America To-day, Observations and Reflections
by
William Archer

Part 3 out of 3



spiritual birthright, or let it drift little by little away from them.
But, on the other hand, virulent and inveterate political enmity, had it
arisen, might quite conceivably have led the Americans to make it a
point of honour to differentiate their speech from ours, as many
Norwegians are at this moment making it a point of honour to
differentiate their language from the Danish, which was until of late
years the generally accepted medium of literary expression. In the
evolution of their literature, the Americans might purposely have
rejected our classical tradition, making their effort rather to depart
from than to adhere to it. Again, an observer in 1776 could not have
foreseen the practical annihilation, by steam and electricity, of that
barrier which then appeared so formidable--the Atlantic Ocean. He might
have foreseen the immense influx of men of every race and tongue into
the unpeopled West; but he could scarcely have anticipated with
confidence the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save one!)
into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was quite on the cards that a
new American language might have developed from a fusion of all the
diverse tongues of all the scattered races of the earth.

Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened. The instinct of kinship
from the first kept political enmity in check; the Atlantic has been
practically wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, all
the other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather than
competition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies a
unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two
dimensions--in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights
of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's
surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and
as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as
though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk
merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as complete
and indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aid
in the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) of
this superb and priceless heritage.

English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly set
forth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and in
material progress, could not produce anything great in the way of
literature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even to
this day, when events have conclusively falsified them. It is a
commonplace with some people that America has not developed a great
_American_ literature. If this merely means that, in casting off her
allegiance to George III., America did not cast off her allegiance to
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, the
reproach, if it be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation to
American authors to own the traditions and standards established by
these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship,
why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that
humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and
with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat
like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English
language, and has produced at least as much effect in England as in
America. If, on the other hand, it be implied that American literature
feebly imitates English literature, and fails to present an original and
adequate interpretation of American life, no reproach could well be more
flagrantly unjust. It is not only the abstract merit of American
literature, though that is very high, but precisely the Americanism of
it, that gives it its value in the eyes of all thinking Englishmen. Only
one American author of the first rank could possibly, at a superficial
glance, appear--not so much English as--European, cosmopolitan. I mean,
of course, Edgar Allan Poe, who has left perhaps a deeper impress upon
literature outside the English-speaking countries than any other
imaginative writer of the century, with the exception of Byron. Poe was
a born idealist, a creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry or
fiction, he was always solving problems; and it is hard to be
distinctively national in an exercise of pure intelligence. We do not
look for local colour in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid.
But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a characteristically American
type. He was the Edison of romance.[N] As for the other great writers of
America, what can be more patent than their Americanism? Speaking only,
for the present, of those who have joined the majority, I would name two
who seem to me to stand with Poe in the very front rank of original
genius. They are Emerson, that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serener
ether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet a
refreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatest
romancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in that
sphere of fiction. Now, it is a mere truism to say that each of these
men was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable as
the offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said,
not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carrying
into metaphysics that gift of realistic vision and inspired hyperbole
which has somehow been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by the
conditions of American life. As for Hawthorne, though he has felt and
reproduced the physical charm of Rome more subtly than any other artist,
his genius drew at once its strength and its delicacy from his Puritan
ancestry and environment. To realise how intimately he smacks of the
soil, we have but to think of that marvellous scene in _The Blithedale
Romance_, the search for Zenobia's body. From what does it derive its
peculiar quality, its haunting savour? Simply from the presence of Silas
Foster, that delightful incarnation of the New England yeoman. "If I
thought anything had happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o'
sorrowful," said the grim Silas; and there never was a speech more
dramatically true, or, in its context, more bitterly pathetic.

Even while English critics were proving that there could be no such
thing as an American literature, Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper
were laying its foundations on a thoroughly American basis. Irving was
none the less American for loving the picturesque traditions of his
English ancestry; Cooper, a gallant and fertile genius, did his country
and our language an inestimable service by adding a whole group of
specifically American figures to the deathless aristocracy of the realms
of romance. Then, in the generation which has just passed away, we have
such men as Thoreau, racy of his native soil; Longfellow, in his day and
way the chief interpreter of America to England; Whittier, so intensely
local that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote for New England
rather than for the whole of the United States;" Lowell, courtly,
cultured, cosmopolitan, and yet the creator of Hosea Biglow; Holmes, as
American in his humour as Lamb was English, who justly ranks with Lamb
and Goldsmith among the personally best-beloved writers of the English
tongue. Prescott, in the sphere of history, paralleled the achievement
of Cooper in fiction, by giving literary form to the romance of the New
World; while Motley was inspired (too ardently, perhaps) by the spirit
of free America in writing the great epic of religious and political
freedom in Europe. Finally, it must not be forgotten that in _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_, a tragically American production, Mrs. Beecher Stowe added
to the literature of the English language the most potent, the most
dynamic, pamphlet ever hurled into the arena of national life.

