor asked him, ‘Did you die, or was it your brother?’.
3 A son of a pedant being sent to battle by his father promised to return bringing the head of one of his foes. He replied, ‘Even though I see you coming without any head, I shall be glad.’
If these seem too easy, see how short you can make your answer, for example, 21 words or fewer.
Or, write down what the Pedant should have said.
Exercises (19)