Читать книгу A Cursory History of Swearing - Julian Sharman - Страница 4

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“ ‘Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘but nothing to this.’ ”—Tristram Shandy.

It lay in the heart of Bohemia. It was approached through a labyrinth of streets that grew denser and darker as one neared the precincts of the club. Could any of the brother Scufflers have seen the neighbourhood by day, it would have presented an appearance dismal and sordid enough. Dealers in faded wardrobes—merchants in tinsel and rouge de théâtre—retailers of wigs and fleshings and all manner of stage wares, seemed one with another to have made the locality their home. One missed certainly the bone-sellers and refuse-sifters of the adjacent Clare Market, and one was spared the cheap cosmetic shops and smug undertakers of the neighbouring Soho. But you were recompensed, here in the heart of mid-Bohemia, by the all-pervading odour of potations and provisions—of banquets long past, and of banquets that were yet to come.

What wonderful odours are those that emanate from this quarter of the town! The dank vapours of Covent Garden are sweet in the nostrils of many a cockney reveller. There is no orange-peel so perfumed as the Drury orange-peel that has been concentrating its fragrance round the boards of Thespis since the days when Mohun and Hart, and Shatterel and Betterton strutted on the bare planks of the Cockpit. No scent of printer’s ink is more refreshing than that which adheres to the yards of flimsy playbill still hawked about by itinerant vendors. But the whole place has through the day-time a blear-eyed, a drunk-over-night appearance. It is like a man who is never at his best until he has supped or dined. From morn till twilight it wears this sullen and uncared-for look. Wait until nightfall, and it will positively glisten with lamps and gleam with merriment. No wonder, therefore, that it has been the birthplace of so many of those midnight carousing dens, into one of which we are tremulously seeking to enter.

It was what is called a literary and theatrical club, the Scufflers. It was literary in so far that the majority of its members lay down at night with unrealised dreams of authorship. It was theatrical to the extent that many a one was the possessor of an unacted drama coiled up in his breast coat-pocket, and was to be seen surging about managers’ doors, only waiting the glance of favour to fall upon author and manuscript. Nor was this literary impulsion entirely without fruit-bearing. Scufflers had been known to rush breathlessly into the club-room at the approach of midnight, and in an excited and panting condition have been heard to sing out for pens and paper, as the morning press would wait for no man. Personally the accomplishments of the members were many and varied. The great primus and leader of the club was a man who was alleged to dash off a leading article, take a hand at whist, and tackle a dish of kidneys at one and the same time.

We must now be supposed to have reached the entrance of the hostelry, for indeed it was a Covent Garden tavern and nothing more.

We commence to grope our way along the mouldering, unlit passage that gives access to the one apartment tenanted by the club, in which their cheerful deliberations are now proceeding. Time cannot efface the memory of that green-baize door at the end of this passage, where we were very properly brought to a stand on that first evening of our initiation. Never shall we forget how momentous seemed the issues that were depending in that inner chamber, as the announcement that there was a “stranger at the gates” was evidently being briskly canvassed there. To have the unquestioned privilege of passing and repassing that mystic portal, the barrier as it seemed between all the rhapsody and the syntax of this weary world, promised to be one of those pleasures that would well-nigh be imperishable.

The apartment entered, it was easy to discern the manner of men who had placed their mark upon its walls and wainscots. There was no lack of artist force in many of the daubs that were let into the panelling, to remain rugged monuments of the skill of the frequenters of that chamber. A piano there was that had seen better days, and was yet to see considerably worse ones, if in our recollection of the ultimate dispersal of the property of the club we are not mistaken. Then there were the pipe-racks. Anything more eloquent can scarcely be imagined than the story unfolded by these mute implements of smoking. Every pipe possessed its decided characteristic and was distinctly different from its neighbour. Some showed themselves as conceited pipes; some were light and sparkish, others ponderous and clumsy. Leave yourself alone with these sticks of briar or cherry-wood and you could readily have brought to mind their absent owners—the man who sang a good song, the youngster given to practical jokes, the patriarch, strong in argument, invincible in debate—in fact you could easily have helped yourself to an inventory of the members of the club. The rest of the furniture of the room consisted of a large oblong table, surrounded by chairs of various patterns, the former of which on the night we first beheld it literally groaned with the weight of “rabbits” and foaming tankards. Stay; food for the mind was not neglected, as how should it be? in that assembly-room. By virtue of the care of a pile of fly-blown magazines, and as far as we can remember of a few odd volumes of ‘Ruff’s Guide’ and a ‘White’s Farriery,’ we became in course of time the elected librarian of the Scufflers’ Club.

