University of Virginia Library

XII.
Does Queen Victoria Speak English?

1. CHAPTER I.

My friend John Common of Roscommon Bay,
middle inlet, third house on the left hand side
going up, where there is good anchorage for a yacht of
several tons burden, propounded the above question one
day, after a yawning stretch over the briny bay in a brisk
breeze, followed by the usual dead calm, when in sight
of home.

“Does Queen Victoria speak English?”

“Surely, John Common of Roscommon, she speaks
her own Queen's English, and that is the purest language
the Court of St. James has heard since the days of Edward
the Confessor.”

John Common of Roscommon lazily puffed his cigar
under the canvass canopy of the summer sail, knocked off
the ashes with the tip of his little finger, drew a fresh
whiff of inspiration from his little brown deity, and said,
in a soft voice of rebuke:

“I know very well that her Majesty is a pure, high-minded,
pious, good woman; but my inquiry related not

to her morals, but to her language; to her vocabulary,
if you will, which is the vocabulary of the realm; the
court language, the language of polite society;—in
fact, that arbitrary style of speaking which is commonly
known as the Queen's English, the mother tongue of
British scholars, statesmen, and of the highly educated
classes of that country; and that is what I meant. I have
a theory of my own upon that subject,” he continued,
“and I merely asked the question of you in order that I
might have an opportunity to answer it myself.”

“A theory! a theory!” cried out several voices from
the cabin of the yacht, where the clinking of ice had been
heard for several minutes, and out came the party. John
Littlejohn, and William Williamson, and Peter Peterson,
and Sandy Sanderson, and several others. They arranged
themselves on the seats under the shadow of the sail,
cigars were handed around; it was a dead calm on the
bay, and so John Common of Roscommon began:

“I have never yet heard an Englishman speak, who
pretended to use the Queen's vernacular, without tracing
in his language a vein of cockney running in it, like a gold
thread through a velvet cloth. And this quite as plain
and distinct among the highly educated, as among the
rest of her Majesty's subjects.

“I maintain that custom does not sanction the misuse
of the eight letter, or as Rare Ben Johnson quotes it,
`the queen mother of consonants,' although it may excuse
it. Certainly, when we consider the matter fairly, we

must conclude that there is as much impropriety in substituting
for the beautiful Greek female name `Helen' the
modern English name of `Ellen,' as there would be in
calling `Emma' `Hemma,' which the Court of St. James
will very speedily do, unless a stop is put to further innovation.

“In citing the name of `Helen,' for so unquestionably
the Hellenes pronounce it, I had a further object in view,
and that was to follow up the stream of cockneyism to its
classical fountain. The Greeks were probably the original
cockneys—at least we can trace the spiritus asper and the
spiritus lenis to them. There might have been still earlier
cockneys, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that
in the confusion of tongues at the destruction of the Tower
of Babel, that the family of H's might have first adopted
the unsettled and wandering mode of life which they have
led elsewhere, and are now leading in the English language;
but so far as that is concerned, it is mere conjecture,
and, therefore, very likely to mislead us in our
course of inquiry after truth.”

Then he continued:

“It is quite easy to follow the current down after striking
the parent spring. In the time of Romulus and Remus,
no doubt the original Latin was a pure sonorous language,
a little barbarous, to be sure, but stuck as full of H's as
the cloves in old-fashioned boiled ham (and a rich dish that
would be now, with the present tax on spices); but as the
Romans waxed opulent, gave up wars and patriotism, and

began to cultivate arts and lassitude, the introduction of
schools prepared the way for the Greek accent; it became
the rage to imitate the style of Athens, as well in its oratory
as in its sculpture and in its architecture; and when
Cicero spoke in the affected and voluptuous diction of
Alcibiades, and Cæsar fell at the foot of a marble image,
then the decadence of Empire began.

