American Language Supplement 1 Read online

  The doctrine that the English language was already complete and sufficient and thus needed no enrichment from Yankee sources persisted among Englishmen and Anglomaniacs for a generation after Aristarcus’s time. Captain Basil Hall, who ventured into the American wilds in 1827 and 1828 and published an account of his sufferings on his return home,2 went so far in urging it as to visit Webster in New Haven and tackle him in person.

  “But surely,” argued Hall, “such innovations are to be deprecated.”

  “I don’t know that,” replied old Noah. “If a word becomes universally current in America, where English is spoken, why should it not take its station in the language?”

  “Because,” replied Hall loftily, “there are words enough already.”

  2. THE ENGLISH ATTACK

  13. [There is an amusing compilation of some of the earlier English diatribes against American speechways in William B. Cairns’s “British Criticisms of American Writing, 1783—1815.”]1 More out of the same barrel are in Allen Walker Read’s “British Recognition of American Speech in the Eighteenth Century,”2 in the same author’s “Amphi-Atlantic English,”3 and in John Pickering’s “Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America.”4 Pickering, as we shall see in Section 4 of the present chapter, was inclined to acquiesce in the objections raised by British reviewers to the new words and phrases that were crowding into the American language of his time, but he was honest enough to quote those reviewers when they were idiotic as well as when, by his standards, they were more or less plausible, as, for example, when the Annual Review denounced the use of appellate in appellate court,5 the British Critic argued that have arrived should always be are arrived6 the Eclectic Review sneered at avails in the sense of the proceeds of property sold,7 and the Edinburgh frowned upon governmental.8 Not infrequently Pickering adopted the pawky device of showing that a locution complained of by one review was used by another, as, for example, derange, which the British Critic disapproved,9 but the Edinburgh employed without apology.10 This device was especially effective against an American imitator of the English — the intensely Anglo-maniacal Monthly Review of Boston. When it called presidential a “barbarism,” Pickering showed that the word had been used by the Quarterly Review,11 which surpassed all others in its animosity to America.

  Cairns’s valuable monograph is mainly devoted to English criticism of American publications, but Read, in his two papers, also gives some account of the observations on the spoken language made by English travelers. Cairns’s conclusion is that the majority of the English and Scotch reviewers “were disposed to be fair, though they were unable to restrain the expression of their own feeling of superiority, and were likely to adopt a paternal, if not patronizing manner. The extremists of both sorts — those whose political conservatism led to bitterness in literary as in other judgments, and those whose liberalism led to absurd praise — were relatively few in number, but they were highly conspicuous; their articles were likely to be longer and to contain more quotable passages than the judicious estimates of the relatively unimportant literary work which America was at this time producing.” Most of the more eminent English literati of the post-revolutionary period, observes Cairns, took little interest in that work, and seldom so much as mentioned it. “Gibbon’s published letters,” he says, “discuss American political affairs, but contain no literary references.” Johnson was against everything American, but Boswell was indifferent. So was Crabbe. Cowper was much more interested in the theological uproars which engaged the citizens of the new Republic than in their contributions to beautiful letters. Blake’s poem, “America,” published in 1793, had a lot to say about soldiers and politicians, but nothing about literati. Coleridge met Washington Allston1 at Rome in 1806, and the two became friends, but Cairns says that the author of “The Ancient Mariner” “never refers to Allston’s poetical works.” Wordsworth also knew Allston, but apparently thought of him as a painter only, not as a writer. Scott admired Irving’s “Knickerbocker’s History of New York” and Freneau’s “Eutaw Springs” and had kind words for Charles Brockden Brown, but that is about as far as he went. Byron was delighted to hear that he was read in America, and wrote in his journal that “to be popular in a rising and far country has a kind of posthumous feel,”2 but there is no record that he ever lent (or gave) a hand to an American author or an American book. And so on down to Southey and Landor. Landor admired some of the American politicoes of his time, and proposed to dedicate one of his books to James Madison, but he showed no interest in either American literature or American Kultur in general, and when Southey sent him a bitter protest against this dedication,1 he replied complacently, “I detest the American character as much as you do.” Only Shelley seems to have discovered anything of genuine merit in American literature, and his discovery was limited to the novels of the aforesaid Charles Brockden Brown.2

