Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  Yet not/ so safe/ly sure, she warns, that ‘our own people will carry its banner.’ It’s all up to the young.

  Youth must think hard, and may walk free.

  Its feet on a mediocre and

  Perhaps improving floor,

  But its head as high as may be in the clouds.

  A hopeful note to end her sombre tale. But yet it seems to me that youth may fail, while keeping wrapped in cloud his thoughtful head, that mediocre floor to safely tread. And if the floor in mediocre manner his stumbling feet should once betray, he might put out his hand and drop the banner, with which he beckons on the approaching day.

  If no day dawns, no azure wisp can light the clouds which do the youthful face benight. Without a wisp, how can the lad unscrew or otherwise the carpentry undo? But with the carpentry still firmly screwed, he’ll miss the private path into the well, where not results but apparitions brood, and where the sprite herself is known to dwell.

  And if we haven’t got the blasted sprite, we’ll never get those damned clocks running right.

  (1967)

  Word sanctuary

  FROM LORD DISGUSTED

  Sir, – I must crave your indulgence for addressing you in this style. It is, I suppose, somewhat unusual in conversation, but after all these years the epistolary form is the one in which I feel myself most at home, even chatting to a journalist like yourself whom I am entertaining to lunch.

  I am surely not alone, Sir, in finding that while sticks and stones may break my bones, words can give me apoplexy. Unless I have been intolerably misinformed from my childhood up, the English language, its vocabulary, syntax, and spelling, were given us by God in their present form as an uplifting discipline. Misspellings, split infinitives, and neologisms I take as calculated affronts to my whole moral code.

  As you know, I have devoted a considerable part of my life to hunting them down and dragging them into the Letters to the Editor columns, manacled to the orotund ironies of my own entirely correct prose-style. It has not been an easy vocation; I have had to hold myself ready to be outraged at all hours. The high moral tone I have been able to enjoy, however, has not been entirely without its satisfactions. A little more roast beef?

  But I digress. Neologisms, I find, are the outrages the most likely to provoke a rise in blood pressure. New words! What the devil do we want new words for? Illegitimately formed, as like as not, half Latin and half Greek, by some semi-literate scientist to denote some damned piece of modern nonsense the rest of us do not wish to know about. A lot of canting jargon! Is the language of Shakespeare and Milton not good enough for some twopenny little nuclear nobody to blow us all to Kingdom Come with?

  Perhaps I should make it clear that I am myself an Arts man. To a scientist, I suppose, words are unimportant, merely adjuncts to blowing things up. But to me words are essential tools without which I could not write my Letters to the Editor. I may say that I think the scientists have an infernal impertinence in interfering with my work, and a diabolical arrogance in inventing new words, when I, the generally recognised guardian of the language, should not dream of altering it by a hair’s breadth.

  But the Beelzebub of neologisms, Sir, is the Americanism. Let me ask a plain question. Whose language is it? Ours or theirs? It makes me furious when I see our own language larded with words like ‘editorialise’ and ‘hospitalise.’ Cannot people say ‘give as an opinion in an editorial’ and ‘cause to go to hospital’? Are they too lazy to say the extra syllables? Are they too sunk in moral torpor to work out the proper syntax?

  And ‘commuter’! Every time I hear the word ‘commuter’ I see a red haze of rage in front of my eyes. It is an entirely unnecessary outrage, since there is a perfectly good English expression: ‘A man who lives in one place and works in another, and who travels back and forth between the two each day.’ There is simply no need for a new word. A man who lives in one place and works in another, and who travels back and forth between the two each day, is simply a man who lives in one place and works in another, and who travels back and forth between the two each day – and that is all there is to say about it.

  It might be asked – though so far as I know it never has been – what is wrong with incorrect English. Surely anyone who has ever learnt any moral standards at all knows in his heart that ‘Don’t mention it’ is right and that ‘You’re welcome’ is wrong. One should think of words as applicants for positions of sacred trust in one’s employment. Naturally one inquires into their backgrounds, and if they turn out to be foreigners, like ‘You’re welcome,’ or of questionably mixed stock, like ‘telecast’ (ugh!), then one naturally thinks twice about employing them.

  At a time like this, when our country is being attacked on all sides, the correctness of our language is more important than ever. If we thought of ourselves as being at all times on parade, if we tightened up the nation’s spelling, ruthlessly stamped out split infinitives and hanging participles, and prohibited the manufacture or import of any new word whatsoever, unless designed by a qualified man like myself with a proper classical education, we could soon show our detractors where we stood in the world.

  If I had my way, our security organisations would be employed to examine the antecedents of every word and expression in the language. Sometimes perfectly innocent-looking phrases one uses oneself turn out to be quite unacceptable when one inquires into them. One of my colleagues pointed out in a Letter to the Editor recently that the expression ‘Have you got a …?’ is being replaced by ‘Do you have a …?’ – and that the latter, which one might in all innocence have entertained on one’s own lips, is of American extraction! As soon as one knows, of course, one can hear just how morally objectionable it is. But if the public had not been warned, the lovely English word ‘got’ would have been quietly murdered.