“The languages, of which the Latin was the primitive
stem, such as the Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese
and the French, easily adopted the accent of Rome when
Rome was in its decay. These modern languages cast
off their H's, and to this day the French Academy, the
Spanish Academy, the Universities of Padua and of
Parma have never been able to recall them. In the language
of a Spanish lexicographer, `H is not properly
considered as a letter, but as a mere aspiration.' The
Spanish Academy has also banished the hard sound of the
h in chimico, chimera, chamelote, etc., by writing instead,
quimico, quimera, camelote. So that the eighth letter is
torn up root and branch, in the Kingdom of Isabella the
Catholic, and the consequence is that they have a revolution
in Spain every six years. In a short time Cuba will
be on a detached service. It is significant that the natives
of the Siempre Fiel pronounce `Habana' with enough
ejaculation of breath upon the first letter to blow a Spanish
fleet from its anchorage.

“But to return to the Queen's English. Before the
Norman Conquest England had a language of its own—

not Saxon altogether, but English! that great, pithy,
thoughtful, bold, full-fraughted, mother tongue, which
even now constitutes the substance and strength of the
highest powers of intellectual expression; not to be excelled
in any language. I might almost say not to be
matched by any foreign idiom.

“I am speaking now of the pure English, that is
spoken only by educated people in New York city and
its immediate vicinity.

“No person who wishes to attain a lofty style can safely
depart from the good old English idiom. It is to glowing
eloquence and sparkling rhetoric, what a blacksmith's
bellows is to a forge.

“This language, notwithstanding it was so splendidly
celebrated by old Thomas Churchyard, (Tempus Henry
VII), had unfortunately been corrupted long before his
time by the Normans. William Conqueror introduced a
court cockney dialect, which had descended from the
Greek cockneys to the Roman cockneys, from the Roman
cockneys to every branch of the Latin family, and from
the derivatory Norman French it spread through to Whitechapel
and Threadneedle streets, through Windsor and
Buckingham Palaces, and from thence to the hearts and
homes of an imitative people. Thus it was that the family
of H's were banished from their own indigenous soil.

“That is the history of it, or chronicle, or what you
will. All that I wish to say is, that we can trace the
Greek taint down to the present time.

“Now, then, for examples. There is old Geoffrey
Chaucer, (commonly known among the wooden spoons
of Boston as Daniel Chaucer), he is full of defiled English.
In the Nonnes' Priest's Tale, we have `habundant'
for abundant;[1] and for hexameter he uses this outrageous
substitute:

For Dante's `Ugolino' he substitutes `Hugelin.'[3] He
even clips the French itself by striking an h off a French
clock, and naming Horloge, `orloge,'[4] and so through all
his works. Can subserviency to the ruling powers farther
go?

“But every innovation has its reaction. The common
people of England, in those early days, seeing that their
beloved H's were being knocked off the household words,
like the noses from the Elgin marbles, revenged themselves
by clapping an H in front of every naked and exposed
vowel. The consequence is that we have such words as
`hedge' for edge, `hall' for all, `hogshead' for oxhead,
and the like. It would be too much of a task to cite all
the corruptions of a similar nature in the language. The
mere mention of these will suggest swarms of others,
familiar to every reader of ordinary books, to say nothing
of philologists.

“Take the word `hedge' for example. Originally it
meant something. It meant an edge, a boundary of
shrubs, indicating the limit of the field or of the estate.
We have it yet in `box edgings,' which are partitions of
garden beds, and meaning the same thing precisely.
Shakspeare says, `Upon the edge of yonder coppice,'
etc., (Loves Labor Lost, IV, I). Now it has lost its significance
in becoming a h'edge.

“So with the word `hear.' We speak of hearing an
argument. That would be considered as proper Queen's
English, would it not? But suppose any one should say
that he had een `h'eying' a street fight? Would that
not be a painful sound to ears polite? And yet both
words are derived from their original substantives, the
ear and the eye, and the verb to `hear' is as plain a cock-neyism
as the verb to heye, when we come to think of it.
You say an `ear-witness' as well as an `eye-witness,' do
you not? If anybody should say an `hear-witness,'
what would you think of that? And yet it is no greater
an impropriety than `hear' is in the mouths of polite
people. No one can for a moment doubt that according
to the mechanism of the language, `to ear' a person is
quite as proper a form of expression as `to eye a person,'
and that the H in `hear' is an insupportable cockneyism.
So with the superfluous `H' in `hall.' In old mansions
in England, the main apartments, the great audience
chamber, the dining-room, the vast conservatory where
the noble guests sat above the salt, where the pilgrim

warmed his rain-drenched, threadbare garments by the
fire; where the minstrel tuned his wretched harp, and
every condition of life was represented, in this vast vaulted
chamber, the `aula,' the atrium, the all in all of the
manorial and baronial residence, what right had an H to
strike out the significance of the original word? There
is no doubt in this case at all. For the `Manor All,' the
`Town All,' and so on in all the grand old English words,
must be replaced. If you have a little, narrow strait between
your parlor and your side wall, call it an entry, if
you will, but do not call it a h'all

