H. W. FOWLER'S ENGLISHMAN
By KENNETH STILES
Tj W. FOWLER'S Dictionary of Modern English Usage .1.1.• is known to all who are interested in the writing of English as a mine of sound and entertaining instruction. It may also be profitably considered as a guide to the national character. From these pages emerges an admirable portrait of an English gentleman. Conservative ; respectful of tradition, yet an individualist ; unassuming, in fact anxious to appear ordinary, to make no pretensions to being better than the next man of his own class ; polite to inferiors, while perfectly conscious of their inferiority ; distrustful of display ; insular.
The conservatism—of the Baldwin, left-centre kind—is often explicitly admitted. The remarks on spelling reform are typical. " English had better be treated in the English way," says Mr. Fowler, " and its spelling not be revolutionized but amended in detail, here a little and there a little as absur- dities become intolerable, till a result is attained that shall neither overburden schoolboys nor stultify intelligence nor outrage the scholar. . . . The well-known type theoretic- radical practical-conservative covers perhaps a majority of our population, and its influence is as sound and sane in the sphere of spelling as elsewhere." And in another article he remarks, " We prefer in England to break with our illogical- ities slowly."
The same conservatism is seen in the reluctance to admit new words and new meanings of old words until they have thoroughly proved themselves. " Sack, dismiss(al), having been on record for a hundred years, may claim promotion from the slang to the colloquial class," he observes cautiously. But he is no hidebound Tory. When a word fills an obvious need and has been made according to precedent he welcomes it. He expresses the hope, for instance, " that burgle may outgrow its present facetiousness and become generally current." But virtual indispensability must be proved. Such comparative innovations as meticulous, banal, sympathetic (in the sense, capable of evoking sympathy, as applied espe- cially to fictional characters), intrigue (in the sense, tease the imagination), fail, in his eyes, to pass this test and are therefore damned. The recent revival of extend for accord (sympathy, a welcome, &c.) is condemned on the ground that in this sense the word " has done its development in America, and come to us full-grown via the newspapers—a bad record." There seems little chance that Mr. Fowler would have approved of the many words that have come to us full-grown from America via the talkies.
The authority to which this respect is paid, it should be observed, is precedent, not any logical system of rules. " Modern precisians " get short shrift. " Illogicalities and inaccuracies of expression," we are .told, " tend to be eliminated as a language grows older and its users attain to a more conscious mastery of their materials. But this tendency has its bad as well as its good effects ; the pedants who try to forward it when the illogicality is only apparent or the inaccuracy of no importance are turning English into an exact science or an automatic machine." Elsewhere there is a reference to " the comfortable old slovenries." In language as in clothes, the Fnglishinan rates ease higher than precision. And his orthodoxy is tempered by a healthy streak of protestantism. " Tenacious clinging to the right of private judgement is an English trait that the mere grammarian may not presume to deprecate," he tells us. And though he goes on, " Spelling, however, is not one of the domains in which private judgement shows to most advantage," he clings tenaciously enough to this right. In this very condemnation he spells judgement with an e that modem usage does not sanction.* The next quality to be noticed is modesty, a positive passion to be thought no better than the next man. " We ordinary mortals " is an expression that sets the note. In moderation this is admirable. " Display of superior know- ledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth," we are told, "—greater, indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners." It follows that " To use French words that your reader or hearer does not know or does not fully understand, to pronounce them as if you were one of the select few to whom French is second nature when he is not one of those few (and it is ten thousand to one that neither you nor he will be so), is inconsiderate and rude." Similarly, " learned persons and possessors of special informa- tion " are warned that they " should not, when they are writing for the general public, presume to improve the accepted vocabulary."
But in Mr. Fowler's practice there are two curious and significant departures from his own gentlemanly code. The clue to one is given by the distinct tones in which he uses the words learned and scholarly. There is always a touch of ridicule in his references to " our learned persons " and " the learned gentry," whereas " scholars " and " the scholarly " are spoken of with respect—" scholars " being those who are learned in Latin and Greek, and " the learned " those who are scholars in any other subject. If the Arabic scholar wants us to use Mohammed rather than Mahomet as nearer to the original, he is accused of bullying ordinary mortals ; but if ordinary mortals speak of electrocution or a duologue, or pronounce laryngitis with a soft g, they are admonished for jarring the ear of the (classical) scholar. This pro-classical bias appears particularly marked when compared with the firmness with which French purists are put in their place. Of such expressions as a l'outrance and nom de plume, which are formed of French elements but appear in no French dictionary, Mr. Fowler favours the common-sense view that " their antecedents do not concern us "—which is reasonable enough. But when it comes to using the word meticulous in a sense entirely different from the Latin meticulosus, down drops the ruler on the sinner's knuckles—which is not so reasonable. One may steal the Frenchman's horse, but one must not look over the classical scholar's hedge.
The second departure from the code is in the matter of pronunciation. " Pronounce as your neighbours do, not better ; for words in general use your neighbour is the general public." This is the theory. The practice suggests that " the general public " is a rough synonym for " the * This judgement must be rhallenged.—ED. The Spectator. readers of The Times." Those wbo pronounce solder as spelt instead of " sadder " put themselves among " the half- educated to whom spelling is a final court of appeal." And those who give medicine three syllables instead of two among " the uneasy half-literates who like to prove that they can spell."
The same gentlemanly prejudice is seen in the advice on the use of Gallicisms (Anglicised borrowings from the French). " What the wise man does is to recognise that the conversa- tional usage of educated people in general, not his predi- lections or a literary fashion of the moment, is the naturalizing authority, and therefore to adopt a Gallicism only when he is of opinion that it is a Gallicism no more." Clearly, if " educated people in general " is " wise man " multiplied, no Gallicism will ever be naturalised, since everyone—every- one, that is, that counts—will be waiting on everyone else. The only hope then for such a term as curtain-raiser (here marked as undesirable) seems to be that some of the educated people may be sufficiently unwise to adopt the usage of the half-educated, and that the contagion may gradually spread among the rest until at last even the wisest of wise men succumbs.
Finally, the English gentleman who is the hidden hero of this hook—as the journalist is the villain—is distrustful of display. " Any attempt to keep te(t)chy alive "—that is, by the side of touchy—" seems due to a liking for curiosities," says Mr. Fowler disapprovingly. Equally disapproving is his reference to " a class of writers whose jaded taste relishes novel or imposing jargon." And in another place he remarks severely, " acquisitiveness and indiscriminate display are pleasing to contemplate only in birds and savages and children."
" To subsist in lasting Monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names and prxdicament of chymera's, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elyziums."
Sir Thomas Browne could hardly be acquitted.
But it is not fair to cast Sir Thomas Browne, or any of his great predecessors, against Mr. Fowler. Our language is older now, and therefore more sober. For the mass of present-day scribblers the gentlemanly ideal, far enough ahead of their practice, is the best. Great writers will continue to go their own way, though even they, alas ! must increasingly conform. In life, Mr. Fowler's Englishman is suffering a decline : his apogee was before the War. In language, he is likely—stript of his mere foibles—to endure.
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