THINGS I DISLIKE OTHER PEOPLE'S QUOTATIONS
By BERNARD DARWIN
NO class of persons has a greater capacity for making us feel malignant and revengeful than those who quote, especially if we have ourselves a weakness for quoting.
They possess at least three ways of infuriating us. First, they may quote the author who is our particular weakness and do so, as we fancy, inappositely or, still worse, in- correctly. Secondly, they may quote an author with whom We ought to be familiar but are not and that makes us angry by humiliating us. Thirdly, they may quote someone we have never heard of and then we hate them as prigs and pedants. In each case our feelings are exacerbated by the fact that in our hearts we know the real reason of our anger. As Mr. Stiggins once observed, "It's all vanity."
Take the case of the man who is a like-minded quoter with ourselves. Superficially he ought to please us and occasionally he does, but not often. The fellow is poaching on our preserves, and at the same time has an air of currying favour with us. Moreover now and then, as we blush to own, he can wound our vanity by hitting on a quotation so delicious and so pat to his purpose as to make us a little jealous. We should have liked to think of that. So contemptible a sentiment we must needs keep to our- selves, but if, as is not infrequent, he misquotes by as much as a word, then our wrath can blaze forth and we openly proclaim him an ignorant bungler. Not long since the writer of a leading article in a great newspaper quoted, or rather attempted to quote, the remark of the clerical gentleman in the Fleet prison: "Well, if I knew as little of life as that, I'd eat my hat and swallow the buckle." He was apposite, he was clearly a kindred soul, but alas! he made the parson say that he would "swallow the buckle too." I did him the justice, though it was unnecessary, to rush to the book- shelf and then I metaphorically let him have it. He had trusted to his memory, which was gravely inaccurate, and he had utterly spoilt the rhythm of the sentence. My vanity was gratified by convincing him, but I raged against him nevertheless.
At the moment I fully sympathised with one who is now, I hope, a friend of mine. Some years ago, before we were acquainted, I had fallen into the gross error, not once but twice, of writing that " Todgers's could do it when it pleased." The word should, of course, have been "chose," and on each occasion I received a postcard pointing out the mistake in trenchant terms. When we met he introduced himself by saying, "I am the man who is always correcting you about Todgers's." No doubt he had been gratified in exposing me and at the same time furious, but he was now very forgiving and we have since had many pleasant quoting matches over familiar fields.
That particular friend is one of those who strictly medi- tate The Wrong Box. There is, perhaps, no other book which possesses so select a body of admirers, priding them- selves on their exact powers of memory, maddening and puzzling those outside the pale. At one time quoting it became more than a habit ; it assumed the qualities of a fever, and one famous editor is said to have made a rule that it must not be quoted more than once a week—or was it once a day?—in his journal. Lately the fire has died down a little, but the smouldering embers have just begun to glow afresh since the immortal work celebrated its jubilee. Once more we are being reminded that there is "nothing like a little judicious levity "—that, of course, is only an elementary quotation. It has long since become the posses- sion of the almost ignorant, just as the late Mr. Walkley used constantly and charmingly to quote " wery fierce," though he confessed to the most superficial knowledge of the little man who killed himself in defence of the principle that crumpets were wholesome. There must be, I think, some mellowing influence in The Wrong Box or else the vanity of its lovers overrides all other feelings. They are not angry with the poor wretch who does not know it or even does not like it. They are only profoundly sorry for him.
Those who quote books that we do not know make us cross, as I said, in a different way. When safe in our own small realm we have, in Hazlitt's words, "a strong itch to show off and do the honours of Civilisation for all the great men whose books we have ever read and whose names our auditors have never heard of." That is the very same weakness of which we accuse the quoters when it is we who are ignorant. Hazlitt himself provides, as far as I am con- cerned, a case in point. I am filled with delight and admira- tion but he will quote a good deal of poetry with which I am very ill acquainted. When Mr. Micawber quoted "Auld Lang Syne " he said with perfect frankness, " I am not exactly aware what gowans may be" and I do much the same with Hazlitt, but it rankles a little, and sometimes in my petty rage I skip the poetry. Yet there are compensa- tions. He quoted from a richly stored memory ; he did not always verify and once or twice I have caught him out. Here should be cause of indignation even against one so eminent but, illogically no doubt, it gives me pleasure. Perhaps I resemble those foolish creatures who watch golf matches and apparently derive pleasure from seeing a great player miss a short putt. They say (heavens! how often I have heard them!) "It's nice to see that even these fellows can do it sometimes, just like us." Whatever the reason—and I am almost sure it is a discreditable one—this finding out the great in a slip gratifies me, and once when I caught Dickens, in a letter, misquoting Pickwick, I could have danced for joy.
It must be, I am afraid, that I am a snob, but if so it is an amiable and innocent snobbishness. On the other hand, it is a snobbishness deliberate and fraudulent that we charge against those whose quotations are too recondite for us. We accuse them of boasting of intimacies denied to us. It may be said that they are paying us the compliment of assuming our knowledge, but we are not going to believe that. We know them and their line of country. It would not surprise us if they turned out to have obtained the quotation they reel off so glibly from a dictionary. Yet if such accusations were made against us we should think them unfair. We quote partly because the copying down of a cherished phrase gives us a glow ; partly because we have come to think in the terms of our favourite books and almost forget the inverted commas ; partly also perhaps because we are lazy and it saves trouble. Here are very harmless motives. Why should people be angry with us? And yet they are.
The question seems to be one of which it is difficult to see both sides, but I am not willing to admit that so much is desirable. Of what comfort is a good, honest unreasonable hatred if it is to be whittled away by specious arguments? To try to be fair in this matter is like watching a game and subscribing to that anaemic doctrine, "May the best side win," unless with a private reservation that ours must be the best side. Let me then honestly hate the other fellow's quotations and, if he hates mine, let me say with Miss Fanny Squeers, "I pity his ignorance and despise him."
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