(1936)

Esau, it has been observed, was a gentleman. He was, in fact, an amiable, manly fellow, who addled his wits with outdoor sports and attached small importance to his spiritual heritage—very like an English gentleman indeed. And he sold his birthright for a sodden mess.

The birthright of the English is the richest, noblest, most flexible and sensitive language ever written or spoken since the age of Pericles. Every day sees it sold, not only to Brother Jock and Brother Paddy, and young Brother Jonathan, but to the sob-sisters of Fleet Street, to the aged and doddering Mother of Parliaments, to the wicked Uncles of the B.B.C., to the governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters of the Board of Education, and to all the myopic old women of both sexes who cannot tell a purposeful hawk from an ill-regulated handsaw. And a nice mess they make of it among them; which mess we greedily and gratefully gulp down.

Like Esau, we think that it does not matter. This is the sin that the Church calls Sloth. Incidentally, the sloth, like Esau, has his hide all covered with hair, and to resemble him does us no credit.

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity: so have some little frocks; but they are not the kind that any fool can run up in half an hour with a machine. Compared with such highly-inflected languages as Greek, Latin, Russian and German, English appears to present no grammatical difficulties at all; but it would be truer to say that nothing in English is easy but the accidence. It is rich, noble, flexible and sensitive because it combines an enormous vocabulary of mixed origin with a superlatively civilised and almost wholly analytical syntax. This means that we have not merely to learn a great number of words with their subtle distinctions of meaning and association, but to put them together in an order determined only by a logical process of thought. There can be no good English without clear thinking, and (as some cynic has justly observed) “most people would die sooner than think, and most of them do.”

Most languages begin by being synthetic—that is, inflected—becoming gradually analytic as men learn to co-ordinate abstract ideas. But the primitive structure still underlies and explains the visible contours as the ancient and enduring bone underlies and explains the flesh. It is therefore easy to come, as our ancestors did, from the study of Latin to the study of English, because that is the natural order of development. But the wisdom of modern educators has freed our children from the shackles of a classical training, and this is about as sensible as freeing young draughtsmen from the study of anatomy. The result in either case is the same: a drawing and an English alike spineless, nerveless, slack-sinewed, ugly, lumpy and meaningless.

If anybody doubts that this country is still engaged in the export of wool, let him examine the utterances of our statesmen in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Here is a passage from a speech made by the Prime Minister[1] about the Economic Conference ( Times Report, June 28th, 1933):

“What he could say of the Conference was that every representative there, knowing his difficulties, was determined to come to no arrangement which meant that his difficulties were simply to be treated as though they did not exist, but was determined at the same time to come to an accommodation where accommodation was possible and to bend every ounce of resource that he could in order to get agreement. That was the temper and determination of the Conference.”

This is pulling the wool over our eyes with a vengeance. The intention is to define the temper and determination of the Conference in terms that no one could possibly take amiss. (Alas! the very timidity of the definition informs us that the temper was uncertain and the determination obstinate.) To say bluntly, “Since our various interests conflict, every nation will have to give up something” would be dangerous; somebody might retort, provocatively, “Very well: you begin”; or, affrontedly, “What, me? Not bloody likely!” To say bluntly that there were some things no nation could be expected to give up would be dangerous too; because those were the very things other nations would want given up, and the answer might be: “Then what is the good of the Conference?” Some formula was required to give each representative the flattering assurance that, though he was notoriously a most accommodating fellow, no important sacrifice could possibly be required of him. The formula when found is (naturally) rather obscure: even when we have succeeded in bending every ounce of resource in interpreting it, we may still be excused for thinking that it means, “Every representative is determined to get his own way, but to be otherwise as obliging as possible.” Perhaps it did mean exactly that. At any rate, the Conference was not a success.

Might a more courageous declaration actually have induced a more malleable temper and a less immovable determination? Bold words do not always make wars. When the French Ambassador told Queen Elizabeth that France would not permit her to keep Mary Queen of Scots prisoner in England, Elizabeth replied:

“Her friends have given shelter to the English rebels, and with her aid and connivance they levied war on me with fire and sword. No sovereign in Europe will sit down under such provocation, and I would count myself unworthy of realm, crown and name of Queen if I endured it.”