  But to come to the point, Sir. I trust you will join the organisation I am founding, the Council for the Preservation of Verbal England. I expect massive support from all the columnists, humourists, school teachers, and writers of Letters to the Editor who have already cared so much and so long. Help us to set an example to hoi polloi by returning to our lares et penates– a close rapport with the ens per se of the English language.

  And so, unless you would like another cup of coffee, I remain, Sir,

  Yours, etc.

  Disgusted

  (1963)

  The words and the music

  They keep playing music on Radio 3, have you noticed? I find it rather intrusive. You’re just settling into a good long interview with someone, you don’t know who, because you missed the beginning, but he seems to play the flügelhorn, and you’re finding out a great deal about his childhood in Leicestershire, and his views on Penderecki and the shortcomings of flügelhorn teaching in England, when they suddenly break off to play some symphony or concerto.

  They keep playing music in concert-halls, too, and I read somewhere recently that audiences there are also getting pretty sick of it. What people want, it’s been discovered, is not just musicians playing at them relentlessly, it’s someone to introduce it all, some familiar personality who can talk them through it.

  No one, so far as I know, has yet suggested it in the opera-house. But it would be the most natural thing in the world. There tend to be a lot of low moments in operas after a famous aria ends, when everyone takes a bit of a break. The composer’s thinking up some more tunes for the next famous aria, the baritone’s gone off to have a cup of tea, a mezzo has come on, and is making small talk to the soprano about offstage political developments and the unreliability of the men in their lives, the orchestra’s vamping till ready, or even off the stand altogether while the harpsichordist fills in until the next set.

  Wouldn’t it be much better if they cut all this, and Michael Aspel or someone, possibly in a costume suitable to the piece, came on and asked the soprano how things were going in her career? Not in her career as betrayed queen or consumptive courtesan, of which we know only depressingly too much already, b
ut in her career as a soprano, where things will certainly turn out to be going much better.

  ‘Lorraine,’ he’d say, ‘you’ve just had a rapturous reception for your wonderful Non sporgersi. This was obviously something you’ve been working towards in your career for some time.’

  ‘Yes, Michael, I’ve been looking forward to it ever since the overture. I really felt I was ready for it. Any earlier in Act One and the chorus would still have been singing Vietato l’ingresso. Any later and I should have run up against Rodolfo doing his wonderful Quanto costa. And everyone has been so tremendously supportive.’

  ‘I couldn’t belp noticing Sir Edward down there on the rostrum, waving his arms about and really urging you to go for it.’

  ‘Yes, the conductor has always been a great influence on me – particularly in deciding the right moment to attempt something new.’

  ‘I believe your immediate plans include one more aria in Act One?’

  ‘If I can fit it in, Michael. I do have a rather heavy schedule of interview work.’

  ‘Yes, tell me something about that. Is the technique involved very different from singing?’

  ‘Oh, it uses completely different physical apparatus. It puts a tremendous strain on the zygomaticus major and the orbicularis oris.’

  ‘Which of course are the muscles you need for smiling.’

  ‘And which tend as you know to remain underdeveloped and flabby in the opera repertoire. The strain on them can cause tension in the digastric and stylohyoid – which can in turn affect the chuckle.’

  ‘You are of course known for the amazing sprizzatura of your chuckle. I remember your wonderfully rich, sustained chuckling in Act Three of La Pastasciutta in San Francisco, in that famous interview you did with KCFR. But you’ve had some trouble with your chuckle recently, haven’t you?’

  ‘I think it was just the strain of trying to keep up my singing as well as the interviewing. Sometimes the chuckle just wouldn’t come.’

  ‘There was one occasion at the Met, I believe …?’

  ‘Yes, when I broke down in the middle of an interview, and just started to sing uncontrollably. It was very embarrassing. But I went to a wonderful woman in New York who helped me to see that question and answer are really yin and yang – part of the natural harmony of the universe. I think now I’m interviewing better than ever.’

  ‘You don’t intend to give up singing altogether?’

  ‘I hope not. But I can’t help feeling that there’s so much conflict in opera, so much aggression. Everyone gets tremendously emotional. It’s not surprising they keep murdering each other. All they can think about is treachery and despair and death. Whereas now for instance, we’re both able to keep perfectly calm. We can just stand here and have a nice friendly talk about really interesting things, such as my career, and we’ve both got a chance to show the nice side of our natures. A lot of the characters in opera are frankly not very nice.’

  They’re having such a nice friendly talk, in fact, that they forget about the audience completely. She pours him some Ribena from one of the golden jugs brought on for the great drinking song earlier in the act. They wander among the cardboard trees in the moonlight, and she asks him what he thinks she ought to do about Rodolfo. Should she wait until Act Three, then simply die of consumption and a broken heart? Or should she make a pre-emptive strike in Act Two, and have him murdered by hired assassins?

  He says that if she and Rodolfo could just stop singing for a moment, and talk to each other quietly, the way he and she are doing now, they might be able to get their problems sorted out.

