dictionaries inform us that "slang is a conversational irregularity of a
more or less vulgar type;" but that is not all. The prim definition
refers merely to words, but I am rather more interested in considering
the mental attitude which is indicated by the distortion and loose
employment of words, and by the fresh coinages which seem to spring up
every hour. I know of no age or nation that has been without its slang,
and the study is amongst the most curious that a scholar can take up;
but our own age, after all, must be reckoned as the palmy time of slang,
for we have gone beyond mere words, and our vulgarizations of language
are significant of degradation of soul. The Romans of the decadence had
a hideous cant language which fairly matched the grossness of the
people, and the Gauls, with their descendants, fairly matched the old
conquerors. The frightful old Paris of Francois Villon, with all its
bleak show of famine and death, had its constant changes of slang.
"_Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant,"_ says the burglar-poet, and he
means that the old buffoon is tiresome; the young man with the newest
phases of city slang at his tongue's end is most acceptable in merry
company. Very few people can read Villon's longer poems at all, for they
are almost entirely written in cant language, and the glossary must be
in constant requisition. The rascal is a really great writer in his
abominable way, but his dialect was that of the lowest resorts, and he
lets us see that the copious _argot_ which now puzzles the stranger by
its kaleidoscopic changes was just as vivid and changeable in the
miserable days of the eleventh Louis. In the Paris of our day the slang
varies from hour to hour; every one seems able to follow it, and no one
knows who invents the constant new changes. The slang of the
boarding-house in Balzac's "Pere Goriot" is quite different from that of
the novels done by the Goncourt brothers; and, though I have not yet
mustered courage to finish one of M. Zola's outrages, I can see that the
vulgarisms which he has learned are not at all like any that have been
used in bygone days. The corruption of Paris seems to breed verbal
distortions rather freely, and the ordinary babble of the city workman
is as hard to any Englishman as are the colloquialisms of Burns to the
average Cockney.
In England our slang has undergone one transformation after another ever
since the time of Chaucer. Shakespeare certainly gives us plenty; then
we have the slang of the Great War, and then the unutterable horrors of
the Restoration--even the highly proper Mr. Joseph Addison does not
disdain to talk of an "old put," and his wags are given to "smoking"
strangers. The eighteenth century--the century of the gallows--gave us a
whole crop of queer terms which were first used in thieves' cellars, and
gradually filtered from the racecourse and the cockpit till they took
their place in the vulgar tongue. The sweet idyll of "Life in London" is
a perfect garden of slang; Tom the Corinthian and Bob Logic lard their
phrases with the idiom of the prize-ring, and the author obligingly
italicises the knowing words so that one has no chance of missing them.
But nowadays we have passed beyond all that, and every social clique,
every school of art and literature, every trade--nay, almost every
religion--has its peculiar slang; and the results as regards morals,
manners, and even conduct in general are too remarkable to be passed
over by any one who desires to understand the complex society of our
era. The mere patter of thieves or racing-men--the terms are nearly
synonymous--counts for nothing. Those who know the byways of life know
that there are two kinds of dark language used by our nomad classes and
by our human predatory animals. A London thief can talk a dialect which
no outsider can possibly understand; for, by common agreement, arbitrary
names are applied to every object which the robbers at any time handle,
and to every sort of underhand business which they transact. But this
gibberish is not exactly an outcome of any moral obliquity; it is
employed as a means of securing safety. The gipsy cant is the remnant of
a pure and ancient language; we all occasionally use terms taken from
this remarkable tongue, and, when we speak of a "cad," or "making a
mull," or "bosh," or "shindy," or "cadger" or "bamboozling," or "mug,"
or "duffer," or "tool," or "queer," or "maunder," or "loafer," or
"bung," we are using pure gipsy. No distinct mental process, no process
of corruption, is made manifest by the use of these terms; we simply
have picked them up unconsciously, and we continue to utter them in the
course of familiar conversation.
