Part 2
_Acres_: “Ha! ha! you’ve taken notice of it――’tis genteel, isn’t it?――I didn’t invent it myself though; but a commander in our militia, a great scholar I assure you, says that there is no meaning in the common oaths, and that nothing but their antiquity makes them respectable――because, he says, the ancients would never stick to an oath or two, but would say, by Jove! or by Bacchus! or by Mars! or by Venus! or by Pallas! according to the sentiment; so that to swear with propriety, says my little major, the oath should be an echo to the sense; and this we call the _oath referential_ or _sentimental swearing_――ha! ha! ’tis genteel, isn’t it?”
_Absolute_: “Very genteel and very new indeed!――and I daresay will supplant all other figures of imprecation.”
_Acres_: “Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete――Damns have had their day.”
There is no doubt that swearing has a definite physiological function; for after childhood relief in tears and wailing is rightly discouraged, and groans are also considered a signal of extreme weakness. Silence under suffering is usually impossible. The nervous system demands some expression that does not affect towards cowardice and feebleness, and, as a nervous stimulant in a crisis, swearing is unequalled. It is a Saturnalian defiance of Destiny. Where rhetorical appeals to Fatherland, Duty, Honour, Self-respect, and similar idealistic abstractions fail, the well-chosen oath will often save the situation. At the beginning of the War, I was advised by peace-time soldiers never to swear at my men; and I was hurt by the suggestion that I could ever feel tempted to do so. But after putting the matter to a practical test in trench-warfare I changed my opinion, and later used to advise officer-cadets not to restrain their tongues altogether, for swearing had become universal, but to suit their language carefully to the occasion and to the type of men under their command, and to hold the heavier stuff in reserve for intense bombardments and sudden panics. For if, as may be questioned, it is a virtue to be a capable military leader, this virtue is not compatible in modern war-fare with the virtue of the unqualified yea and the unintensified nay. Tristram Shandy’s father, and his uncle Toby whose opinions had been formed some two hundred years before by trench warfare in the same district and curiously enough with the same battalion as I served with had anticipated me here:
“Small curses, Dr. Slop, upon great occasions,” quoth my father, “are but so much waste of our strength and soul’s health to no manner of purpose.”
“I own it”, replied Dr. Slop.
“They are like sparrow-shot”, quoth my Uncle Toby (suspending his whistling), “fired against a bastion.”
* * * * *
“They serve”, continued my father, “to stir the humours but carry off none of their acrimony; for my own part, I seldom swear or curse at all――I hold it bad; but if I fall into it by surprise I generally retain so much presence of mind (“Right”, quoth my Uncle Toby) as to make it answer my purpose, that is, I swear on till I find myself easy. A wise and just man, however, would always endeavor to proportion the vent given to these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within himself, but to the size and ill-intent of the offence upon which they are to fall.”
“Injuries come only from the heart”, quoth my Uncle Toby.
But after this, Tristram Shandy, who was an Elizabethan born too late, treats of contemporary swearing and protests against the connoisseurs of swearing that they have pushed the formal critical control of swearing too far. He speaks of a gentleman, “who sat down and composed, that is, at his leisure, fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases from the lowest to the highest provocation which could happen to him; which forms being well considered by him and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece within his reach, ready for use.” Tristram Shandy finds this practice far too academic. He asks no more than a single stroke of native genius and a single spark of Apollo’s fire with it, and Mercury may then be sent to take the rules and compasses of correctness to the Devil. He says furthermore that the oaths and imprecations which have been lately “puffed upon the world as originals”, are all included by the Roman Church in its form of excommunication: that Bishop Ernulphus who formulated the exhaustive commination which he quotes (and which later the Cardinal used with such success on the Jackdaw of Rheims) has indeed brought categorical and encyclopaediac swearing to a point beyond which there can be no competition. He asks what is our modern “God damn him!” beside Ernulphus’
May the Father who created man curse him!