There was no mistaking a temper and determination like that. Mary remained a prisoner, while the Prince of France sought Elizabeth’s hand in marriage.

But whatever excuse politicians may have for prostituting language to the concealment of thought, there can be none for us. And as a rule we offer none; our dishevelment is sheer sluttishness. We think that correctness and comeliness do not matter, provided we say what we mean; unaware that without correctness and comeliness we cannot say what we mean, but often say more, or less, or the precise opposite. “She was one of those actresses who had left the stage on her marriage,” says a novelist, careless of syntax. Surely, this is more than was meant; or what kind of actress is this whose marriage sweeps her fellow players from the stage? “It was one of the worst moments he had ever experienced,” says another, careless of diction, “sending many of his awkward moments ‘abroad’ into the limber of insignificant things.” The “limber” is part of a gun-carriage—did the author mean only to send the bad moment “abroad” on a gun-carriage? I think he meant to send it further: to the limbo where all such nonsense should go and be forgotten. “Known to all the world as the man responsible for the Arrow’s meteoric rise,” says a third, careless of metaphor. So he gives himself the lie; for a meteor cannot rise, and in fact is a meteor only in virtue of its fall.

It is well, then, to know what we mean and to learn how to say it in English. And by English I mean English, and not any other tongue. In a day when the British Broadcasting Corporation imports its language committee from Ireland and Scotland, and when Fleet Street swarms with Scots, Irish and Americans, it is well to remember that all these persons are foreigners; that the Scots and the Irish were so from the beginning and that the Americans have become so; that they speak our language as foreigners; and that while it is childlike and charming in us to enjoy their sing-song speech and their quaint foreign barbarisms, to imitate these things is childishness and folly. It is true that a language thrives by piracy: it will do us no harm to adopt a striking word of slang or a vivid turn of expression. We must not, however, give our pure gold for cowrie-shells or abandon our beautiful and useful grammatical tools because these barbarians do not know how to handle them.

Let us take as our example that famous distinction which we English alone in all the world know how to make: the distinction between “shall” and “will.” “The mere Englishman,” says Mr. H. W. Fowler, “if he reflects upon the matter at all, is convinced that his shall and will endows his speech with a delicate precision that could not be attained without it, and serves more important purposes than that of a race-label.” (Mark, in passing, how slyly the scholar is here laughing in his sleeve at those to whom one word is as good as another. “Mere Englishman,” says he, knowing that this will be taken for mock humility. But he knows, too, that merus means “pure,” and that when Queen Elizabeth called herself “mere English” she meant it for a boast.) Indeed, the distinction is no empty one: “I will do it” (with reluctance, but you force me); “I shall do it” (and God and His angels have no power to stay me).

Consider this sentence, taken from a short novel which contains no fewer than forty-three incorrect uses of “will” and “would”:

“I am also thinking about getting some work. It should be easy, because I won’t be pushed by necessity.”

It looks like a failure of logic. If the speaker is determined not to be pushed by his necessity into whatever work shall offer itself, then, one would say, a man so necessitous and so obstinate will not easily find work before he perishes of his necessities. But the context shows that the author does not mean this. He means: “I shall not be pushed by necessity (because I have plenty of money), and can therefore afford to take a job with small pay; and that should be easy to find.”

Is this a trifling matter, not worth making clear? Then see how you can destroy the most beautiful parable in Scripture by using the one word for the other:

“I shall arise and go to my father and shall say unto him . . .”

How jaunty the words are now; how cocksure; how hypocritical; how they compel the sneering comment, “and the poor old blighter will fall for the sob-stuff again.”[2] 

Remember, too, how the late Lord Oxford, who was a stylist, refused on a famous occasion to surrender the hammer-stroke of “shall,” even when faced by a conglomeration of sibilants that might have daunted the most courageous orator:

“We shall not sheathe the sword that we have not lightly drawn . . .”