I am concerned with a degradation of language which is of an importance
far beyond the trifling corruption caused by the introduction of terms
from the gipsy's caravan, the betting ring, or the thieves' kitchen; one
cannot help being made angry and sad by observing a tendency to belittle
all things that are great, to mock all earnestness, to vulgarize all
beauty. There is not a quarter where the subtle taint has not crept in,
and under its malign influence poetry has all but expired, good
conversation has utterly ceased to exist, art is no longer serious, and
the intercourse of men is not straightforward. The Englishman will
always be emotional in spite of the rigid reserve which he imposes upon
himself; he is an enthusiast, and he does truly love earnestness,
veracity, and healthy vigour. Take him away from a corrupt and petty
society and give him free scope, and he at once lets fall the film of
shams from off him like a cast garment, and comes out as a reality. Shut
the same Englishman up in an artificial, frivolous, unreal society, and
he at once becomes afraid of himself; he fears to exhibit enthusiasm
about anything, and he hides his genuine nature behind a cloud of slang.
He belittles everything he touches, he is afraid to utter a word from
his inner heart, and his talk becomes a mere dropping shower of verbal
counters which ring hollow. The superlative degree is abhorrent to him
unless he can misuse it for comic purposes; and, like the ridiculous
dummy lord in "Nicholas Nickleby," he is quite capable of calling
Shakespeare a "very clayver man." I have heard of the attitude taken by
two flowers of our society in presence of Joachim. Think of it! The
unmatched violinist had achieved one of those triumphs which seem to
permeate the innermost being of a worthy listener; the soul is
entranced, and the magician takes us into a fair world where there is
nothing but loveliness and exalted feeling. "Vewy good fellow, that
fiddle fellow," observed the British aristocrat. "Ya-as," answered his
faithful friend. Let any man who is given to speaking words with a view
of presenting the truth begin to speak in our faint, super-refined,
orthodox society; he will be looked at as if he were some queer object
brought from a museum of curiosities and pulled out for exhibition. The
shallowest and most impudent being that ever talked fooleries will
assume superior airs and treat the man of intellect as an amusing but
inferior creature. More than that--earnestness and reality are classed
together under the head of "bad form," the vital word grates on the
emasculate brain of the society man, and he compensates himself for his
inward consciousness of inferiority by assuming easy airs of insolence.
A very brilliant man was once talking in a company which included
several of the superfine division; he was witty, vivid, genial, full of
knowledge and tact; but he had one dreadful habit--he always said what
he thought. The brilliant man left the company, and one sham-languid
person said to a sham-aristocratic person, "Who is that?" "Ah, he's a
species of over-educated savage!" Now the gentleman who propounded this
pleasant piece of criticism was, according to trustworthy history, the
meanest, most useless, and most despicable man of his set; yet he could
venture to assume haughty airs towards a man whose shoes he was not fit
to black, and he could assume those airs on the strength of his slangy
impassivity--his "good form." When we remember that this same fictitious
indifference characterized the typical _grand seigneur_ of old France,
and when we also remember that indifference may be rapidly transformed
into insolence, and insolence into cruelty, we may well look grave at
the symptoms which we can watch around us. The dreary _ennui_ of the
heart, _ennui_ that revolts at truth, that is nauseated by earnestness,
expresses itself in what we call slang, and slang is the sign of mental
disease.
I have no fault to find with the broad, racy, slap-dash language of the
American frontier, with its picturesque perversions and its droll
exaggeration. The inspired person who chose to call a coffin an
"eternity box" and whisky "blue ruin" was too innocent to sneer. The
slang of Mark Twain's Mr. Scott when he goes to make arrangements for
the funeral of the lamented Buck Fanshawe is excruciatingly funny and
totally inoffensive. Then the story of Jim Baker and the jays in "A
Tramp Abroad" is told almost entirely in frontier slang, yet it is one
of the most exquisite, tender, lovable pieces of work ever set down in
our tongue. The grace and fun of the story, the odd effects produced by
bad grammar, the gentle humour, all combine to make this decidedly
slangy chapter a literary masterpiece. A miner or rancheman will talk to
you for an hour and delight you, because his slang somehow fits his
peculiar thought accurately; an English sailor will tell a story, and he
will use one slang word in every three that come out of his mouth, yet
he is delightful, for the simple reason that his distorted dialect
enables him to express and not to suppress truth. But the poison that
has crept through the minds of our finer folk paralyses their utterance
so far as truth is concerned; and society may be fairly caricatured by a
figure of the Father of Lies blinking through an immense eyeglass upon
God's universe.