“So with the bird of wisdom, the owl. Everybody
has heard her note who has lived in the country. It is
`how, how, how, how, howl!' From this we get the name
of this fowl of Minerva. The bird of night, in the newborn
nakedness of early English, was undoubtedly the
`Howl.' We find it still in its diminutives, such as
`Howlet.'

In the Scotch vocabularies Houlet is the word, not owl.
And, by the way, none of these French cockneyisms
appear in either the Scottish or Irish dialects. I believe
their idiomatic languages to be purer than the modern
English. Shakspeare does not have any allusion to cock-neyism
in his time, except when he shows his knowledge
of the Greek language in his Athenian play, by putting into
the mouth of Bottom the Weaver 'Ercles for Hercules.[5]

“But it is needless to multiply examples. Some
vacancy should be left in the mind of the listener, which
he can fill up himself at leisure. Let me say here, however.
that, save Chaucer, there are few writers of our
earlier English who so Frenchify the mother tongue as
he does. In Piers Ploughman[6] we have hem for them,
and hire for their. In Robert of Gloster[7] we find `hit'
used for `it,' as it is in the Lord's Prayer of Richard the
Hermit, and so it is used to this day by some of the English,
even in writing. But generally the language of these
old authors was pure, as indeed it was from the time of
Chaucer to the Restoration. After King Charles II came
in, we had the French affectation introduced, as lively
as it was in the days of William the Conqueror.

“Now a few words more: there is the word `hatchet,'
the diminutive of axe, the original of which is eax, Saxon,
(or ascia, Latin). It should of course be atchet. So we
have hatchment, a corruption of the heraldric word
`achievement,' meaning an armorial escutcheon; then
there is the word ability, which, in the dictionaries of a
century old, is spelled properly, `hability,' or able—
hable,' from the French; arquebus, we say, instead of
harquebus, and artichoke instead of hartichoke, and the
like.

“Then, again, consider the number of words from
which the H is omitted in pronunciation: 'onorable, 'um-ble,

'umor, 'eir, 'ome, sweet 'ome, 'ow, 'onest, and the
like. Then, again, such words as 'ostler for hostler, (from
host or hostel), 'arbor for harbor, (a shelter), Oboe for
haut bois, and so on, where the abuse is sanctioned by
the dictionary makers.

“You will commonly find, too, that well-educated
Englishmen (and women) say 'oo, for who, 'andiron for
hand'iron, 'ow for how, and 'anging for hanging. They
deny it, of course, and will, if they think they are watched,
pronounce these words properly, but they are sure to
relapse as soon as they are left to themselves. If you
were to ask Lord John Russell, who is esteemed to be as
deep in erudition as he is in diplomacy, how to spell the
letter H, he would, no doubt, spell it a-i-t-c-h, when in
truth it should be h-a-i-t-c-h, with a strong aspiration on
the first letter.”

2. CHAPTER II.
“Does Queen Victoria Speak English?”

“To continue,” said John Common of Roscommon.
“To leave this class of impediments
of speech behind, and go further, we find many defects in
modern English, derived from the same parentage. For
example—there is no W in the French alphabet. If you
were to ask a Frenchman to pronounce the name of the
first President of the United States, he would say “Vashington,”
or he might, by a strong mental effort, get as
near to it as Guashington. Just as if you were to ask him
the name of the second President, he would be obliged to
reply “Hadams,” and so forth. Now there is not one
single word in the English language beginning with the
letter V that is not derived from the French, the Spanish,
the Italian, or some of the coguate branches of the Latin
family of words. There is no V in the Anglo-Saxon
alphabet, none in the Mæso-Gothic, from which two
tongues we derive our mother tongue, none in the earlier
editions of English authors; take, for example, Grafton's
or Hollinghead's Chronicles, or any other work of that

