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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Ex Cathedra

page 51

Ex Cathedra.

A Chapter on Chairs might be written full of edification as well as of interest: even as the unpromising subject of the Sofa, touched by the genius of an English poet, has added a flower to the chaplet of English verse. But it is with one kind of Chair only that we have to do at present—the Chair which bids fair to take the highest place of all. From the Chair Editorial proceed thunderings louder than those echoing from the Pontifical Seat on the Seven Hills; decrees that have overruled those issuing from thrones of conquest; and in questions of science and philosophy the last word is no longer given from the Chair of the Professor, but is sought from that (usually shabby) article of furniture which is found in the inner chamber whence proceeds the Spirit of the World's Press. The Chair, then, which takes precedence of all other Chairs, is no single article—it is the composite result and aggregate of all editorial seats, from the upturned gin-case in the miners' camp to the triumph of upholstery adorning the Palace of the Press in the Land of Big Things. The Chair is not without its reverse—its seamy side. At times it is anything but potent: sometimes its influence is in the wrong scale; but, taking it all in all, it is unquestionably one of those powers in these latter days that work for righteousness.

Let it never be said that the virtue is not in the Chair, but in the occupant. There is high authority to the contrary. He who, speaking and acting in his own proper character, is subject to all those errors and infirmities which are the common heritage of mankind, is, we are told, absolutely infallible in word and deed when seated in a certain venerable Chair. And the man whose voice is only one among many millions, unheard and unnoticed—when speaking from the Chair and in the name of The Times, or even with serio-comic quip and crank from the Seat of the Hunchback of Fleet-street, is for the time being a leader of the thoughts and actions of men.

Therefore though the Chair, as a whole, be highly exalted—though it possess and impart the great gift of infallibility—let no single representative claim the dignity for itself. Sufficient if it possess but a single fragment, chip, or splinter of the True Chair, wherein shall reside a due portion of the virtue of the whole. And thus, wherever the Press is known, and wherever the anonymous spectacled Editor sits in his sanctum sanctorum, he claims, and not without reason, his share of the gift. He writes, be it known, not as Brown, or Jones, or Robinson; he disdains the first person singular: like King, Emperor, or Pope, he adopts the Pronoun of Dignity. And rightly, too, for he writes ex Cathedra.

In these pages, happily, the Chair is not called upon to decide the ancient problems of philosophy or government; to unravel the tangles of statecraft; to criticise the most recent dogma of Rome, or the latest ukase of the Emperor of Russia. These things are done so often, and so well, by all the up-country weekly papers, that it would be superfluous. For this Chair, then, there is little else left than to moralize on things in general—to discover incidentally that other Chairs are sometimes frail and fallible after all, even to the extent of not having a leg to stand on. It will not affect, as do certain Chairs, to take a wholly unprejudiced view, ؟Where is the Pressman, the Parson, the Politician, worthy of the name, who religiously stifles his prejudices? No one would care to listen to him or to read his writings if he died. ؟Did any man void of prejudices ever accomplish a great reform, or take any prominent place in the fulfilment of the world's work? Do not trust the man who says he is superior to prejudice. He will deceive you: if he believes what he says, he has already deceived himself. The Chair, once only, received a communication written in that spirit which certain injudicious people commend as altogether admirable. It was from a cold-blooded lawyer, and was written entirely without prejudice. It was not edifying reading, and as a literary effort, was absolutely worthless.

A sad example of the suppression of natural instinct is to be found in the inartistic attire of the male being of civilized society. Nature occasionally asserts itself, in bizarre fashion, as in football costume and at fancy balls; and in the free air of the Coral Isles we find that a celebrated author, instead of endeavoring to convert the Natives to stupid European costume, arrays himself in their own picturesque garb, even to the wreath of flowers around his brows. (See Black and White, No. 1.) A hundred years ago the English gentleman could exercise his personal taste in form and color, and Goldsmith's plum-colored coat is historic. Now the fashion-reporter can find nothing to say regarding the garments of the masculine section of creation. We certainly did read not long ago in a Wellington paper that « Mr Fitzsimmons looked really charming in lavender silk, trimmed with point-lace, and a long train, » but the next day's issue stated that the printer had blundered, and that Mrs Fitzsimmons was intended. But there was a wedding lately at North Goulburn, New South Wales, and the reader was actually told what the bridegroom wore. In half-a-column of glowing description of decorations of church, dresses of bride and bridesmaid, &c., the indispensable masculine adjunct to the ceremony received just three lines of incidental reference. Mr Z., we were told, « wore a look of great happiness and satisfaction on his face. » With the assistance of the Muse (and the late Sir Walter Scott, who contributed the first line), the Chair has condensed the whole interesting report into three stanzas of immortal verse:—

The church was decked at morning-tide,
White flowers were on the organ placed;
Beneath a rose-arch walked the Bride,
And orange-blooms the altar graced.
Rght tastefully was she arrayed
In charming silver-grey costume
With rich silk sleeves of darker shade,
And lovely hat with ostrich-plume.
All eyes were on the Lady's dress.
The Groom, unnoticed, took his place
He wore … a look of happiness
And great content … upon his face.