Mr. George Meredith, with his usual magic insight, saw long ago whither
our over-refined gentry were tending; and in one of his finest books he
shows how a little dexterous slang may dwarf a noble deed. Nevil
Beauchamp was under a tremendous fire with his men: he wanted to carry a
wounded soldier out of action, but the soldier wished his adored officer
to be saved. At the finish the two men arrived safely in their own lines
amid the cheers of English, French, and even of the Russian enemy. This
is how the votary of slang transfigures the episode; he wishes to make a
little fun out of the hero, and he manages it by employing the tongue
which it is good form to use. "A long-shanked trooper bearing the name
of John Thomas Drew was crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out
pops old Nevil, tries to get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil
insists that it's exactly one of the cases that ought to be, and they
remain arguing about it like a pair of nine-pins while the Moscovites
are at work with the bowls. Very well. Let me tell you my story. It's
perfectly true, I give you my word. So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and
Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as at school. Then Drew offers a
compromise. He would much rather have crawled on, you know, and allowed
the shot to pass over his head; but he's a Briton--old Nevil's the same;
but old Nevil's peculiarity is that, as you are aware, he hates a
compromise--won't have it--_retro Sathanas!_--and Drew's proposal to
take his arm instead of being carried pick-a-or piggy-back--I am
ignorant how Nevil spells it--disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to
stop where they are, like the cocoanut and pincushion of our friends
the gipsies on the downs; so they take arms and commence the journey
home, resembling the best friends on the evening of a holiday in our
native clime--two steps to the right, half a dozen to the left, &c. They
were knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery. 'Confound it!'
cries Nevil. 'It's because I consented to a compromise!'"
Most people know that this passage refers to Rear-Admiral Maxse, yet,
well as we may know our man, we have him presented like an awkward,
silly, comic puppet from a show. The professor of slang could degrade
the conduct of the soldiers on board the _Birkenhead_; he could make the
choruses from _Samson Agonistes_ seem like the Cockney puerilities of a
comic news-sheet. It is this high-sniffing, supercilious slang that I
attack, for I can see that it is the impudent language of a people to
whom nothing is great, nothing beautiful, nothing pure, and nothing
worthy of faith.
The slang of the "London season" is terrible and painful. A gloriously
beautiful lady is a "rather good-looking woman--looks fairly well
to-night;" a great entertainment is a "function;" a splendid ball is a
"nice little dance;" high-bred, refined, and exclusive ladies and
gentlemen are "smart people;" a tasteful dress is a "swagger frock;" a
new craze is "the swagger thing to do." Imbecile, useless, contemptible
beings, male and female, use all these verbal monstrosities under the
impression that they make themselves look distinguished. A
microcephalous youth whose chief intellectual relaxation consists in
sucking the head of a stick thinks that his conversational style is
brilliant when he calls a man a "Johnnie," a battle "a blooming slog,"
his lodgings his "show," a hero "a game sort of a chappie," and so on.
Girls catch the infection of slang; and thus, while sweet young ladies
are leading beautiful lives at Girton and Newnham, their sisters of
society are learning to use a language which is a frail copy of the
robust language of the drinking-bar and the racecourse. Under this
blight lofty thought perishes, noble language also dies away, real wit
is cankered and withered into a mere ghastly crackle of wordplay, humour
is regarded as the sign of the savage, and generous emotion, manly love,
womanly tenderness are reckoned as the folly of people whom the smart
young lady of the period would describe as "Jugginses."
As to the slang of the juniors of the middle class, it is well-nigh past
description and past bearing. The dog-collared, tight-coated, horsey
youth learns all the cant phrases from cheap sporting prints, and he has
an idea that to call a man a "bally bounder" is quite a ducal thing to
do. His hideous cackle sounds in railway-carriages, or on breezy piers
by the pure sea, or in suburban roads. From the time when he gabbles
over his game of Nap in the train until his last villainous howl
pollutes the night, he lives, moves, and has his being in slang; and he
is incapable of understanding truth, beauty, grandeur, or refinement. He
is apt to label any one who does not wear a dog-collar and stableman's
trousers as a cad; but, ah, what a cad he himself is! In what a vast
profound gulf of vulgarity his being wallows; and his tongue, his slang,
is enough to make the spirits of the pure and just return to earth and
smite him! Better by far the cunning gipsy with his glib chatter, the
rough tramp with his incoherent hoarseness! All who wish to save our
grand language from deterioration, all who wish to retain some savour of
sincerity and manhood among us, should set themselves resolutely to talk
on all occasions, great or trivial, in simple, direct, refined English.
