'Little Effect After Much Labour?'

Like any adolescent, Anecdotal Evidence – she turns fifteen today – is ungainly and not always sure of herself but reliably charming when it counts. She is strong and wary of longueurs, and sees the ridiculous in most human beings, including herself. As Max Beerbohm told Lord David Cecil: “Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.” AE works hard to have solid values that would make any sane parent proud: pleasure in laughter, devotion to family and work, gratitude for friends and good books. A blog is a temperamental thing, given to disappointment one day and exaltation the next. It’s a modest effort, fated never to change the world and not interested in doing so.  

 

With a mingling of pride and humility, Jane Austen, the wittiest of women, adopted the déclassé sailor’s hobby of scrimshaw as the emblem of her art. In an 1816 letter to her nephew, a would-be novelist who had misplaced a manuscript, the author of small, perfect novels writes:

 

“What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety & Glow? — How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”

 

I have excellent readers. Some write comments which often prompt my desire to reply. But the comments section is the reader’s exclusive realm. I’ve had my say. I would love to meet you but can’t without an email address. Write, please, so we can talk. Heed Sterne’s suggestion at the start of Chapter XI in the second volume of Tristram Shandy:

 

“Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all; -- so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.”