Not promise; but prophecy.

Does anybody, possessing a tool that will do such delicate work so easily, really desire to abandon it? It is being abandoned. We are letting “shall” and “should” drift out of our hands while we labour to do their work, crudely and coarsely, with “will” and “would.” Even so correct and elegant a writer as Mr. Robert Graves is losing his English ear and writing: “I would like to,” and “I would prefer to.” Here the use is redundant and not ambiguous; but if we do not trouble to distinguish we shall soon lose the power of distinguishing. Moreover, if we use “will” or “would” wrongly nine times, and the tenth time intend it rightly, who, the tenth time, will give us credit for good intentions? The gentleman with the forty-three wrong uses has perhaps a dozen right uses as well; but amid so great a herd of goats his few innocent lambs look like strays.

Is it not worth while also to stretch out a helping hand to the rapidly perishing gerund? The fused participle is usurping its seat and soon will have its life. Here is the perpetrator of the forty-three “wills-and-woulds” happily engaged in fusing the participle:

“There was every excuse for a young man not wishing to be too precise.”

Very good: but for what are we to excuse him? Is this a general free pardon to imprecise young men? A not-wishing-to-be-too-precise young man, says the participle, has every excuse—for (presumably) murder, arson, larceny, rape or any other crime he cares to commit. But no. The author means only that a desire for imprecision is excusable in a young man. Then let the young man lay claim to the gerund of his desire with a bold possessive. It is his desire, “a young man’s not wishing,” that is excusable. There is little excuse for an author’s not wishing to be precise, however readily he may excuse his characters.

Here is a fine pair of specimens from a novel:

“In history he had come across so many instances of victory being turned into defeat through the winning side underrating the other side’s strength.”

There is no ambiguity here; it may pass, you think. But make a similar sentence where the substantives are replaced by pronouns, and the hideousness of the structure smites you in the eye:

“He had come across many instances of us being defeated through me underrating the enemy’s strength.”

Would the clumsiest boor that ever set pen to paper not hesitate to write such a sentence? Yet in every newspaper written in the English language and in half the books, the gerund is murdered a hundred times a day.

Let us choose one more offender against syntax for summary execution. Let us pick that vile fellow the hanging participle, who, if he would but hang all his employers, would perform the one useful act of his mean existence. Here he stands, hand in hand with his vulgar associate, the unattached infinitive:

“And though one might avoid the margins his lobby was too tiny not to step on the paint when crossing it.”

Who stepped on the paint? The lobby? Who crossed? The lobby? Crossed what? Did the lobby, in an access of religious fervour, cross itself? It cannot be “one” who stepped or crossed, for “one” is marooned in a parenthesis and, having successfully avoided the margins, can trip no further. Nor is it easy to see why, if “one” could grammatically be the crosser, he should not avoid the paint; for, if the lobby was too small to be cleared at a stride, then the larger the lobby the shorter the crossing; which is ridiculous. Clearly it was the little lobby whose infant strides were too short to cross the paint without doing damage.

Lest anyone should go mad in endeavouring to solve the problem of the lobby, let us give the explanation at once. What the writer was trying to say was this: “In the large rooms, one might avoid the (freshly-painted) margins; but the lobby, being small, had been painted all over, so that one could not cross it without stepping on the paint.” Is there any reason why that should not be said in good, plain English? Is anything gained by bad and obscure English?

There is the test: is anything gained? Language must develop, and in developing must move from closer to freer constructions. We must not be pedants, but let us ask, before abandoning a nice distinction of words or a delicate syntactical construction: Do we gain anything by the change? If so, let us adopt it. Does the change, at any rate, do no harm? If so, let it run: it will prove its worth if it has any. Do we lose anything by the change? If so, let us resist it at all costs—even at the cost of a little thought and trouble; for, once lost, it is lost for ever.

