Part 2

_Mise-en-scène_ is another of the French terms which has suffered a Channel-change. In Paris it means the arrangement of the stage-business, whereas in London and in New York it is employed rather to indicate the elaboration of the scenery and of the spectacular accessories. An even more extraordinary misadventure has befallen _pianiste_, in that it is sometimes used as if it was to be applied only to a female performer. And this blunder is of long standing; but I remember as lately as forty years ago seeing an American advertisement of Teresa Carreño which proclaimed her to be 'the greatest living _lady_ pianiste'. I have also detected evidences of a startling belief of the illiterate that _artiste_ is the feminine of 'artist'. Nevertheless I found recently in a volume caricaturing the chief performers of the London music-halls a foot-note which explained that these celebrities were therein entitled _artistes_--because 'an artist creates, an _artiste_ performs'.

Still to be analysed are _première_ for 'first performance' or 'opening night' and _debut_ for 'first appearance'; and I fear that it is beyond expectation that these alien words will speedily drop their alien accents and their alien pronunciations. The same must be said also of _dénoûment_ and of _ingénue_--French words which really fill a gap in our vocabulary and which are none the less abhorrent to our speech habits. The most that is likely to happen is that they may shed their accents and more or less approximate an English pronunciation, _dee-noo-meant_, perhaps, and _inn-je-new_, an approximation which will be sternly resisted by the literate. I well remember one occasion when I overheard scorn poured upon a charming American actress who had happened to mention the date of her own _deb-you_ in New York.

V

_Encore_ and _mise-en-scène_ are only two of a dozen or a score of French words not infrequently used in English and misused by being charged with meanings not strictly in accord with French usage. 'Levee' is one; the French say _lever_. _Nom de plume_ is another; the French say _nom de guerre_. _Musicale_ also is rarely, if ever, to be found in French, at least I believe it to be the custom in Paris to call an 'evening with music' a _soirée musicale_. If _musicale_ is too serviceable to demand banishment, why should it not drop the _e_ and become _musical_? When Theodore Roosevelt, always as exact as he was vigorous in his use of language, was President of the United States, the cards of invitation which went out from the White House bore 'musical' in one of their lower corners; so that the word, if not the King's English, is the President's English.

To offset this I must record with regret that the late Clyde Fitch once wrote a one-act play about a manicurist, and as this operator on the finger-nails was a woman he entitled his playlet, the _Manicuriste_; and he did this in spite of the fact that, as a writer fairly familiar with French, he ought to have known the proper term--_manucure_.

Then there is _double-entendre_, implying a secondary meaning of doubtful delicacy. Dryden used it in 1673, when it was apparently good French, although it has latterly been superseded in France by _double-entente_--which has not, however, the somewhat sinister suggestion we attach to _double-entendre_. I noted it in Trench's 'Calderon' (in the 1880 reprint); and also in Thackeray; and both Calderon and Thackeray were competent French scholars.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to consider _née_, put after the name of a married woman and before the family name of her father. The Germans have a corresponding usage, Frau Schmidt, _geboren_ Braun. There is no doubt that _née_ is convenient, and there is little doubt that it would be difficult to persuade the men of culture to surrender it or even to translate it. To the literate 'Mrs. Smith, born Brown', might seem discourteously abrupt. But the French word is awkward, nevertheless, since the illiterate often take it as meaning only 'formerly', writing 'Mrs. Smith, _née_ Mary Brown', which implies that this lady had been christened before she was born. And there is a tale of a profiteer's wife who wrote herself down as 'Mrs. John Smith, New York, _née_ Chicago'.

Yet the French themselves are not always scrupulous to follow _née_ with only the family name of the lady. No less a scholar than Gaston Paris dedicated his _Poètes et Penseurs_ to 'Madame James Darmesteter, _née_ Mary Robinson'. Perhaps this is an instance of the modification of the strict meaning of a word by convention because of its enlarged usefulness when so modified.

Gaston Paris must be allowed all the rights and privileges of a master of language; but his is a dangerous example for the unscholarly, who are congenitally careless and who are responsible for _soubriquet_ instead of _sobriquet_, for _à l'outrance_ instead of _à outrance_, and for _en déshabille_ instead of _en déshabillé_. The late Mrs. Oliphant in her little book on Sheridan credited him with _gaieté du coeur_. It was long an American habit to term a railway station a _dépot_ (totally anglicized in its pronunciation--_deep-oh)_; but _dépôt_ is in French the name for a storehouse, and it is not--or not customarily--the name of a railway station. It was also a custom in American theatres to give the name of _parquette_-seats to the chairs which are known in England as 'stalls'; and in village theatres _parquette_ was generally pronounced 'par-kay'.

