Category: Robert Lynd

Born in Belfast, Robert Lynd moved to London when he was 22 and soon became a popular and prolific essayist, critic, columnist, and poet. His essays are characterized by humor, precise observations, and a lively, engaging style.

Writing under the pseudonym of Y.Y., Lynd contributed a weekly literary essay to the New Statesman magazine from 1913 to 1945. ‘The Pleasures of Ignorance’ is one of those many essays. Here he offers examples from nature to demonstrate his thesis that out of ignorance ‘we get the constant pleasure of discovery.’

It is impossible to take a walk in the country with an average townsman—especially, perhaps, in April or May—without being amazed at the vast continent of his ignorance. It is impossible to take a walk in the country oneself without being amazed at the vast continent of one’s own ignorance. Thousands of men and women live and die without knowing the difference between a beech and an elm, between the song of a thrush and the song of a blackbird. Probably in a modern city the man who can distinguish between a thrush’s and a blackbird’s song is the exception. It is not that we have not seen the birds. It is simply that we have not noticed them. We have been surrounded by birds all our lives, yet so feeble is our observation that many of us could not tell whether or not the chaffinch sings, or the colour of the cuckoo. We argue like small boys as to whether the cuckoo always sings as he flies or sometimes in the branches of a tree—whether [George] Chapman drew on his fancy or his knowledge of nature in the lines: When in the oak’s green arms the cuckoo sings,

And first delights men in the lovely springs.

This ignorance, however, is not altogether miserable. Out of it we get the constant pleasure of discovery. Every fact of nature comes to us each spring, if only we are sufficiently ignorant, with the dew still on it. If we have lived half a lifetime without having ever even seen a cuckoo, and know it only as a wandering voice, we are all the more delighted at the spectacle of its runaway flight as it hurries from wood to wood conscious of its crimes, and at the way in which it halts hawk-like in the wind, its long tail quivering, before it dares descend on a hill-side of fir-trees where avenging presences may lurk. It would be absurd to pretend that the naturalist does not also find pleasure in observing the life of the birds, but his is a steady pleasure, almost a sober and plodding occupation, compared to the morning enthusiasm of the man who sees a cuckoo for the first time, and, behold, the world is made new.

And, as to that, the happiness even of the naturalist depends in some measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes. He wishes with his own eyes to see the female cuckoo—rare spectacle!—as she lays her egg on the ground and takes it in her bill to the nest in which it is destined to breed infanticide. He would sit day after day with a field-glass against his eyes in order personally to endorse or refute the evidence suggesting that the cuckoo does lay on the ground and not in a nest. And, if he is so far fortunate as to discover this most secretive of birds in the very act of laying, there still remain for him other fields to conquer in a multitude of such disputed questions as whether the cuckoo’s egg is always of the same colour as the other eggs in the nest in which she abandons it. Assuredly the men of science have no reason as yet to weep over their lost ignorance. If they seem to know everything, it is only because you and I know almost nothing. There will always be a fortune of ignorance waiting for them under every fact they turn up. They will never know what song the Sirens sang to Ulysses any more than Sir Thomas Browne did.

If I have called in the cuckoo to illustrate the ordinary man’s ignorance, it is not because I can speak with authority on that bird. It is simply because, passing the spring in a parish that seemed to have been invaded by all the cuckoos of Africa, I realised how exceedingly little I, or anybody else I met, knew about them. But your and my ignorance is not confined to cuckoos. It dabbles in all created things, from the sun and moon down to the names of the flowers. I once heard a clever lady asking whether the new moon always appears on the same day of the week. She added that perhaps it is better not to know, because, if one does not know when or in what part of the sky to expect it, its appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy, however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds the fruit of the apple tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at the beautiful holiday of a May orchard.

At the same time there is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learning the names of many of the flowers every spring. It is like re-reading a book that one has almost forgotten. Montaigne tells us that he had so bad a memory that he could always read an old book as though he had never read it before. I have myself a capricious and leaking memory. I can read Hamlet itself and The Pickwick Papers as though they were the work of new authors and had come wet from the press, so much of them fades between one reading and another. There are occasions on which a memory of this kind is an affliction, especially if one has a passion for accuracy. But this is only when life has an object beyond entertainment. In respect of mere luxury, it may be doubted whether there is not as much to be said for a bad memory as for a good one. With a bad memory one can go on reading Plutarch and The Arabian Nights all one’s life. Little shreds and tags, it is probable, will stick even in the worst memory, just as a succession of sheep cannot leap through a gap in a hedge without leaving a few wisps of wool on the thorns. But the sheep themselves escape, and the great authors leap in the same way out of an idle memory and leave little enough behind.

And, if we can forget books, it is as easy to forget the months and what they showed us, when once they are gone. Just for the moment I tell myself that I know May like the multiplication table and could pass an examination on its flowers, their appearance and their order. Today I can affirm confidently that the buttercup has five petals. (Or is it six? I knew for certain last week.) But next year I shall probably have forgotten my arithmetic, and may have to learn once more not to confuse the buttercup with the celandine.