May the Son who suffered for us curse him!
May the Holy Ghost who was given to us in baptism curse him!
May the Holy Cross, which Christ for our salvation triumphing over his enemies ascended, curse him!
May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him!
May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers and all the heavenly armies curse him!
(“Our armies swore terribly in Flanders” cried my Uncle Toby, “but nothing to this. For my own part, I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.”)
Tristram Shandy wrote at the beginning of the best period of English profanity (1760–1820), which owes a great debt to Voltaire and his fellow rationalists. The “Zounds!”, “Icod!”, “Zoodikers!”, and “Pox on you!” of a Squire Western were discarded by men of fashion, and the “oath referential” of Acres, facetiously and indecently blasphemous, succeeded these: spreading their culture downwards and materially helping the national _morale_ in the War years that began the new century.
* * * * *
I do not think that Coleridge’s distinction between the violent swearer who does not really mean what he says and the quiet swearer who swears from real malignity is an essential one. He writes in his apologetic preface to _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_: “The images, I mean, that a vindictive man places before his imagination will most often be taken from the realities of life: there will be images of pain and suffering which he has himself seen inflicted on other men, and which he can fancy himself as inflicting on the object of his hatred. I will suppose that we heard at different times two common sailors, each speaking of some one who had wronged or offended him, that the first with apparent violence had devoted every part of his adversary’s body and soul to all the horrid phantoms and fantastic places that even Quevedo dreamed of, and this in a rapid flow of those outrageous and wildly combined execrations which too often with our lower-classes serve for escape-valves to carry off the excess of their passions, as so much superfluous steam that would endanger the vessel if it were retained. The other, on the contrary, with that sort of calmness of tone which is to the ear what the paleness of anger is to the eye, shall simply say ‘If I chance to be made boatswain, as I hope I soon shall, and can but once get that fellow under my hand (and I shall be on the watch for him), I’ll tickle his pretty skin. I won’t hurt him, oh, no! I’ll only cut the ―――― to the liver.’ I dare appeal to all present which of the two they would regard as the least deceptive symptom of deliberate malignity――nay, whether it would surprise them to see the first fellow an hour or two afterwards cordially shaking hands with the very man the fractional parts of whose body and soul he had been so charitably disposing of; or even perhaps risking his life for him.”
* * * * *
No general distinction of motive can be made between swearers who adopt one or other of these methods. The art of one is that of the whirlwind boxer who comes bustling into the ring and excites admiration in the audience, and, he hopes, fear in his opponent by a great display of unnecessary footwork and shoulder-shaking; the other is an old hand, who saves his strength and misleads his opponent, if he can, by pretended slowness and even by “boxing silly”, but after a few ingenuous leads, such as “I’ll tickle his pretty skin! I won’t hurt him, oh, no!” out comes the heavy right-to-jaw: “I’ll only cut the ―――― to the liver”; with telling effect. And Coleridge obscures the fact that to refuse to shake hands with a man in public or, even more, to refuse to risk one’s life for him, are breaches of social custom far more serious in male society than an oath.
Frequent swearing, then, is often, no doubt, the accompaniment of debauch, cruelty, and presumption, but, on the other hand, it is as often merely what the psychologists call the “sublimation in fantasia of a practical anti-social impulse”; and what others call “poor man’s poetry”. But if the latter simile be permitted, it would seem that original poets are as rare in modern non-literary as they are in literary society. Occasionally in low life one hears a picturesque ancestral oath or an imaginative modern one coined by some true blasphemer and carefully stored by an admirer for his own use――“as in wild earth a Grecian vase”. But for the most part the dreary repetition of the two sexual mainstays of barrack-room swearing is the despair of the artist. This is a mechanical age, and even our swearing has been standardized.