  Of the English and Scotch reviews of the time, Cairns says that those most constantly anti-American were the European Magazine and London Review, the Anti-Jacobin Review, the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, and the Monthly Mirror, and that those which showed most friendliness were the Monthly, the Literary Magazine and British Review, the Eclectic, the Scot’s Magazine and the Bee of Edinburgh, the last-named a weekly. The Anti-Jacobin and the Quarterly were not only hostile, but also scurrilous. Both were edited, at different times, by the William Gifford lately mentioned. The Anti-Jacobin specialized in reviling George Washington and the Quarterly in spreading scandal about Thomas Jefferson. The former, in 1788, denounced Washington as not only guilty of “the horrid crime of rebellion, which nothing but repentance can efface,” but also of the still worse infamy of deism. The latter propagated the fable that Jefferson maintained a harem of Negro mistresses at Monticello, and derived a large revenue from the sale of their (and his) children. In addition it accused Americans in general of a long list of incredible offenses against sound morals, among them, employing naked Negro women to wait upon them at table, and kidnapping Scotsmen, Welshmen and Hollanders and selling them into slavery.1 On the literary front both reviews were implacably contemptuous of American writing, and to their diatribes they commonly added flings at the whole of American civilization. Thus the Quarterly in two reviews2 quoted by Cairns:

  No work of distinguished merit in any branch has yet been produced among them.… The founders of American society brought to the composition of their nation few seeds of good taste, and no rudiments of liberal science.

  The English who toured America in the post-revolutionary period were, on the whole, more favorable in their comments, both upon the spoken and written speech of the new Republic and upon its institutions, than the English and Scotch reviewers. Even after the turn of the century they seem to have been generally friendly: it was only in the years following the War of 1812 that they took over the job of denouncing everything American. They noticed, of course, the strange neologisms that had appeared on this side of the water, and sometimes they were shocked by them, but in the main they showed a tolerant spirit, and were pleased to discover that the dialectical differences between the speech of various parts of the country were less marked than those familiar to them in Britain. This fact had been noted, indeed, before the Revolution — for example, by William Eddis, who came to America in 1769 and stayed until 1777. In a letter written on June 8, 1770 he said:

  In England almost every county is distinguished by a peculiar dialect; even different habits and different modes of thinking discriminate inhabitants whose local situation is not far remote. But in Maryland and throughout the adjacent provinces it is worthy of observation that a striking similarity of speech unirersally prevails, and it is strictly true that the pronunciation of the generality of the people has an accuracy and elegance that cannot fail of gratifying the most judicious ear.… The language of the immediate descendants of a promiscuous ancestry is perfectly uniform and unadulterated, nor has it borrowed any provincial or nat
ional accent from its British or foreign parentage.… This uniformity of language prevails not only on the coast, where Europeans form a considerable mass of the people, but likewise in the interior parts, where population has made but slow advances, and where opportunities seldom occur to derive any great advantages from an intercourse with intelligent strangers.1

  Testimony to the same effect was offered by Nicholas Cresswell, whose journal in America ran from 1774 to 1777. He said:

  No county or colonial dialect is to be distinguished here, except it be the New Englanders’,2 who have a sort of whining cadence that I cannot describe.3

  Nevertheless, the English travelers of the time noted that American speech was not quite identical with any form of English speech — that it made use of many words not heard in England, and was also developing certain peculiarities of pronunciation and intonation. “There are few natives of the United States,” wrote the editor of the London edition of David Ramsay’s “History of the American Revolution” in 1791, quoting an unnamed “penetrating observer,” “who are altogether free from what may be called Americanisms,4 both in their speech and their writing. In the case of words of rarer use they have framed their own models of pronunciation, as having little access to those established among the people from whom they have derived their language.” The more naïve travelers were sometimes astonished to discover that familiar objects had acquired new names in America. Thus Richard Parkinson, in “A Tour in America, 1798–1800”:5

  It was natural for me to enquire what they kept their cows and horses on during the Winter. They told me — their horses on blades and their cows on slops.… [Blades] turned out to be blades and tops of Indian corn, and the slops were the same that are put into the swill-tub in England and given to hogs, composed of broth, dish-washings, cabbage-leaves, potato-parings, etc.6

  Read lists some of the other novelties remarked by English travelers — lengthy and to advocate by Henry Wamsey in 1794;1 to loan, to enterprise, portage, immigration and boatable by Thomas Twining in 1796,2 and fork (of a road) by Thomas Anburey shortly before 1789.3 Most of these terms are discussed in other places. Boatable, an obvious coinage to designate streams too shallow to be called navigable, is traced by the DAE to 1683, when it was used by William Penn. To loan, in the sense of to lend, goes back in England to the Sixteenth Century and probably even beyond, but the NED marks it “now chiefly U.S.” The DAE’s first American example is dated 1729; it is now in such wide use in the United States that it has appeared in the text of laws, though purists still frown upon it. To enterprise seems to have died out. The DAE does not list it, and it is marked “archaic” by the NED, though John Ruskin used it in “Fors Clavigera” so recently as 1871.

