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VII

ON BEING LEFT-HANDED 

A lady friend of mine — not all the gold of the Indies would bribe me into revealing her name — is left-handed. She carves left-handed; writes left-handed ; sews left-handed ; indeed, her husband sometimes says that she talks left-handed. However that may be, my esteem for this lady sufficiently explains my choice of my present theme. On the face of it, there is nothing really singular about such a phenomenon. The wonder is, not that some people are left-handed, but that so many people are right-handed. Nature has done nothing towards establishing the right hand in the place of precedence. No physical law ordains that I shall put my right foot foremost. Whence, then, this slavish submission to an unwritten law ? Why should we not all be left-handed ? Or, at least, why should not the favours be more evenly divided ? Or, better still, why should we not all be ambidextrous ? Why have we left my lady friend under an embarrassing sense of .singularity and isolation? Has not she at least as good a right to express a preference for her left hand as I have to thrust into special prominence my right ? 

Sir James Sawyer, I notice, says that the right hand gained its unnatural but commanding authority in the rude old times when all men were warriors and spent most of their time at war. ‘When,’ he says, ‘men first fought together in companies, they must soon have found that it was most convenient to handle their weapons in a uniform way. If some in a fighting company were right-handed and others were left-handed, their weapons would be continually clashing. Whether drilling or fighting, the men would need more space for wielding their weapons. If, on the other hand, each man used his sword or his staff with the same hand as his neighbour employed, confusion would be minimized, and a symmetrical appearance would be given to the martial body.’ But that does not help us very much. It only goes to show that men fighting side by side should handle their weapons with the same hand. It says nothing in support of the tyrannical claim of the right hand to absolute supremacy; it says nothing derogatory to any similar claim that the more modest left hand might be persuaded to lay. Granting all that Sir James Sawyer says, why should not all the warriors have used their left hands ? Or why, at any rate, should not some of the companies have used their left hands? In very early times they certainly did, for are we not told that ‘ among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed ; every one could sling stones at an hairbreadth and not miss’? I advise my lady friend, whenever she is invited to subscribe her signature to an autograph album, to place that quotation against her name. 

I hinted in my introductory sentences that my friend’s husband — we all know what husbands are — is inclined to twit his wife on her extreme left- handedness. But that kind of thing never pays in the long run. As a matter of fact, this very man had not been married many months before he discovered that there were some things that his left-handed wife could do, and do well, that he could only do very awkwardly or not at all. Indeed, even before their wedding, a hint was given him that such a revelation very possibly awaited him. With all the mingled pride and bashfulness incidental to such occasions, he one day took his bride-elect to inspect the house that was being erected for them. As they moved cautiously about the roofless and floorless skeleton of their future home, the foreman suddenly shouted for one of his men. 

‘ Bremner ! Where’s Bremner ? ’

‘ He’s gone over to the other job, sir,’ explained one of the carpenters. ‘ Is it anything I can do? ’

‘ No,’ replied the foreman. ‘ I want a screw driven in here, but it’s an awkward corner, and only a left-handed man could get in ! ’

My friend smiled, and the lady beside him blushed ; but very often since he has discovered that there are innumerable awkward corners that only left-handed people can skilfully negotiate. 

And thus it often happens that a left-handed person and a right-handed person, like the two hands themselves, perfectly supplement each other. It often happens that the one hand is able to perform what the other hand cannot. The world is built on that plan. As each member of my body holds in charge powers that it is under obligation to exercise for the good of all the other members, and is thus a supplement to them, so each member of society holds in sacred charge gifts and graces which he is under solemn obligation to use for the general good. And just as particular members of my body are designed as supplements in a special sense to each other, so it is intended that we should supplement, and be supplemented by, those who, by circumstances or by kinship, are most nearly related to us. In his memoirs, Thomas Boston tells of the fast and fruitful friendship subsisting between Mr. Gabriel Wilson, of Maxton, and himself. This friendship, he says, ‘arrived at an uncommon height and strictness. Whatever odds there was in some respects betwixt him and me, there was still a certain cast of temper by which I found him to be my other self. He was extremely modest ; but, once touched with the weight of a matter, he was very forward and keen, fearing the face of no man. On the other hand, I was slow and timorous. In the which mixture, whereby he served as a spur to me, and I as a bridle to him, I have often admired the wise conduct of Providence that matched us together,’ Is not this our right-handed friend and his left-handed wife over again? 