Although not a flourishing community in the matter of finances, there were instances in plenty of great kindness and liberality displayed by Scuffler unto Scuffler. There were times when they brought out their myrrh and cassia, their spikenard and oil of price. When, one bitter winter morning, an unhappy Scuffler came shivering out of the debtors’ side of the City Prison, they did not beat about the bush and hesitate at receiving him. Neither did they stand on any dignity or whisper any threat of expulsion. They did nothing of this kind, they simply made him drunk. It is, we hope, quite clear that these gentlemen were not professors of any sort of austerity.

It may have already dawned upon the reader that there can hardly have existed a fraternity boasting any such name as the one we have allotted to it. In this much the reader is perfectly right. The club had a title strikingly similar to that which we have adopted, and the thin disguise has only been suggested from a circumstance that we may at once frankly disclose. Suspended over the club chimney-piece was the usual notice-board, a perfect encyclopædia in its way, and covered with a trellis-work of crimson tape for the purpose of retaining the various affiches. In this way were displayed, from day to day, the cards and letters intended for the members of the club. For so long a time did they frequently remain exhibited, and so complete a disregard did the owners manifest for their property, that the appearance of each packet often grew quite familiar to the frequenters of the place. The individuality of the writer might be often guessed from the evidence of the various superscriptions, and when all other sources of amusement failed the contents of this stationary post-office formed a fair staple of banter and merry comment. There were to be seen perfumed and coronetted envelopes addressed to quasi-fashionable members. These were gentlemen who never seemed to call and claim their belongings. Then there were letters reputed to emanate from the great publishing houses, and there were missives surmounted with well-known theatrical monograms that were alleged to forward brilliant offers of engagements. In fact it was by the aid of such simple nest-eggs as these that the men managed to establish reputations. But there was one class of correspondence that obviously was not intended for much publicity. These were the letters couched in feminine handwriting, none of the neatest, whose tremulous writers, in addressing their envelopes, rarely succeeded in hitting off the proper style and title of the club. The early looker-in might have made a useful study of these shaky epistles—scrawls painfully executed by milliners and toy-women. It was on the cover of one of such effusions, even worse written and worse spelt than they usually were, that we first saw the inscription, the “Scufflers’ Club.”

Although some years have passed since first we were made free of that circle, distinctly do we remember the manner of our greeting—“This,” said our introducer, “is a room rendered famous by the celebrated Addison.” He emphasised the “celebrated” owing to an evident misgiving that we might not perhaps be intimate with the name of that personage. “Kitty Clive, the actress,” he continued, “lodged in the upper floors,”—which was true—“and Dr. Johnson is said to have worn away the wainscot with his wig in the further corner,”—which was not. We were already lingering over the notice-board and letter-rack, reminded probably by the associations of a similar contrivance at Will’s Coffee House, when Parson Swift came in the mornings to seek for letters from Stella, when the voice of our cicerone again summoned us. “Drop into a seat,” it whispered, “and I’ll show you the best men in London.”

The best men in London were engaged for the most part in imbibing various amber-coloured fluids, and shouting out at intervals the burden of a well-known chorus. An entertainment known as a “sing-song” was vociferously going on. Vocalisation of a very fair order was being given, whenever any one of the hearty Scufflers had sufficiently wetted his throat to “oblige.” We were in time to hear the ‘Friar of Orders Gray’ performed very creditably, and ‘When Joan’s ale was new’ brought out a ringing chorus. We must have stayed some hours in listening to this minstrelsy. Hospital songs, ditties well-known at Bartholomew’s and Guy’s; poaching songs that bore the flavour of the honest shire of Somerset; pieces from the comic operas; all were given with the utmost good-humour and vivacity. But what seemed most to invigorate the spirits of the Scufflers was a song that had been demanded more than once during the evening and was at length only given after extreme pressure upon the part of the audience. We do not know the name of the song; we are not certain we should recollect the tune; but we are positive of the words, such of them at least as formed the refrain of the melody. In every stanza there was held up to reprobation some unpopular type. The severer virtues were no less mercilessly handled, while all authority of the more invidious kind, from that of the beak to that of the exciseman, was subjected to the same unceremonious treatment. Every versicle—well do we remember it—concluded with the exordium, “Damn their eyes!” Never can we forget the rapturous reception that was accorded to this piece of harmony. The men literally shrieked with delight. “Damn their eyes!”—they grasped convulsively at tumblers and decanters and banged them on the table. “Damn their eyes!”—they hurrahed, they shouted, they raved, they swore. “Damn their eyes!”—they bestrode chairs and benches, as they might have bestridden hobby-horses, and tournamented about the room. Was this then the pæan or war-song of the Scufflers’ Club?

