11.xi.xxxiv.
The Shire dialect is a pleasant and interesting one, which can be reduced to a few easy rules, like English Grammar. The first rule is to omit the common or garden “w” whilst supplying a few of your own. Thus a woman is an ooman, and your wife is your Wold ooman. The second, more curious, rule deals with the crushed past participle. For “frozen” we say “friz”; for “frightened,” “frit”; for “written,” “writ.” The man who has been warped by his education can only rise to the abbreviation “isn’t,” but we extend this throughout the verb “to be.” “Be’nt” is as good as “isn’t.” Thus, if I were asked for a short sentence illustrative of all that is best in the Shire, I should produce: “A be’ant frit of my Wold ooman.”
18.xi.xxxiv.
I have had to sit down under such a lot of guff in definition of the “gentleman,” from the pulpit, the maternal lecture and the pure-bred snob, that I really don’t see why I shouldn’t begin defining him myself. I define him by his hospitality. The infallible test for a gentleman is to drop in upon him suddenly at an awkward hour, preferably at half-past nine o’clock in the evening, unfed, and see what he does about it. If he is too mean to do anything but pass it off as a breach of good manners, or if he rings for the butler and provides you with a caviare sandwich or some such flummery, then he is no friend of ours. But if his wife dives into the kitchen, and provides you there with the best in the house, even if it is only bread and butter (though there is sure to be some little relish), at a moment’s notice, and if the kitchen is clean, then that person is a gentleman and God is with his house.
[T.H. White, England Have My Bones (1936)]
noted
under the elms
I like to have a man’s knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves. I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, III]
#41
We ramble about in open country so as to learn how to ramble about in the singularly dusty world of books.
[Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, The Natural History of the German People]
to & fro
Upon the foure and twentieth day of the eleventh moneth, which is the moneth Sebat, in the second yere of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the sonne of Barachiah, the sonne of Iddo the Prophet, saying:
I saw by night, and behold a man riding vpon a red horse, and he stood among the mirtle trees that were in the bottome, and behinde him were there red horses, speckled and white.
Then said I, O my Lord, what are these? And the Angel that talked with me, said vnto me, I wil shew thee what these be.
And the man that stood among the myrtle trees answered, and said, These are they, whom the Lord hath sent to walke to and fro through the earth.
And they answered the Angel of the Lord that stood among the mirtle trees, and said, Wee haue walked to and fro through the earth: and behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest.
#33
Best footnote this week:
“Zusammengeklaubten bröckelnden Lehmklüppchen gleicht das was ihr gegen mich zusammenkramt.” All you need to know about that sentence is that it translates only three Hebrew words.
[Edwin M. Good, In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job (1990), note on page 82. Professor Good’s own translation of 13:12b: “Your shields are shields of clay.”]
Les Henokiens
In 1885, when Lemoine et fils, music publishers since 1772, published F.-A. Gevaert’s Nouveau Traité d’Instrumentation (in which I found this inkstamp), they had been in business for over a century. How remarkable to find that, as Editions Henry Lemoine, the business remains alive and well and in the hands of the Lemoine family in the seventh generation.
I wonder how many family firms have enjoyed this kind of longevity? Perhaps a few dozen worldwide? Editions Henry Lemoine belongs to an exclusive association of long-lived family companies, members of which must fulfil four criteria: all are at least 200 years old, all are directed by descendants of the founder, the majority of their capital is in family hands, and their finances must be sound. The 47 members of this association call themselves Les Henokiens, a name inspired by the Old Testament patriarch Enoch (or Hénok), who was not merely long-lived but never died. Some are decidedly modern firms, in banking and finance, real estate development, and industry. Others are in more of a craft tradition, oriented to the carriage trade — jewelers, gunsmiths, confectioners, vintners (one makes swords for induction ceremonies to the Académie Francaise).
I spent a fascinating evening looking at each of les Henokiens. This kind of longevity, so unusual for a family business in the modern corporate environment, ought to be the object of some study. What kind of family traditions, business culture and practices are common to these superannuated firms? My interest here is not so much in business per se as in the transmission of values and traditions and practices perhaps not wholly in sync with the modern world.
silence still greater
Occasionally I pass by little shops – in the rue de Seine, for example. Dealers in antiques or small second-hand booksellers or vendors of engravings with overcrowded windows. No one ever enters their shops; they apparently do no business. But if one looks in, they are sitting there, sitting and reading, without a care; they take no thought for the morrow, are not anxious about any success, have a dog that sits before them, all good nature, or a cat that makes the silence still greater by gliding along the rows of books, as if it were rubbing the names off their backs.
Ah, if that were enough: sometimes I would like to buy such a full shop-window for myself and to sit down behind it with a dog for twenty years.
[Rainer Maria Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge]
cardo et decumanus
Every Man is a Roman Forum.
All things are up and down — east and west to me. In me is the forum out of which go the Appian and Sacred ways, and a thousand beside, to the ends of the world– If I forget my centralness, and say a bean winds with or against the sun, and not right or left, it will not be true south of the equator.
[H. D. Thoreau, Journal, 11 July 1839]
#26
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
[H.D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6th 1840]
#25
Consider society at any epoch, and who does not see that heresy has already prevailed in it?
[H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6th 1840]
Seven Roads: Notes 