Once more I shall see the world as a garden through the eyes of a stranger, my breath taken away with surprise by the painted fields. I shall find myself wondering whether it is science or ignorance which affirms that the swift (that black exaggeration of the swallow and yet a kinsman of the humming-bird) never settles even on a nest, but disappears at night into the heights of the air. I shall learn with fresh astonishment that it is the male, and not the female, cuckoo that sings. I may have to learn again not to call the campion a wild geranium, and to rediscover whether the ash comes early or late in the etiquette of the trees. A contemporary English novelist was once asked by a foreigner what was the most important crop in England. He answered without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Rye.’ Ignorance so complete as this seems to me to be touched with magnificence; but the ignorance even of illiterate persons is enormous.

The average man who uses a telephone could not explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone, the railway train, the linotype, the aeroplane, as our grandfathers took for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither questions nor understands them. It is as though each of us investigated and made his own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day’s work is regarded by most men as a gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate. We revel in speculations about anything at all—about life after death or about such questions as that which is said to have puzzled Aristotle, ‘why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from night to noon unlucky.’ One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen.

One envies so inquisitive a man as Jowett, who sat down to the study of physiology in his sixties. Most of us have lost the sense of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our squirrel’s hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realised at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.

Robert Lynd, an Irishman, is one of the great contemporary essayists of English literature. He was born on 20 April 1879 in Belfast. He received a Protestant education in Belfast and began his literary work with the drawings of Irish life. In 1901 Robert moved to London where he actively participated in various newspapers. He started his profession as a journalist on The Northern Whig in Belfast and later started to write under the pen name Y.Y. (Ys, or wise). His essays, namely “On Holidays”, “The Money Box”, “The Pleasure of Ignorance” and “On Good Resolutions” are few most anthologized, taught, and cited works. Robert Lynd is a celebrated writer of the modern age. He possesses remarkable ability to write on any topic howsoever trivial it may be, and he can discover a wealth of meaning in an object which to a common eye may appear insignificant. This reminds us of Hugh Walker’s remark on his book ‘The English Essay and the Essayists’ when he says, ‘Apparently, there is no subject, from the stars to the dust heap and from the amoeba to man, which may not be dealt with in an essay’.

Lynd was primarily a journalist and the journalistic temperament gets reflected in his writings too. The range of his themes is vast and expression is highly reflective. He can take a sweep from one mood to another, from the joy to the grave, from the apparently frivolous to the sober and thoughtful vein. His ideas are sometimes deliberately whimsical and arguments are equally perverse, but his subject matter is never labored. Though he lacks the urbanity of E.V. Lucas or the wit of G.K. Chesterton, yet he is more delightful than either of the two. He is fond of wit, epigrams, ironies and bathos and they find front place in his essays. His writings give a delightful experience to the readers who find his comments upon men and manners subtle and penetrating. For instance, in his essay “The Money Box” he delightfully reflects on the gift of a money box to child which is given with a view to train him in the art of saving because ‘wisdom lies in saving for the future’. Now, the child who learns well to save carefully at last becomes miser, and he who, every now and then, draws money from that saving to spend, develops the chance to become a perfect spendthrift. In both the cases, the result is the same ‘to end up as a physical wreck either through abstinence or through over-indulgence’.

In humorous yet satirical manner, Lynd appears to say that the gift in the form of a money box is a fatal kindness. He presents his point of view with an urbane persuasiveness, quiet humour, ease and charm of style. Robert Lynd is a humourist but his humour is somber and not boisterous. He is of the view that ‘The world is crying out just now for a return of good humour’, and it is this good humour that is the chief characteristic of all his essays. He also says at one place that ‘Lacking its good humour London would be one of the most uninhabitable of cities. Who would live amid the buzz of eight million spites?’ A. C. Ward too has aptly appreciated Lynd’s treatment of humour in his essay while writing-‘Being more directly and coolly critical in his approach, he has neither the confident urbanity of E. V. Lucas nor the sensitive comprehensiveness of A. G. Gardiner. But he is a skilled phrasemaker, he can describe a cup final with his eye on many things besides the game-or on everything except the games”. He quotes from Lynd’s essay “The Pleasure of Ignorance” to prove this further: ‘There is great danger of a revival of virtue in this country. There are, I know two kinds of Virtue, and only one of them is a vice’. In brief, it may be said that in his prose style these is “use of the most concrete and expressive words and phrases, very homely and appropriate illustrations and weaving of the finest modulations and rhythmic patterns with his easy, simple and natural prose.” Essay “The Money Box” “The Money Box” was written by Robert Wilson Lynd in 1925 under the pseudonym “Y. Y”.

