WANT TO KNOW US?
WATCH OUR LIPS
Paul Johnson argues that the key to the English is their words
WE English are a mixed breed, difficult to categorise physically or in most other ways. We are offshore islanders, conditioned by our insularity but also by our proximity to the Continental mass. The Channel, 21 miles at its narrowest, was insufficient to deter waves of bronze- and iron-age set- tlers from coming here. But it often seems wider than the Atlantic. The English are certainly more of a cultural than a racial phenomenon. We are best defined by our language. It is now by far the most power- ful cultural force in the world. The British Empire rose, for reasons no historian has satisfactorily analysed, and then dispersed itself, equally mysteriously. But the English language goes marching on, inexorably, penetrating every vocal nook and cranny in the planet.
English is a thing of beauty and one can spend a lifetime exploring its nuances and overtones. Indeed that is precisely what a writer does. Evelyn Waugh delighted in learning new words or studying the precise meaning of old ones. Kingsley Amis told me he wore out a new dictionary every three years. My day is made when a term I did not know swims fortuitously into my net, as it did yesterday: Tunctation', as in the Punctation of Ems (1786), meaning a contract or agreement. I do not expect to use it often, but you never know. Gordon Brown's latest Budget shows evidence of `a hidden punctation with the Left'. Sitting in my library, I survey the 20 gleaming vol- umes of the OED with the same propri- etorial affection Bonaparte bestowed on his Old Guard, and I ask them, `What secrets of linguistic glory will you reveal to me next?' But if one of the strengths of English is its multiplicity of similar words, each nonetheless conveying a distinctive meaning, another is its extraordinary con- cision, which makes it the most efficient language the world has known. One word will often serve many purposes and, with the dimension of speech added, many more. The word `really' can mean a dozen different things, depending on the way you say it.
English is spreading all over the world, now faster than ever, not least because it is acquisitive as well as adhesive. It sucks the nutritious marrow from the bones of other languages, not always obvious ones. Hob- son-Jobson, the Anglo-Indian dictionary, reveals the sheer quantity and importance of our borrowings from the Indian subcon- tinent. Wherever the redcoat or the Tommy trod — in Egypt, for example he drew to himself useful linguistic detri- tus, like a magnet picking up iron filings. Daughter-languages, far from drifting apart, brought us grandchildren. Through American, English acquired a new clutch of French terms, hundreds of key nouns from the Spanish, marvellous Indian expressions, and useful Dutch, German and Yiddish words. From South Africa we got an injection of Boer and Bantu, while Australasia yielded a rich harvest of Poly- nesian, Maori and Aborigine.
These tentacles across the globe were not just receptive but inventive too. The Dictionary of Australian Slang is a mine (and a minefield), and American slang is even more inventive. The rough-and-ready ways of the Americans with English etymo- logical rules — which used to make Browning and Tennyson wince — have turned American-English into a matchless instrument for giving instant voice to dumb products and processes churned out daily by the sciences and technology. Ger- man, French, Spanish come puffing and panting behind, but always too late: the slots are filled, the new verbal coins are already minted and go spinning across the world for the young to clutch and use. Thus English expands, pan passu, with modernity itself. Whether others like it or not, English is becoming the global demot- ic, the tongue in which practical matters of commerce and communication are trans- acted. Its one-time rivals are slowly acquir- ing the status of the hieratic. In northern Europe it is now increasingly common for large firms to conduct their board meet- ings in English. It saves so much time. It avoids so many misunderstandings.
Yet it would be wrong to see English as a mere function of globalisation. It remains much more than that. It is inti- mately linked, at every level of expression, with the creation of English literature its spread and perpetuation. And our liter- ature, in its variety, duration and immensity, is second only to our language as our donation to the world. Nothing brings us closer to Englishness. Dr John- son rightly observed, 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.' When statesmen, kings and conquerors grow dusty and are forgotten, the poet still leaps from the page and the memory. You cannot define the English or Englishness, but if you want to know them, to develop a feel for what being English is like, you must read them. And in particular you must read the four transcendental geniuses of the English canon — Chaucer, Shake- speare, Dickens and Kipling.
