BLEAK PUNCTUATION!
May I add to your season of classroom reminiscences by mentioning “Comprehension” which we were set fairly frequently when I was in my final year at primary school, in 1954-5. The prose extracts that we were required to comprehend were properly printed, and the source of each piece – the author and title – stated in the final line, which I felt added a scholarly touch. Most of the extracts seemed unremarkable and were quickly forgotten, but two made such an impression that I can remember exactly what they were, and even the words with which they began and ended.
One of these consisted of the first four paragraphs of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1852-3). After I had been gripped by the vivid scenes of metropolitan murk and mire, my attention was drawn, somewhat pedantically, to the isolated words “London” (full stop), and “Fog everywhere” (full stop). Miss (actually, a Mrs) had drummed into us that (a) a sentence consists of a group of words that ends with a full stop – or more rarely, a question mark or an exclamation mark; and (b) every sentence must contain a verb. So according to definition (a), “London” and “Fog everywhere” were sentences, because they ended with full stops; yet neither contained a verb. This worried me. Had Miss noticed this contravention of the rules? If so, would she be cross? Cross with Charles Dickens, logically, but some of the flak might hit us. But then I reflected that Charles Dickens is a very great writer, and moreover he is dead. Phew! It was the latter, more than the former, that meant I relaxed.
The second memorable extract was from the chapter (IV) on St Mark’s in volume two of John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1851-3). It comprised all of section 10, and section 11 as far as “the mist at the bend of the river”. Before approaching St Mark’s, Ruskin takes the reader on a tour of a typical English cathedral close, and I was caught by his rising enthusiasm as he guides the reader’s eye from one architectural detail to the next, higher and higher up the cathedral’s richly decorated west front, to the topmost pinnacles of the towers.
After this great crescendo, a hush falls: “Think for a little while of that scene . . . Estimate its secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities . . .” Here was a man of sufficient standing to write a book (I did not then know who Ruskin was) speaking to me directly in a way which showed his confidence in my ability to “think” and “estimate” productively if invited to do so.
The opening of Bleak House is one of the most powerful descriptive passages in English fiction and is often cited and admired, though I would guess that scarcely one person in 20 continues to the end of the novel. Likewise Ruskin’s complex sentences and unashamed didacticism are out of fashion now. But these two extracts were my earliest encounter with literature intended for an adult readership, and looking beyond my task of “Comprehension” I felt I had a momentary glimpse into a new world. You did not find that quality of writing in Biggles.
Robert Lee, Abingdon, Oxfordshire