Of all that living Americans are doing for the literature of our common
tongue it is as yet impossible to speak adequately. Since 1870, a new
spirit of nationalism has entered into American literature, which has
not yet been thoroughly studied in America or appreciated in England. So
far from having no national literature, America has now, perhaps, the
most intimately national body of fiction in the modern world. Before the
Civil War there was practically no deliberate and systematic study of
local and racial idiosyncracies. Hosea Biglow was a mask, not a
character, and Parson Wilbur was a literary device. Even Hawthorne
thought primarily of the element of imagination in the romances--the
universal, not the local, element. His leading characters are
psychological creations, with nothing specifically American about them;
his local colour and local character-study, though admirable, are
incidental, or at any rate stand on a secondary plane. In the South
there was no literature at all, local or otherwise, with the one
startling exception of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.[O] But since 1870, and
mainly, indeed, within the past twenty years, a marvellous change has
come over the scene. Not only the national but the local
self-consciousness of America has sprung to literary life, until at the
present day there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely an
aspect of social life, that has not found its special, and, as a rule,
very able interpreter through the medium of fiction. Pursuing technical
methods partly borrowed from abroad (from France rather than from
England), American writers have undertaken what one is tempted to call a
sociological ordnance-survey of the Republic from Maine to Arizona, from
Florida to Oregon. There is scarcely a human being in the United States,
from the Newport society belle to the "greaser" of New Mexico, that has
not his or her more or less faithful counterpart in fiction. No European
country, so far as I know, has achieved anything like such comprehensive
self-realisation. Comprehensive, I say--not necessarily profound.
Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps Russia in Turgueneff and Tolstoi,
found more searching interpretation than America has found even in her
host of novelists. But never, surely, was there a body of fiction that
touched life at so many points, to mirror if not to probe it. And in
many cases to probe it as well.

It would take a volume to criticise these writers in any detail. I can
attempt no more than a bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary
Wilkins's studies of New England life are well known and appreciated in
England, but the talent of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is not sufficiently
recognised. In her _Country of the Pointed Firs_, for example, there are
whole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of workmanship. The
novelists of the Eastern cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman,
at their head, are of course numberless. For studies in the local colour
of New York nothing could be better than Professor Brander Matthews'
_Vignettes of Manhattan_, and other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's
_Honorable Peter Stirling_, though antiquated in style, gives a
remarkable picture of political life in New York. The Bowery Boy is
cleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate is concerned, by
Mr. E.W. Townsend in his _Chimmie Fadden_. Even the Jewish and the
Italian quarters of New York have their portraitists in fiction. Life in
Washington has been frequently and ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs.
Burnett's _Through one Administration_. Of the many interpreters of the
South I need mention only three: Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and
Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made
the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several
novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of _The
Cliff Dwellers_, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago
slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of _Artie_. The Middle West counts
such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose
_Main Travelled Roads_ contains some very remarkable work. The Far West
is best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic sketches of Mr.
Owen Wister; while California has novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude
Atherton and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living abroad have
made noteworthy contributions to this sociological survey of their
native land: the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dealt mainly with
country life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose
picture, in _The Open Question_, of a Southern family impoverished by
the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost
fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest
but not insignificant part in this movement of national
self-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' _Alabama_ is a delightful picture
of Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's _Shore Acres_ takes a
distinct place in the literature of New England, his _Griffith
Davenport_[P] in the literature of Virginia.

There must, of course, be many gaps in this summary enumeration. It is
very probable that many novelists of distinction have altogether escaped
my notice; and I have made no attempt to include in my list the writers
of short magazine stories, many of them artists of high accomplishment.
One omission, however, I must at once repair. "Mark Twain's"
contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the main
retrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the
"sacred poet" of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius,
and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English
language during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliant
romance of the Great Rivers, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_.

Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain" is one of the greatest
living masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seem
a paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of the
prejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confers
upon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and to
write it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to class as an
"Americanism" every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we do
not happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty lively
interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar
"journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in
America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of
this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think,
that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its
expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language,
after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life--the
experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race
which employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sends
down into the soil of life, and the more varied the strata of human
experience from which it draws its nourishment, whether of vocabulary or
idiom, the more perfect will be its potentialities as a medium of
expression. We must be careful, it is true, to keep the organism
healthy, to guard against disintegration of tissue; but to that duty
American writers are quite as keenly alive as we. It is not a source of
weakness but of power and vitality to the English language that it
should embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other civilised
tongue. A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a
multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language,
an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the
fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. So long as
there is a potent literary tradition keeping the core of the language
one and indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in virtue of
the survival of the fittest, to promote the abundance, suppleness, and
nicety of adaptation of the language as a literary instrument. The
English language is no mere historic monument, like Westminster Abbey,
to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past, and reverenced as
the burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism,
ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the processes of
assimilation and excretion. It has before it, we may fairly hope, a
future still greater than its glorious past. And the greatness of that
future will largely depend on the harmonious interplay of spiritual
forces throughout the American Republic and the British Empire.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote M: I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, or
always take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think with
shame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which certain English
journalists used for years to treat Mr. W.D. Howells, merely because he
had expressed certain literary judgments from which they dissented. What
I do mean, and believe to be true, is that we are _habitually
unconscious_ of American criticism, while Americans may rather be said
to be _habitually over-conscious_ that the eyes of England and of the
world are on them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me no
less evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself.]

[Footnote N: I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a mean
and ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is surely time
that a worthy memorial should be raised, at his burial-place or
elsewhere, to this unique genius. England and the English-speaking world
would gladly contribute. For a masterly criticism and vindication of
Poe, let me refer the reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's _New Essays
towards a Critical Method_. London and New York, 1897.]

[Footnote O: For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on _Two
Studies in the South_, in Professor Brander Matthews' _Aspects of
Fiction_. New York, 1896.]

[Footnote P: Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener.]




THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

I


Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forth
on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language.
The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the serious
causes of dissension between England and America have begotten half the
bad blood that has been engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary,
grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence,
probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on either
side to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not have written in
vain.

In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless (and inevitably) been
the worst offenders. We have habitually used "Americanism" as a term of
reproach, implying, if not saying in so many words, that America was the
great source of pollution, and of nothing but pollution, to the
otherwise limpid current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offensively
to this effect; Archbishop Trench, on the other hand, discussed the
relations between the English of America and the English of England with
courtesy and good sense.[Q] He protested against certain transatlantic
neologisms, including in his list that excellent old word "to berate,"
and a word so useful and so eminently consonant with the spirit of the
language as "to belittle;" but, whether wise or unwise, his protest was
at least civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals, have been
apt to take their tone from the Dean rather than from the Archbishop. It
may even be said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen, which
finds heedless expression in the newspapers and common talk, is to
regard Americanisms as necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarisms
as probably American. If challenged and brought to book, they can
generally realise the narrowness and injustice of this way of thinking;
yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on our
guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may be
found (alackaday!) in _Fors Clavigera_ for June 1, 1874. With shame and
sorrow I transcribe the passage, for the time has not yet come for it
to be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual,
however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind;
but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogether
uncommon habit of thought:--

"England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought,
hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are
foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England,
unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be
humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds."


Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon
criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even
remotely or inadvertently implied?

The American retort, however, has not always been judicious or
dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one
linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that
there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the
attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater
sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The "You're another" style of
argument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker,
for instance, in a book entitled _Our Common Speech_ (1895) implying,
if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness of
innovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolute
licentiousness," is more characteristic of England than of America. The
suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of
bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit
to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we
British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching;
but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord in
the opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions of
life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than
ours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in America
than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only
with new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quicker
and wittier than the English) with apt and luminous colloquial
metaphors; and I know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit.

He next sets forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting the
language; and, in doing so, he falls into some curious errors.

Dickens was boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say, "Mr. Boffin,
I never bargain"--"haggle," it would seem, is the proper word. But if
Mr. Tucker will look into the matter, he will find it extremely probable
that this was the original sense of the word "bargain," and quite
certain that it was a very early sense; for instance--

"So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,
As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse."

