Books of the Week
The Spoken Word as Written By HENRY GREEN THE Oxford Book of English Talk,* edited by James Sutherland, is an anthology of conversa- tions, that is to say, of oral communications in print between people and extracted from plays, novels, proceedings at judicial trials, and so forth. Mr. Sutherland, in his preface, believes " that this is the first book to record at length how Englishmen and Englishwomen actually spoke from late medimval times down to the present day." This may be true. At the same time it does raise the question of how people speak to different purposes and on different occasions. Does a man on trial for his life speak frankly and easily ? At a recent murder trial Christie used sentences of an extraordinary intricacy in his defence which were not, one would assume, characteristic of his everyday speech. Similarly, playwrights and novelists, in dialogue are always writing, that is to say, introducing " business." This must interfere with their rendering of their idea of how contemporary conversation goes. In other words, no anthology can be as successful as a gramophone record made off a concealed microphone, and possibly nothing would be more untypical or boring than such a record. Art must intrude. And the question is, how far art has distorted this recorded talk, recorded in print, of course, 'from 1417 in this book to 1949. .
I saw, with great pleasure, that a piece of mine has been included. On re-reading this, an extract from one of my novels, I found that it came from a moment, for me, of great difficulty in the writing of the book. Of course, talk must be about something, but here a landlady is telling her lodger three things he must know and which are vital to him and to the story. To do this she verbally ducks, improvises and some- times has to wince away from him in her telling.. So what? you say. Everyone has to in real life. Very well, but the question with us here is whether such a conscious effort to other things by any novelist is a valid attempt on his part to convey contemporary talk. In other words, can he clothe his purpose, which is the story he is writing, with an accurate rendering of contemporary speed. ?
Another of Mr. Sutherland's choices is a broadcast by John Hilton entitled, ominously enough, " Calculated Spontaneity." He tries to show how to be natural in written speech. He does not draw attention to the fact that he repeats everything at least three times. Is this repetition endurable in ordinary conversation ? It is prevalent, of course. But we are on a high plane here : this is an Oxford Book, and on this occasion one doubts the value of Mr. Hilton's inclusion. Nevertheless, it does raise the whole difficulty, which anyone who writes dialogue knows only too well—that written dialogue is not like the real thing, and can never be.
Yet there are moments, dramatic, of course, when the words ring out and we cannot help but say, " This then is how he spoke." In " Charles I Faces His Accusers " we have this recorded as having been said three hundred years ago : " Re- member I am your King, your lawful King, and what sins you bring upon your heads, and the judgment of God upon this land—think well upon it—I say think well upon it before you go further from one sin to a greater." Even then a doubt creeps in. At that time this text made politics and must have surely been edited by those in power. Are they then the King's own words ? At another trial, and again the man is " on his life," poor Colonel Turner is interrupted by his wife while he gives his vital evidence. (He was hanged within the week, with Pepys watching.) Turner: " My wife came to me paiblicly7I did not whisper with her— " Mrs. Turner: " Nay, look you, husband— "
*Oxford University Press. 18s.
Turner : "Prythee, Mall, sit down : you see, my Lord, my wife will interrupt me with nonsense. Prythee, sit thee down quickly, and do not put me out : I cannot hold women's tongues, nor your Lordship neither."
Lord Chief Justice Bridgman : " This is not a May-game." Poignant enough, this, in all truth, with a real ring of speech, but how true we shall never know.
• Another gem is Pope's description of Jonathan Swift : " Dr. Swift has an odd blunt way that is mistaken by strangers for ill-nature." With a friend he calls on Swift, who rather begrudgingly offers them food and then drink. When both decline, Pope describes the following : Swift : " But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought to have done, you must have drank with me. A bottle of wine—two shillings. Two and two is four, and one is five : just two and sixpence a piece.". (He is referring to the cost of two lobsters and two sixpenny tarts.) " There, Pope, there's- half a crown for you, and there's another for you, sir : for I won't save anything by you, I am determined." Here one wonders whether the artist in Pope has not im- proved on Swift, so taut and sharp are the sentences. '
Perhaps the best way with this difficulty, as to whether The Oxford Book of English Talk really represents talk, is to turn to the few selections included which span our own lives. There is an enchanting and beautifully written broadcast, " Holiday at the Seaside," by a Mrs. Lilian Balch. It is conversational, certainly, although done with extreme skill, describing exactly what the title implies, but it is a monologue.. Now monologue is also always with us, of course, but surely only as a small part of talk, its poor relation, so to speak.
We have also a speech by Mr. John Betjeman in defence of the threatened village of Letcombe Bassett. It is a fine thing, but it is not, to those who have the privilege of knowing him, at all the way he talks ordinarily. It is the public occasion we are given, when he is speaking to a cause. Possibly the nearest to what Mr. Sutherland calls " linguistic truth " is the piece with the frightful title of " Wizard Prang," another broad- cast for which, no doubt, the pilot did not choose the name. But this is in just one of the Service lingoes evolved by one more war and which by now is already dated. Mr. Sutherland then includes a piece of Hansard of the time after Munich. The several speeches given are all in that unique and horrible jargon of the House of Commons for which it is impossible to find reason or excuse, or its like outside that institution.
Next we have an extract from Al Coppard's " Abel Staple Disapproved," 1933. This is accurate dialogue which rings true, but is it like talk, is it the way people actually spike ? You must read it and judge for yourselves.
Talk, I suppose, is an exchange between two or more people watching the expression on each other's faces, hearing the tone of voice. Perhaps there is, as Mr. Hilton practised, endless repetition. Certainly there are pauses, hesitations, and changes of direction which will never do in print. And this, of course, we cannot expect Mr. Sutherland to give us. Nor Could he very well call his work " The Oxford Book of Recorded Conversation " or " Printed Talk" or what have, you. What he has done, and that it is learned as well as scholarly goes without saying, is to raise a monument to that great source of our language as we know it, the spoken word, out of which, as the language changes from generation to generation the written word springs; new turns of phrase as they come up in speech, being the tools of the poet and the novelist. And if this book will inspire, as it deserves, at least qne young man to write out of his birthright, this most miraculous of all languages open to writers, then Mr. Suther- land's labours will not have been in vain.
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