Edward Spencer Dodgson an Hugo Schuchardt (244-02595)

von Edward Spencer Dodgson

an Hugo Schuchardt

Cork

13. 12. 1897

language Englisch

Schlagwörter: Vinson, Julien Webster, Wentworth Rhys, John Meyer, Paul Michaëlis de Vasconcelos, Carolina Charencey, Hyacinthe de Linschmann, Th.

Zitiervorschlag: Edward Spencer Dodgson an Hugo Schuchardt (244-02595). Cork, 13. 12. 1897. Hrsg. von Bernhard Hurch (2015). In: Bernhard Hurch (Hrsg.): Hugo Schuchardt Archiv. Online unter https://gams.uni-graz.at/o:hsa.letter.3772, abgerufen am 28. 03. 2024. Handle: hdl.handle.net/11471/518.10.1.3772.


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Cork1 13 December, 1897.
To Dr Hugo Schuchardt in Graz,

Sir on Saturday I received from and returned to MrJ. Vinson, of Paris, four pages of a letter of yours full of concentrated "envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness" against me to quote a bit of the Anglican Litany. In it you have the audacity to say you are not mine enemy. Well I find that I must henceforward be yours. As I still profess and call myself a Christian, however unworthy, I cannot hate you nor can I challenge you to a duel as you deserve. The worst punishment and the best that I can devise is to publish, as I have already threatened, your letters to me. As Axular says "p. 406 Oraren autsiquia oraren beraren illeac behar du sendatu:" which the |2| Portuguese express thus "A mordadura do cão curase com o cabello do mesmo cão", or, as Sir Walter Scott says, "to cure the bite of a serpent, you must crush another scorpion on the wound". You tell Vinson you will not write to me any more. You confess that you have been deceiving me during all these years, that my correspondence has been unwelcome to you, forced upon you, that you have thanked me for printed documents forwarded to you (not for all of them, I can swear), that they have been of no use to you (no you learnt nothing from the Ainou New Testament etc: nor of course from my works on Leiçarragas verb!), that your Academy knows nothing about me (though it thanked me officially for presenting my books through you!) that finally you will condescend to mention my works in the future. I pray you not to do so. You are not my friend, and I need not your patronage. Good wine needs no bush, and bad deserves no advertisement. You deceived me in promising to devote two lines of criticism to my Capánaga. You deceived my old governess by a letter which she says made her think you my friend. |3| I have not seen it, but I now know for certain that you are a deceiver, capable of insulting and defaming a friend in the dark by secret correspondence with Webster le prêtre, Vinson le maitre and Professor Rhys, who has not a much better opinion of you than Paul Meyer, Madame Doelter, Carolina Michaelis & certain Basque clergymen. I return your compliment & express my opinion that your conduct towards me has not been gentlemanly. Publish my letters if you dare. They will shew the world that I have tried to be a friend to you and to Basque. They will serve to warn others against trusting you, or spending money on you, or praying for you, or paying you compliments which never satisfy you and only bring down false accusations, misrepresentations, and insults from you in return upon those weak enough to pay them. Now to come to a few |4| particulars. You have misrepresented to Vinson what I said about bai used by peasants in Umbria near Spello in 1891 (not Orvieto as you say in one of your letters to me on the point) and about ba and bai used in Portugal. You tell him these are but be and ben from latin bene & misunderstood by me. I deny this: they exist side by side with the modern Italian and Portuguese derivatives of bene, without superseding them. I believe them to belong to some prae-latin tongue, kept up partly by the common people, and that they are the same as basque bai and ba and equally un nasal. I shall call you ein äsel if you fail to hear them for yourself among those people. Go and try, pricking up your ears well on the way!

Then the question of archiatre (how much you need one, I fear!) |5| If you do not believe what I told you it is only another proof to me that you are not the kind of man that I want for a friend on philological or other grounds. I have told you the truth and must bear the consequences. I suppose that I am capable of sometimes finding an etymology for myself. I wish I had kept copies of all my letters to you! And I say this to insult you purposely! I have already had to reproach Mr. de Charency for putting scraps from my letters to him into brochures published soon after receiving them without any mention of me at all. Now then write to him for the future instead of to me, and see if he will gratify your vanity by advertising you. It appears that you and Linschmann have been vexed by a post card I sent to the Academy at Vienna about your chusing so fatally the bién artecho plan of |6| reprinting the Testamentu Berri. I adhere to all I said on it, even if I said, as Linschmann tells me, that your method was a scandalous proceeding. We know what scandalon means in the gospels. Hautins misprints are errors that make the unwary reader fall, and are especially stumbling-blocks to trip him up when reading aloud. We want a purified text, to read with pleasure the beautiful language of the version. The misprints should be put in an appendix as a chamber of horrors only to |7| seen by the curious. All your flurry only shews that, while your pride is against me, your literary conscience is on my side. I never implied that you have not ability enough to detect many of these blunders yourself. But as I have had a long experience of such misprint-hunting I thought my aid might be useful in collaboration, if you had decided to give us an emended text as a proof of your skill. 30 copies of the original in European libraries are quite enough evidence of Hautins blundering. I dont suppose 30 purchasers of your edition will take the trouble to collate it with these originals, or to |8| correct your misprints by aid of your index to them, if you take my advice and append one. Well then! you ill treat a friend, you miss an unique occasion of improving your reputation and conferring a blessing for all time on those who read Basque, and you seek a pretext for quarrelling. Henceforward I shall be your enemy within the limits of good breeding, the law, and the religion of the Testamentu Berri. You once said you feared I might be writing to others against you, as you have against me. You thought I was as bad, and underhand, as yourself. No, sir, though I admire your learning and talents I prefer a good man however stupid to a brilliant actor and playwriter whom I cannot trust as a friend, & who has missed his vocation in becoming a professor in a University. You refuse to teach me. I will make you learn something from me. God be with you!

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E. S. Dodgson.

2 I have sent you the first Basque book printed in Ireland because I thought you might be an admirer of Bruno Wille.


1 Vorgedruckt, ebenso wie „189“.

2 Randnotiz rechts oben.

Faksimiles: Universitätsbibliothek Graz Abteilung für Sondersammlungen, Creative commons CC BY-NC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (Sig. 02595)