A Cursory History of Swearing

by Julian Sharman

“When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths.”—‘Cymbeline,’ ii. 1.

In the study of antiquity there are steep and irregular by-paths that defy the traveller every step that he pursues them. It is in threading these tortuous windings that many a fearless venturer has lost foot-hold and been utterly cast away. Many a man with the passion for antiquity deep at his heart, and with limbs well girded to attain to the summit of his aim, has been fain to settle down, jaded and dispirited, at mid-task. He has accomplished nothing perhaps beyond the mere reading of an inscription or deciphering of a medallion, but the spirit of his insight is dimmed, and stricken in the work. Thus has it been with many generations of seekers and inquirers. The virtuosi and cognoscenti, the curious in gems and medals, in brasses and torsos, the commentators and concordancers,—all these may be said to be nothing more than so many units in the lost tribe of eager scholarship. Starting confident of probing to the very source and mystery of things, they have rather preferred the shelter of some attainable evening refuge than be overtaken in their task by the chills and storms of night.

It is easier far, means not being wanting, to place in one’s cabinet some matchless group of Capo di Monti, some priceless specimen of the fabric of Sèvres or Dresden, than to tax one’s strength in extracting the lessons conveyed by form and colour. It is a simpler matter to be the possessor of Damascus sword-blades or Aleppo prayer-rugs than to burden one’s self with reflections upon oriental chivalry or mysticism. And so, again, it is a far readier, as it is certainly a rougher, way of being in sympathy with antiquity, to notch off a fragment in the Acropolis, or carve one’s name among the ruins of the Forum, than to originate such poetic passages as Byron uttered over the field of Marathon, or Longfellow in the market-place of Nuremburg. Say what we will, both forms of veneration arise alike from the same innate craving to grasp some part or parcel of the tissue of the past.

To the untiring few who have overcome the drought and dust of the up-land journey, the summit, once attained, will disclose many a point and promontory unsuspected by the purblind dweller in the plain. The retrospect will reveal to them a busy, thronging life underlying the serenity of history. They will be able to range the perished multitudes in their once motley grouping, to restore warmth and colour to lineaments long obscured in death, and greed and alacrity to the sunk eyes and folded hands. To those whom the spirit of the past is apt to visit as a passionate inspiration, the mere record of consecutive events is often wearisome. It is not altogether for this that they have laboured to catch some murmur, however slight, of the infinite harmony that is being sounded by all, the chords of history. Rather, it is to tramp mistily along from generation to generation in the long, forced march of human life. Rather, to probe to the depths of some one of the world’s stupendous follies, of some one of its golden vanities, that they have thus cast about them with measure and lead-line. And when they have completely searched out and written of the world’s stupendous follies, they will perhaps have written what alone would be worth calling its history.

As some small, tentative contribution to the understanding of this under-life, the plan of this volume has been designed. The past has come down to us cloaked and shrouded, and attended by its decorous retinue of mutes and bearers. We are continually seeking to revive this dead past, just as it was, when its future was a wild, inscrutable thing, and its life was so fragrant, so masterful, and so momentous. It wants a great mental effort to recall events that are as indubitably past as if they had never happened at all. The pleasure of possessing, or of even entering, the vanished territory is a privilege so rare, that there are permitted but a few moments for its enjoyment. It is so subtle a perception that even seasoned historians seldom have the power of imparting it. They may surround us with the conflict of contending legionaries, until we seem to recognise the thud of advancing battalions and the clash and impact of the squadron. These, however lifelike, are impressions of a much grosser and more tangible nature, and can have but little in common with the blended sweetness and irony that pertain to the spontaneous realisation of the dead past.

What we are for ever craving to learn is something more of the gambols, the humours, and the anticing of this sad army, for ever on the march. We yearn to know something more of the vanity and the pettiness, the fever and the longing, of those weary men and women, the memorial of whose lives has been trampled out. The historian will sometimes rend away the veil that separates us from this unwritten history; but more often it is the creation of the romancer that helps to clothe the dim spirit of the past from the loom of its misty memories; Pascarel, depicting the splendours of the artist-life of Florence, while Arlecchino and the rest of the gay carnival troupe are romping in the faded street of the stocking-makers; Slender and Shallow and the simple folk of the Cotswold country ambling out their jests midst the turmoil of those stirring Lancastrian times; or “sweet Anne Page,” provoking and winning, three hundred years ago, in the glades of Windsor Forest. The honest yeoman who fought the master of fence—three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes; the foolish justice who in the days of his youth had beat Sampson Stockfish behind Gray’s Inn, and had heard the chimes at midnight, lying out in the windmill in St. George’s Fields—these and many kindred types represent to us so many factors in that prodigious army of the unknown that is never permitted us more thoroughly to know. It is indeed in the fancy of Shakespeare that this bygone sweetness and irony seem the oftener to be kindled and awakened. Not, certainly, in the wordy warring of Capulet and Montagu; not, perhaps, in the outspoken chivalry of “Harry the King,” or the blunt generosity of Falconbridge. But we find it moving and thrilling in every tone caught up from the English country-side, in the echoes wafted from the vintage-lands of France, or the garden walks of Padua. And freshest and daintiest of all, we find it in the poet’s snatches of song and rugged bursts of minstrelsy. This indeed is the enchantment that subdues us as the dimpled page advances to the gay theatre lights, and pleading the woes of three hundred years ago, and exhorting now as he exhorted then, bids “Sigh no more, ladies; ladies, sigh no more.” It is this which captivates as the scene pauses and the drama halts, that the eye may be carried back through a vista of three centuries to dwell upon a simple “lover and his lass” as they wander “between the acres of the rye.”

