SCHOLARSHIP IN JOURNALISM
C.
L. R. SASTRI
“It
is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind’s
dignity. A man of immense information may, through the want of large and
comprehensive ideas, be far inferior in intellect to a labourer
who, with little knowledge, has yet seized great truth…A good mind formed by
a few great ideas, net by an infinity of loose
details.”
–W. E. CHANNING
This
is just the sort of subject that suits me very well: inasmuch as I am, thereby,
enabled to ramble at my sweet will and pleasure, to branch off into any
tempting bypaths or sidelanes, that cross my prearranged plan. Discursiveness is the
essence of essay-writing: and what was good enough for Dryden, Lamaitre, and Walkley–and, coming
down to modern times, for that doyen of British dramatic critics, the late Mr.
James Agate–is, without doubt, good enough for me, too. All the same, I must,
in the interests of historical accuracy, hasten to disavow any claim to
scholarship–even “north-north-west.”
It
is true, of course, that I have always had (ever since, in a manner of
speaking, I could lisp in numbers) a vague hankering, an inchoate ambition,
after that priceless jewel. But a concatenation of circumstances effectively
prevented that vague hankering, that inchoate ambition, from realising itself to the fullest possible extent: of
“expanding itself”, in Walter Pater’s celeberated phrase, “to the measure of my intention.” A
stronger mind than mine would, in all probability, have scorned to be defeated
by the mere caprice of events, would even, on the contrary, have been spurred
on to redoubled efforts, just because of that formidable obstruction in its
way. But it is useless to cry over split milk and to cast a longing, lingering
glance over the “might-have-beens., As Sir Thomas
Browne puts it: “The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth
her poppy.”
Greek and Latin
The past is a closed
chapter: and there is no known process by which we can retrieve it and remould it nearer to our hearts’ desire. “The moving finger
writes, and, having writ, moves on”. I have not, then, any pretensions to
scholarship. But this bitter pill is not without its proverbial sugar-coating
in that, though I have no pretensions to scholarship, I am yet not unaware that
there is such a thing as scholarship and that the man who possesses it has an
immense advantage over the man who does not possess it. In this connection
Walter Bagehot’s sapient observation comes pat:
“While a knowledge of Greek and Latin is not necessary
to a writer of English, he should at least have a firm conviction that those
two languages existed.”
The
profound truth of this sapient observation will be brought home to us when we
remember Edward Gibbon’s magnificent saying that “the Greek language gave a
soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of metaphysics.”
Scholarship, indeed, is never wasted anywhere, least of all in the realm of
journalism which is immeasurably enriched by it: being, in fact, transformed
beyond recognition by the additional graces that it seldom fails to bestow on
anything that it touches. At the present juncture, however, not only is
scholarship conspicuous by its absence in journalism: it is severely frowned
upon when it makes the slightest show of raising its head from the abysmal
depths to which Fleet Street (and, even more so, whatever stands for Fleet
Street in our own hapless country) has, in the plenitude of its ignorance,
consigned it.
This
is, preeminently, the Age of the “New Journalism”: and “New Journalism” and
scholarship are as poles apart. As far as the “New Journalism”, at any rate, is
concerned, it is safe to say that no
“...brighter
From
waves serener far,”
and
that no
“...new
Peneus rolls its fountains
Against the morning star.”
In other words scholarship finds no “abiding city” in the world of the “New Journalism”. There is that in the “New Journalism” that is inherently inimical to the encouragement of scholarship: and those who would follow “Apollo and the Nine” would do well to apply elsewhere for admission. Matters had been vastly different, of course, before the late Lord Northcliffe, the father, the mother, and the wet nurse combined of the “New Journalism”, took Fleet Street by storm. Then scholarship had a none too inconsiderable place in journalism. To the practitioners of the art in those far-off days it was, as Dr Johnson said of Greek, “like old lace–you can never have too much of it.”
If
a slight exaggeration (pardonable in the circumstances) may be permitted, to be
a journalist then was to be a scholar: the two terms were conterminous. Those
who were aspirants to the journalistic purple generally made sure that they had
the requisite qualifications. Quite apart from the fact they were not “dead
from the neck up”, as the saying is, they invariably came to their tasks with a
firm determination to leave their patrimony, like the old Athenian, not worse,
but something better than, they found it. To put it differently, they took pains
to be splendid. They regarded themselves as the inheritors of fulfilled
renown and, therefore, saw to it that they gave of their best to the noblest of
all professions. You could never catch them napping. In especial, they were
adepts in the instrument of their calling. In their hands English prose
“...
became a trumpet, whence they blew
Soul-animating
strains.”
Scholarship alone not
enough
They
knew perfectly well that scholarship, by itself, cannot carry a journalist very
far: he must learn how to put it to the best possible use. That was why they
took endless trouble to prune and to polish. In the matter of the mechanics of
their trade they had a kind of sixth sense, as it were, that, as the poet has
it, “brightness does not fall from off the air”: that, instead, brightness had
to be cultivated–and cultivated, too, with assiduous care. Booklore should
never, it is true, be deplored, but it would be all the better if it could
“coexist” with the ability to write well: to know, in the vulgar parlance, how
many beans make five. Else it would turn no wheels and grind no corn.
The
journalists I have in mind were not ripe scholars but excellent penmen. They
were alive to the pregnant truth that literature should never be divorced from
life. They did not subscribe to the quaint proposition that literature is only
for the “highbrows.” They held, on the other hand, that it should be the
possession of the common man no less than that of the dilettante. Such
being their high endeavour it was hardly surprising that
they touched nothing that they did not adorn. The tiniest paragraph that they
wrote had distinction stamped upon it, was invested with a sort of plenary
inspiration. Reading their productions was a liberal education in itself. You
were not fobbed off with the crumbs that fell from their groaning tables: you
were served with a sumptuous meal, as delicious as it was wholesome. You
expected a toothsome thing, and you got it.
Who
were these masters? In the main they were Scott, Spender, Massingham
and Gardiner. They formed a quartette that has never been surpassed anywhere.
They have had no single successor. It was, probably, not quite an accident that
all of them belonged to the Old Liberal party. During that period there was an
efflorescence of the human spirit in that party that was well-nigh unique. In
politics as well as in the art it “flamed in the forehead of the morning sky.”
Look where you would it was a liberal that dominated the scene.
It
was from that cultural Palmir Plateau that all–or
nearly all–its rivers and rivulets of genius flowed and “winded somewhere safe
to sea.” That illustrious savant, Lord Morley, himself, drew inspiration from
the same prolific source. Naturally, these four figures whose names I have mentioned
had no option but to tread the same path of intellectual development. Scott in
the Manchester Guardian and Massingham in the Daily
Chronicle and, later, in the Nation, and Spender in the “old, the seagreen, incorruptible”, and Gardiner in the Daily News
“magnoperated”, in Agate’s beautiful phrase, as
no “foursome” had ever been privileged to do. It was the grandest symphony
that anyone could have hoped to listen to.