I call a writer a genius when there is something mysterious and inexplicable about their achievement. Thus, we can work out all kinds of reasons why Geoffrey Chaucer reached so high — his family con- nections with the wine trade, for example, always a means for an Englishman to acquire wide horizons, Ruskin being another outstanding example. Then there were Chaucer's court and diplomatic duties, his official posts in the Customs and the King's Works, a lifetime spent, when not writing, in travelling and meeting a variety of people. But when all is said, there remains an unexplained gap between this man of his times, richly experienced to be sure, but earthy enough to all outward signs, and the most readable work of the entire Middle Ages — indeed the only still readable work in many ways — with its cast of characters who dance vividly before us 600 years after he created them. Only genius could bridge this gap.
Again, there is Shakespeare: Not a well- educated man, as his academic peers, such as Ben Jonson, were quick to point out. Some said he had been a butcher's lad. He had certainly knocked about the world, but we know little of what he actually did, other than act. Maybe he was more of a Jingle, an opportunistic strolling player, than we care to admit. What he did have was the same acquisitive, adhesive charac- ter as the English language itself. He had it to the point of genius. Whatever he came across, in law and politics, in military affairs, in religion and philosophy, in sex and tavern brawls, in history and poetry, and in the darker wells of the human spirit where all sensitive men find themselves occasionally, he put it to use in ways which had never been done before. And in the process he transformed the language too, using it with all the volumes and refine- ments of a vast orchestra, extracting from it sounds never yet heard, and expressing a range of sentiments which still reach right to our heartstrings as though he had just plucked them this instant. How to explain such a phenomenon? Here was, to all appearances, a rather ordinary man from an unpromising background, transformed by the use and mastery of the language into genius incarnate, walking the world like Apollo himself. It is another case of the inexplicable.
Dickens, too, is a mystery writer. Where- as with Jane Austen and George Eliot we can trace all the stages whereby these two superbly gifted and single-minded women made themselves mistresses of their cho- sen craft, worked and polished, reworked and heightened their skills until all shone with exactly controlled brilliance, with Dickens there is none of this sure and traceable ascent. There is nothing except a deprived childhood, poverty, shame and hardship. Then, suddenly, there is a clap of thunder, a tremendous puff of smoke, the flash of mirrors and bright, dazzling lights — and Dickens is there, fully-fashioned, performing furiously, amazing the world. And he goes on like this, creating a uni- verse of his own, never pausing for breath, raising laughs, making the nations cry, fill- ing hearts with pity and dread, with sorrow and gratitude, year after year, decade after decade until, equally suddenly, he collapses. There is another puff of smoke, and his chair is empty. It is genius again, and we are no wiser at the end than we were at the beginning.
If anything, Kipling is an even more remarkable case, for his childhood was also deprived and stunted, but in a dismal, middle-class, boarding-school way, full of inhibitions and unspoken secrets. Then, back to India. And immediately this restricted, emotionally manacled school- boy, with his thick glasses and ridiculous moustache, begins to write tales which show he sees deeply into the most secret feelings of mature men and women. Here is a boy-man who, seizing avidly on the vast resources of the English language, makes the Indians speak in tones they never used before, to express their most profound thoughts. He gives a voice to the animals, big and small, to rivers and jun- gles, to ships and machines and tempests. He is a pantheist who makes every being and thing come to vigorous life and tell its story. How did it happen? What is the explanation? There is none. It is the genius of the English language at work again.
Hence I think the answer to the ques- tion 'What are the English? What is Englishness?' is to be found in the tongue, written and spoken — and thought. Geog- raphy and history have made us word- spinners. Within us, however reserved and even taciturn we may appear to be, there are powerful forces of imagination which our superb language releases and sets dancing across the continents and the oceans. I am inclined to say, 'If you want to know us, watch our lips.' Watch our words, anyway.
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