  ‘You’re right,’ she murmurs. ‘It’s the singing – it’s the music. It’s got to go. Insightful relationships and coloratura just don’t mix. I feel I’ve become a lot more mature about my work in the last few minutes.’

  He is fascinated by all this, but he can’t help noticing that they are being watched. There is a face just visible out there in the darkness somewhere, with an impatient expression on it. He can see a raised arm, holding some sort of weapon.

  ‘The conductor?’ she says. ‘Let him wait. I’m tired of being told what to do by conductors. I’m tired of having all my thoughts and feelings laid down for me on staves, measured out by bar-lines. I’ve got past that stage of my career now.’

  Well, they talk for a long time. They have come to share a vision. They want everyone in the world to be interviewed. Not just musicians, but industrialists, generals, postmen, train-drivers. Because if everyone would simply stop doing things all the time, if they could just sit down on the scenery and talk about it instead, then obviously there would be fewer wars, there’d be less pollution. Letters wouldn’t get mis-delivered, trains wouldn’t run into each other.

  ‘And the most wonderful thing of all,’ they cry out at last in unison, ‘is that it would be so much cheaper!’

  No one hears this bit, though, because the audience has long since taken their point, and they’re all rather noisily interviewing each other.

  (1994)

  The world: week two

  1 And on the morning of the eighth day God woke up, greatly refreshed by His rest. And He remembered His work, that He had finished on the sixth day, and that He had beheld, and that He had seen was very good.

  2 And He looked at it again. And behold, it was not very good at all, it was very bad.

  3 The winged fowl was flying above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, it was true, and the creeping thing was creeping upon the earth. But the creeping thing was creeping upon the earth in considerably fewer numbers than might have been expected, because, lo, the winged fowl was zooming down out of the firmament of heaven and eating the creeping thing.

  4 Meanwhile the fowl of the air was getting eaten by the beast of the earth, and the beast of the earth was getting eaten by the fowl of the air; and some of the creeping things were creeping right off the earth, and installing themselves in various warm corners of the beasts and fowls, where plainly they had never been intended to be.

  5 And He looked at man, and He got a worse shock still. He had granted man dominion over the fish of the sea, certainly – but dominion was one thing, and what man appeared to be doing to the fish population of the world’s shallower seas was quite another. Nor could any reasonable person think that the concept of dominion was ever intended to include all the things that man was trying out on the fowl of the air and the cattle, which involved pieces of specially sharpened flint and captive bolt pistols. All right, a little latitude in the case of the creeping things might possibly be allowed, since no one had much sympathy for them, and they were behaving in such a pestilential fashion themselves. But this could not for a moment be said about the great whales, which were extremely lovable, and almost human, and bothering no one at all apart from some tiny organisms which God could not even remember figuring in the original list.

  6 It was strange. God remembered being immensely pleased with man when He had created him. He remembered the good feeling He had had at the end of the sixth day. Now He could not remember for the life of Him what He had been so pleased about. He began to think that He should have stopped much sooner; possibly on the first day, as soon as He had done the light, which was a brilliant success, everyone said so.

  7 Though it would have been a terrible shame if He had stopped before He had done the grass, and the herb yielding seed, and the tree yielding fruit. These had all got wonderful reviews, and the only trouble was that they were succumbing fast before the depredations of His subsequent efforts.

  8 Oh, and the fourth day had been one of the great days. At the time it had seemed no different from all the others, but looking back He couldn’t think how He had ever done anything as simple and daring as the two great lights that ruled the day and night, and the stars also. He hadn’t thought about them! He’d just done them! Now people were writing poems about them.

  9 Though now apparently man was doing something rather nasty to one of the great lights, and getting extremely
confused about the stars.

  10 He felt rather like tearing the whole thing up and forgetting about it. Or perhaps if He redesigned some of the beasts a bit, and made them more herbivorous … Though then that would ruin the whole concept of the fruit and the herbs. It seemed crazy to throw away perfectly good fruit and herbs just to fix the problem with the lions and tigers.

  11 And on the ninth day God began to get very depressed about how He had really been able to create things back then in the early days, when He had done the trees and the stars. Now, who knows, maybe He was finished. Maybe He would never be able to create anything ever again.

  12 And God thought, It was taking that day off, that’s when it all went wrong. I knew it was a mistake – I only did it because My Wife kept on about having a holiday. Though heaven knows, He needed a day off, He’d been working all the hours that He had made, for the entire week, and if you can’t take an occasional day off then what’s the point of it all?

  13 Yes, now He came to think about it, what was the point of it all?

  14 And God thought about how He should perhaps have created one of the other possible universes He had had in mind – for instance, the one that consisted of differently-shaped smells, or the one that was all in the subjunctive.

  15 And on the ninth day God became so depressed about the whole thing that He showed it to His Wife, and asked her what She thought. He couldn’t really see it any more, He explained – He’d been living with it for nine days, He was too close to it. He would really value Her opinion.

  16 And His Wife said it was wonderful, and that She liked it, She genuinely did – She wasn’t just trying to reassure Him. She thought that He had done something absolutely unique. She really adored the beasts of the earth, especially the aardvark and the velociraptor.