There are probably as many in Great Britain as in the United States who speak the French which is not spoken by the French themselves. Affectation and pretentiousness and the desire to show off are abundant in all countries. They manifest themselves even in Paris, where I once discovered on a bill of fare at the Grand Hotel _Irisch-stew à la française_. This may be companioned by a bill of fare on a Cunard steamer plying between Liverpool and New York, whereon I found myself authorized to order _tartletes_ and _cutletes_. When I called the attention of a neighbour to these outlandish vocables, the affable steward bent forward to enlighten my ignorance. 'It's the French, sir,' he explained; '_tartlete_ and _cutlete_ is French.'

That way danger lies; and when we are speaking or writing to those who have English as their mother-tongue there are obvious advantages in speaking and writing English, with no vain effort to capture Gallic graces. Readers of Mark Twain's _Tramp Abroad_ will recall the scathing rebuke which the author administered to his agent, Harris, because a report which Harris had submitted was peppered, not only with French and German words, but also with savage plunder from Choctaw and Feejee and Eskimo. Harris explained that he intruded these hostile verbs and nouns to adorn his page, and justified himself by saying that 'they all do it. Everybody that writes elegantly'. Whereupon Mark Twain, whose own English was as pure as it was rich and flexible, promptly read Harris a needed lesson: 'A man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, "Get the translations made yourselves if you want it--this book is not written for the ignorant classes".... The writer would say that he uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English. Very well, then, he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book.'

The result of these straight-forward and out-spoken remarks is set forth by Mark Twain himself: 'When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting agent. I can be dreadfully rough on a person when the mood takes me.'

VI

This sermon might have been made even broader in its application. It is not always only the ignorant who are discommoded by a misguided reliance on foreign words as bestowers of elegance; it is often the man of culture, aware of the meaning of the alien vocable but none the less jarred by its obtrusion on an English page. The man of culture may have his attention disturbed even by a foreign word which has long been acclimatized in English, if it still retains its unfriendly appearance. I suppose that _savan_ has established its citizenship in our vocabulary; it is, at least, domiciled in our dictionaries[2]; but when I found it repeated by Frederic Myers, in _Science and a Future Life_, to avoid the use of 'scientist', the French word forced itself on me, and I found myself reviving a boyish memory of a passage in Abbott's _Life of Napoleon_ dealing with Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt and narrating the attacks of the Mamelukes, when the order was given to form squares with '_savans_ and asses in the center'.

An otherwise fine passage of Ruskin's has always been spoilt for me by the wilful incursion of two French words, which seem to me to break the continuity of the sentence: 'A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages; may not be able to speak any but his own; may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance from words of modern _canaille_; remembers all their ancestry, their intermarriages, distantest relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they hold, among the national _noblesse_ of words, at any time and in any country.' Are not _canaille_ and _noblesse_ distracting? Do they not interrupt the flow? Do they not violate what Herbert Spencer aptly called the Principle of Economy of Attention, which he found to be the basis of all the rules of rhetoric?

Since I have made one quotation from Ruskin, I am emboldened to make two from Spencer, well known as his essay on 'Style' ought to be:--'A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him, requires part of his power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived.'--'Carrying out the metaphor that language is the vehicle of thought, there seems reason to think that in all cases the friction and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency; and that in composition, the chief, if not the sole thing to be done, is to reduce this friction and inertia to the smallest possible amount.'

_Savan_ and _canaille_ and _noblesse_ may be English words; but they have not that appearance. They have not rooted themselves in English earth as _war_ has, for instance, and _cab_ and _wig_. To me, for one, they increase the friction and the inertia; and yet, of course, the words themselves are not strange to me; they seem to me merely out of place and in the way. I can easily understand why Myers and Ruskin wanted them, even needed them. It was because they carried a meaning not easily borne by more obvious and more hackneyed nouns. 'The words of our mother tongue', said Lowell in his presidential address to the Modern Language Association of America, 'have been worn smooth by so often rubbing against our lips and our minds, while the alien word has all the subtle emphasis and beauty of some new-minted coin of ancient Syracuse. In our critical estimates we should be on our guard against its charm.'

Since I have summoned myself as a witness I take the stand once more to confess that Alan Seeger's lofty lyric, 'I have a rendezvous with Death' has a diminished appeal because of the foreign connotations of 'rendezvous'. The French noun was adopted into English more than three centuries ago; and it was used as a verb nearly three centuries ago; it does not interfere with the current of sympathy when I find it in the prose of Scott and of Mark Twain. Nevertheless, it appears to me unfortunate in Seeger's noble poem, where it forces me to taste its foreign flavour.

Another French word, _bouquet_, is indisputably English; and yet when I find it in Walt Whitman's heartfelt lament for Lincoln, 'O Captain, my Captain', I cannot but feel it to be a blemish:--

'For you _bouquets_ and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shore's a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.'

