When I became a cub reporter on the Times in 1963 (the front page was still covered with small-ads), an old sweat in the newsroom gave me two pieces of advice. The first was:
Don’t get too proficient at shorthand. If you do, you’ll find yourself in a stuffy courtroom, recording the proceedings verbatim.
The second was:
Never describe any incident as ‘unique’ or say it is the first time it has happened. If you do, sure as eggs is eggs, a reader will write in to point out an identical occurrence in the near or distant past.
He added:
And don’t suggest that such-and-such will never happen again. If you do, it will inevitably happen again before you can say ‘Déjà vu!’.
I followed the first part of the veteran’s advice to the letter — or to the squiggle, one might say. I attended a shorthand class at Miss Mitchell’s Secretariat in Chancery Lane. My fellow pupils were mostly charming debs, who would arrive late because of the party they had been to the night before. I never did master shorthand; I remember Scottish Miss Mitchell’s severe admonishment that ‘Your “f” hook is a wee bitty large, Bevis.’ I never languished in a stuffy courtroom. But, alas, I forgot the last part of the old newsman’s advice.
Last Christmas, when reviewing the year’s art books, I heaped praise on Michael Snodin’s book, Horace Walpole’s Straw- berry Hill, about that ‘delectable Gothick meringue of a house’. Incautiously, I added: ‘I do not think another book on the subject will ever be needed.’ Fatal!
Not even six months have elapsed, and now here is a magnificent facsimile of Horace Walpole’s own catalogue of Strawberry Hill and its variegated contents — the copy copied is that which was extra-illustrated for Walpole’s deputy, Charles Bedford, now in the collection of Lord Waldegrave of North Hill.
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