The subject of swearing the writer has come to regard as one of the many indices by which the paths of our ancestors may be traced. Holding in fitting estimation the monuments of their industry and their prudence, none the less may we seek to view the departed generations in their hours of carelessness and frolic, and may peer into their casinos and their tiring-rooms, their spital-houses and their bridewells. What manner of men were they? we ask. Were they sparkling and festive, tellers of rare stories, dealers in racy jokes? Were they wholesome in their living, manly and courageous in their lives, or were they loose and liquorish, winking at falsehood and cajoling the truth? And if the monumental record of their virtues be a just one, why did they heirloom on posterity this bitter heritage of swearing?

The truth would seem to be that in every society there has existed a certain corps d’élite, which, distinguished at once by its breeding and its brusquerie, has perversely thought fit to adopt the insignia of swearing as its own particular device. In advancing this explanation of the fidelity with which posterity has exercised its watchfulness over the bequest of swearing, we must not for a moment be misunderstood. It is far from our purpose to associate good breeding with the use of coarse vituperation, but at the same time it is impossible to overlook the fact that swearing has mostly owed its favour and its audacity to the practice of really cultivated men. The first contrivers of our modern methods of swearing took pains to raise an air of mystery and exclusiveness around their favourite art. “To be an accomplished gentleman,” says Carlo Buffone, in Ben Jonson’s comedy,[30] “have two or three peculiar oaths to swear by that no man else swears”; and it would seem to have been one of the gravest charges brought against the Hectors and Bobadils of the Elizabethan stage, that they dare assume acquaintance with courtly oaths. Even Hotspur is portrayed by the dramatist as a most precise and scrupulous swearer. It may be seen how he reproaches Lady Percy for swearing “like a comfit-maker’s wife,” and bids her “swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art!” and not to mince her oaths like some city madam or seller of gingerbread.[31] For upwards of two centuries, the notion of finish and exclusiveness in oath-taking afforded constant merriment for the stage, the creations of the playwright seldom failing to give full scope to the illustration of this strange humour. Every period brought its particular oath and fresh generations of exponents. Now it was the soldier of fortune returned from encounters with the Spaniards or the Turk. Anon it was the tavern rake of King James’ day, and after some interval, the wits and foplings of the Restoration. By-and-by, there followed the crowd of nabobs and parvenus, the blustering swearers of the days of East Indian speculation, and finally came the truculent swabbers and commodores of Adelphi melodrama. The nouveau riche of the younger Colman, who fails to enrobe himself with dignity by the aid of all ordinary resources, is enjoined by his more practical helpmate to vent his “zounds” and “damme,” in emulation of the swearing of the great.

For this corps d’élite of which we have spoken have drawn to themselves men the most worthless, and men the most admirable. It has found disciples in every capital—the easy, the affluent, the voluptuous, cheery and sunny of speech, bold and swarthy of countenance. There are numbered among them free livers and free lances innumerable. There are men remarkable for their stores of boisterous animalism, no less than delicate scholars remarkable only for the brightness of their fancy and the vividness of their dreams. They have ever been a composite and a cosmopolitan crew, some shouldering into the ranks by the weight of their purses or the length of their rent-rolls, others by skill evinced at high midnight, when taper-lights throw pale vertical rays upon a refreshing margent of green cloth. Among them, too, are stout soldiers, bold fearless riders, the wild and fevered blood of many countries, the fervour of Italy, and the craft of the Levant. To the precincts of this gilded and splendid society come many sorts and conditions of aspirants. The boy-parson lays down the sanctity of the priesthood and rapturously sues for admission. Elders of threescore demand an entrance upon the strength of risqué stories sprung from garrison-towns and college common-rooms. Skilled physicians feign indifference to their calling that they may smack of the kennel and the hunting-field. Staid, contemplative men, men with a prayer and a tune in them, press into this joyous throng, eager to clasp the bruised fruit of human desire and to claim kindred with these cheery fellowships. But, however varied the elements of the order, the members are constituted alike in this: they are hearty and laughter-loving; they are jolly and courageous.

With outposts so widely distributed, it is the more necessary that there should be some unmistakable uniform, that whether it be in a Paris ordinary, or on the steppes of Tartary, one may easily recognise the scion of the order. Such a uniform, so at least we are constrained to understand it, has, for the most part, been supplied by a subdued and discriminate use of the materials of swearing. A Sandwich Islander appreciates this when he salutes a British crew in terms compounded of oaths and ribaldry.[32] He is really intending to denote his sense of the distinction of the exalted visitors, when he exclaims: “Very glad see you! Damn your eyes! Me like English very much. Devilish hot, sir! Goddam!” It is to claim kindred with the brotherhood that swell surgeons vent their “blasted!” and “damnation!” as they tender to the ailments of rackety young patients. It is to bridge over the gulf between carelessness and propriety that even mild college tutors will sometimes venture upon a modest “botheration!” or “confounded!” The most fertile and most voluminous swearer, we have been given to understand, exists in the person of one of the leading littérateurs of the century when desiring to curry favour with a company of fast men.