The neighborhood was a dreary one at that time—as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night as any about London. There were neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, carcasses of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving bells, windmill sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which—having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather—they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery works upon the riverside arose by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, the rags of last year’s handbills, offering rewards for drowned men, fluttering above the high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb tide.

The books of Charles Dickens brim with finely wrought characters—to read David Copperfield is to make several new friends and one or two nemeses—but this particular passage from Copperfield is remarkable for its dearth of human beings. Yet the portraitist in Dickens can’t help but to personify the scene: houses have carcasses, wooden piles grow a substance like green hair, and rusty objects were vainly trying to hide themselves. The narrator deduces human history from visible artifacts: without conducting any interviews, he can tell that the houses were inauspiciously begun and never finished, and those rusty objects were accumulated by some speculator. Dickens has already betrayed his interest in people.

The passage’s main achievement, though, is to connect decay with industry by juxtaposing images. Nominally, we are presented with a neighborhood and a factory. But “the neighborhood” is a misnomer—it consists of a prison and a sort of graveyard for rotting houses, “rusty iron monsters,” and “drowned men.” We are left to infer that the factory is to blame, as it disturbs “everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke,” apparently the factory’s flagship product. A century after Copperfield, Joseph Schumpeter described the “creative destruction” of capitalism, but Dickens here shows us capitalism’s unredeemed destruction: abandoned houses, decaying wares (left by a “speculator”), and unidentified slush, ooze, sickly substance, and slimy gaps. The market may have a solution for every problem (”…last year’s handbills, offering rewards for drowned men”), but this passage displays, without overt commentary, capitalism’s grotesque aspect.

Further reading: David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)

The art of joining squares of glass with lead is little used in Scotland, and in some places totally forgotten. The frames of their windows are all of wood. They are more frugal of their glass than the English, and will often, in houses not otherwise mean, compose a square of two pieces, not joining like cracked glass, but with one edge laid perhaps half an inch over the other. Their windows do not move upon hinges, but are pushed up and drawn down in grooves, yet they are seldom accommodated with weights and pullies. He that would have his window open must hold it with his hand, unless what may be sometimes found among good contrivers, there be a nail which he may stick into a hole, to keep it from falling.

I tremble a little before writing about Samuel Johnson. I cannot claim to illuminate his prose, but I will attempt to express the things I like about this little passage concerning Scottish windows (and the paragraphs that follow it) in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Dr. Johnson’s rather intimidating version of “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

Dr. Johnson describes what’s not present as much as what is. The technique distinguishes a wise observer from one who is merely keen. The window pieces were not joining like cracked glass, the windows do not move upon hinges, and are seldom accommodated with weights and pullies. An experience is made equally of expectation and observation, and Johnson captures them both. Does this make Johnson a cultural imperialist, imposing his own standards and notions of window-ness upon a foreign people? Why, yes, actually. His Journey is filled with comparisons between England and Scotland, usually to the humiliation of the latter. I am guilty for laughing with him. The last sentence of the paragraph above was the funniest thing I read all week; I love the image of a man holding open a window to keep cool, and then the phrase “good contrivers” almost killed me. (The humor, of course, is that the “good contrivers” in England were a sight more clever.)

What I like about Johnson’s prose is that it is laden with both morality and understated wit, even in the mundanest details. What I love about it is that he cannot stay focused on these details for long, because his mind is busy understanding the generality at stake. That ability — perhaps I should say tendency or even constancy — to discern a large truth in detail endows Johnson’s prose with a gravity that I regard as greatness. He continues on the subject of Scottish windows:

What cannot be done without some uncommon trouble or particular expedient, will not often be done at all.

(Let me interrupt briefly to say how much I like that sentence. It is simple truth that needs no evidence, explanation, or citation, presented in a way that asserts: if you understand the semantics, you agree with the statement. The sentence could have been written by God Himself.)

The incommodiousness of the Scotch windows keeps them very closely shut. The necessity of ventilating human habitations has not yet been found by our northern neighbours; and even in houses well built and elegantly furnished, a stranger may be sometimes forgiven, if he allows himself to wish for fresher air.

