Good linguists sometimes get confused, when languages have words with similar sounds but different meanings. Thus, the German ‘nehmen’ sounds like the English ‘name’ and ‘dumm’ like ‘dumb’ and ‘bekommen’ like ‘become.’ A man once said to me at breakfast, “I shall name bacon”: then, seeing that I did not grasp what he had said, he hurriedly corrected it, “Ach, I am dumb. I shall become bacon.”
When I first went to Greece, they still spelled Byron’s name phonetically, Mpairon. They pronounce b like our v, but mp like our b—a fact unknown to many of the people who talk about the Mpret of Albania. Similarly, the Spaniards spelled O’Donohue’s name O’Donojo. He was Cuesta’s chief-of-staff in the Peninsula. The veterans of that war picked up the foreign names by hearsay, and usually got them right; but now our veterans can read, they see how foreign names are spelled and mispronounce them sadly. Leekatoo suggests a cockatoo, but really is Le Câteau.
There is always a temptation to turn foreign names into some English words with which we are familiar: we still say Leg-horn for Livorno, though we have dropped Lush-bone for Lisboa, and call it Lisbon now. I was looking for a ship at Devonport, the Hecate, and thought I spotted her; so I asked, “Is that the Hekaty?” and was answered, “She’s the He Cat.” In the gardens here the Gloire de Lorraine begonia is always called the Lower End. I hear people talk of the Cornice as the Cornish road, and make Hague rhyme with ague.
After the Kruger telegram Punch printed an imaginary letter to the German Emperor (18 January 1896) signed Grandmamma, but attributed on internal evidence to the Duke of York, there being a nautical breeziness about it, e.g. “Solche eine confounded Impertinenz habe ich nie gesehen.” I saw this in Vienna, reprinted in the February number of Progress, the editor stating explicitly that it was “drollig.” In the ensuing War people on the Continent felt certain that our troops were using Dum-Dum bullets; and I saw a newspaper at Paris which said that we were slaughtering the Boers with our murderous Dam-Dams. And in 1912 or 1913 I saw one there which said that we expressed our highest hopes in singing “God shave the King.”
In looking through the obsolete music here I found the anthem in the good old form which should have been revived in 1910—“God save great George our King”—and also in a later form that seems to be forgotten—“God save Britannia’s King, William, our noble King.” There was also a good deal of dance-music, some “as performed at His Majesty’s balls, Almack’s, and the Court of France,” and some “as danced at Almack’s, the Nobility’s balls, and the Assembly Rooms, Ramsgate.” Judging by the music, the dancing was very animated then: in Beauties of the Ball Room the first dance is the Sailor’s Hornpipe. Pop Goes The Weasel is described as “now become so popular in fashionable circles,” and directions are given for dancing it and exclaiming at the right moments “Pop Goes The Weasel.”
Amongst the old pamphlets and sermons here (mostly presented by their authors) there is A Sermon preached in Trinity Church, Cambridge, on Feb. 1, 1857, the Sunday before the Bachelors’ Ball. The text seems inappropriate—“neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” The sermon is chiefly aimed at candidates for ordination. They are to shun the Bachelors’ Ball, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of others who might be led astray by their example. And it gives an awful instance. “He received a pressing invitation to a public ball.... In that ball-room he found, it is stated, no fewer than six clergymen. To stifle the reproaches of conscience, he went up to those six clergymen, and asked them, one by one, if they thought there could be any harm in attending a public ball.... To shelter their own inconsistency, they at once answered that such amusements were perfectly harmless.... That night’s dissipation removed all his former scruples.... He plunged into extravagance, had recourse to gambling, became a bankrupt in his fortunes, perpetrated forgery, administered poison, and at last expiated his crimes upon the scaffold, the precincts of the prison receiving his strangled body, and hell, it is to be feared, receiving his lost soul.”
There is also a volume of Letters from Abroad by the man who preached that sermon. After a brief residence in France, he knows all about the French. “Like people in a fever, the French complain of everything outside them, whereas the evil is within them. Had they in their churches and schools sound Scriptural teaching, they would be contented. But, being without the knowledge of the Bible,” etc.... “As I come from our Protestant service on Sunday, I meet men and women carrying bundles of firewood, which they have been gathering in the forest. It all arises from their ignorance of God’s Word. Had they Bibles, I might refer them to Num. XV. 36, where Moses asked God what was to be done to a man who was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and God Himself answered, Let the man be put to death.”
Then there is a sermon on The Great Exhibition, preached by a much abler man, 4 May 1851. He also speaks of “our blessing of blessings, the opened Bible,” but is not so sure of its effects. “There is too much reason to apprehend that a vast increase of vice, and Sabbath-breaking, and profaneness, may be added to the iniquity already abounding in our demoralized metropolis ... and foreign visitors may leave our shores worse than when they arrived.”
Writing from Exeter, 23 October 1838, my father says, “I went to hear the Mayor preach on Sunday evening: he had an immense audience, and spoke for about an hour and a half. He holds up the Bible alone as the sole necessary book, condemns every creed and article framed by men, calls every system of religion in the world a money-getting system, etc., etc.” My father kept a copy of some verses on the Mayor, which were very popular in Exeter just then, especially the lines, “on Saturday sells gin to all, | preaches Sunday, | and on Monday, | sitting in judgment in the Hall, | inflicts the fine for fight or fray | caused by the gin of Saturday.”
I can still recall a conversation between my father and an old-fashioned country doctor at a place where we were staying in 1866. I had been reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and I began to listen attentively, when I heard the doctor denouncing Rugby and speaking of Arnold’s “presumption” in undertaking to bring up other men’s sons when he could not bring up his own: every one of them had turned out badly. My father looked surprised, and mentioned Matthew Arnold. The answer came with several slaps upon the table—“Matthew, indeed! A free thinker, sir, a Free Thinker.” And then the doctor went on to talk of the “impiety” of bishop Colenso in remarking that the Book of Numbers had arranged the Hebrew camp in such a way that the Levites’ quarters would be more than a sabbath-day’s journey from the lavatories.