There are pedants, God mend their ears, who, having read some cheap-jack, rule-of-thumb, cramp-wit folly in a sixpenny text-book, would like to break our free idiom to the bit of an alien fashion. These are not the Latinists (who know better), but the Latinisers; they remember the Latin bones of language, and will have them dry bones. These are the pinching misers, who will hoard their gold, but will not put it out to gain. Of such are the dreary little men who write to the papers protesting—in the teeth of Chaucer, Bacon, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, the English Bible, Milton, Burton, Congreve, Swift, Burke, Peacock, Ruskin, Arnold and the whole tradition of English letters—that a sentence must not end with a preposition. This is no matter of syntax; it is a matter of idiom; and the freedom to handle our prepositions is among the most glorious in our charter of liberties. Here are a few sentences which let these pedagogues take and re-write after their own crabbed fashion, and then ask themselves whether what they have written is English:

Is any song worth singing? That depends on what language it is written in, what music it is sung to and what the song is about.

England is a land worth living in, worth singing of, worth fighting and dying for, and to betray her is a sin such as the sun might fear to look upon.

Let us have as many defenders as are ready to come and the ranks have room for, since so great a menace is not to be trifled with.

Finally, after the politicians, the foreigners, the slovens and the pedants, let us look at the makers of jargon, who are the wireless announcers, the newspaper reporters, the jurors and committeemen, the business-letter-writers, the framers of by-laws and all those who think in abstract nouns and windy periphrases. A single example, taken at random, must do for them. Here is what the Daily Express calls a “strongly-worded protest,” addressed by the Swansea and District Sunday Schools Union to the B.B.C., under the impression that it was a piece of plain speaking:

“Having regard to the fact that the homes of many thousands of listeners are otherwise free from such pollution, its introduction into the family circle by means of wireless broadcast is deeply regretted and strongly resented as being liable to pollute the minds of the young people whom we are trying to keep pure.”

Look at that great rambling circumlocution at the start, with its hanging participle and redundant abstractions! Look at the flabby impersonality whereby the homes remain passively free from an abstract pollution! Look at the still flabbier impersonality of the “introduction” and the “regret” and even of the “resentment”! Look at the timidity of the phrase “liable to pollute”! Not until the last relative clause is any living person made responsible for anything. “Strongly worded,” indeed! If the Swansea and District Sunday Schools Union had the courage to say what they mean, we might believe that they meant what they said:

“Since thousands of listeners take pains to keep such dirty stuff out of their homes, they deeply regret and strongly resent your thrusting it upon them by wireless; because they fear it may corrupt the young people they are trying to keep pure.”

That is personal; that is concrete; that, if you like, is plain speaking; it is also much better English.

But what do we care after all? “What profit shall this birthright do to me?” If our English is not good our speech will be neither beautiful nor intelligible; but does that matter a straw? Have words any power in themselves? We began by contrasting Mr. Ramsay MacDonald with Queen Elizabeth: let us contrast them once again.

Here is the Prime Minister speaking to the Commons of England:

“Schemes must be devised, policies must be devised if it is humanly possible to take that section [of the unemployed] and to regard them not as wastrels, not as hopeless people, but as people for whom occupation must be provided somehow or other, and that occupation, although it may not be in the regular factory or in organised large-scale industrial groups, nevertheless will be quite as effective for themselves mentally, morally, spiritually and physically than, perhaps, if they were included in this enormous mechanism of humanity which is not always producing the best result, and which, to a very large extent, fails in producing the good results that so many of us expect to see from a higher civilisation based on national wealth.”

Do you like it? Or do you prefer this, which is a speech of Queen Elizabeth to the judges?

“Have a care over my people. You have my people—do you that which I ought to do. They are my people. Every man oppresseth them and spoileth them without mercy; they cannot revenge their quarrel, nor help themselves. See unto them, see unto them, for they are my charge. I charge you, even as God hath charged me.”

I know little enough about social problems, in this age or in that; but I know which speech fills me with the more passionate pity of the poor man at odds with the tyranny of the world.



[1] Mr. Ramsay MacDonald.

[2] In Wycliffe’s Bible, the passage actually stands: “I shal aryse”; but the makers of the Authorised Version, with their more developed feeling for the right word, would have none of it.