The popular satire entitled simply _The Australian Poem_, and satirizing the adjectival barrenness of the Australian Forces in the War, will be recalled:
A sunburnt bloody stockman stood, And in a dismal, bloody mood Apostrophized his bloody cuddy: “This bloody moke’s no bloody good, He doesn’t earn his bloody food, Bloody! Bloody! Bloody!”
He leapt upon his bloody horse And galloped off, of bloody course. The road was wet and bloody muddy: It led him to the bloody creek; The bloody horse was bloody weak, “Bloody! Bloody! Bloody!”
He said “This bloody steed must swim, The same for me as bloody him!” The creek was deep and bloody floody. So ere they reached the bloody bank The bloody steed beneath him sank―― The stockman’s face a bloody study Ejaculating Bloody! bloody! bloody!
Orderly-room charges of obscene and blasphemous language show a distressing sameness:
“Sir, the accuser called me an x――ing y――” or “Sir, the accused called me a y――ing x――”.
“And what have you to say for yourself, my man?”
“Well, sir, it was because the lance-corporal called me a double x――ing y――, and I didn’t think it was right.”
The only novelty I remember in a long series of these charges was: “Sir, the accused used threatening and obscene language; his words were ‘Two men shall meet before two mountains’.”
_Omne ignotum pro obsceno_ is the rule among the uneducated. Mr. W. H. Davies’ odd story will be recalled. An old hedge-schoolmaster one day came as a stranger to the Inn in South Wales where the poet was drinking, and sat down at a corner table. Presently he cried out twice in a loud voice: “Aristotle was the pupil of Plato.” After a moment’s silence the men at the bar protested: “Keep silence, you there!” Their wives caught their skirts tightly to them: “We are respectable married women and did not come here to be insulted.” The publican threatened to throw the speaker out if he uttered any further obscenity. But the old man apologized in the acceptable formula: “No offence intended; I am a stranger here”; and was forgiven. After long pondering on this story, I believe that I have got the clue. _Aristotle’s Works_ (with illustrations) is sold in every rubber-shop in London and Cardiff, in company with other more obviously erotic publications. I have never had the courage to buy a copy and see what is wrong with the philosopher; but I suspect the worst. And certainly “Aristotle” to the public-house mind is known only in the rubber-shop context. But I can testify to a man having been thrown out of the Empire Lounge some years ago for calling a barmaid a “maisonette”. (“Indeed you’re wrong; I’m an honest woman.”)
* * * * *
Of swearing-duels little is now heard. They used to be frequent, tradition says, in the good old days when public-houses kept open all night and beer was more strongly brewed: alas, I can find little historical matter to indicate what was the technique and range of this popular art at its Dickensian prime.[2] But at least the palm of victory does not always seem to have gone to the most resonant or strong-chested artist. Often, as in jujitsu, a man’s own strength is turned against him. It is recorded that once in the City an Admiral’s brougham was obstructed by a coster’s barrow and that the Admiral improved the occasion by a very heavy and god-damnatory flow of abuse. The coster let him have his say; but as he paused for breath remarked cheerfully: “If you was better house-trained, Jackie, I’d take you home for a pet.”
[2] Though swearing in fashionable society began to decline as an art about the same time as the wig disappeared, it flourished among the lower classes for fifty years longer.
* * * * *
I am informed that the legal view of abusive swearing is that, unless calculated to cause a breach of the peace, it is no offence. So that it is just possible to call a man a blasted fool in public. On the other hand, there is an offence in calling him plain and unqualified fool: that constitutes a libel and a penalty can be exacted.
* * * * *
Of American swearing I am not qualified to write, but I understand that in vulgar life the convention there is somewhat different. “Bastard” and “son of a bitch” are friendly terms of reproach. This recalls the experience of an American tourist, Mrs. Beech, who was staying in Paris after the War. An elderly Frenchman who was introduced to her greeted her cordially: “Ah, Mrs. Beech, Mrs. Beech, you are one of ze noble muzzers who gave so many sons to ze War.”