And, after all, what on earth does it matter ? The main thing is, not to do your work in a particular way, or with a particular hand, but to do it particularly well. The seven hundred chosen men left-handed could every one sling stones at an hairbreadth and not miss. That is what counts. Their methods would doubtless be severely challenged at first. But the accuracy of their aim, and the efficiency of their service, would soon disarm all carping criticism. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, two great literary men were making valuable contributions to the enlightenment of mankind. Jean Buffon was writing his Natural History at Paris; Samuel Johnson was editing his Dictionary in London. Buffon would only work in a room scrupulously clean and tidy, and would wash and dress, as though for a ball, before entering his study. Johnson worked in a room as dusty and untidy at can well be imagined, and the very chair on which he sat was a broken one. But the world has passed over these facts with a smile. It reads Buffon’s Natural History, and it consults Johnson’s Dictionary ; and it pardons the idiosyncrasies of both men. Exactly a century later, history, according to her custom, repeated herself. In his library in London Macaulay bends over the manuscript of his History of England looking as though he had just returned from a dinner at Holland House. Not many streets away, Carlyle is working away at his Frederick the Great, so smothered with dust that ‘ he looks, for all the world, like a miller who had fallen into his bins one after another in the process of grinding the meal for his daily bread.’ But literature welcomes both Macaulay and Carlyle. 

We instinctively recall the rivalry that existed two hundred years ago between the audacious Lord Peterborough and the stolid Lord Galway. When Peterborough commanded the British armies in the field, nobody could predict his next manoeuvre. He outraged all the conventions of the military schools and bewildered everybody who watched the dispositions of his troops. The only compensation was that he won all his battles and drove his enemies to despair. The Government, however, felt that it would never do to entrust the conduct of the war to so very erratic a commander. They, therefore, appointed Lord Galway in his stead. ‘Galway,’ says one historian, ‘ conducted the campaign in the most scientific manner. He drew up his troops at Almanza according to the methods prescribed by the best writers, and in a few hours lost eighteen thousand men, a hundred and twenty standards, all his baggage, and all his artillery.’ Is it not better to do a thing well with the left hand than to do it badly with the right ? 

I suppose the feebleness and awkwardness of my left hand is one of the most forceful illustrations I could have of the penalty attendant upon neglect. Why is my left hand weaker than my right ? Is it because it was made so, or intended to be so ? Of course not ; it is because it has been neglected, and has never received the attention that has been lavished upon its companion. Henry Drummond and Charles Darwin have said all that needs to be said on that subject. I lived for some years in New Zealand. In New Zealand you will find ‘ wingless birds.’ But a ‘ wingless bird ’ is a contradiction in terms. A bird, in its very nature, must have wings. And these birds had. But, finding it more pleasant to hop about the earth than to soar into the air, their neglect of their pinions soon led to their forfeiting them altogether. And when, later on, the country was invaded by stoats and weasels, the miserable creatures, unable now to fly, fell an easy prey to the enemies they might otherwise have despised. 

But this left-handed lady of mine reminds me of a happier law — the law of compensation. I find that most people who are left-handed owe it to some early injury inflicted upon the right hand. The one hand became temporarily disabled; the other took its place ; and the original worker was never reinstated. On the disablement of the one, the other swiftly became as quick, as sensitive, and as useful as the other had been. It has often been remarked that a person deprived of one faculty soon develops other powers almost to the point of adequate compensation. Now, there are many people who have been bitterly disappointed in life. It is as though they have been deprived of the use of their right hand. The temptation is to give up. My right hand is injured, what can I do? But left-handed people point us to a quite opposite conclusion. If you are denied your right hand, make the most of your left. If one of our greatest sailors and one of our greatest soldiers had not argued on these lines, two of our greatest British battles would never have been won. Nelson lost his right arm at Santa Cruz. He might have said, ‘ I have no right arm, and I have lost an eye ; I will give it up ! ’ Then we should have had no Trafalgar ! The doctors shook their beads gravely over Wolfe when a boy, and said that he could not possibly live long. Wolfe might have decided that there was nothing for it but to sit and mope away his few years in melancholy indolence But he argued the other way. He resolved to make the very most of what years were destined to be his. He enlisted, and earned rapid promotion. He was a general before he was thirty. And, in his thirty-second year, to the amazement of mankind, he took Quebec. He fell in the hour of his magnificent triumph, having lived as brilliantly, and dying as gloriously, as he could possibly have wished. 

I see that one of our authorities, in accounting for the prevalence of right-handed fighting, suggests that, when men came to use swords in their warfare, and to fight hand to hand, it became necessary, above all things, to keep the heart as far from the antagonist as possible. To fight with the left hand would have exposed that vital organ ; to fight with the right hand would protect it. There is a wealth of philosophy just there. ‘ Keep the heart with all diligence,’  said one of the wisest of men, ‘ for out of it are the issues of life.’ We recall the old story of the conversation between Sir Walter Raleigh and his executioner. It is said that the executioner told his noble victim that he would find the scaffold more comfortable it he turned his head the other way. Whereupon Sir Walter replied, ‘My friend, it matters little how the head lies so long as the heart is right ! ’  We cannot do better than leave the matter there. 

FWB