July II, 191 8 
Land & Water 
15 
Life and Letters QjJ.C^Souice 
One 
LOVELY and pleasant it is to have lynxes for 
readers. A fortniglit ago I referred here to a 
verbal solecism of which the authors of the King's 
English— the most salutary and diverting of all 
works on composition — would not allow the use. 
A reader, whose title to speak is fully equal to that of those 
authors, at once wrote to say that I need not think that I 
avoided ugly and indefensible English altogether. I am, he 
says, deep-sunk in one viae which would certainly have been 
denounced by the authors of the King's English had it been 
as prevalent when they wrote as it is now. This is the habit 
of using "One" in contexts where it cannot pretend to 
represent anything but "I" or "me." He appends illus- 
trative extracts : Four from Oneself, one from Mr. P. F. 
Warner, one from the Bishop of the Falkland Islands,^ and 
three from persons unknown — of whom one writes : " But 
I have known in the small circle of one's personal friends 
quite a number of Jews who . . ." Guilty ! 
****** 
The letter found one in a state in which one's defences 
are at their weakest. One was fand is) in bed with this 
loathly influenza, which has just shown its lack of discrimin- 
ation 'elsewhere by killing the harmlesa Sultan of Turkey 
and sparing the Kaiser. One's head aches. One's spine 
aches. One's hip-bones and shoulder-blades ache and pro- 
trude. Countless little sharp coughs harry one's outworn 
stomach. One's throat is a dry stove-pipe. One's brows are 
tight and one's eyelids heavy with the pressure of one's hot 
biood. One has no taste for tobacco ; one cannot talk, 
work, think, or drink. All one can do is shut one's eyes 
until one is bored with that, and then read until one is ex- 
hausted by that. 
****** 
I, I, I. I, I, have, therefore, taken that course. My read- 
ing, as always in these circumstances, has been the Bacon- 
Shakespeare controversy ; when I am very ill indeed I think 
there may be something in it. For two. days I went from 
volume to volume, and at last I reached Sir Sidney Lee's 
Life of Shakespeare. This is, as is generally admitted, a 
prodigiously informative book, though its title might more 
accurately have been The Probable Life of Shakespeare. 
The perhapses drape the book in festoons, right up to the 
hypothetical last malady which Sir. Sidney introduces in 
these touching words : 
The cause of Shakespeare's death is undetermined. 
Chapel Lane, which ran beside his house, was known as a 
Hoisome resort of straying pigs ; and the insanitary atmos- 
phere is hkely to have prejudiced the faiUng health of a 
■eighbouring resident. 
But it is a great book. It is an encyclopaedia ; its compiler 
hasvrrittenwithgreat learning, judgment, and fairness of mind; 
it is not likely to be superseded unless the Baconians suddenly 
prove their case. But (I observed on my couch) Sir Sidney 
has his defects as a writer. His ordinary style, compressed and 
clear, is wonderfully suited to the narration of dry facts. 
But when he feels he must be picturesque for a time or two, 
especially when he is attempting a little of that "merely 
aesthetic criticism " which he eschews in his preface, he is apt 
to be awkward with his imagery. Especially, he juxtaposes 
incongruous metaphors which, although moribund, are not 
quite dead enough to be put together unnoticed. When 
he writes of "all the features of a full-fledged tragi-comedy," 
one [i] cannot help wondering whether "features" was a mis-, 
print for "feathers." When he says that whereas something 
bears "trace of a more mature pen" something else "savours 
of Shakespeare's youthful hand," he is still more unfortunate. 
Half-dead imagery leaps to life in : 
It was to the tragi-comic movement, whicli liis ablest 
•ontemporaries espoused with public approval, that Shakes- 
peare lent his potent countenance in the latest plays which 
•ame from his unaided pen. 
