MARGINAL COMMENTS
By ROSE MACAULAY
ISOMETIMES wonder if publishers overestimate the .I. modernity of their readers' tastes, or if this is impossible. " We like .books dealing with modern con- ditions," a very intelligent and literary artisan once said to me. It is said that publishers are getting to realize that this taste is widespread, and must be catered for, and are now modernizing and re-editing the popular works of past times, that proterophobes may peruse them without repulsion. Telephones, motor-propelled vehicles, aeroplanes, wireless, electricity, modern dress and speech, are being skilfully inserted, so that all may feel at home. No story must begin in the old manner, " One dark night, a solitary horseman might have been seen riding along a lonely road across a Surrey heath." It must now read " A sports car was buzzing along the A3 by-pass at 60 m.p.h. " ; or, better still, " A two-seater 'plane was hurrying through the sky towards the Channel." This strikes the right note at once.
Looking down a list of the books (or " titles," it seems one should say) which are much read in cheap pocket editions, I observe that it is headed by Lorna Doone. Presumably, then, this admirable work has been brought up to date. No doubt the Doones now have a Ford car, in which they ascend to their remote eyrie, as far, anyhow, as the farm where the road ends today. Then there is Jane Austen, who badly needed re-dressing. Elizabeth Bennet, I understand, now rings up the Bingley house to enquire after her sister and to announce that she is coming over in the small Austin to nurse her, and it was not her ankles that got muddy on the way, but her hands oily. Mr. Woodhouse has abandoned his gruel, and now says, " Let us all have a little Instant- Postum before retiring." Harriett does not cherish Mr. Elton's pencil, but his fountain pen. Ouida's guardsmen have shaved their golden whiskers, the saturnine Brontë heroes their wild and ebon ones, and Mr. Rochester's house is rendered Jess melancholy by electric light ; when the deranged Mrs. Rochester visits Jane at midnight she no longer carries a candle (nor, I suppose, for that matter, does Lady Macbeth) but flashes an electric torch. Fagin's school of pick- pockets are not today content with filching wipes from pockets ; they are a smash-and-grab gang, and work with borrowed cars. I am told that it is not necessary to alter Dotheboys Hall very much ; but Miss Pinkerton's Academy has become, by deft touches, a little less unlike Roedean. We know, from the films, what can be done to improve Sherlock Holmes, and I take it .that the re-edited text does not fall short-of this. Holmes should certainly snuff up his " snow " through the nose instead of injecting it ; details such as taxis, wireless and telephones have of course been seen to. And Dr. Johnson remarks that he would like to spend his life driving with a pretty woman, not in a post chaise but in a Rolls-Royce.
The modernization of conversation presents more difficulties. I believe that the great doctor's has proved a stumbling-block' hard to surmount, and is still being dealt with by skilled hands. Thackeray's is much easier. " By Jove, my boy, she's a doosid, fine woman," easily becomes, " Really, my dear, she's the most attractive person " ; " Gad " gives place to whatever expletive may chance to be in season with each fresh edition, " devilish " to " extraordinarily," or. " fright- fully," " stunning " to " superb." Oscar Wilde's gentle- men clip their epigrams ; all the ladies their hair. Any tailor or milliner can easily deal with' the clothes. • A little such attention to anachronisms, a little trouble and care, and we shall be spared the annoyance of having to envisage, when perusing our old favourites, a mode of life irritatingly anterior to our own.
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