Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-07-08
SOME FREAK PENMEN.
The Writing of Many Famous Men
Looked Like Chicken Tracks.

II Is perversity of human nature
that people who ought to do one thins
do another. Men who write legiple
hand (no one can accomplish more
than that now) will use typewriter
land others, who ought never 10 De
trusted with a pen, order them by the
gross and take the discount.
Rudyard Kiplng writes neat
delicate hand, and Conan DOyle's is
as plain as the proverbial plKestah'
but both used typewrters. 1t would
| have saved deal of misery ana heip-
ed to perpetuate a useful art IL other
writer's of eminence could nave peeh
nrevailed upon to type" Unfortunate
i, tho tynewriter was too belated an
invention to affect many of the best
had writer's Carlyle would not nave
struggled with Keyboard, Dut IL
would have prevented that miserable
compOsitor fleeing from Edinburgh
| TO London out Of his way If ne nad.
| Carlyle's, however, was copperplate
to others that could be mentioned.
Hugo'S manuscript, we are tolu' pre-
sented the appearance OF sort VI
battlefield on paper, in when the XIII,
ed words were we'll stamped out ana
|
ANYTHING but good order.
| Napoleon was unique in everything
even i'm his handwriting. His letters
from Germany to Josephine were
at first taken for maps of the seat OF
war. And his signature was an un-
ldistinguishablc heroglyphic. Byron
and Dean Stanley wrote atroclOuS
lists" and it is said sydney Smiths
was no better. although he used TO
chafr Jeffrey badly. He used to say
that he read Jeffrey from left to right.
and his wife from right To left Dut
neither could make out syllable.
| Jules Janin would rather rewrite
than attempt to read again what ne
had written, and Montaigne could
never read what he had written. The
acute thinker mended matters by
lemploying a secretary whose writing
was absolutely undecipheraDle.
BalZac was as big a sinner writing
on blue paper with blue ink. appalling
many seasoned compositors. ter
rible hand had Henry Ward Beech
er. His daughter once declared that
she had three guiding rules i'm copy
ing tiff Il letter was dotted it was
not an IL" and Il word with a capi-
Jacob Bryan said of Archdeacon
|Coye's caligraphy that it could neither
be called Il hand nor 4 fist. but
foot. and that Il club one. His hero
glyphics formed clumsy, tangled
black Skcin that ran across the paper
i'm knots. which ii was impossible to
]untic into meaning.
Lord Eldon used to tell of John
| Rell. a great ChanCcry lumnary or
his time. that he had three different
methods of putting his wisdom on
papcr-one intelligible to himself on
| |iy. another which his clerk could read
and he could not. and the third. which
neither he nor his clerk nor any one
else could read. The funny letter of
r. B. AIdrich to Prof. Morse stands
alongside of Tom Hoods facetious
reply to Lady Georgiana Fullerton's
as protest against learned illegibility.
| Aldrich asserted that he could deci-
pher nothing i'm the professors miSsive
| but the date. which he knew. and the
signature, which he guessed at.
| The story of the Duke of Yelling
ton writing to Bishop Bloomfield when
! he had received Il letter from j. {.
| IOudon the eminent landscape design
| or. asking to see the Waterloo
breecheS at Stratticdsaye. is ancient.
! but IL makes us laugh (althOugh per-
| hans we ought noD to picture the con-
! strrnatiun of the bishop (and through
| him the shock to the whole Episcopal
| bench) on receiving permission To
| Also u classic is the tale of Macready's
admission ticket being Sulemnly made
up by the aputhecary into cough