Might not a useful addition be made to this _To-day and To-morrow_ series, by some worthier, more energetic, and more scholarly hand than mine? To be called _Lars Porsena_; or _The Future of Swearing_. Lars Porsena, if we may trust Lord Macaulay, was more fortunate than ourselves: he had no less than nine gods to swear by, and every one of them in Tarquin’s time was taken absolutely seriously. How would the argument run? On the lines perhaps of the following synopsis:
The imaginative decline of popular swearing under industrial standardization and since the popular Education Acts of fifty years ago; the possibility that swearing under an anti-democratic rêgime will recover its lost prestige as a fine art; following the failure of the Saints and Prophets, and the breakdown of orthodox Heaven and Hell as supreme swearing-stocks, the rich compensation offered by newer semi-religious institutions, such as the “League of Nations” and “International Socialism”, and by superstitious objects such as pipes, primroses, black-shirts, and blood-stained banners; the chances of the eventual disappearance of the sex-taboo and of the slur on bastardy, but in the near future the intentional use of Freudian symbols as objurgatory material; the effect on swearing of the gradual spread of spiritistic belief, of new popular diseases such as botulism and sleepy-sickness, of new forms of chemical warfare, of the sanction which the Anglican Church is openly giving to contraception, thereby legitimizing the dissociation of the erotic and progenitive principles and of feminism challenging the view that hard swearing is a proof of virility. Research would be suggested on the variations of taboo in different English-speaking lands,[3] on the alliterative emphasis and rhythm of swearing, on the maximum nervous reaction that can be got from a normal subject by combinations and permutations of the oath, the results to be recorded on a highly sensitive kymograph. Finally, this valuable and carefully documented work might treat of the prospects of Pure Swearing; by which is not meant sterilized swearing or “Cliff Clawsonism”, but _Swearing without a practical element, with only a musical relation between the images it employs. Swearing of universal application and eternal beauty_, following the recent sentimental cult for Pure Poetry.
[3] A man charged recently at Hoxton with using language calculated to make a breach of the peace complained that at Bethnal Green, where he lived, he could have said all that and more with impunity. He suggested a swearing-directory for the London district which should indicate what you might say where.
“But how is this?” the reader asks. “Isn’t what I’m reading called _Lars Porsena_, or _the Future of Swearing_”. I apologize for a little joke, somewhat resembling those advertisements in _Snappy Bits_, which promise erotic delights to any schoolboy who will send five shillings and a statement that he is not a minor: only to job him off with badly printed photographs of classical paintings and statuary――for to send indecent matter by post is illegal. No doubt the Chic-Art Publishing Company would not object to dealing more faithfully with its clients if it could, and perhaps the delight of expectation is worth the ensuing disappointment of only getting the Venus of Milo and a Rubens or two to gloat over. But though a joke is a joke, this volume goes as far as it decently can in containing at least a few classically draped forecasts and an honest inquiry into the taboos which prevent publication of the real _Lars Porsena_. And, anyhow, this is the nearest to a _Lars Porsena_ that will ever be published. For as soon as there is sufficient weakening of the taboos to permit an accurate and detailed account of swearing and obscenity, then, by that very token, swearing and obscenity can have no future worth prophesying about, but only a past more or less conjectural because undocumented.
Though Samuel Butler’s definition of “Nice People” as “people with dirty minds” can be misunderstood by critics who refuse to differentiate between the humourously obscene and the obscenely obscene, I like it. No nice person is uncritical; and yet we are all hedged round with an intricate system of taboos against “obscenity”. To consent uncritically to the taboos, which are often grotesque, is as foolish as to reject them uncritically. The nice person is one who good-humouredly criticizes the absurdities of the taboo in good-humoured conversation with intimates; but does not find it necessary to celebrate any black masses as a proof of his emancipation from it. This book is written for the Nice People. Then, though it is in its first intention a detached treatise on swearing and obscenity, it cannot claim a complete innocence of obscenity, while consenting to the publishers’ limitations of what is printable and what is not. Observe with what delicacy I have avoided and still avoid writing the words x―――― and y――――, and dance round a great many others of equally wide popular distribution. I have yielded to the society in which I move, which is an obscene society: that is, it acquiesces emotionally in the validity of the taboo, while intellectually objecting to it. I have let a learned counsel go through these pages with a blue pencil and strike through paragraph after paragraph of perfectly clean writing. My only self-justification is that the original manuscript is to be kept safe for a more enlightened posterity in the strong-room of one of our greater libraries.