  13. [The famous sneer of Sydney Smith.] This gibe rankled in American bosoms for many years, and was still often cited, always with indignation, during the 90s of the last century, when I was first becoming aware of literary atrocities. It was printed in the first issue of the Edinburgh Review for 1820, as a sort of postscript to a review of Adam Seybert’s “Statistical Annals of the United States,”4 and, in accordance with the custom of the magazine, appeared anonymously, but its authorship was generally known and Smith acknowledged it when his reviews were reprinted in his Works in 1839.5 It is usually quoted only in part,6 so I here give the whole of it:

  The Americans are a brave, industrious and acute people; but they have, hitherto, given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character. They are but a recent offset, indeed, from England; and they should make it their chief boast, for many generations to come, that they are sprung from the same race with Bacon and Shakespeare and Newton. Considering their numbers, indeed, and the favorable circumstances in which they have been placed, they have yet done marvellously little to assert the honor of such a descent, or to show that their English blood has been exalted or refined by their republican training and institutions.

  Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the other sages and heroes of their Revolution, were born and bred subjects of the King of England, — and not among the freest or most valued of his subjects. And since the period of their separation, a far greater proportion of their statesmen and artists and political writers have been foreigners than ever occurred before in the history of any civilized and educated people. During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature or even for the statesman-like studies of politics or political economy. Confining ourselves to our own country, and to the period that has elapsed since they had an independent existence, we should ask where are their Foxes, their Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windhams, their Horners, their Wilber-forces? — where their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys? — their Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys, and Malthuses? — their Porsons, Parrs, Burneys, or Bloomfields? — their Scotts, Rogers’s, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbes? — their Siddons’s, Kembles, Keans, or O’Neils? — their Wilkies, Lawrences, Chantrys? — or their parallels to the hundred other names that have spread themselves over the world from our little island in the course of the last thirty years, and blest or delighted mankind by their works, inventions or examples? In so far as we know, there is no such parallel to be produced from the whole annals of this self-adulating race.

  In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they done in the mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from American plates? or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

  When these questions are fairly and favorably answered, their laudatory epithets may be allowed; but till that can be done, we would seriously advise them to keep clear of superlatives.

  There was enough truth in this to make it sting, and it kept on stinging long after all truth had vanished from it. It was not Smith’s first essay on America, nor his last. He had tackled the subject in 1818, in the form of a review of four books by English travelers, and he was to return to it in 1824. In the former article he said:

  Literature the Americans have none — no native literature, we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed; and may afford to live half a century on his fame. There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems; and his baptismal name was Timothy.1 There is also a small account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an epic by Joel Barlow;1 and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should the Americans write books when a six weeks’ passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science and genius, in bales and hogsheads? Prairies, steamboats, grist-mills, are their natural objects for centuries to come. Then, when they have got to the Pacific Ocean — epic poems, plays, pleasures of memory and all the elegant gratifications of an ancient people who have tamed the wild earth, and set down to amuse themselves. — This is the natural march of human affairs.

  In his 1824 Edinburgh article Smith referred to the uproar that his sneers of 1820 had kicked up in the United States, but professed to believe (with obvious disingenuousness) that it was his 1818 article that was complained of. Thus:

  It is rather surprising that such a people, spreading rapidly over so vast a portion of the earth, and cultivating all the liberal and useful arts so successfully, should be so extremely sensitive and touchy as the Americans are said to be. We really thought at one time they would have fitted out an armament against the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and burnt down Mr. Murray’s and Mr. Constable’s shops, as we did the American Capitol. We, however, remember no other anti-American crime of which we were guilty, than a prefe
rence of Shakespeare and Milton over Joel Barlow and Timothy Dwight. That opinion we must still take the liberty of retaining. There is nothing in Dwight comparable to the finest passages of “Paradise Lost,” nor is Mr. Barlow ever humorous or pathetic, as the great bard of the English stage is humorous and pathetic. We have always been strenuous advocates for, and admirers of, America — not taking our ideas from the overweening vanity of the weaker part of the Americans themselves, but from what we have observed of their real energy and wisdom.

  As a matter of fact, Smith’s attitude toward the United States was generally friendly, and in all of his articles he set up contrasts, always favorable to America, between American ways and institutions and those of England.1 But after 1840 his friendliness vanished, for by that time he had inherited £50,000 from his brother, an Indian nabob, and had invested a substantial part of it in American State bonds. When the States, following the panic of 1837, began to repudiate those bonds, he yielded himself to moral indignation of a very high voltage, and in 1843 he published a volume called “Letters on American Debts” which was for years a favorite textbook of all the more extreme varieties of English Americophobes. Most of the bonds he held appear to have been issued by Pennsylvania, and it is probable that he really lost only the interest on them, for in the end the principal was repaid. But maybe he also owned a few of Mississippi, Michigan and Florida, which repudiated both principal and interest.