I HENRY VI., V. v. 53.

And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a distinction between
"bargaining" and "haggling" as to be worth an international wrangle?
"Starved" for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both by
Shakespeare and Milton. "Assist" in the sense of to "be present at" is
an "absurd" innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a
"tolerably good authority," says Mr. Tucker himself, "in the use of
English." Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, "Theodora _flung_ away
and was rushing off;" but Milton says, "And crop-full out of doors he
flings." Charles Reade "is guilty of such phrases as 'Wardlaw whipped
before him,' 'Ransome whipped before it;'" but the Princess in _Love's
Labour's Lost_ is guilty of saying, "Whip to our tents, as roes run
o'er the land," and the word occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson and
Steele, to search no further. The simple fact is that Mr. Tucker has not
happened to note the intransitive sense of "to fling" and "to whip,"
which has been current in the best authors for centuries. He is very
severe on the English habit of "inserting utterly superfluous words,"
instancing from Lord Beaconsfield, "He was _by way of_ intimating that
he was engaged on a great work," and, from a magazine, "She was _by way
of_ painting the shrimp girl." Now, this is not an elegant expression,
and for my part I should be at some pains to avoid it; but it has a
perfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redundancy. If Mr. Tucker
supposes that "She was by way of painting the shrimp girl" means exactly
the same as "She was painting the shrimp girl," he misses one of the
fine shades of the English language. Similarly, his remark on the
"peculiar misuse of the affix _ever_, as in saying 'What_ever_ are you
doing?'" stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, to
treat _ever_ as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "What
ever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the
"ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very
useful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simple
curiosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What the
devil are you doing?" expresses anger--we need not run farther up the
scale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, licentious or otherwise.
"Ever" has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle after
the interrogative pronouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For
instance, in _The World of Wonders_ (1607), "I shall desire him to
consider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests."

One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in
which he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our American
speech as compared with that of the mother country" by going through
Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and picking
out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America
are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.)
Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in
England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze,
affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie
order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker,
blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious,
cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon,
cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike),
cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades,
loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole,
scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came
to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any
one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have
sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject
Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British
English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for
his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy,
cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England?

Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his
catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and
kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always
over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of
language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity
(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion
which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than
instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our
people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be
standard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have every
reason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselves
being judges_." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of
no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt
with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to
movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers
another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on
Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the
less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for
the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood
boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion
of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a
"bumper state" when I mean a "buffer state," I see no reason whatever
for any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two men
who take a common interest and pride in the subject of his
treatise--_Our Common Speech_.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote Q: See _English Past and Present_, ninth edition, pp. 63,
215.]

[Footnote R: "What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires,
"has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors at
all comparable in importance to those of the Cockney speech of London?"
The answer is pat: New York and Chicago--unless Mr. Townsend's _Chimmie
Fadden_ and Mr. Ade's _Artie_ are sheer linguistic libels.]

[Footnote S: It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare
talking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a hardened
offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single,
inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language.]




II


It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should
ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to
Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English;
why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a
banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is),
there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a
vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to
be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of
a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words.
For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The
American habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman,
unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."[T] Neither is right,
neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either
habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism
of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again,
when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a
curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of
Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and
"Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the
American pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo"
is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I
spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of
the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not
_constitootional_." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring,
like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and
to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that
had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said
"constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse
in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing
fashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to
their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons
will be saying "constitootional," and theirs "constityootional." I
confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the
dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans
choose to say,

"From morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve,
A summer's day."

I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own
right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that
Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the
pronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I
have learnt to prefer.

It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a
long visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to the
English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of
protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily
sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of
respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has
died out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it.

So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and
"tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily"
and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong,
refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other.
It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the
root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix,
the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be
contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin
precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither,
indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a
principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix,
else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the
Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else
they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised
pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there
is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as
far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says
"in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this
tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not
a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for
obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a
matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel
Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have
maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think
one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward
of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would
take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and
"exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is
surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the
word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance,
is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an
"il-lustrated" book or the "_Il-lustrated London News_" because we do
not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense
demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious"
statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential
element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would
"tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our
list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the
more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a
trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit
of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous
criticism, is simply childish.

Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For
instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a
vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may
have crossed in the _Mayflower_ for aught I know; but the overwhelming
preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of
prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special
word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most"
supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to
remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would
survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has
attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is
perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place.
Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I
druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would
defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend
"I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for
instance, were to say,

"I druther be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman,"

American and English critics alike could not but protest against the
solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly
indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism
is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from
localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and
"ruther."

A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the
advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of
"nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but
one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some
other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary
alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.

Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains
to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and
"a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial
genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so
severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon
Kellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothic
for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative
"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle
English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Heliand)_, "daeges and
nihtes" _(Beowulf)_, "daeies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day
and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the
genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be
retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward"
better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see
that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent
practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become
irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful
concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all,
"somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly
jars in England.

An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is
taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or
"have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's
Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The Albany
Depot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago
clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the
locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me"
for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face
the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a
colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm,
for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the
logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last
letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last
letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.

An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a
Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the
same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a
particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of
convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up
by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little
or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are
always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking
him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a
context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word
which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no
difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the
North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say
"in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should
say "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord," but "in Boston." I
recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do
not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I
would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different
to."

As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on
the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long
list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York
Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to
me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man;
she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The
grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to
the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?"
Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not
separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be,"
not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed.

I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of
spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational
human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in
"program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The
baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging
to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews'
_Americanisms and Briticisms_. Let me only put in a plea for the
retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words
of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should
write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural
"stories" and "storeys."


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote T: "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing," writes Mr. A.B.
Walkley, "the Englishman has the advantage here, for 'when he wants to
be emphatic' he can be, whereas the American cannot." This is a
misapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American a can be spoken with
or without emphasis, just as the speaker pleases. It is because we are
accustomed always to associate this particular sonority with emphasis
that even when it is spoken without emphasis, we imagine it to be
emphatic.]




III


Passing now from questions of pronunciation and grammar to questions of
vocabulary, I can only express my sense of the deep indebtedness of the
English language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the old
words she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented.
It is a sheer pedantry--nay, a misconception of the laws which govern
language as a living organism--to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms,
and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary
language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which
it can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself,
whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in the
broadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying a
psychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditions
of the problem, will always express itself in dialect, provincialism,
slang.

America doubles and trebles the number of points at which the English
language comes in touch with nature and life, and is therefore a great
source of strength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure,
rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular,
words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by others
which are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though
an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive,
it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time.
Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout
the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible
and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America.
Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how
much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had
become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent.

I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary
and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark,
allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and
clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to
all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that
neologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected with
contumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably)
American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist." It was originally
suggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use in
America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley
and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _Daily
News_ denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar
product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding
its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde,"
"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in
his day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt
to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend
that it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man of
science."[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to
"scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that
it implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged with
equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist,
dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist,
and--purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word
"scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined,
illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the
English language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and we
should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary
ideas.

Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of
"transpire" in the sense of "happen." I do not quote it as an
Americanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret to
note, in Dickens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrably
vicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from the
language. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time,
has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"--that
is, leaked out, become known--and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, has
noted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred"
or "happened." The blunder has been passed on from one penny-a-liner to
another, until at last it has crept into the pages of writers, on both
sides of the Atlantic, who ought to know better. If it served any
purpose, expressed any shade of meaning, it might be tolerated; but
being at once a useless pedantry and an obvious blunder, it deserves no
quarter.

My point, then, is that "scientist" ought to live on its merits,
"transpire" to die on its demerits. With regard to every neologism we
ought first to inquire, "Does it fill a gap? Does it serve a purpose?"
And if that question be answered in the affirmative, we may next
consider whether it is formed on a reasonably good analogy and in
consonance with the general spirit of the language. "Truthful," for
example, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence on
that account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted
"veracious," but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English words
in the dictionary.