There is no need to be bookish; there is much need for being natural and
sincere--and nature and sincerity are assassinated by slang.
_September, 1888._
_PETS._
That enterprising savage who first domesticated the pig has a good deal
to answer for. I do not say that the moral training of the pig was a
distinct evil, for it undoubtedly saved many aged and respectable
persons from serious inconvenience. The more practical members of the
primitive tribes were wont to club the patriarchs whom they regarded as
having lived long enough; and an exaggerated spirit of economy led the
sons of the forest to eat their venerable relatives. The domestication
of the noble animal which is the symbol of Irish prosperity caused a
remarkable change in primitive public opinion. The gratified savage,
conscious of possessing pigs, no longer cast the anxious eye of the
epicure upon his grandmother. Thus a disagreeable habit and a
disagreeable tradition were abolished, and one more step was made in the
direction of universal kindliness. But, while we are in some measure
grateful to the first pig-tamer, we do not feel quite so sure about the
first person who inveigled the cat into captivity. Mark that I do not
speak of the "slavery" of the cat--for who ever knew a cat to do
anything against its will? If you whistle for a dog, he comes with
servile gestures, and almost overdoes his obedience; but, if a cat has
got into a comfortable place, you may whistle for that cat until you are
spent, and it will go on regarding you with a lordly blink of
independence. No; decidedly the cat is not a slave. Of course I must be
logical, and therefore I allow, under reasonable reservations, that a
boot-jack, used as a projectile, will make a cat stir; and I have known
a large garden-syringe cause a most picturesque exodus in the case of
some eloquent and thoughtful cats that were holding a conference in a
garden at midnight. Still I must carefully point out the fact that the
boot-jack will not induce the cat to travel in any given direction for
your convenience; you throw the missile, and you must wait in suspense
until you know whether your cat will vanish with a wild plunge through
the roof of your conservatory or bound with unwonted smartness into your
favourite William pear tree. The syringe is scarcely more trustworthy in
its action than the boot-jack; the parting remarks of six drenched cats
are spirited and harmonious; but the animals depart to different
quarters of the universe, and your hydraulic measure, so far from
bringing order out of chaos, merely evokes a wailing chaos out of
comparative order. These discursive observations aim at showing that a
cat has a haughty spirit of independence which centuries of partial
submission to the suzerainty of man have not eradicated. I do not want
to censure the ancient personage who made friends with the creature
which is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever to many estimable
people--I reserve my judgment. Some otherwise calm and moral men regard
the cat in such a light that they would go and jump on the tomb of the
primeval tamer; others would erect monuments to him; so perhaps it is
better that we do not know whose memory we should revere--or
anathematise--the processes are reversible, according to our
dispositions. Man is the paragon of animals; the cat is the paradox of
animals. You cannot reason about the creature; you can only make sure
that it has every quality likely to secure success in the struggle for
existence; and it is well to be careful how you state your opinions in
promiscuous company, for the fanatic cat-lover is only a little less
wildly ferocious than the fanatical cat-hater.
