Possession

by A.S. Byatt

Mortimer Cropper’s graduate students were made to transcribe passages—usually from Randolph Henry Ash—transcribe again their own transcriptions, type them up, and then scan them for errors with a severe editorial eye. There was never an error-free text, Cropper said. He kept up this humbling exercise, even in the days of effortless photocopying. There was no such professional method about Blackadder, who nevertheless noticed and corrected a plethora of errors, accompanying this correction with a steady series of disparaging comments on the declining standard of English education. In his day, he said, students were grounded in spelling and had learned poetry and the Bible by heart. An odd phrase, “by heart,” he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream. “ ‘Felt along the heart,’ as Wordsworth said,” Blackadder said. But in the best English tradition he did not consider it his business to equip his deficient students with tools they had not got. They must muddle through in a fog of grumble and contempt.