The above-quoted writer in the _New York Press_ is a purist in
vocabulary, no less than in grammar. He will not allow us to be
"unwell," we must always be "ill;" an inhuman imperative. Why should we
sacrifice this clear and useful gradation: unwell, very unwell, ill,
very ill? On "sick" he does not deliver judgment. The American use of
the word is ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of its
meaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have the general terms
"unwell" and "ill" ready to hand. Again, the _New York Press_ authority
follows Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation" from the
language; surely a ridiculous literalism. It is true we do not sacrifice
a sheep at a modern "ovation," but neither (for example) do we judge by
the flight of birds when we declare the circumstances to be "auspicious"
for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" for
the night, but always to "go to bed." If, as is commonly alleged,
Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed,
the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe
that either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one may
retire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladies
especially, the interval between retiring and going to bed is reputed
to be far from inconsiderable. If, then, one really means "retired for
the night" and does _not_ definitely mean "went to bed," I see no crime
in employing the expression that conveys one's exact meaning. Finally
the _New York Press_ will not let us use the word "commence;" we must
always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or
half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the
best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least
grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its
competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin,
whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic
attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym
out of the language. Whence comes this rage for impoverishing our
tongue! The more synonyms we possess the better. Wherefore (by the way)
I for my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a forcible
Americanism merely because it happens to duplicate some word or
expression already current in England. The rich language is that which
possesses not only the necessaries of life but also an abundance of
superfluities.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote U: Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed on
the same analogy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize,' set the example.
But we happen to have no use for 'scientist.'" It is not quite clear
whether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressing
sheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case I
can only say that he has been fortunate in never coming across
conjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly and
inelegantly.]




IV


Let me note a few of the Americanisms, good, bad, and indifferent, which
specially struck me, whether in talk or in books, during my recent visit
to the United States. I call them Americanisms without inquiring into
their history. Some of them may be of English origin; but for practical
purposes an Americanism may be taken to mean an expression commonly used
in America and not commonly used in England.

I had not been three hours on American soil before I heard a charming
young lady remark, "Oh, it was bully!" I gathered that this expression
is considered admissible, in the conversation of grown-up people, only
in and about New York. I often heard it there, and never anywhere else.
A very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer in Cuba, was
asked to state his impressions of war. "War," he said, "is a terrible
thing. You can't exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your tent the
night before the battle, and think of home and your wife and children,
you feel pretty sick and downhearted. But," he added, "next day, when
you're in it, oh, it _is_ bully!"

The general use of picturesque metaphor is of course a striking feature
of American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm root
in England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in"
a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. For
instance, where an English theatrical manager would say, "We must get
this play well talked about and paragraphed in advance," an American
manager puts the whole thing much more briefly and forcibly in the
phrase, "We don't want this piece to come in on rubbers." Metaphor
apart, many Americans have a gift of fantastic extravagance of phrase
which often produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in high
political office had one day to receive a deputation with whose objects
he had no sympathy. He listened for some time to the spokesman of the
party, and then, at a pause, broke in with the remark: "Gentlemen, you
need proceed no further. I am not an entirely dishevelled jackass!" One
would give something for a snapshot photograph of the faces of that
deputation.

Small differences of expression (other than those with which every one
is familiar--such as "elevator," "baggage," "depot," &c.)--strike one in
daily life. The American for "To let" is "For rent;" a "thing one would
wish to have expressed otherwise" is, more briefly, "a bad break;"
instead of "He married money" an American will say "He married rich;"
but this, I take it, is a vulgarism--as, indeed, is the English
expression. I find that in the modern American novel, setting forth the
sayings and doings of more or less educated people, there are apt to be,
on an average, about half a dozen words and phrases at which the English
reader stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of English, may be
taken as a faithful reporter of the colloquial speech of Boston and New
York. In one of his comediettas, he makes Willis Campbell say, "Let me
turn out my sister's cup" (pour her a cup of tea). Mrs. Roberts, in
another of these delightful little pieces, says, "I'll smash off a
note," where an English Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off "; and where an
English Mrs. Roberts would ring the bell, her American namesake "touches
the annunciator." It is commonly believed in England that there is no
such thing as a "servant" in America, but only "hired girls" and
"helps." This is certainly not so in New York. I once "rang up" a
friend's house by telephone, and, on asking who was speaking to me,
received the answer, in a feminine voice, "I'm one of Mr. So-and-so's
servants."

The heroine of _The Story of a Play_ says to her husband, "Are you still
thinking of our scrap of this morning?" "Scrap," in the sense of
"quarrel," is one of the few exceedingly common American expressions
which, have as yet taken little hold in England.[V] Admiral Dewey, for
instance, is admired as a "scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a
fighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel
_The Cliff Dwellers_, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"--he
talks of a "connubial spat." In the same book I note the phrases "He
teetered back and forth on his toes," "He was a stocky young man," "One
of his brief noonings," "That's right, Claudia--score the profession."
"Score," as used in America, does not mean "score off," but rather, I
take it, "attack and leave your mark upon." It is very common in this
sense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper,
"Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism." Talking of Yellow Journalism,
by the way, the expressions "a beat," and "a scoop," for what we in
England call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until I
went to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a
family which "lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of canned (or,
as we should say, tinned) provisions.

