MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IN "A Spectator's Notebook" for last week (the temple of Janus being temporarily closed for repairs) Clusius made a statement against which I protest. He questioned a recent assertion by Professor Joad to the effect that many people who have become great readers in later life had not read for pleasure before the age of ;ourteen. "Can this be true?", asks Clusius.. "I should have guessed, on the other band, that those who do not read for pleasure in childhood (given access to books) will never do so." This guess on the part of Clusius is surely a faulty guess—a harsh Etruscan assumption. It may in fact be true that the citizens of Chiusi, if they failed to acquire a taste for literature in childhood, remained illiterate all their lives. We do not know about that, since we have no relics of Etruscan literature and cannot even read their language. But Clusius is not writing about his home town in the eighth century before Christ ; he is writing about Europe in 1942. And I contend that his guess is both inaccurate and dangerous. Inaccurate, since in fact many people who never willingly opened a book until they swam into adolescence have in later life found in books a stimulus for their energies and a solace for their lethargic hours. Dangerous, since were his words to meet the eyes of boys and girls of fifteen, or even of their parents, alarm and despondency might be spread.
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The illusion that the reading habit necessarily develops in early childhood is due to many causes, and particularly to the fact that men of letters have seldom been truthful about their early reading. We all know the story, which appears so often in autobiographies, of how a little boy crept down to his father's study when all had retired to rest and by the light of a flickering candle devoured delightedly the folio pages of the Prouralamion or the Faerie Queene. Some pre- cocious boys, such as J. S. Mill, may in fact have indulged in this priggish ceremony. It may be true also that in Puritan or Victorian days, when so many books were regarded as forbidden fruit for the young, the more inquisitive child may have sneaked into the vicarage study and spent some wicked minutes scanning the pages of the Classical Dictionary. Yet the fact remains that in the memories of the eminent there is seldom any mention of the unirnproving books which they read in childhood ; and that even honourable people, who would hesitate to toy with veracity in describing other forms of early prowess, will lie shamelessly when it comes to talk about their early reading. Even Macaulay, who by temperament was quite capable of having enjoyed the Areopagirica at the age of seven, slipped in a fib about the Faerie Queene. Even Byron, who was frank about his weaknesses, allowed it to be supposed that at Harrow he had acquired a sound knowledge of the Classics, and that his distaste for Horace was but a pardonable eccentricity on the part of an outspoken scholar. These false assertions by the eminent have had a bad effect upon parents, and have tempted them to believe that unless their children care for serious books while in the nursery they are unlikely in later life to care for any books at all. I regret that Clusius should perpetuate this error.
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Many literary people, if they searched their memories and banished all vanities, would admit that until the age of fourteen they found it difficult to read at all, and that the few books which held their attention were those which were of so exciting a character that the thrill of the story enabled them to conquer the physical strain of de- ciphering the printed word. It has always appeared strange to me that the parents and teachers of my generation seemed to ignore the fact that the normal boy and girl, up to the age of fifteen or sixteen, reads with effort and pain. No parent in my day would have been so unwise as to turn the young pianist, who had only just mastered his five-finger exercises, on to deciphering the Fifth Symphony ; they started him off with something catchy and simple, such as the Lustige Bauer. But when it came to books the theory was widely held that a child could jump in a bound from Froggy Would a Wooing Go to the Last Days of Pompeii. I can well remember being discouraged by my schoolmaster from reading the works of
Sir A. Conan Doyle on the ground that they were " worthle literature." Had I been allowed to indulge my taste for Sheri Holmes between the ages of ten and eleven I should assuredly hay learnt to read print rapidly at least two years earlier than I di With my own children I adopted a wholly different method. encouraged them to read all the shockers they could find, wi the result that they had mastered the art of reading before they lef their private schools. And I wisely refrained from the pernicio indulgence of reading books to them aloud.
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Not only do the eminent tell lies in their memoirs about th serious books which they read in childhood but they forget t mention the silly books which they liked. Moreover, in tracing th development of their own exquisite taste, they omit to record th books which they came gradually to dislike. The milestones alon the long road to the fastidious enjoyment of literature, may, on o side, record the progress towards trained literary appreciation. Bu the milestones, on the opposite side of the road, although of equ interest and importance, are too often ignored. I should much ilk to know at what age Tennyson came to find Byron empty Churchill dull. For in truth the landmarks in one's own lit development are not merely the discovery of the good but th realisation of the bad. It was a very important milestone on in own road when I acquired an appreciation of Racine ; but it w an equally important milestone when I flung the Picture of Doria Gray into the Irish Channel when crossing from Stranraer to Larne It is a great day in any young person's life when he first thrill to the poetry of Swinburne ; but it is an even greater day whe the surmise steals upon him that the poetry of Swinburne is no quite so good as all that.
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I admit that Clusius does not say that a child who has not read an improving book before the age of fourteen is doomed to illiteracy. He would probably agree with what I have written above on the subject of Sherlock Holmes. But since his words might well be misunderstood, I wish to enter a warm plea for the young illiterate If he be an only child, then it is indeed probable that at a ye early age he will find in books the companionship denied him in the nursery. But if he belongs to a large and noisy family he will not have the silence, the leisure, or the courage to crouch ova books. He may acquire the theory that he does not care for books and an unwise parent may confirm this theory, either by taking it for granted and thereby fixing a huge label of illiteracy upon his child or else by seeking to counter it by imposing on the infant the reading of improving books. I am glad to see that this adult clumsiness has of recent years diminished. When I was a boy I would be given as prizes at school books, such as the works of Charles Kingsley, ahich were really unreadable. I observe that prize-books today are chosen with some regard to the estimated taste of the under-fourteens. I was also told in my youth that I was a sign of illiteracy to mark or to " deface " books. It took me many years to realise that, on the contrary, it was a sign of literal to mark one's books very carefully and to scribble a personal index on the fly-leaf. In the days when I could afford to buy books, I used to annotate them carefully ; and today, when seeking for some reference, I thank heaven that I was guided to such defacement. A man who marks or defaces a library book is, I fully admit, a knave; but a man who omits to annotate his own books is not to my mind a serious reader. I trust that if the eye of any under-fourteen, if the eye of any intelligent parent, falls upon these words they will list to Professor Joad and myself rather than to the disconcerting words of Clusius. It is a common experience that the tastes or the distastes manifested before the age of adolescence are not always permanent ; many a child has, before the age of fourteen, regarded books with aversion and has yet in later life come to handle even bad book with that greedy reverence which marks the addict.
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