A most voluminous manner

We have looked at one or two choice examples of the ‘transferred epithet’ before, but here's one from Edith Sitwell’s English Eccentrics, in a passage introducing to her readers “the Hermit . . . Mr Matthew Robinson, afterwards Lord Rokeby", who was "famous for his amphibious habits, and for possessing benevolence and a beard. This gentleman of long life and virtuous habits . . . seems to have had only one fault - the vice of reciting to visitors in the most voluminous manner.”

Edith Sitwell was herself an English Eccentric - though it was unnecessarily unkind of Penguin Books to add on the front cover of their edition their own subtitle A gallery of weird and wonderful men and women, and to place immediately beneath it a photograph of Dame Edith in one of her most eccentric costumes and poses.

She was clearly fascinated by the versatility of words and could skilfully use them, especially in her poetry, much as an impressionist might paint with imaginative dashes and blobs of colour. Her witty pre-occupation with words could be compared (though their contexts were very different) to those of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll - though we get the impression that her humour, however verbally arresting or even outrageous, always comported itself with high seriousness. Did Edith Sitwell ever chuckle ?

‘Voluminous’ is an unexpected epithet for a person’s ‘manner’: we can see that it really describes (before being transferred) the overwhelmingly well-meant wordiness of the noble hermit. We know just what the author means, and somehow the very imprecision of the phrase ‘voluminous manner’ suggests the noble hermit’s own style of speech.

A most voluminous manner