The most popular slang expression of the day is "to rubberneck," or,
more concisely, "to rubber." Its primary meaning is to crane the neck in
curiosity, to pry round the corner, as it were.[W] But it has numerous
and surprising extensions of meaning. It appears to be one of the laws
of slang that when a phrase strikes the popular fancy, it is pressed
into service on every possible or impossible occasion. Another
favourite expression is "That cuts no ice with me."[X] I was unable to
ascertain either its origin or its precise significance. On the other
hand, a piece of slang which supplies a "felt want," and will one day, I
believe, pass into the literary language, is "the limit" in the sense of
"le comble." A theatrical poster, widely displayed in New York while I
was there, bore this alluring inscription:

THE LIMIT AT LAST!

"THE MORMON SENATOR AND THE MERMAID"

JAGS OF JOY FOR JADED JOHNNIES.

A "jag," be it known, means primarily a load, secondarily a "load," or
"package," of alcohol.

Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems in two recent books
which I commend to their notice: _Chimmie Fadden_, by Mr. E.W. Townsend,
and _Artie_, by Mr. George Ade. _Chimmie Fadden_ gives us the dialect of
the New York Bowery Boy, or "tough," in which the most notable feature
is the substitution either of "d" or "t" for "th." Is this, I wonder, a
spontaneous corruption, or is it due to German and Yiddish influence?
When Chimmie wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he says:
"Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes." When the young lady's
father comes to thank him for championing her, this is how Chimmie
describes the visit: "Den he gives me a song an' dance about me being a
brave young man for tumping de mug what insulted his daughter," "Mug,"
the Bowery term for "fellow" or "man," in Chicago finds its equivalent
in "guy." Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago clerk, and his dialect is of the
most delectable. In comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of English
undefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence of polyglot
immigration. "Kopecks" for "money" evidently comes from the Russian Jew;
"girlerino," as a term of endearment, from the "Dago" of the sunny
south; and "spiel," meaning practically anything you please, from the
Fatherland. When Artie goes to a wedding, he records that "there was a
long spiel by the high guy in the pulpit." After describing the
embarrassments of a country cousin in the city, Artie proceeds, "Down at
the farm, he was the wise guy and I was the soft mark." "Mark" in the
sense of "butt" or "gull" is one of the commonest of slang words. When
Artie has cut out all rivals in the good graces of his Mamie, he puts it
thus, "There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens. They ain't even in
the 'also rans.'" When they have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, "Well, I
s'pose the other boy's fillin' all my dates." When he is asked whether
Mamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When he
disapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next"
to the fact, as he himself would say--

"You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the
deck.... Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and
then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell
you you're a two spot, and if you come into the same part o' the
town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get
back at you people.... If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll
be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days.... But this
same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any
time she comes in."

I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racy
metaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car."[Y]
But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr.
Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, express
themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask
of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans
take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily
developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the least
impair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea that
the English language is degenerating in America is an absolutely
groundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading
American cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least as
well written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books the
average level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. There
are bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until the
beams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americans
to attend to the motes in theirs.


POSTSCRIPT.--When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text for
an editorial article in the _Daily News_, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's
sign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhat
desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we
habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked,
"who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but the
English writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, an
American phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when our
language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or
idiom."

In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far
from accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as he
pleases, of course." Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in this
very article. And, for my part, I think the principle a false one. I
think the English language has been entrusted to the care of all of us,
English no less than Americans, Americans no less than English; and if I
find an American writer debasing it in an essential point, as opposed to
a point of mere local predilection, I assert my right to remonstrate
with him, just as I admit his right, under similar circumstances, to
remonstrate with me.