It may be hypercriticism on my part, but _bouquet_ strikes me as sadly infelicitous; and a large part of its infelicity is due to its having kept its French spelling and its French pronunciation. It is not in keeping; it diverts the flow of feeling; it is almost indecorous--much as a quotation from Voltaire in the original might be indecorous in a funeral address delivered by an Anglican bishop in a cathedral.

[Footnote 2: _Savan_ is quite obsolete in British use, and is not in the _Century Dictionary_ or in Webster, 1911. _Savant_ is common, and often written without italics, but the pronunciation is never anglicized.--H.B.]

VII

There are several questions which writers and speakers who give thought to their expressions will do well to ask themselves when they are tempted to employ a French word or indeed a word from any alien tongue. The first is the simplest: Is the foreign word really needed? For example, there is no benefit in borrowing _impasse_ when there exists already in English its exact equivalent, 'blind-alley', which carries the meaning more effectively even to the small percentage of readers or listeners who are familiar with French. Nor is there any gain in _résumé_ when 'summary' and 'synopsis' and 'abstract' are all available.

The second question is perhaps not quite so simple: Is the French word one which English has already accepted and made its own? We do not really need _questionnaire_, since we have 'interrogatory', but if we want it we can make shift with 'questionary'; and for _concessionnaire_ we can put 'concessionary'. To balance 'employer' there is 'employee', better by far than _employé_, which insists on a French pronunciation. Matthew Arnold and Lowell, always apt and exact in their use of their own tongue, were careful to prefer the English 'technic' to the French _technique_, which is not in harmony with the adjectives 'technical' and _polytechnic_. So 'clinic' seems at last to have vanquished its French father _clinique_, as 'fillet' has superseded _filet_; and now that 'valet' has become a verb it has taken on an English pronunciation.

Then there is _littérateur_. If a synonym for 'man of letters' is demanded why not find it in 'literator', which Lockhart did not hesitate to employ in the _Life of Scott_. It is pleasant to believe that _communard_, which was prevalent fifty years ago after the burning of the Tuileries, has been succeeded by 'communist' and that its twin-brother _dynamitard_ is now rarely seen and even more rarely heard. Perhaps some of the credit may be due to Stevenson, who entitled his tale the _Dynamiter_ and appended a foot-note declaring that 'any writard who writes _dynamitard_ shall find in me a never-resting fightard'.

The third question may call for a little more consideration: Has the foreign word been employed so often that it has ceased to be foreign even though it has not been satisfactorily anglicized in spelling and pronunciation? In the _Jungle Book_ Mr. Kipling introduces an official who is in charge of the 'reboisement' of India; and in view of the author's scrupulosity in dealing with professional vocabularies we may assume that this word is a recognized technical term, equivalent to the older word 'afforestation'. What is at once noteworthy and praiseworthy is that in Mr. Kipling's page it does not appear in italics. And in Mr. Pearsall Smith's book on the English language one admiring reader was pleased to find 'débris' also without italics, although with the retention of the French accent. Perhaps the time is not far distant when the best writers will cease to stigmatize a captured word with the italics which are a badge of servitude and which proclaim that it has not yet been enfranchised into our language.

The fourth question is the most perplexing: If the formerly foreign word has been taken over and if it can therefore be utilized without hesitancy, can it be made to form its plural in accord with the customs of English. Here those who seek to make the English language truly English and to keep it truly pure, will meet with sturdy resistance. It will not be easy to persuade the literate, the men of culture, to renounce the _x_ at the end of _beaux_ and _bureaux_ and to spell these plurals 'beaus' and 'bureaus'. And yet no one doubts that 'beau' and 'bureau' have both won the right to be regarded as having attained an honourable standing in our language.

VIII

'De Quincey once said that authors are a dangerous class for any language'--so Professor Krapp has reminded us in his book on _Modern English_, and he has explained that De Quincey meant 'that the literary habit of mind is likely to prove dangerous for a language ... because it so often leads a speaker or writer to distrust natural and unconscious habit, even when it is right, and to put in its stead some conscious theory of literary propriety. Such a tendency, however, is directly opposed to the true feeling for idiomatic English. It destroys the sense of security, the assurance of perfect congruity between thought and expression, which the unliterary and unacademic speaker and writer often has, and which, with both literary and unliterary, is the basis for all expressive use of language'.

And since I have borrowed the quotation from Professor Krapp I shall bring this rambling paper to an end by borrowing another, from the _Toxophilus_ of Roger Ascham (1545).

