Of the necessity for swearing there is more than one opinion: large numbers both of the educated and the uneducated stand for the rigour of the taboo and for self-control: for them yea must always be yea, and nay, nay. Yet in practice they permit a few sterilized ejaculations, such as “you silly beggar”, which is the drawing-room synonym for the double b. of the street-corner; “bother”, “blow”, and “dash” do service for “damn”, “curse”, and “blast”, which are just beyond the old-fashioned limit. For oaths there are “By Jove!”, “By George!”, and “By Goodness!”, and on comic occasions “Oddsboddikins!”, “Strike me!”, “Swelp me Bob!”, and “By my halidom!” are dragged out, their blasphemy purged by the lapse of time. It is one of the curiosities of English that an oath by “God’s little bodies”—that is, by the Host—is a Christmas-annual jest, while “Bloody”, still stringently disallowed, does not mean more than “By Our Lady” as an oath, nor as an adjective more than “worthy of the Bloods”, those aristocratic disturbers of City peace in the eighteenth century. Another section of the community swears luxuriously, from anti-institutional conviction; but a middle course is, as usual, the most popular one: bad language is permitted only under extreme provocation, and even then must stop short of complicated invention.
Swearing as an art probably reached its highwater-mark in the late eighteenth century. The aristocracy was as careful in its protection of a corrupt Church as it was cynical about religion; and swearing as an assault on a coffee-house rival and introductory to a duel demanded a nice refinement of oratorical blasphemy; as the contemporary sermon demanded a nice refinement of oratorical eulogy. The Elizabethan Age may have been richer in far-fetched profanities and wild conceits than the Augustan Age, but swearing is an art that cannot trust to mere adventure for its success; it must have a controlled purpose, and always flourishes most strongly in a pure aristocracy, particularly a leisured town-dwelling aristocracy. The Elizabethan age swore, it hardly knew how or why: and it was an excitable age with few settled convictions. The Augustan age swore with deliberation and method, as clearly appears in Sheridan’s Rivals:
Acres: “If I can find out this Ensign Beverley, odds triggers and flints! I’ll make him know the difference o’t.”
Absolute: “Spoken like a man! But pray, Bob, I observe you have got an odd kind of a new method of swearing.”
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.”