Horace is my idea of a characteristically obscene man. An immoderate liking for his poems is, I believe, a sure proof of obscenity in any person. Catullus, on the other hand, was not obscene: he had greater self-respect. Witness his:
Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa Illa Lesbia quam Catullus unam Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes. Nunc in quadriviis et angiportis Glubit magnanimos Remi nepotes.
Where “Glubit” by self-disgust and by the bitter irony of the “magnanimos Remi nepotes” leaves obscenity looking foolish. The “Long Man of Cerne” carved out in chalk on the Dorset Downs is not obscene in the real sense that the modern Cinema is obscene with its sudden blackings-out at the crisis of sexual excitement.
When a future historian comes to treat of the social-taboos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a fourteen-volume life-work, his theories of the existence of an enormous secret-language of bawdry and an immense oral literature of obscene stories and rhymes known, in various degrees of initiation, to every man and woman in the country, yet never consigned to writing or openly admitted as existing, will be treated as a chimerical notion by the enlightened age in which he writes. As Sir James Frazer took, as the text for his inquiries, the Golden Bough legend of Aricia and the primitive ceremonies there surviving until Imperial times, so this new Sir James may take _The Bottom Legend_ recorded by a contemporary historian Roberts as his text. As follows:
‘Shortly before the “Great War for Civilization” (the indecisive conflict, 1914–1918, between rival European confederations to decide which was to have the right of defining Civilization) there was a student at Oxford University famous for his “practical joking”. He is said to have been one of the rare persons of the day to whom a peculiar licence was given for such “practical joking” and for deriding the most sacred taboos of the time. It was he who first defiled a local altar, “The Martyr’s Memorial,” by climbing to the very summit at night-time and planting a chamber-pot――a stringently tabood vessel――on the cross which crowned it. The civic authorities had great difficulty in removing this scandalous object, because climbing the Memorial was no easy feat, and the chamber-pot, being made of enamel ware and not, as was first thought, of porcelain, could not be dislodged by rifle fire. On another occasion, this same student is said to have impersonated an African potentate and, with a suite of disguised companions, to have been officially welcomed with a Royal Salute aboard a battleship of the English Navy, and to have aggravated this quasi-blasphemous performance (for the Fleet was a religious institution of greater dignity and efficiency than the Church itself) by the bestowal of medals on the ship’s officers.
‘But the most interesting breach of taboo with which he is credited was a dinner-party which he gave at a Cathedral town in the Midlands. He spent over a year, and a great deal of money, in scraping acquaintance under an assumed name with every person in the town whose surname contained the syllable “bottom”; Ramsbottom, Longbottom, Sidebottom, Winterbottom, Higginbottom, Whethambottom, Bottomwetham, Bottomwallop, Bottomley, and plain Bottom; he insinuated himself into the friendship of every one of these families, but separately, without allowing them to meet in his presence, until finally he was able to invite them all together to a huge dinner-party at his hotel. When each name in turn had been announced by a particularly loud-voiced hotel-servant, he withdrew, promising to return in a few minutes, and begging them to begin dinner without him. The meal consisted merely of rump-steak, and the host was already in a railway train, riding swiftly towards London, and leaving no address.
‘This story is regarded by Roberts and others as a most amusing one, though the point of the joke will need explaining to readers of this thirtieth century.