A beginning, a muddle and an end
Peter Quennell
THE HUTCHINSON BOOK OF ESSAYS chosen and introduced by Frank Delaney
Hutchinson, £24.95, pp. 550
Montaigne, though he wrote in a spacious attic room under the maxim 'Know Thyself which he had had painted on the rafters, found that he thought most clearly and constructively while he was riding round his own estate. It was in the saddle that he prosecuted his endless quest for self-knowledge, and its results he enti- tled his Essais, otherwise his intellectual efforts, of which an English translation by John Florio appeared in 1580; it was evidently admired by Shakespeare, who used some of his observations in The Tempest, putting his sketch of an ideal commonwealth into the mouth of old Gonzalo. Montaigne's book was followed by Bacon's Essays; and since that time the essay has become a favourite stylistic form, described in the dictionary as a 'literary exposition on any subject, usually in prose, and short'; and Frank Delaney has now compiled an anthology of specimens together with critical commentaries and biographical notes.
It is a stimulating if, now and then, slightly exasperating work, since by no means all the passages included appear to be essays in the strictest meaning of the word. Here, for example, we find a piece of vigorous topical invective, Pink Triangle and Yellow Star, directed by the versatile commentator Gore Vidal against those misguided enough to mistrust homosexuals and denigrate the Jewish race. This might, in the proper quarter, make an effective weekly article; but I doubt if it could be regarded as an essay; and elsewhere we read picturesque accounts of ancient Egypt and modem India that, lively as they often are, seem better suited to a popular travel magazine.
This brings us to the question just what it is that in a true essay we nowadays hope for and expect. Perhaps that this literary organism should have a clear-cut beginning and a conclusive close and reflect not only the writer's affection for his subject but his attitude towards the world at large. Such essayists are Steele and Hazlitt. They give us freely of their individual feelings; their works are miniature self-portraits and skil- fully establish the disposition and circum- stances that have impelled them to put pen to paper. For essay-writing is an extremely personal art. Many good essays have an autobiographical basis; and in the present collection two of the best, Sean O'Fao- lain's An Irish Schooling and Jonathan Raban's Living on Capital, a picture of his dominant father and troubled middle-class childhood, convey painful recollections of the buried past.
As his farewell, the editor has repub- lished Virginia Woolf's discussion of The Modern Essay. 'The principle which con- trols it', she told us, 'is simply that it should give pleasure... Everything in an essay must be subdued to that end. It should lay us under a spell with its first word, and we should wake, refreshed with its last.' This she herself very often did in the volume she entitled The Common Reader. Each sec- tion crystallises her personal response to some famous literary forerunner who had enlarged her individual view of life.
As I have already suggested, the essayists collected here form a somewhat diverse assembly; but, as a whole, the book is well worth reading; and one hopes that some future Montaigne will be inspired by his example. His appetite for knowledge continued all his life; and he never tired of recording the progress that he made and meditating fresh advances. Meanwhile, his turret-room can still be visited; and maybe it will provide a starting point for some young contemporary essayist, who shares his unflagging interest in himself and his environment and asks the same absorbing questions. Few problems were ever be- neath his notice, from the natural incon- stancy of women to the domestic behaviour of his cat. When the two of them played a game, was he himself playing with her, he enquired, or had she suddenly decided she had time to play with him?
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