FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING

THE DISCOVERY OF AN ART

It is curious that people do not grumble more at having to spell correctly.  Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value of orthography?  This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet naturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does not often hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation.  Dealers in small talk, of the less prolific kind, are continually falling back upon the silk hat or dress suit, or some rule of etiquette or other convention as a theme, but spelling seems to escape them.  The suspicion seems quaint, but one may almost fancy that an allusion to spelling savoured a little of indelicacy.  It must be admitted, though where the scruples come from would be hard to say, that there is a certain diffidence even here in broaching my doubts in the matter.  For some inexplicable reason spelling has become mixed up with moral feeling.  One cannot pretend to explain things in a little paper of this kind; the fact is so.  Spelling is not appropriate or inappropriate, elegant or inelegant; it is right or wrong.  We do not greatly blame a man for turn-down collars when the vogue is erect; nor, in these liberal days, for theological eccentricity; but we esteem him “Nithing” and an outcast if he but drop a “p” from opportunity.  It is not an anecdote, but a scandal, if we say a man cannot spell his own name.  There is only one thing esteemed worse before we come to the deadly crimes, and that is the softening of language by dropping the aspirate.

After all, it is an unorthodox age.  We are all horribly afraid of being bourgeois, and unconventionality is the ideal of every respectable person.  It is strange that we should cling so steadfastly to correct spelling.  Yet again, one can partly understand the business, if one thinks of the little ways of your schoolmaster and schoolmistress.  This sanctity of spelling is stamped upon us in our earliest years.  The writer recalls a period of youth wherein six hours a week were given to the study of spelling, and four hours to all other religious instruction.  So important is it, that a writer who cannot spell is almost driven to abandon his calling, however urgent the thing he may have to say, or his need of the incidentals of fame.  Yet in the crisis of such a struggle rebellious thoughts may arise.  Even this:  Why, after all, should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literary merit?  For it is less fatal for an ambitious scribe to be as dull as Hoxton than to spell in diverse ways.