P ERHAPS nothing in post 7 War London is more notice- able among
the young generation than the disap- pearance of the Cockney accent, with its ungracious vowels and misplaced aspirate. Cockney is the exaggera- tion of a dialect still to be heard in Essex, the county that trenches on the east of London City, and, we can conjure up in our imagination our old friend Pepys, over his dish of tea under the trees of Mile-End, being extremely diverted by the dialect of the characters in the perform- ance on the previous evening of The Merry Devil of Edmonton ; or we can get a distant echo of Essex lads infecting their companion apprentices with the comi- calities of their phrasing.
Astonishing, too, to meet in the remoter parishes of the Eastern counties another dialect so surprising in its nasal and " Yankee " intonation that we are puzzled for the explanation until we remember that it was from this stock sprang many of the sturdy settlers of New England. Indeed, all over the British Isles local accents have resisted to the last every attempt at unification.
Scots still obstinately throw their contracted vowels and constricted consonants into the witches' cauldron of Highland and Lowland languages : Irishmen still determinedly fight the battle of North and South with their variations on the national chant and that vibration of the letter " r " that bears no relation to its context : Welshmen still give an excellent imitation of the Teufon with interchanging " b " and " p " and hissing sibilant : Devonians still give encouragement to their horses in a cadence : Lancastrians still conduct their business in rhythm : Yorkshiremen still fling burrs over their por- tentous utterances : but in the scholastic institutions of the kingdom there is everywhere a determined effort to establish a uniformity of pronunciation.
• This is especially noticeable in the young servants of to-day, with their correct usage of the aspirate and vowels. True, this nicety of speech is sometimes reserved only for their employers, as may be overheard in the conversation that floats up the stairs from time to time ; but I am none the less grateful at their solicitude for my sensitive attitude towards. the mother tongue. I have noticed, however, that .in certain quarters exception has been taken to what Americans very flatteringly call " the English accent," and I fail to understand why there are critical spirits who use the expression " Oxford accent " as a term of opprobrium. This carping at the decencies of pronunciation is difficult to analyse, but it would appear to have its origin in a subtle sus- picion that a convention of voice production may cloak some prejudice in favour of gentility. Yet such a sus picion is as prejudiced as any _ die-hard conventionality and is as much a form of inverted snobbism as the refusal of the Communist to stand at attention when the hymn, " God Save the King" is played or to doff his hat to the memory of the men who fell in defence of their country because for him God, King and Country do not exist.
The discussion rages round the closed vowel and the silent letter " r " on the London stage, and as an actress I may perhaps be permitted to -go into the technicalities of both.. All teachers of public speaking will, I feel sure, appreciate the explanation that in hurling the voice over an area which comprises tier upon tier of galleries a vowel. needs a more careful delivery than in ordinary conver- sation. Thus, the simple phrase, " I don't,'.' spoken quite openly as is natural in daily life, assuming the sound of: " A doant " the 'time it arrives at the first circle, may-give the effect of the purest cockney " Ah dahnt " by the time it reaches the gallery ; and in preparing speakers for the platform it is well to warn them against this trap, seeing that most well-educated people have a careless way of taking enunciation for granted. The closed vowel ,has thus nothing to do with an affectation of culture or class : for the trajectory power of sound is as highly technical as the muzzle velocity of a weapon.
The " r," when found in such words as " hard-hearted," " clerk," " Derby," has been introduced in the gradual history and development of our language wherever it is wanted to expand the " a " or " e." Vibrate it in such - juxtaposition and we get the troubled Scotch sound " herrrd-herrted," Dirrby," " Clairrk " than which nothing is more inharmonious or heavy, while an " r vibrating at the end of " rapture " becomes " rapturh." To object to a pronunciation on the English stage founded on the evolution of the language is as meaningless as it would be for a barrister to set his face against a law founded on precedent in an English Court.
To be frank I must confess to have observed an increasing inaudibility among young players, but it is only fair to add that this failing is not 'confined to the theatre over here. In recent years at a performance in Paris of La Nuit des Rois (Twelfth Night) I came out before the end. Although the French idiom is familiar enough to me, the producer had set the pace at-such a gallop to conform to the exigencies of the fashion in time- schedules that the play lost its flavour for me. I deter- mined not again to experiment in our classics in the French tongue. On the following evening I visited a theatre for the " Intelligentsia " (that expression that covers a multitude of sins of omission) and could not sit through a play that dealt with present-day politics. Here the convention of the four walls was so strictly adhered to that nothing percolated to the audience of the confi- dential intercourse among the players on the stage. But again—to hold the scales of criticism evenly—the difficulty of hearing may often be due to 'the lack of acoustic facility in the building. The science of acous- tics is confessed by architects to be inexact and untrust- worthy, and as little is really known about it by designers of theatres as is definitely known by aurists about diseases of the ear.
To return to the vexed question of pronunciation. Granted that the actor is given to use more than a little of the scholastic diction of the day, I can have no quarrel with him for assuming a virtue even if he have it not. Better to my ear by far than the idiosyncrasies of some of our most distinguished artists whose, success has silenced criticism. One there is whose accent I could not for a long time " place " until I learned that it was a family trait, perhaps a tribal formation of the palate. Another,- otherwise deservedly popular, has a colonial slouch of the voice that makes fora monotony of characterization. Yet a third was so' rapidly thrust in to the front rank that there was no time for modulation of accent on the short passage from the warehouse to the theatre.
On the other hand, the actress and actor I should single out for complete harmony of diction and vocal production are Miss FaST Compton and Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. The exquisite tones of the first and the full:throated. music of the second fill me with that entire sense of gratification that a wanderer feels on a morning in the deep-breasted coombs of Coleridge'l Quantocks when the murmurs_ of brook, bough and bird make perfect melody.
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