'He that will wryte well in any tongue must folowe this council of Aristotle, to speake as the common people do, to think as wise men do. Many English writers have not done so, but using straunge wordes as latin, french, and Italian, do make all things darke and harde. Once I communed with a man whiche reasoned the englyshe tongue to be enryched and encreased thereby, sayinge--Who wyll not prayse that feaste where a man shall drinke at a diner bothe wyne, ale and beere? Truly, quod I they all be good, every one taken by hym selfe alone, but if you put Malmesye and sacke, read wine and whyte, ale and beere, and al in one pot, you shall make a drynke neyther easie to be knowen nor yet holsom for the body.'

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

NOTES

The word #laches#, which is not noticed in the above paper, is one of a list of words sent to us by a correspondent who suggests that it is the business of our society to direct the public as to their pronunciation. Like other examples given by Mr. Matthews, _laches_ seems to be at present in an uncertain condition; and as it is used only by lawyers they will be able to decide its future. What seems clear about it is that the two contending pronunciations are homophones, one with _latches_ the other with _lashes_. The A having been Englished its closing T seems natural; and _latches_ (from _lachesse_) is thus an exact parallel with _riches_ (from _richesse_). But there seems no propriety in the SS being changed to Z. The pronunciation _látchess_ would save it from its awkward and absurd homophone _latches_, and would be in order with _prowess, largess, noblesse_, &c. Moreover, since _laches_ is used only as the name of a quality (= negligence) and never (like _riches_), as a plural, to connote special acts of negligence, the pronunciation _latchess_ would be correct as well as convenient; and the word would be better spelt with double S: _lachess_.

Of the word #levee# the _O.E.D._ says, 'All our verse quotations place the stress on the first syllable. In England this is the court pronunciation, and prevails in educated use. The pronunciation' with the accent on the second syllable 'which is given by Walker, is occasionally heard in Great Britain, and appears to be generally preferred in the U.S.', but the dictionary does not quote Burns

'Guid-mornin' to your Majesty! May Heav'n augment your blisses, On ev'ry new birthday ye see, A humble poet wishes! My bardship here, at your levee, On sic a day as this is, Is sure an uncouth sight to see, Amang thae birthday dresses Sae fine this day.'

So that it would seem that the Scotch and American pronunciation of this word is more thoroughly Englished than our own: and the prejudice which opposes straightforward common-sense solutions, however desirable they may be, is brought home to us by the fact that almost all Englishmen would be equally shocked by the notion either of spelling this word as they pronounce it, _levay_, or of pronouncing it, like Burns, as they spell it, _levee_.

ENGLISH WORDS IN FRENCH

It would be instructive if we could give a parallel account of what the French do when they adopt an English word into their language. _Le Dictionnaire des Anglicismes_, lately published by Delagrave, has two hundred pages, and is much praised by a reviewer in the _Mercure de France_, Feb. 15, p. 246: but it does not give the current French pronunciations of the English words. The reviewer writes: 'Ce qui me gène bien davantage, c'est que M. Bonnaffé supprime, partout, avec rigueur, la façon française de prononcer le mot anglais. Était-il superflu de dire comment nous articulons _shampooing_? Nous n'avons, je crois, qu'une forme orale pour _boy_, petit domestique, parce qu'il est dû à l'oreille; mais nous sommes partagés quant à _boy-scout_, qui est arrivé par tracts et par journaux. L'anglais donne un mot _high-life_, le français en fait cinq: _haylayf, aïlaïf, ichlif, ijlif, iglif_.' p. 247. It would seem from _high-life_ that English words in French sometimes look as strange as French words do when represented in make-shift English phonetics. On p. 228 of the same _Mercure_ there is notice of 'un petit manuel de conversation' in which 'Toutes les nuances de la "phonetic pronunciation" sont notées, à l'usage des Américains désireux de se faire comprendre en français. Cette notation (says the reviewer) m'a tellement amusé que je ne puis résister au plaisir d'en citer quelques exemples: Av-nü' day Shawn Zay-lee-zay', Plass de la Kown-kord' to Plass der lay-twal. Fown-ten day Zeen-noh-sawn,--Oh-pay-râ Kum-meek,--Foh-lee Bair-zhair,--Bool-vâr day Kâ-pu-seen,--Beeb-lee-oh-tech Sant Zhun-vee-ayv',--Lay Zan-vâ-leed,--May-zown' der Veck-tor' U-goh',--Hub-bay-leesk',--Rü San Tawn-twan, &c., &c....' There would seem to be errors in this 'citation'. Vecktor should be Veektor? and H looks like a misprint for L in Hub-bay-leesk. -tech was probably -teck. Bonnaffé's book is noticed in _The Modern Language Review_ of last January.

ON THE DIALECTAL WORDS IN EDMUND BLUNDEN'S POEMS[3]

[Footnote 3: _The Waggoner and other Poems_, by Edmund Blunden, pp. 70. Sidgwick and Jackson. London, 1920.]