There is no surer way of testing the current of popular religious opinion than by examining the breaches of the taboos in swearing. At the present day the First Person of the Trinity is not taken too seriously. “O God!” has become only a low-grade oath and has crept into the legitimate vocabulary of the drawing-room and the stage. The second Person, since the great evangelical campaigns of the last century overturned a despotism and inaugurated a spiritual republic, is far more firmly established. To swear by Jesus Christ is an oath with weight behind it. The Third Person is seldom appealed to, and makes a very serious oath, partly because of the Biblical warning that the sin against the Holy Ghost is the one unforgivable offence, and partly because the word Ghost suggests a sinister spiritual haunting. “God” to the crowd is a benevolent or a laughable abstraction; Jesus Christ is a hero for whom it is possible to have a warm friendly feeling; but the Holy Ghost is a puzzle and to be superstitiously avoided.
From blasphemy and semi-blasphemy it is only a short step to secular irreverence. Many secular objects where they have become symbolic of deep-seated loyalties are held in the highest reverence by naval, military, and sporting society. The Crown and the Union Jack are for the governing classes enthroned beside the Altar and the Communion-cup. To call the smallest King’s ship a “boat”, let alone a “wretched tub” or “lousy hencoop”, is to invite broken ribs; to mistake a pack of hounds in full cry for a “whole lot of howling dogs” is social suicide. The ingenious General G——r, so remarkable an artist in swearing that he must one day earn a paragraph in the revised D.N.B., used this form of profanity with the happiest effect. Once, when inspecting the famous “Z” Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery, he was dissatisfied with its response to his order “Dismount!” He bellowed out: “Now climb back again, you pack of consumptive little Maltese monkeys!” “Z” Battery complained to Headquarters of this affront, and General G——r was in due course asked for his explanation and apology. He gave it briefly as follows:
Sir,
I have the honour to report that, on the occasion to which I am referred, my order to dismount was obeyed in so slovenly a fashion that for the moment I was deceived. I concluded that I was actually assisting at a performance by a troop of little Maltese monkeys, amusing enough but crippled by disease. I tender my apologies to all ranks of “Z” Battery for my mistake.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
J. G——r.
Major-General.
Besides these religious and semi-religious taboos there is a whole series forbidding the mention of any realistic danger or misfortune that may be lurking round the corner. So it is a greater personal offence to tell a taxi-man “May your gears seize up and your tyres burst, and may you get pitched through your windscreen and break both legs against a lamp-post” than merely to ejaculate “Blast your bleeding neck!” or “Plague take you!” Instances of necks bleeding and divinely blasted are rarely met in General Hospitals, and England has been free from plague these two hundred years. To curse effectively one must invoke a reality or, at the least, a possibility. Any swearing that fails to wound the susceptibility of the person sworn at or of the witness to the oath, is mere play. Few people enjoy being sworn at, but there are no forms of humour more boring than guaranteed non-alcoholic substitutes for the true wine of swearing. “Great Jumping Beans!”, “Ye little fishes!”, “Snakes and ladders!”, and “Mind your step, you irregular old Pentagon!” If Sinclair Lewis has done nothing else in Martin Arrowsmith, he has at least nailed up as an abominable type Cliff Clawson, the medical student, who indulged perpetually in this form of heartiness.
Among the governed classes one of the unforgivable words of abuse is “bastard.” Bastardy is always a possibility, and savagely tormented whenever it appears; so that “You bastard!” must be regarded as a definite allegation. Whereas in the governing classes there is far greater tolerance towards bastards, who often have noble or even royal blood in their veins, and who, under the courtesy title “natural sons and daughters,” have contributed largely to our ancestral splendours. On the other hand, the other common word in “b.,” which originally meant a Bulgarian heretic, but later implied “one addicted to unnatural vice”, is not a serious insult among the governed, who are more free from the homosexual habit. Dr. Johnson rightly defined the word as “a term of endearment among sailors”. Whereas in the governing classes the case is reversed. When some thirty years ago the word was written nakedly up on a club notice-board as a charge against one of its members, there followed a terrific social explosion, from which the dust has even now not yet settled. Had the accusation been “Mr. Wilde is a bastard”, shoulders would merely have been shrugged at the noble lord’s quixotic ill-temper. As it was....