Cats and pigs appear to have been the first creatures to earn the
protective affection of man; but, ah, what a cohort of brutes and birds
have followed! The dog is an excellent, noble, lovable animal; but the
pet-dog! Alas! I seem to hear one vast sigh of genuine anguish as this
Essay travels round the earth from China to Peru. I can understand the
artfulness of that wily savage who first persuaded the wolf-like animal
of the Asiatic plains to help him in the chase; I understand the
statesmanship of the Thibetan shepherd who first made a wolf turn
traitor to the lupine race. But who first invented the pet-dog? This
impassioned question I ask with thoughts that are a very great deal too
deep for tears. Consider what the existence of the pet-dog means. You
visit an estimable lady, and you are greeted, almost in the hall, by a
poodle, who waltzes around your legs and makes an oration like an
obstructionist when the Irish Estimates are before the House. You feel
that you are pale, but you summon up all your reserves of base hypocrisy
and remark, "Poor fellow! Poo-poo-poo-ole fellow!" You really mean, "I
should like to tomahawk you, and scalp you afterwards!"--but this
sentiment you ignobly retain in your own bosom. You lift one leg in an
apologetic way, and poodle instantly dashes at you with all the
vehemence of a charge of his compatriots the Cuirassiers. You shut your
eyes and wait for the shedding of blood; but the torturer has all the
malignant subtlety of an Apache Indian, and he tantalizes you. Presently
the lady of the house appears, and, finding that you are beleaguered by
an ubiquitous foe, she says sweetly, "Pray do not mind Moumou; his fun
gets the better of him. Go away, naughty Moumou! Did Mr. Blank frighten
him then--the darling?" Fun! A pleasing sort of fun! If the rescuer had
seen that dog's sanguinary rushes, she would not talk about fun. When
you reach the drawing-room, there is a pug seated on an ottoman. He
looks like a peculiarly truculent bull-dog that has been brought up on a
lowering diet of gin-and-water, and you gain an exaggerated idea of his
savagery as he uplifts his sooty muzzle. He barks with indignation, as
if he thought you had come for his mistress's will, and intended to cut
him off with a Spratt's biscuit. Of course he comes to smell round your
ankles, and equally of course you put on a sickly smile, and take up an
attitude as though you had sat down on the wrong side of a harrow. Your
conversation is strained and feeble; you fail to demonstrate your
affection; and, when a fussy King Charles comes up and fairly shrieks
injurious remarks at you, the sense of humiliation and desertion is too
severe, and you depart. Of course your hostess never attempts to control
her satellites--they are quiet with her; and, even if one of them
sampled the leg of a guest with a view to further business, she would be
secretly pleased at such a proof of exclusive affection. We suppose that
people must have something to be fond of; but why should any one be
fond of a pug that is too unwieldy to move faster than a hedgehog? His
face is, to say the least, not celestial--whatever his nose may be; he
cannot catch a rat; he cannot swim; he cannot retrieve; he can do
nothing, and his insolence to strangers eclipses the best performances
of the finest and tallest Belgravian flunkeys. He is alive, and in his
youth he may doubtless have been comic and engaging; but in his obese,
waddling, ill-conditioned old age he is such an atrocity that one wishes
a wandering Chinaman might pick him up and use him instantly after the
sensible thrifty fashion of the great nation.
I love the St. Bernard; he is a noble creature, and his beautiful
life-saving instinct is such that I have seen a huge member of the breed
jump off a high bridge to save a puppy which he considered to be
drowning. The St. Bernard will allow a little child to lead him and to
smite him on the nose without his uttering so much as a whine by way of
remonstrance. If another dog attacks him, he will not retaliate by
biting--that would be undignified, and like a mere bull-dog; he lies
down on his antagonist and waits a little; then that other dog gets up
when it has recovered breath, and, after thinking the matter over, it
concludes that it must have attacked a sort of hairy traction-engine.
All these traits of the St. Bernard are very sweet and engaging, and I
must, moreover, congratulate him on his scientific method of treating
burglars; but I do object with all the pathos at my disposal to the St.
Bernard considered as a pet. His master will bring him into rooms. Now,
when he is bounding about on glaciers, or infringing the Licensing Act
by giving travellers brandy without scrutinizing their return-tickets,
or acting as pony for frozen little boys, or doing duty as special
constable when burglars pay an evening call, he is admirable; but, when
he enters a room, he has all the general effects of an earthquake
without any picturesque accessories. His beauty is of course praised,
and, like any other big lumbering male, he is flattered; his vast tail
makes a sweep like the blade of a screw-propeller, and away goes a vase.
A maid brings in tea, and the St. Bernard is pleased to approve the
expression of Mary's countenance; with one colossal spring he places his
paws on her shoulders, and she has visions of immediate execution. Not
being equal to the part of an early martyr, she observes, "Ow!" The St.
Bernard regards this brief statement as a compliment, and, in an ecstasy
of self-approval, he sends poor Mary staggering. Of course, when he is
sent out, after causing this little excitement, he proceeds to eat
anything that happens to be handy; and, as the cook does not wish to be
eaten herself, she bears her bitter wrong in silence, only hoping that
the two pounds of butter which the animal took as dessert may make him
excessively unwell.