period. Hence it is that we find such expression in the
modern British classics as: “Now, Shiny Villiam, give
the gen'lem'n the ribbons,”[8] “vell vot of it,”[9] or “vot's
the use of giving vay so long as you're 'appy;” of which
forms of expression numbers could be produced if one
could give his mind, his time, and his attention to it. I
do not mean to say that the substitution of the V for the
W is common to the upper classes of Great Britain. Far
from it; but I do mean to say that this innovation is
creeping up, and will, by and by, beget a class of words
foreign to the genius of the English tongue, just as the
dropping of the H has produced such words as ostler and
arbor.

In confirmation of this, let me state that a distinguished
traveler and philosopher, Mr. George Gibbs, of Long
Island, after a residence of a quarter of a century on the
Northwest coast of this continent, has written a dictionary
of the Chinook jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon, prepared
for the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C.,[10]
in which he shows conclusively that the Chinook, the
Nootkan, the Yakama, the Cathlasco, (which is a corrupted
form of the Watlala or Upper Chinook), the
Toquat (which he spells Tokwaht), and the Nittinak languages
have been corrupted by the mis-pronunciation of
the English of the Hudson's Bay Company. The consequence
is, that there is scarcely an H in its proper place

in any of the dialects of the Northwestern tribes of the
Pacific, and W's are substituted for V's to such an extent,
that in his dictionary not one word beginning with the
latter consonant can be discovered. It is, however, a
consolation to know that these are the most prominent
innovations in those rich and beautiful occidental
tongues. After complaining that the Spanish and French
voyageurs have left traces of their languages in the earlier
Chinook, he says:

If this be so, we can imagine what a highly respectable
tone prevails in Kanaka society of Queen Emma.

But to return. The substitution of the French “V”
for the English “W” led to the retaliatory process, by
which every free born Englishman makes all things
hequal. Just in proportion to the cockneyism of the
upper classes in the middle ages arose the defiant attitude
of the cockneyism of the lower classes. The doubleyous
began to crowd into the lower ten million vocabulary.
“Weal pie” took the place of the other word:

“Even the tailors 'gan to brag,

And embroidered on their flag,

“Aut Wincere Aut Mori.”'[12]

There was a stout battle between the starveling French
V and the broad bottomed English W, and to this day it
has continued. There is not a member of any English
legation in any part of the world, at this present time,
who dares to spell “Vaterloo” with a V. And this is in
obedience to the dictates of the lower, and, I might
almost say, the illiterate classes; for after all, a mob has
a great deal to do with fixing the expression as well as
the meaning of words.

Since I am so far committed to this subject, I must
continue a little longer; but let me say here, that if I tax
the old nation from which we are derived, with speaking
a very impure language, let me at least have the credit
of doing so in a friendly spirit. Let us with one hand
soothe the American Lexicographical Eagle, while with
the other we smooth the bristling mane of the British
Polyglot.

In further confirmation of what I have already advanced,
permit me to recall to every mind another phrase of the
language of the realm, in order to prove that the queen
speaks broken French. I do not mean to say that she
does so intentionally, for surely no one can have a higher
regard for that good lady than I have. In fact, we are
both of an age; both born on the same day of the same
month in the same year, perhaps in the same hour, if
degrees of longitude could be computed with accuracy,
(of different parentage, I admit). What I mean to say
is, that she speaks imperfect English, both of herself and

through her ministers, through her parliaments, through
her lords and her lord mayors, through her ladies and her
laundresses, through her British museum, and her Billingsgate
market. After all this explanation, which might lead
to a digression, let me return to the point that I intended
to make when I said that the queen speaks broken
French.

Nothing is more striking to an American when he first
visits London than the constant misuse of the French
“A” pronounced aw by the high school of cockneys.
The lower classes of her majesty's subjects use the plain
old fashioned English “A” as an expletive, as well as an
offset to the other (a fashion, by the way, derived from
the Greeks, for their language is full of expletives), in
this manner—I was “a-going,” or, I was “a-thinking,”
or, I was “a-'oping,” or, I was “a-hironing,” and so on
through the whole family of verbs. Now this misuse of
the vowel is so common to the common people, that to
hear it from the lips of any person is sufficient to suggest
that his education has been quite imperfect. This being
so, is it quite fair that we should acquit Lord Brobdignag
of a similar charge, when we hear him read from a master
of style, thus: “They say-aw that it was aw-Liston's firm
belief, that he-aw was aw-great and neglected tragic actaw.
They say-aw that ev-aw-ry one of us believes, in
his heart, or would like-aw to have others believe, that
he-aw is something which he is aw-not!”

