Four Syllables in the Clay

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, out past the common where the clay was dug, two brickmakers fired the same earth, and each pressed a name into every brick he sold.

Two brickmakers, the same seam of clay, the same kilns, the same price the thousand.
Both stamped a name in the hollow bed of every brick they made.
One took his out of a book, handsome, four syllables, and spelled by nobody.
One used his own, which was short and said exactly as it was written.
Both were praised by builders standing in the same merchant's yard.
Why did only one of those praises ever reach an order book?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two brickmakers in the town I've never named, their fields a mile apart on the same seam of clay. The same moulds, the same fortnight under the hacks, the same three days of fire, the same thirty-eight shillings the thousand. And both did what brickmakers do, which is to cut a name into the stock board, so that every brick carries it for ever in the frog, the shallow hollow in its bed.

The first man had thought longer about his name than about his kiln. He had taken a word out of a book, a Latin one meaning lasting, four syllables with a flourish cut round it. It looked uncommonly well on his bill heads and on the board at his gate, and visitors said so, and they were right.

Now consider the work that word had to do. A builder pleased with his bricks says so a fortnight later to another builder in the merchant's yard, both of them in the cold with their minds on a load of lime. The second builder then goes to the counter and must say the word aloud to a clerk, who must write it down: four syllables of Latin, said once, by a man doing somebody else a small favour. The clerk wrote what he heard, which was not it. More often the builder spared them both and asked for the ones from out past the common, and the merchant, stocking both makers, sent whatever stood nearest.

None of it appeared anywhere, since an order that goes to the wrong yard is not entered in your book as a loss. He saw his word every day, spelled perfectly in his own hand, and never knew it reached the counter in pieces.

The second man's name was simply his own: two syllables, said as it was written. Builders got it out without effort and clerks wrote it without looking up. It had one weakness, which he knew, in that eleven households in the district carried the same name and two of those were in trade. So he did a dull thing. He had the stock board cut with his name and, under it, the name of the common his clay came out of. Both words were already in every builder's mouth. The name was now his alone, and still nobody had to take care over it.

Be fair to him, because the word was not foolish. The two architects who dealt with him by letter never once got it wrong, having it in front of them. A name that is read is a different animal from a name that is said, and nine tenths of his trade arrived by mouth.

One spring the merchant's order book held forty-one orders naming the second man and nine naming the first, six of those nine spelled three different ways. The clay was the same clay.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A name is not a message, it is a handle, and its one duty is to survive being carried by somebody who is not paying attention. Everything else you do is deposited into it. Every finished job, every handbill, every promise kept in bad weather goes into one word, and the only question that matters about it is whether the deposits arrive.

They arrive along a chain, which is the part most traders never picture. Between the customer who is pleased with you and the customer who pays you stands at least one person with no stake in it: a friend listening with half an ear, a clerk with a queue behind him, a man typing into a telephone with one thumb. Every one of those handoffs is a spelling test you did not set and never see marked, which is why the fault is so seldom found. It is the same principle as writing in the words your customer would actually use: a name is chosen in a quiet room, by a man with a pen, who is looking at it, and then used out loud, in noise, by somebody in a hurry.

Plainness by itself is not the lesson, since a name can fail in two opposite directions. It can be unsayable, so that nobody passes it on, or so ordinary that passing it on leads nowhere, which was the trouble lying in wait for the second man. So the test comes in a pair. Can it be written down by somebody who heard it once and does not care, and does it then lead to you and nobody else. The second failure is repaired not by cleverness but by attachment: the trade beside the name, or the town, or the field your clay comes out of.

Two cautions. The first is that a name already in service is not a blank sheet. It holds every deposit made into it so far, and changing it spends them. Most names that irritate their owner work perfectly well for everybody else, so be slow here and remember that a new name is a reward rather than a rescue. The cheap repairs usually suffice: one spelling everywhere, the trade attached, the thing said slowly on the telephone. The second caution runs the other way. Do not overcorrect into four hyphenated words of trade and county, which is as unrepeatable as the Latin and less dignified.

Three questions, before you cut the stamp or pay the sign writer:

1. Can a stranger write it down having heard it once? Say it over the telephone, do not spell it, and ask for it to be read back. Whatever comes back is your real name, and the one on your gate is an opinion.
2. If a person has only the name, does it find you and nobody else? Hand it over alone, with no address and no trade beside it, and watch where it leads.
3. Is it the same word everywhere it appears? The board, the bill head, the van, the listing, the way the lad answers the telephone. Three variants are three names, each taking a third of the deposits.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did only one of those praises ever reach an order book?

Because one name could be carried by a man who was not trying to help, and the other had to be remembered exactly by somebody with no reason to take care. The praise was equal and only one name was portable. A recommendation that cannot be carried is a kind thought with nowhere to go.

The verse:

The clay was one, the fire was one, the price was one the same,
And both men pressed into the bed the letters of a name.
One went up the road entire, and one went up in parts,
And walls were built of both of them, but one got into carts.

Until next time. Go and say your name once to a stranger over the telephone, without spelling it, and ask them to write it down and read it back to you.

P.S. The same test belongs on everything you ask a customer to repeat for you: the name of the thing you sell, the street you are on, the person they should ask for when they ring. Each is said aloud by somebody who is not you, in a room you are not in, to a person writing down what they think they heard. You can only choose, in advance, words that come through a wall undamaged.

Also in the archive: The Yellow Wheels, The Name Above the Door and Under the Wrong Heading.