Through March he was deep in the last chapter. On the 22nd he wrote: “I am always unhappy if I find myself using an unexplained term. I fear I have sometimes mentioned types of machine with no explanatory comment. You might keep an eye open for this. It is a large comfort to me to have you goal-keeping.” And on the 27th: “You will think me hopeless, but I am really stuck in the naval part of Chapter VIII. You see I don’t know. If none of the questions that interest me are answered in the summaries I have, are not my readers likely to be in the same position?”
In the middle of April he came up to town and had dinner with General Brancker. The following day he wrote: “Brancker depresses me, because, whatever I mention he says something true and important that has not reached us. He knows all the people and is a shrewd and cheerful judge of them. I must tell you when we meet.... The latter[[2]] is wonderful on any period or any incident, shake the tree and a plum falls off.... Brancker is as gay as a lark.”
Chapter VIII was finished at last and Sir Walter’s life-work was nearing completion. The next effort was revision. This effort was almost as worrying as the original writing. The records are often contradictory and sometimes a whole day was spent trying to check some small fact which eventually was cut out of the book.
Perhaps the greatest trouble when revising was given by the question of wireless. Sir Walter was a man of letters. He was intensely interested in anything and everything, however, and was not content to accept any technical facts. He wanted to understand them. He was a constant interrogative. Indeed it seemed sometimes as he curled his long body into curious shapes in his chair that he formed a note of interrogation. This question of the why? was no new developed one. He once told me that when as a small boy he was sent to a governess, he was given a Latin grammar and severely told to learn the first declension. The word meant nothing to him. “Please what’s a declension?” he asked. “That’s a declension, and you just learn it,” was the reply. But the answer was inadequate and Sir Walter took no further interest in the lesson. He could not learn where he was not interested. It was no use talking to him about “coherers” and “microhenries.” His only comment would be that “microhenries” were far better called “harries” for short.
So when after Chapter V had been written Captain Morris found new and interesting information on the use of wireless telegraphy in aircraft in the days before the war, the whole of this difficult chapter had to be reopened for new patching. “In regard to wireless,” he wrote, “I am like a blind man who has never talked to painters employed to write a critique of a picture exhibition. It’s paralysing. The only escape is to keep on broad lines. Every one knows that wireless sends messages. I shall be happier when events begin again.”
“I think I had better come up for a day and have a long talk with you instead of writing what will have to be rewritten.” But he got to work on wireless, and on May the 9th, “I have written about twenty or more of my pages on wireless. I believe I have made it much clearer and simpler than it is. I have arranged to come to London on Monday, June 20, bringing Chapter V (which is the devil) and as much more as I can. VI will be plainer sailing.” But before he came to London he struggled on with the wireless history. On May the 24th he wrote, “I fear I shall make you impatient. I can go on, if I have to, and copy the statements I have. But if I were a reader of the book, it would annoy me by avoiding the questions that naturally suggest themselves to an intelligent reader who has had no technical education,” and two days later, “I know from long experience that any one who attempts accurately to repeat what he does not understand never repeats it accurately.... If I could get my brain tuned to the wave-lengths of all these papers, something would begin to come through. All the oscillations of my mind are strongly damped, but I hope soon to get an oscillating current of high frequency.... After all it’s very little I need write about the process and instruments.... What is Rouzet’s full name?”
But June came and he was still working away with pain. “I feel I owe you an apology, yet I am doing what I can. It’s the most difficult thing yet—wireless, I mean. It is coming into shape, but there is something absurd about sandwiching it in as an afterthought. It’s of first-rate importance, and I fear it may delay us a little.” Then on June the 12th:
“I shall come on Monday next week, latish morning, with Chapter V. Not content or pleased. That wireless insertion has put the chapter out of gear, and lots of small things, later on, seem clumsy. One can’t write a book backwards. But I think we can patch it to look all right. I depend on you and the office to go through my revised Chapter V in the interests of consistency rather than of truth. I think the facts are right now, and the chapter is like a plain-faced clumsy person celebrated for saying true things in the wrong time and in the wrong place.”
“Exam papers are pouring in in large bundles. I grudge every minute to them.... I hope and believe that there won’t be another Chapter V.”
Chapter V was sent to the printers for proofs. In the meantime Sir Walter had sent the chapter to one or two people to read over the wireless portion. Sir Richard Glazebrook sent him some valuable notes.