There is a perennial charm and eternal fitness in phrases from a dead language or a foreign tongue. Artemu Ward has placed on record his conversation with the schoolmaster, in which each pelted the other with scraps of erudition. An American State Governor owed his election to a grand peroration consisting of eight or ten random Latin phrases; and the Cambrian parson secured his church in the Far West by quoting from the Old and New Testaments in the (Welsh) « original. » These historic feats are quite equalled by an East Coast newspaper-man, who brightens with his classical lore so trite an incident as that of the escape of a bullock from a wharf. The animal, disinclined to submit to the indignity of the slings, boarded the cattle-schooner by the gangway, and promptly cleared the decks. Having done this, he jumped overboard. Let the reporter complete the narrative. « He was lost to view for a few seconds, and on coming to the surface swam over to the island opposite, where he was allowed to remain in peace. Sic transit gloria mundi. »

page 52

The Wanganui Herald complains that the press has « strangely misread » Mr Ballance's Taranaki speech about the local harbor loan. It had just the same complaint when he made his celebrated reference to the Railway Commissioners in Napier. In that case the three reporters present maintained that their notes were correct. Mr Ballance is fated to be misunderstood.

A good many newspapers blundered as to « the end of the ninth decade » of the century, and now we read in a travelling paragraph that « there is a disputes » as to when the twentieth century will begin! Not only this, but that a Pittsburg astronomer says it will begin on the 1st January, 1900. If, as he appears to think, 99 years complete a century, ten years of the twentieth century have already gone by, and no one has ever discovered the fact.

What passes for civilization has its drawbacks. Science has given us telescopes, microscopes, and spectroscopes, and has had wonderful success in artificially assisting imperfect vision—but ؟how many Europeans have eyes like the old Maoris, who could, without artificial aid, see Jupiter's satellites, partially resolve the nebulæ into stars, and gaze at noonday on a comet within one degree of the sun? The nearsightedness of the younger generation of Germans is proverbial, and is often attributed—quite erroneously, we think—to the use of Gothic types. It seems that the Gaul is nearly as myopic as the Teuton. Inquiry has shown that among the senior boys in the French colleges more than 46 per cent. are near-sighted. The outlook for the future, so far as vision is concerned, is a grim one. The occupations of civilized life, almost without exception, tend to confirm and perpetuate the evil.

The New York correspondent who writes under the name of « Broadbrim, » tells the following story—too familiar in the colonies as well as in older lands: On Tuesday at the Jefferson Market Police Court, the crop was uncommonly large. In the wretched congregation a ragged tramp approaches the judge's desk, his face is wan and haggard, his eyes are bloodshot, his hands tremble, his limbs will hardly support him, his hair is matted, and his beard unshorn; he is the picture of abject misery and dissipation. The wretched dirty tramp now trembling before the judge's bench is all that remains of Launt Thompson, the favourite sculptor of twenty years ago. Then he was vice-president of the National Academy of Design, a welcome companion to all the clubs, with a golden future so bright that no man could estimate the wealth and glory of his zenith. All that is passed now; no refuge for him but death—death most merciful and kind—which shall close this sorrowful history.

We do not know whether fine or imprisonment would best meet the case of those school-inspectors who propound useless and catch-questions to the persecuted scholars. It is an absolute fact that in a paper set before all the members of an English public school lately, the following was one of the questions: « How many legs has a fly, a butterfly, a spider, a stevedore, an apteryx, a platypus? » Fairly successful shots were made with the first two. As to the third, grave doubts, apparently, existed in the minds of many of the boys as to whether spiders usually walked on four, six, or ten legs; but when the case of the stevedore had to be considered speculation ran rampant. Some rashly concluded that it was merely another name for a centipede, and asserted that it possessed a hundred legs; others thought it might be a species of serpent, and pronounced against any at all. The apteryx and the platypus also proved terrible pitfalls. The probability is that the inspector himself would have had no better success with a paper on similar lines, prepared by another hand.

The new municipal school at Paris—École Estienne du Livre—lately decided to invent a new style of type for their own use. It will occur to most people that with some thousands of faces of roman to select from—modern, ancient, modernized old-style, French-face new and old, and the rest—that the authorities of the school must have been somewhat fastidious. « Many difficulties cropped up, » we are told—which we take to mean that the new styles « created » were somehow not equal to the old after all. At last they addressed themselves to M. Motteroz, the celebrated Parisian printer, who—as all who have made a study of typography are aware—has had a peculiar form of roman engraved after his own design. Hitherto, he has resolutely refused to part with these types; but in this case he has made an exception, and has furnished the school with a full set of matrices; so that in future the publications will be printed in the Motteroz types.—It is a matter, we think, for extreme thankfulness, that the school did not carry out their original « fad. » It would have been a costly experiment, and would only have added one more horror to modern typography.