Walking-Stick Papers

by Robert Cortes Holliday

The English "go on" a good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," quotes from some tenth-rate American author—which is a way they have had in England of judging our literature—with the comment that "that is not the way John Milton wrote." Not long ago Mr. Crosland became involved in a trial in the courts in connection with Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas and Robert Ross. He defended himself with much spirit and considerable cleverness. Among other things he said, as reported in the press: "What is this game? This gang are trying to do me down. Here I am a poor man up against two hundred quid (or some such amount) of counsel."

Well, that wasn't the way John Milton talked, either.

The English slang for money is a pleasant thing: thick'uns and thin'uns; two quid, five bob; tanners and coppers. And they have a good body of expressive and colourful speech. "On the rocks" is a neat and poetic way of saying "down and out." It is really not necessary to add the word "resources" to the expression "on his own." A "tripper" is a well-defined character, and so is a "flapper," a "nipper," and a "bounder." There had to be some word for the English "nut," as no amount of the language of John Milton would describe him; and while the connotation of this word as humour is different with us, the appellation of the English, when you have come to see it in their light, hits off the personage very crisply. To say that such a one "talks like a ha'penny book" is, as the English say, "a jolly good job." And a hotel certainly is presented as full when it is pronounced "full up." A "topper" would be only one kind of a hat. Very well, then it is quite possible, we see, to be "all fed up," as they say in England, with English slang.

Humorous Englishmen sometimes rather fancy our slang; and make naive attempts at the use of it. In England, for instance, a man "gets the sack" when he is "bounced" from his job. So I heard a lively Englishman attracted by the word say that so and so should "get the bounce."

In writing, the Englishman usually employs "the language." He has his yellow journals, indeed, which he calls "Americanised" newspapers. But crude and slovenly writing certainly is not a thing that sticks out on him. What a gentlemanly book reviewer he is always! We have here in the United States perhaps a half dozen gentlemen who review books. Is it not true that you would get tired counting up the young English novelists who are as accomplished writers as our few men of letters? The Englishman has a basketful of excellent periodicals to every one of ours. And in passing it is interesting to note this. When we are literary we become a little dull. See our high-brow journals! When we frolic we are a little, well, rough. The Englishman can be funny, even hilarious, and unconsciously, confoundedly well bred at the same time. But he does have a rotten lot of popular illustrated magazines over there compared to ours.

When you return from a sojourn of several months in the land of "the language" you are immediately struck very forcibly by the vast number of Americanisms, by the richness of our popular speech, by the "punch" it has, and by the place it holds in the printed page at home. In a journey from New York I turned over in the smoking-car a number of papers I had not seen for some time, among them the New York Evening Post, Collier's, Harper's, Puck, and the Indianapolis News. Here, generally without quotation marks and frequently in the editorial pages, I came across these among innumerable racy phrases: nothing doing, hot stuff, Right O!, strong-arm work, some celebration, has 'em all skinned, mad at him, this got him in bad, scared of, skiddoo, beat it, a peach of a place, get away with the job, been stung by the party, got by on his bluff, sore at that fact, and always on the job. I learned that the weather man had put over his first frost last night, that a town we passed had come across with a sixteen-year-old burglar, and that a discredited politician was attempting to get out from under. Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the Englishman frequently fails to get us.

You note a change in the whole atmosphere of language. A pronounced instance of this difference is found in public signs. You have been seeing in English conveyances the placards in neat type posted about which kindly request the traveller not to expectorate upon the floor of this vehicle, as to do so may cause inconvenience to other passengers or spread disease, and so forth and so on. Over here:

Don't Spit? This means You!

This is about the way our signs of this kind go. Now what about all this? I used to think many person just returned from England ridiculously affected in their speech. And many of them are—those who say caun't when they can't do it unconsciously. That is, over here. In Britain, perhaps, it is just as well to make a stagger at speaking the way the Britains do. When you accidently step on an Englishman's toe, it is better to say "I'm sorry!" or simply "sorry," than to beg his pardon or ask him to excuse you. This makes you less conspicuous, and so more comfortable. And when you stay any length of time you fall naturally into English ways. Then when you come back you seem to us, to use one of the Englishman's most delightful words, to "swank" dreadfully. And in that is the whole story.

Mr. James declares that in the work of two equally good writers you could still tell by the writing which was that of the Englishman and which that of the American. The assumption of course is that where they differed the American would be the inferior writer. Mr. James prefers the English atmosphere. And the Englishman is inclined to regard us in our deviation as a sort of imperfect reproduction of himself. What is his is ours, it is true; but what's ours is our own. That is, we have inherited a noble literature in common. But we write less and less like an Englishman all the while. Our legacy of language brought over in the Mayflower has become adapted to our own environment, been fused in the "melting-pot," and quickened by our own life to-day. Whether for better or for worse—it may be either—the literary touch is rapidly going by the board in modern American writing. One of the newer English writers remarks: "A few carefully selected American phrases can very swiftly kill a great deal of dignity and tradition."