No doubt the movement, with that plurality of husbands, 
wanted keeping in countenance, but the support seems 
rather confused. At 
the main issues fell within the verge of tragedy, but left 
the tragic path before they reached solution. 
we can only say "Lucky for them"; and when "notes" 
(tones) are "seasoned" with something "clothed" in pecu- 
liarly intimate phraseology, we may well be at a loss for 
anything to say. I was wondering how it was that so sensi- 
ble and unrhetorical a man as Sir Sidney had left these 
sentences in this book after so many editions, when the letter 
arrived informing me, in the pleasantest way, that I had a 
beam in my own eye. 
****** 
But, to continue our metaphors, my withers are imwrung 
by that beam. I know that I write "one" when "one" 
does not mean "we," or "everybody," or "any sort of 
person," but "I," or "me,' and nothing else. One does not 
think one uses "I" and "one" in a single sentence ; beyond 
that one is quite unscrupulous. One will say, for instance, 
"One opened this book with pleasure,' which means, and can 
only mean, "/ opened this book . . ." It is, from my 
critic's point of view, indefensible and inexplicable. Why 
do I do it ? Or, rather, why do we do it ? — for I am speaking 
now, not only for myself but for Mr. Pelham Warner and the 
Bishop of the Falkland Islands. The answer is simple. 
Reader, one is modest ; bashful. 
****** 
I — for here I will force myself boldly into the first personal 
pronoun — do not like seeing a page of print covered all 
over with I's. Those I's are so bold, so brazen ; they stand 
up so, they are so tall. Often and often I suppress an "I" 
as I write, substituting the meaningless, but oh so comfort- 
able and pseudonymous-looking, "One." Sometimes, owing 
to long custom, the operation is performed unconsciously. 
And often it is done deliberately after I have written. The 
proofs come back to one — here I am, lapsing again — and one 
is struck by the ubiquity of those little staring marks of 
egoism. Panic seizes one. "One" offers cover, and one 
takes it. 
* * * • * * * 
There is the negative advantage ; one would be a hypocrite 
if I were to pretend that one finds in the practice no positive 
advantage for myself. If a critic writes, "I admit that I 
did not approach- this biography with a favourable bias, but 
it was Worse than I expected," he is liable to an uneasy feeling 
when he reads his own words. All these people, he will 
reflect, may say to themselves, "What the dcviLare your 
biases to do with us, and as for your opinion, it is only your 
opinion:" But knock out the first person and put "one " ; 
and forthwith the whole statement seems to acquire the 
mysterious backing of all mankind. The critic's judgment 
looks like the meritable judgment that any sane man was 
bound to form, that masses of men have simultaneously 
formed ; there is weight, authority, behind it, something of 
the weight and authority of the royal, papal, or editorial 
"we." 
* ♦ * *■ . * * 
That is not a defence ; it is an explanation and a very 
discreditable admission. I admit that no really courageous 
or honest man (always excepting Mr. Pelham Warner and the 
Bishop of the Falkland Islands) would employ so ungainly 
a device to secure such dubious ends. As I have now con- 
fessed, I suppose that it would be futile to work this stunt 
off here any more ; my unobtrusiveness will no longer deceive. 
But if, in the future, it" should be found that this page is covered 
with what I have heard another shy writer describe as " these 
horrible little telegraph-poles," do not blame me. The 
responsibility for the change, I hope I have made clear, 
rests elsewhere. 
As a writer of fiction, Rebecca West is new to English 
readers, but The Return of the Soldier (Nisbet & Co., 5s. net), 
although a sHght story in itself, is a book of such quahty as 
should assure for its author a large public of the better, more dis- 
criminating kind. It is the story of a man who, by reason of 
shell-shock, had fifteen years or so of his life taken out from his 
memory, so that he knew nothing of his marriage, nor of any 
ol the events of those years, when he returned an invalid 
from overseas. It is, too, the story of how a woman broke 
her heart to give him back the memory of those years, make 
him once more a complete man ; the whole "plot" — if such 
a word can be used in respect of such a book— is no more 
than is crowded into many two-page stories in a magazine, 
but the method of presentment is so vivid that this is really 
an outstanding book. There is in it so much more than 
the average promise of a first novel that many readers are 
certain to watch, with more than usual interest, for the 
appearance of Miss West's next book. 