It is very true, as Dr. Samuel Johnson says in his little

article on Orpiment, that “talk is elastic.” But even talk
he mis-spells, (for he means “talc,” a mineral), nevertheless
we will accept the mistake as being truer than his
definition in every way. Talk is elastic! but what shall
be said of the petrifiers of the living words of our language?
What shall we say, for example, of the abuses
of Webster's Dictionary? When an elastic language
becomes a concretion of fossils—when its life has gone
out, and lexicographers have left nothing of it but its
organic remains—what should be done with them? To
compel them to speak plain English would be impossible,
for that they do not comprehend. What should be done
with them? Surely the Cadmus teeth they sow should
rise up and reap them.

I suppose, in time, that the good old English word
“Beef-eater,” as applied to those broad-backed warders
of the Tower of London, will degenerate into “Buffetier”
(French), as now a revolution is being effected in a similar
word—and “cur,” which some writers claim as a
Hindoo word, “Ischur.”[13] Blackstone, (a famous law
writer of the last century), has endeavored to elevate the
tone of the British bar by changing the honest old name
of “bum-bailey” in this wise: He says “that the special
bailiffs are usually bound in a bond for the due execution
of their office, and thence are called `bound-bailiffs,'

which the common people have corrupted into a much
more homely appellation,!”[14]

I cannot here avoid expressing my regret that a very
creditable weekly paper in the British booksellers' interest
in London should have its classical name corrupted into
“a much more homely appellation.” I mention this the
more cheerfully from the fact that it has always abused
American authors, and, therefore, when I say that I regret
it, you will understand that it is an act of generosity on
my part. I allude to the Athenœum, which has never
recovered from the punishment that Bulwer inflicted
upon it when he called it the “Ass-i-neum,” a name by
which it has been known to cultivated people in all parts
of the world, from the days of Paul Clifford down to this
time.

But these corruptions of the language we must frown
down. Let us take a bold stand against other cockneyisms
creeping into public use, such as “cab” for cabriolet,
“pants” for pantaloons, “canter” from the Canterbury
pilgrimages at the good old-fashioned ambling pace, and
the like; for, if we do not, the age of progress will make
the word “gentleman” a dead language, and only its
cockney substitute, the “gent,” will be known in dictionaries
and newspapers.

A few more words and I shall wind up my squid.

There is a slang phrase of Parisian-French, which I

cannot recall at this moment, that expresses a peculiar
way of shortening words, and running one into another,
in use among the fashionable people of the continental
metropolis, so that it is very difficult for a novice to understand
their aristocratic argot.

This shrinkage, this corrugation, this wrinkling up of
words, so that a good long sentence which should be
sonorous and expressive, becomes as shrivelled as a washerwoman's
thumb, is beautifully implanted in the modern
English. Go to the House of Lords and hear the debate
between Lord Brobdignag and the Marquis of Lilliput!
Only by the skill of the practised reporter can that tongued
and grooved dialect be interpreted. I shall not give you
a sentence by way of example, but only a few specimen
bricks of this modern Babel.

It is well known that in the glorious old English
tongue every word carries a meaning with it; a little
history in its womb, such as those beautiful phrases
“belly-timber,” as applied to food, and “bread-basket,”
as applied to its receptacle. So the lord of thousands of
broad acres in Merrie England—