It is not here, however, that I join issue with Mr. Lang: it is on his
theory that an English writer necessarily does wrong who unnecessarily
employs an Americanism. This is a question of great practical moment,
and I am glad that Mr. Lang has stated it in this definite form. My view
is perhaps sufficiently indicated above, but I take the opportunity of
reasserting it with all deliberation. I believe that, as a matter both
of literary and of social policy, we ought to encourage the free
infiltration of graphic and racy Americanisms into our vernacular, and
of vigorous and useful Americanisms (even if not absolutely necessary)
into our literary language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms, if
only the duplicates be in themselves good terms? For instance, take the
word "fall." Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "An American with a sense of
the poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word 'autumn' the native
and more logical word 'fall,' which the British have strangely suffered
to drop into disuse." Well, "autumn" was a sufficiently early
importation. "Our ancestors," wrote Lowell (quoted by Mr. Matthews in
the same article), "unhappily could bring over no English better than
Shakespeare's;" and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's) English they
brought over "autumn." The word has inherent beauty as well as splendid
poetical associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare could have made
out of "fall" so beautiful a line as

"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase."

I doubt whether Keats, had he written an _Ode to the Fall_, would have
produced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."

Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that "fall" has a poetic
value, a suggestion, an atmosphere of its own. I wonder, with him, why
we dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we should not recover
it. The British literary patriotism which makes a point of never saying
"fall" seems to me just as mistaken as the American literary patriotism
(if such there be) that makes a merit of never saying "autumn." By
insisting on such localisms (for the exclusive preference for either
term is nothing more) we might, in process of time, bring about a
serious fissure in the language. Of course there is no reason why Mr.
Lang should force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to him; but
if "fall" is congenial to me, I think I ought to be allowed to use it
"without fear and without reproach."

Take, now, a colloquialism. How formal and colourless is the English
phrase "I have enjoyed myself!" beside the American "I have had a good
time!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that the
one should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of our
linguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock of
semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merely
because we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is--Mr. Lang will
understand the forcible Scotticism--to "sin our mercies."

Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that in
hardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrier
between ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let us
remark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell,
Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers are
consciously reproducing conversations in dialect." He made the same
remark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the _Academy_,
March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson,
and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children,
one _for_ Her Majesty and one _for_ Prince Albert," and in Emerson
"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it _all the
time_." The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under
his ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he would
translate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of
brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think
of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes
me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of
the phrases we should accept with gratitude--if, indeed, it be not
already naturalised.

Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes to
witness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "That
does not belong there." Writing of "needless Americanisms," he says,
"The use of 'belong' as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, by
the way] is an example of what we mean. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a
stern opponent of such neologisms." I turn to the Oxford Dictionary, and
the one quotation I find under "belong" in this sense, is:--"'You belong
with the last set, and got accidentally shuffled with the others.'--_O.W.
Holmes, 'Elsie Venner_.'" But this, Mr. Lang may say, is in
dialogue. Yes, but not in dia_lect_. I am very much mistaken if the
locution does not occur elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisure
hour, were to undertake a search for it, he might incidentally find
cause to modify his view as to the sternness of the Autocrat's
anti-Americanism.

Let me not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept
and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the
English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay,
indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and I
trust Mr. Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism. He and I,
in this little discussion, are simply playing our allotted parts. I
believe (and Mr. Lang would probably admit with a shrug) that the forces
of the future are on my side. May I recall to him that charming anecdote
of Thackeray and Viscount Monck, when they were rival candidates for the
representation of Oxford in Parliament? They met in the street one day,
and exchanged a few words. On parting, Thackeray shook hands with his
opponent and said, "Good-bye; and may the best man win!" "I hope _not_,"
replied Viscount Monck, with a bow. A hundred years hence, if some
English-speaker of the future should chance to disinter this book from
the recesses of the British Museum or the Library of Congress, and
should read these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say--for the
immortal soul of the language even anarchism cannot affect--"the race is
not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote V: Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman,
speaking of a street row, "There's been a little scrappin'."]

[Footnote W: "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church and
stood around rubberin'." "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles and
rubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres."--_Artie_. A writer in
the New York _Sun_ says: "I first heard the term 'rubbernecks' in
Arizona, about four years ago, applied to the throngs of onlookers in
the gambling-houses, who strove to get a better view of the games in
progress by stretching or bending their necks."]

[Footnote X: "We didn't break into sassiety notes, but that cuts no ice
in our set."--_Artie_.]

[Footnote Y: Extract from a letter to the _Chicago Evening Post_: "I do
not at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of my
acquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured people
in Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a grip-car and a
trailer, and he said, 'No; just one car.' And I told him right there
that I could not agree with him."]



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