Writing tips from Benjamin Franklin

The following strikes me as a fantastic exercise for anyone who has some time to invest in improving their writing. I certainly have trouble expressing ideas in my own words when working from a set of lengthy quotes (which is unfortunately what most of my source notes and first drafts consist of). Based on the essays I'm marking at the moment, my students also struggle with finding "their own words", and either "string together" a "series of short quotes" which "roughly express" the idea they are "aiming at", or they plump for the most academic-sounding vocabulary and wind up making no sense at all.

About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

(Free Kindle edition)

I don't normally go in for autobiographies but Franklin's is a thoroughly enjoyable read, containing a lot of useful pointers for getting people to cooperate in your schemes (in case any of you wish to set up a local militia, subscription library or fire service).

Old News, Nottingham 1862

From the Nottinghamshire Guardian, Friday Nov. 7th, 1862.

GUY FAWKES DAY IN LONDON. - Wednesday being Guy Fawkes Day, collisions were expected between the Garibaldians and the Irish, but the weather being very wet, coupled with a dense fog, no disturbance took place.

ELOPEMENT. - The greatest consternation has been caused in a very small village about three miles east of Market Harborough by the elopement of a young lady with a rustic butcher. An acquaintance had by some means or other sprung up between them, and on Saturday night last the lady, as usual, attended prayers in the family circle, and was with the family between 11 and 12 o'clock. While she was performing her usual household duties the gay Lothario went by train to Rugby, where they arrived in time for the mail train and proceeded to London. By 8 o'clock the "fast knot" was tied. A brother went after them in the evening and found them comfortably housed for the night.

THE DISTRESS IN LANCASHIRE.- The distress in Lancashire has still further extended during the past week. According to the report of the Central Executive Committee, dated Monday, there are now in the twenty-four Unions of the Cotton Districts, 182,401 persons entirely out of employment, and only 58,638 in full work, the remaining 119,712 factory operatives being on short time. The loss in wages to the work-people suffering from the famine is estimated at £136,094 per week. [...] Englishmen in Egypt, Buenos Ayres, and Bengalore have also testified their sympathy with their distressed fellow-countrymen at home by sending handsome subscriptions; and other new sources of aid at home and abroad are also daily springing up. One of the most welcome and seasonable donations is a gift of 2,000 tons of coal, by three firms of colliery proprietors at Pendleton. The Ashton and Oldham colliery proprietors have also promised to contribute 3,500 tons of coal.


A man named George Brown died at Ramsgate a few days ago at the advanced age of 101. For a considerable time past he had been in the habit of taking daily excercise.


J. H. MORGAN THE CONFEDERATE GUERILLA [sic] CAPTAIN.- Morgan as a citizen in times of peace, maintained the reputation of a generous, genial, jolly, horse-loving, and horse-racing Kentuckian. He went into the Rebellion con amore, and pursues it with high enjoyment. He is about thirty-five years of age, six feet in height, well made for strength and agility, and is perfectly master of himself; he has a light complexion, sandy hair, and generally wears a moustache, and a little beard on his chin. His eyes are keen, bluish grey in colour, and when at rest, have a sleepy look, but he sees every one and every thing around him, although apparently unobservant. He is an admirable horseman, and a good shot. As a leader of a battalion of cavalry, he had no superior in the Rebel ranks. His command of his men is supreme. While they admire his generosity and manliness, sharing with them all the hardships of the field, they fear his more than Napoleonic severity for any departure from enjoined duty. [...] Thirteen months in the Rebel Army. By an Impressed New Yorker.

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NOTES:
Guy Fawkes Day - I like the term 'collisions' instead of 'clashes'. The burning of effigies on the 5th November seems to have been a focus for religious tribalism and violence for a lot longer than I imagined. At least most of the injuries these days are accidental, unlike what happened to this little girl in 1869.
Elopement - Although it's a century too late to be a 'fleet marriage', I can't pass up this opportunity to link to John Southerden Burn's 1833 book The Fleet Registers, which is well worth a quick browse. It's a shame we don't know the age of the young lady in question; I wonder at which point newspapers started obsessively providing the age of everyone they report on..?

The Distress - There's a short BBC article here on the riots in Stalybridge, one of the areas worst hit by the Cotton Famine caused by the American Civil War. 

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OBLIGATORY HORSE PICTURE:

Interpretation

Image via tywkiwdbi

This photograph clearly illustrates the feelings of emasculation felt by many soldiers of World War One, as the encroachment of women into traditional male territory quite literally meant that they were no longer 'wearing the trousers' (Hosentragend). The expression on the soldier's face is a mixture of pride and bemusement; something experienced often by troops at the front line as they attempted to come to terms with their role as defenders but also as killers. His pose is carefully arranged, either by himself or the photographer, with bayonet pointing down to pristine black jackboots, most likely in a conscious foreshadowment of the street violence and extreme politics in which many of their comrades were to be embroiled post-1918. The cat - it would be naive to assume that it is by coincidence alone a black cat - is a reference both to fate and to the increasingly fatalistic attitude of the men, as the world they knew was crumbling around them, while the photographer's decision to include the outhouse in the background suggests a subconscious acknowledgement that the world in which they moved at that time, similar to this analysis, was replete with Mist.