The essay opens with a dialogue between the author and his niece who is trying to discover how to open the money box, before putting a coin in it. The author develops his argument from this very gift to the child in the form of a money box and advances to criticize the materialistic obsession of the people in the modern age. He talks about the ongoing tussle between the desire to save and the desire to spend in human psyche. Lynd believes that the human self consists of two “I”. The first “I” saves, but the second, on the contrary, to spend. In the essay, often the first “I” that is trying to save is contested with the second one that spends. That who spends loves every minute of his life and wants to live it to the fullest. He sees no purpose in sacrificing the joy of the today to be enjoyed in the future. Thus, the struggle between the “I” that saves and the “I” that spends continues. The conscience here acts as a judge. Humour in the essay is generated on various occasions with the help of jokes, suggestions, and references. The money box serves as an instrument to present the author’s opinion on the saving and spending tendencies of people. It is also an attack on the growing materialism in humankind. This essay is full of wit and humour and it vividly examines the problem of human psyche.

The money box is like the delusion of wealth. When the coins get into the box, it seems not quite a pleasant thing. However, opening this box becomes a significant concern of the owner’s mind. It is understood that the desire to spend something overcomes the desire to save, even at such a young age. The writer believes that the money box as a gift is absurd since parents give children a token of their own greed. While talking about the money box, the essayist tends to recall the experiences of his own childhood. He remembers how he used to try everything to turn up his money box and get the coins out of it. The psyche of a child regarding the utility or futility of a money box has been vividly expressed. With a tone of autobiography, Lynd articulates his thesis calmly with the help of diverse images, allusions and comparisons.

While concluding, Lynd suggests that there is an urgent need to learn the art to balance between the saving and spending tendencies in us. He demonstrates that it is good as well as necessary to know the art of saving money in life but it should not be an obsession. People should also be trained in spending it meaningfully without being extravagant. The author at times also humanizes the money box to yield humour. Few mythical figures, such as Tantalus, as well as modern figures such as George Cruikshank, Arnold Bennett, and Balzac have also been referred to in the essay to prove the point and illustrate the ideas.

Forgetting written by Robert Lynd is an amusing, satirical and simple essay. In this essay, Robert Lynd has pointed out various professions like that of a politician, sportsman, philosophers, chemists etc. to highlight the most common nature of forgetting things.

He mentions the fact that the tendency of forgetting things is more common in the young people rather than the adults. Besides appreciating the people with good memory, he even describes that how Absent- Mindedness becomes a virtue. He did not even spare the Poets, Philosophers and the Great thinkers to justify his philosophy of “Forgetting”.

The essay begins with the list of articles which are lost by the travellers at a railway station in London and the people are astonished at the absent mindedness of their fellows. On this Robert Lynd comments about the efficiency and the inefficiency of human memory that compels his wonder.

He continues to exemplify his philosophy by stating that modern man remembers the telephone numbers, the addresses of his friends, the dates of good vintages, appointments for lunch and dinner, the names of actors, actresses, cricketers, footballers, murderers, the weather in the long past August, the name of provincial hotel at which he had a vile meal during the summer etc.

He remembers almost everything that he is expected to remember. He even remembers to wear every item of clothing while dressing in the morning, and to shut the front door while leaving the house. Despite such brilliant memories, Robert Lynd points out some important matters in regard to which the memory works with less than its usual perfection.

Modern man forgets the most common things like – consuming medicines on the advised time, posting letters in a letter box, carrying his walking sticks, books, spectacles, umbrellas and many other essential goods and commodities. Robert Lynd himself is no exception to this habit as he often forgets his walking sticks, pens and umbrellas.

He continues his statement by stating that according to Psychologists, we forget those things that we hate, which is obviously true in cases of medicines because despite the rule that it is supposed to be taken before, during or after meals, people forgets to consume their prescribed medicines may be because they don’t want their health to be dependent on a medicine.

Robert sarcastically remarks that chemists earn a lot of money because of the patient’s forgetting habits of consuming the medicines as this leads to their long treatment and their illness is not cured. As a result the patients end up buying more and more medicines.

He playfully points out the most common type of forgetfulness which is posting letters. He remarks that any person who asks him to post a letter, is of a poor character, because he never posts his letters despite keeping it in his pocket for many days.

Robert Lynd suddenly starts appreciating Absent-mindedness of this kind and calls it a virtue. Forgetfulness has its own merits as it has the capability of making a man happy and enables him to accomplish the targeted goal. The moment of forgetfulness is a moment of great joy, and such a man lives in the world of imagination.

Failures and disappointment leads a man into a world of trauma and depression. So, one can conclude that it is forgetful people who are able to create something authentic, new and genuine.

He then talks about the advantages of a good memory and exemplifies by stating that many great writers, poets and music composers have fantastically great memories and Memories is half the substance of their art.

On the other hand, statesmen seems to have extraordinary bad memories. The frequency with which the facts are challenged in their autobiographies and speeches indicates that the world has not yet begun to produce ideal statesmen.