BOOKS AND WRITERS
46 HEIR capacity to read continuously for any length of time being 'limited, they can absorb knowledge better if
they get it in small quantities: therefore they will often read reference books when they may reject the reading of more extended matter." So say the editors of the Oxford Junior Encyclo- paedia of their youthful readers and they are doubtless right, but are they not right also about many adult readers ? Do not many of us who are almost painfully grown-up find no reading so alluring as books of reference ? Debrett, Whitaker, Wisden, Bradshaw—these are great names, and if the ultimate test of,a book be its readers' inability to lay it down then books of reference are the best of all. The reader may set out for one particular goal, but it is ten to one that he will never reach it, having been led away down some agreeable by-path so that he has clean forgotten his original quest. The temptation to turn over just one more page is as irresistible as that which makes us watch one more over at a cricket match and then still another all through a long summer afternoon while the shadows grow longer and longer and the duty to return to work ever more imperative. A railway guide, super- ' ficially unattractive and utilitarian enough, is in this respect perfectly desperate for anyone with a love of beautiful names. It is impossible to say what treasure trove may not lurk over the next page and if that be true of a mere guide book it is a fortiori true of an encyclopaedia.
The ninth volume of the encyclopaedia (O.U.P., 30s.) deals with " Recreations," and it is natural, particularly at this time of year, to turn first to cricket. I did so accordingly, but I never got there, since on my way I was arrested and held spellbound by one of the most beautiful pictures I had ever seen. It is from a nineteenth-century woodcut and shows a conjurer, clearly at the supreme moment of his evening's triumphs. With one hand he is scattering drums, trumpets, flags, birds and bunches of flowers. In the other hand he holds his tall hat in which a docile white rabbit is quietly sitting .up. The attendant page-boy starts back in astonishment and the audience simultaneously burst into applause and wave their arms frantically in the air. Naturally there was now nothing to do but to read the article on conjuring and very instructive it was. I cannot say that I felt as did Miss Pole at Signor Brunoni's enter- tainment at Cranford that she " would undertake to do all he did, with two hours given to study the encyclopaedia and make her third finger flexible " ; but I shall 'in future be much less horrified if I see an Indian conjurer plunge his knife through a basket, which has clearly got a boy inside it, while the boy ,screams and blood comes oozing out ; I shall know a trick worth two of that.
Whatever the subject treated, so much knowledge must be skilfully compressed into so small a space that the writers have had for the most part to take " no flowers " as their motto. Yet it is remarkable how one little touch of romance, if I may so term it, as opposed to solid information, can cheer up a. whole treatise that might otherwise be just a little dry. Here is an example from Rugby football. There must be many other people beside me who have often wondered why Blackheath,- illustrious though they unques- tionably are, should alone be entitled to the war-cry "Club." Here we are told the reason. It appears that the old boys of Blackheath School formed a side called .the Old Blackheathens. When this side played their old school their supporters responded to shouts of " School " with counter-cries of " Club," and this battle-cry was in due time inherited by Blackheath. Thik is a most engaging little bit of history which made me happy for the day. It was equally pleasant in another way to find under the head of "Charades" the poem which Mr. Elton proffered for Harriet Smith's collection of riddles in " Emma." My cup would have been full if in the learned disquisition on baseball there had been another little fact from Miss Austen, namely that dear Catherine Morland played that game, but this was perhaps too much to hope for.
I was made much less happy by the article on golf. Doubtless everybody is inclined to be pernickety as to a subject of which he imagines ,himself to have some knowledge ; but really the author should know better than to say that " if he were two up and only one hole remained to play he would be dormy two." Again, I hardly think that the venerable Braid will be pleased to read that golf tournaments early in this century " were dominated by the great English golfers J. H. Taylor, James Braid and Harry Vardon." English ! Heaven forbid 1 This is almost as if the writer were to allude to the great Scottish cricketer W. G. Grace. Bunkers are not necessarily " artificial obstacles " nor is the ball " lifted " out of them with a niblick.
In reading accounts of games which presuppose little or no previous knowledge on the readers' part it is natural to wonder how that reader would set to work to play them guided by the description alone. Granted the descriptions are clear and succinct and written in easily intelligible language as they are, would he be able from them to produce anything like the real thing ? " I have amused myself by fancying some young gentleman in a desert place, with nothing but a football, a wall and the encyclopaedia, deter• mining to play the Eton Wall Game. There is not a word in the description to be criticised, and I speak with some knowledge, having before now tried quite vainly to describe these mysterious rites in print myself. And yet I think that the game evolved would be wholly unrecognisable, nor would it be anybody's fault.
It must not be thought that, because I have been talking chiefly of games, they take up the whole or anything like the whole of the book. On the contrary there is here every kind of amusement that can possibly be conceived. Films, for instance, today largely occupy the mind of youth: we are told that 65 per cent. of children, of school age in England go to the cinema once a week,•or more and that only 5 per cent. do not go at all. So films, as is only right, have a generous allowance both of pages and pictures. There is a superbly sinister picture of two gentlemen in black hats with black ' bars across their faces showing what can be done by the, skilful use of lighting to freeze the blood in the veins. As to another picture showing "a tense moment while the murderer waits behind the door for his victim," I do not think that poor grown-ups should be subjected to such agonies ; only children have strong enough nerves for this sort of thing, and perhaps not all of them.
incidentally it occurs to me that the love of films and games can sometimes be harmoniously combined. As I write I have just been one of a surging mob at St. Andrews trying to see the illustrious Mr. Bing Crosby playing in the Amateur Championship. Fortunately for him and for the Championship the crowd at St. Andrews is now kept rigidly to 'the side lines as in a football match—otherwise his frantic adorers would certainly have swooped on' him as they did in his practice round and insisted on his signing their autograph books before every stroke. As he began by doing the first two holes in three apiece, it is clear that no authority in an encyclopaedia could possibly have done better. Here was a chance for a pleasanter and less bloodcurdling picture
There are subjects treated in this encyclopaedia Which might not by some parents or teachers be deemed' good for youth, but it is useless to assume too great an innocence. I am myself so guileless that the information about football pools is almost entirely new to me, but there is probably no intelligent child of twelve who could not have told me all about the various ways of making my fortune out of the penny pools. I have acquired some fresh knowledge about the ways of bookmakers and tictac men; which as Mr. Pecksnilf would say was " likewise very soothing." But at present I have only just begun—I hope to browse delightedly for years on this
Previous page