Halleck—

was called the Earl of “Beau-champs,” from the Norman
French, as m Scotland the name of Campbell is derived
from an Italian origin meaning the same thing, as Beau-champs,
“Campo-bello.” Just as the constellation in the
Southern hemisphere called “Charles' Oak,” recalls the
history of that royal and ragged refugee, in Boscobell, so
a vast number of words in English once represented ideas.
They were words with poetry and history locked up within
them, like flies, in perpetual amber. The river “Alne”
in Cumberland, the stream celebrated in many a border
foray, has upon its banks the ancient town of Alnecester,
and the “home of the Percy's high-born race,” Alnwick
Castle. Should you inquire for either place, there is not
a man in England who would understand you. But just
ask for Anster and Annick, and there is not a red-coated
boot-brushing boy in the neighborhood of Temple Bar
that cannot tell you where to find the train that will carry
you to the residence of the Lord's of Northumberland. I
remember once that I hired a post and pair to go down to
Stratford-upon-Avon. A jaunty postilion in spotless, white
dimity knee breeches, white top boots, silver-rimmed hat-band,
and a whole carillon of bell buttons on his jacket,
touched his hat as I stepped into the “shay.” “Drive me
round,” said I, “by the way of Charlecote Hall!” for I
wished to see the place where Shakspeare was tried for
deer-stealing. That was a puzzler. The friendly landlord
of the “Warwick Arms,” the aged Pensioner of the Bear
and Ragged Staff; the obsequious waiter; the radical
tailor, who made red riding coats for fox-hunting squires
and d—d them in the bitterness of his sartorial soul;
the small boy that always followed a stranger as the mite-fly
follows a cheese; the parochial Beadle with his bell;
the blue eyes of the chambermaid, from an upper story
of the Warwick Arms; all, in dire suspense, in that dewy
morning, waited to hear the reply of the post-boy. There
was no reply. Presently an underhostler, who had been
hovering around the horses like a spiritual gad-fly, whose
wings were horse-brush, and curry-comb, spoke out in a
foggy voice: “P'raps the gemman means Chawcut?”
Shade of Shakspeare! And chawcut it was, as everybody
understood it there. So it is that in this puckered-up
English,—Warwick, itself a splendidly significant name,
becomes Waric. The Beauchamp Chapel is Beecham.
Charlesbury has lost its ancient significance in Chawbree.
Cholmondely is Chumlee. Berwick of old renown,
“royal Berwick's beach of sand,” is now Berric; Candlewick
Street in London, is Cannick; Gloucester is Gloster,
Smithfield is Smiffld, and Worcester—Wooster! So, too,
that word dear to every domestic tie, “housewife,” is
“hussif,” subtle is “suttle,” and High Holburn, I-oburn.

Can anybody doubt that the corruption of these good
old expressive English words into bastard French is not
undermining the Queen's English?

And the mis-spelling of these and many other words
will soon follow the mis-pronunciation, as, indeed, some
do now—witness “Gloster!” I once hired an English
hackman to take me from a once-celebrated hotel in New
York to a once-celebrated Hudson river steamboat. It
chanced that when we reached the wharf the boat was
casting off, and the driver called out to me, “You 'ad
better 'urry up, sir, or she'll be h'off, and you can pay me

the fare when you get 'ome agin.” So when I did get
back again, and asked for my little account, he referred
to his pocket remembrancer—“Mr. C., June 14th, 1842.
m. o. to e. u.” “What does that mean?” “'Merican
'Otel to 'Endrick 'Udson, sir!”

“And what,” said little Tweedle, “are we to do. If
we go to England, are we to fly in the face of every man
there? are we to insist upon our own pronunciation, and
endeavor to find out famous localities by naming them in
the language used in the Saxon Heptarchy?”

“Certainly,” said John Common of Roscommon, “I
would advise you to agitate this subject; to call things by
their right names in that benighted kingdom; to inquire
for places that nobody can tell you anything about, so
that you can teach the ignorant natives what should be the
names of their choicest, their dearest, their most cherished
localities. You can do this thing, for you have a genius
for disturbing the old herring-bone foundations of ancient
edifices. And I will give you all the glory of being the
pioneer, if you choose to take this matter of reform of
the tongue upon your own shoulders. I may adopt it
also. But I shall not trumpet forth my claims upon the
world until I find that you have succeeded. I think I
feel a fresh breeze creeping up. Haul away on the jib
halyards! Let us see if we can't work up the creek.
The champagne has been in the cooler over there for five
hours now and the meats only go to the brander upon
signal. So haul up the dinner signal! Ah, here comes
the breeze! Up sails, and now to dinner.”