Johnson simply cannot contemplate his subject without giving thought to both generality (What cannot be done…) and morality (a stranger may be sometimes forgiven…). I would that all writing about windows, pies, pets, and wildlife did not shy from such noble thoughts. I would that such writing had Johnson’s good manners, too: if he allows himself to wish for fresher air. Here is a man equally in control of his words and his desires. It’s like reading the prose of Jupiter, or King Solomon.

In fact, Johnson can’t even think about Scottish windows without thinking about the nature of writing about small things. His thoughts finally collect into quite a nice passage about writing, rich in images, long on truth. I refuse to injure the Doctor by taking the last word here for myself, so you must contemplate the paragraph on your own. The chapter on windows in Bamff terminates thus:

These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be remembered, that life consists not of a serious of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease, as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent interruption. The true state of every nation is the state of common life. The manners of a people are not to be found in the schools of learning, or the palaces of greatness, where the national character is obscured or obliterated by travel or instruction, by philosophy or vanity; nor is public happiness to be estimated by the assemblies of the gay, or the banquets of the rich. The great mass of nations is neither rich nor gay: they whose aggregate constitutes the people, are found in the streets, and the villages, in the shops and farms; and from them collectively considered, must the measure of general prosperity be taken. As they approach to delicacy a nation is refined, as their conveniences are multiplied, a nation, at least a commercial nation, must be denominated wealthy.

Further reading: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (Samuel Johnson)

A principall Fruit of Frendship is the ease and discharge of the fulnesse and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds doe cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the minde: you may take sarza to open the liver; steele to open the spleene; flowers of sulphure for the lungs; castoreum for the braine; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true Frend; to whom you may impart griefes, joyes, feares, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppresse it, in a kind of civill shrift or confession.

This medical mini-tract comes from that dark angel of English prose, Sir Francis Bacon. I don’t have any deep thoughts about it, but I do appreciate the use of a list or litany, even though I have no idea what any of the curatives are or how they are to be taken (my apothecary was fresh out of sarza, steele, flowers of sulphure, and castoreum). After setting up a complete thought (”you may take sarza to open the liver”), Bacon can convey similar thoughts just by naming the pairs of nouns to go in the appropriate places (”sulphure for the lungs”, “castoreum for the braine”). If he had so chosen, he could have pared down his prose even further, eliminating the word for (e.g., “flowers of sulphure, the lungs; castoreum, the braine…”), and his meaning would have been just as clear.

A list in prose serves the same purpose as a grocery list on the fridge; if you’ve already spent time driving to the store or thinking up a high-octane verb, bring home as many victuals as the trunk of your sentence can hold. And after Lord Bacon, append to the list something sweet and surprising (no receipt openeth the heart, but a true Frend…).

Further reading: The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon

The only thing better than encountering great prose is encountering great prose unexpectedly. Last night I went to the movies and saw His Girl Friday, a 1940 comedy about a newspaperman preventing his coworker-cum-ex-wife from quitting her job and marrying an insurance salesman. The film’s writing is superb. I normally wouldn’t quote it here, since it’s all dialogue. Well, almost all dialogue.

In one scene, the newspaperman (Cary Grant, left in the picture above above) reads aloud a story-in-progress written by his ex-wife (Rosalind Russell, right). It concerns a murderer named Earl Williams and his confidant, Mollie Malloy:

And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. And use it he did. But the state has a ‘production-for-use’ plan too. It has a gallows. And at seven a.m. unless a miracle occurs, that gallows will be used to separate the soul of Earl Williams from his body. And out of Mollie Malloy’s life will go the one kindly soul she ever knew.

This prose is the epitome of quick-witted journalism, the sort that perhaps can be composed only on a heavy typewriter while smoking unfiltered cigarettes in rapid succession. Each sentence kindles the next. Watch how produced for use in the first sentence lights up the next two sentences (use it he did, ‘production-for-use’ plan), which in turn provide the spark for the gallows, and then we get a sentence, lit in the middle, that burns both forwards and backwards (“that gallows will be used”), whose ends fortuitously meet at the end of the passage (“the one kindly soul she ever knew” is both the soul of Earl Williams and yes, a sort of miracle). These fissioning, dancing embers of prose, I must confess, left me with a pretty good secondhand buzz.

Further watching: His Girl Friday (written by Charles Lederer)