The prose style of A.G. Gardiner
Introduction:
A. G. Gardiner was born in the heyday of Victorianism. The Victorian age saw a large number of thinkers like Carlyle, Ruskin, and Ewman. Matthew Arnold and Water Pater. A. G. Gardiner were least concerned with these authors and thinkers of the latter nineteenth century. He was more in line with Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt than Ruskin Pater or Carlyle.
The versatility of genius:
A. G. Gardiner was a versatile genius. His style is marked with the triple qualities of an essayist, a critic and a journalist. Like Addison and Steele, he was a reformer and moralist at heart. His style of placing thoughts or opinions was Aristotlean rather than Longinesean. The task of a preacher is great.
The task of an entertainer is easy. Literature should be both amusing and instructive. A. G. Gardiner was placed in a society which was war-ridden and full of boredom, disappointment and resentment. The suffering and devastation of the war had disturbed the people. A. G. Gardiner's style as an essayist was not the style of theorising. He was a man of the mass.
He was the symbol of the common people. He placed ideas most known to the people. He had to revise them and call to the memory of the readers. For example, the rules of common courtesy in day-to-day life and the rules of travelling in buses are known to both the passengers and conductors of the buses playing on the roads of London but most of them fail to practise the common rules of travelling through the roads and streets are known to all.
He devotes a special time in his essays to apprise his readers about the common rules. In the essay 'On Saying Please', he advocates the need for common courtesy in life. In his opinion "Please and Thank You' are the two coins that make life easy and pleasing. He deprecates discourtesy in the following words: 'Discourtesy is not a legal offence and it does not excuse attack and battery.'
The story method:
A. G. Gardiner is a preacher as well as an entertainer. His method is the method of a storyteller and narrator. He wrote for a world which was adverse to moralising and theorising. He begins his essay with the telling of tales and narration of events. He starts his essay 'The Letter Writing' with the narration of a parting scene of two brothers leaving to resume their duties as a soldier by train.
The man parts with his brother with all the promises to write to him but forgets to write to his brother after he has reached his destination. He humorously points out a woman, who sat down to write a letter to her husband with the words that she had no work so she sat down to write to him and she stopped writing the letter as she had no words to write.
A personal essayist:
A.G. Gardiner is a personal essayist. He is governed by his likes and dislikes. His style reveals his personality. The charm of his essays is the charm of his style. He writes with ease and his prose has the qualities of good talk Simplicity, economy, rhythm and balance are the qualities of his style. Simple words, simple phrases and simple sentences are the foundation of his style. His essays contain commonplace things but they are loaded with ideas. He puts the old and popular wine in new bottles that attract and amuse us.
A master of passionate prose:
A. G. Gardiner is a master. of passionate prose. His method is analytic. His words are simple and commonplace. He writes for beginners. Each one with a little study can read, understand and enjoy him. Let us mark his style in the essay 'On Shaking Hands'. He describes the spirit of shaking hands.
"They would revolt. They would not remain in our pockets or behind our backs or trying with a button. We should have to chain them up, so instinctive and impetuous is their impulse to leap at a friend's hand."
The above is an example of the passionate prose style. Each word catches our attention and leads us on. Gardiner's prose is poetic and his style is an example of the passionate style. He explains the quality of the umbrella he found in the exchange. As a person of a middle-class family, he found the silk umbrella with gold band and gold tassel, a luxury, in his house which terrified him.
"Before its golden splendours, we were at once humbled and terrified-humbled by its magnificence, terrified by its presence. I felt as though I had been caught in the act of stealing the British Empire.”
