Mmd your language
THE Sherlock Holmes stories have an abiding fascination, despite the cliché and artificiality of their language and plots; perhaps because of them. Colonel Openshaw, upon opening a letter with a Pondicherry postmark and finding therein five orange pips, exclaims: 'My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me.' Have you ever heard anybody speak in such language on such an occa- sion?
Yet it came as something of a surprise when I was listening to a wireless dramatisation of one of Conan Doyle's tales to hear a character referred to as `the Reverend Wilson' and another as `Justice Trevor'. It reminded me of 'the Reverend Green' in Cluedo. No educat- ed Englishman until the past few years would refer to a clergyman except as the Reverend Charles Green, or the Rev- erend Mr Green, or Dr Green, or what- ever; never as the Reverend Green.
I rushed to my copy of The Gloria Scott. It was as I thought. Conan Doyle calls the clergyman simply `Wilson'; Trevor, who is a magistrate, is also referred to merely by his surname. Per- haps the dramatiser, who called him `Justice', is an American. But it ain't English.
Dot Wordsworth
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