The EconomistMarch 21st 2020 Books & arts 732
Johnson Talking to the world
A tribute to the original Johnson columnist, a voice for the agesT
he founderof this column, Stephen
Hugh-Jones, died on February 28th.
He was an extraordinary character at The
Economist—long, lean, waspish, and a
self-appointed menace to facile consen-
sus. His theatrical interventions tended
to come at Monday editorial meetings
where, sitting on the floor with his back
to the editor’s desk, he would uncurl his
lanky frame to shout “Phooey!” Such
exclamations (“Ho hum”, “Baloney”,
“Piffle”) often found their way into copy,
both his own and other people’s. His
edits, during which he chanted and
sometimes almost sang the lines aloud,
were razor-sharp.
He was hired in the 1960s before
leaving to run a magazine in Paris. He
was lured back to oversee the business
pages in 1974, and his first act was to buy
calculators for his writers, which along
with his force of personality made an
immediate difference in quality. He
huffed out in 1980 after an organisational
dispute, but so admired was he that he
was hired a third time—and given a
language column from 1992 to 1999.
The column grew from Stephen’s love
of the great dictionary-maker’s human-
ity, and of the original Johnson’s hatred
of cant. “The Goths have already seized
the airwaves. Do not expect young John-
son to encourage them,” he wrote in high
dudgeon in his opening manifesto. His
exactitude showed up in columns on
“may” v “might”. “Hitler might have won
the war” is a counterfactual that wonders
what would have happened had Stalin-
grad gone differently, he explained.
“Hitler may have won the war” means the
outcome remains unknown.
But he also knew (like the original
Johnson) that though changes in lan-
guage could be slowed, they could not be
stopped: “Lovers of English do well tosaying the rule forbidding a preposition
at the end of a sentence was the kind of
nonsense “up with which I will not put”.
Alas, Churchill never said it—the kind
of misstep Stephen would not have made
in the age of Google. Indeed, he did not
mention the internet until a Christmas
piece in 1999. He drank in the world’s
languages the old-fashioned way. He was
born in Egypt, brought up in Scotland,
and was variously an encyclopedia sales-
man in America, a soldier in Germany
and a junior journalist in India. And he
was a lifelong reader.
A stubborn legend pursued Stephen—
that he threw a typewriter out of his
office window in a rage. Or perhaps
intended to, but failed to break through
the glass. Or perhaps it was a phone,
through a window in an internal door.
No two versions of the story are the
same; he himself denied it, in a history of
The Economist published in 1993. But, he
told the book’s author, he could un-
derstand why people might believe it.
Yet his frantic bursts of irascibility
would be followed by graceful and kind
conversation, as though nothing was
untoward. Friends and colleagues re-
member surprising tendernesses. He
collected glass artefacts. He lavished
affection on children visiting the office.
Perhaps his most lyrical piece for the
paper was a tour of the English church-
yards he cherished, finding poignant
gravestones of both great and humble.
And yes, he was in love with language.
He knew words could be weapons, but
they were the best kind. His son David
recalls a cover of The Economistthat
showed a Palestinian and Israeli shout-
ing in each other’s faces, and his father
saying “What a hopeful picture that is.”
To his puzzled child’s inevitable “why?”
he replied: “they’re talking to each other.”resist until majority opinion overrules
them.” In the “endless debate be-
tween...the pedantic view of language and
the anyfink-goes one...the wise man ex-
pects no resolution.” He could be shock-
ingly old-fashioned. “Parental love is
seldom honoured in poetry,” he opined;
“most mothers, perhaps, are too busy
caring for their young to write poems
about them, and men prefer their mis-
tresses.” Yet he knew this about himself,
and welcomed change too: “political cor-
rectness, at its silliest, has never done
one-fiftieth as much harm as its reverse.”
His column was global in its reach.
Portuguese pronunciation, Indian lan-
guages and Chinese characters found a
home alongside the more obvious German
and French, Greek and Latin. Despite the
odd potshot at the yoof and yobs, he wrote
admiringly of Caribbean patois, black
American vernacular and rural English
dialects. Johnny Grimond, who wrote
most of The Economist’s style guide, calls
him a keen contributor—but mostly to
suggest rules for deletion, not addition.
His column (twice) quoted Churchill asfor his tastes. As the split-screen manipu-
lation proceeds, the real question is not
whether Strane will be caught, but whether
Vanessa will be: caught, that is, by the reali-
ty of her past, which would wreck the love
story that she has spun around her trauma.
Even as a teenager she knows that there are
“things [Strane] needs to believe in order to
live with himself, and it would be cruel for
me to label these as lies.” The same goes for
Vanessa as an adult. Her slow capitulation
to the truth is a macabre echo of Strane’s
original grooming. “We’ll have to be care-
ful,” says her therapist, “and not do toomuch too soon.”
On one level, Ms Russell’s tale is a rei-
magining of “Lolita”, a copy of which Strane
gives Vanessa; her title comes from “Pale
Fire”, another book by Vladimir Nabokov.
But beyond its main villain, this novel’s
stealthy power comes from the ambient
sexism and harassment that Vanessa and
the other female characters suffer from
lousy—but ordinary—men: a creep who
tries to pick her up at a bowling alley,
guests at the hotel, handsy guys in bars,
cruel adolescent boys. On a date an older
man “clamped a hand over my mouth andsaid, You want it like this, you want it, you
know you do.” Where, Vanessa wonders, is
the line that separates “criminal from so-
cially acceptable”? Is Strane different in
kind, or merely in degree?
In its evocation of the mix of knowing-
ness and naivety that characterises (and
jeopardises) teenagers, plus its frankness
about female sexuality and the psychology
of victimhood, this is a bracingly uncom-
promising book. It will doubtless be de-
voured with an ache of recognition by large
numbers of women. But it really ought to
be read by men. 7