As with the morning light we came to reflect upon the midnight orgie, we felt we had opened a chapter in a strange history, and that history a history of swearing.

We can hardly bring our pen to write the very title of this book without being reminded of an incident that has amused while it has displeased us. It is now very many years ago that a kind relative brought the present writer, then a child at a dame’s school, a handsome copy of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ and thenceforward for a time that bitter schoolhouse bade fair to be made bright and joyous with the doings of the simple men and women whose story the gentle Goldsmith has recorded. What possible objection could be uttered against so innocent a tale? None the less however did our worthy preceptress take occasion to remonstrate. “Does not that book concern females?” asked she. Our friend could have had no reply prepared that was fitted to so insidious a reproach. “Ah! well,” was the quiet rejoinder, “but poor Goldsmith did not mean badly.”

If such, then, be the measure dealt out to the more disciplined champions in the strife with human error, what sort of accord will be given to the present unharnessed and ill-caparisoned writer, who attempts, let it be hoped not ill-naturedly, to cope with one of the more rosy-faced forms of sinfulness. That he will be assailed from the higher latitudes of prudery he has a right to expect. That the very novelty of the venture will pass as an affront to some portion of his readers there is only reason to anticipate. That even the more indulgent will cast looks of suspicion upon his pirate ensign is a circumstance he can conceal as little as he can regret it.

As the matter stands, a poor devil of an author is proposing an expedition into regions that, despite many hundred years of literary enterprise, are still remote and untravelled. It were not surprising therefore at the outset that his readers should inquire if he is sincere and reliable, or whether on the contrary he is counterfeiting honesty with a sanctimonious face. It were perhaps right they should be assured that the trip is really intended for their welfare, and that the skipper is not given to risk the safety of his craft for a mere capful of wind. But conceding that it is natural to raise these doubts at the threshold of the journey, the author has it in his power to give little or no assurance of the sincerity of his undertaking. Whatever notion he may entertain of his own, or of other people’s morality, he has no opinion whatever of their professions of it. He refrains therefore from giving any warranty of the soundness of his wares.

Save but for this. He has often been vexed, and puzzled as well as vexed, at one great discord that has been sent upon the world. Yielding and kindly as it may have been to them, men have not scrupled to cast defiance and calumny upon this forbearing earth and to hurl hissing curses at its abundance and its pervading spirit of forgiveness. Not since the labour of men’s hands began have they ceased to furrow it with menace and sow it with imprecation, cursing while their very corn ripens under midsummer skies, cursing as they gather in their store of wine and victual. What does it mean? What can it mean? Whence has it arisen, and whither does it tend? These are among the questions that have influenced the mind of the writer in considering the purview of his book.

The misfortune that is often experienced in handling any subject lying wide of the beaten track does not necessarily arise from the inherent viciousness of the subject itself, but from the fact that a large number of people have previously arrived at painful impressions concerning it. It is therefore an obligation cast upon a writer to treat these preconceived notions with the utmost tenderness and respect. Personally one may hold the art of swearing in perfect indifference, being neither among the number of swearers oneself nor having any very strong feeling of reprobation towards its more active adherents. But despite a certain inclination that we feel to apologise for what we hold to be the silliest of vices, we are forced to recollect that to many the offence will always appear in anything but a trivial light. It is therefore obligatory upon us to abstain as far as possible from referring to expressions that are calculated to alarm. At the close of the last century there existed a religious sect who were in favour of abandoning the use of clothing. Blake, the poet, was one of these enthusiasts, and his wife also. The holders of this convenient doctrine were in the habit of presenting themselves in their households as naked as they were born. In so acting we may be sure they were only in keeping with their sober convictions, and that they were ready to maintain in argument the thorough soundness and consistency of their views. For aught we know to the contrary, this naked doctrine may of itself have been right, but the misfortune which continued, and for the matter of that still continues, to be felt, was that by far the larger portion of humanity retained a decided prejudice in favour of apparel. So long as the disciple of the Adamite school was contented to denude himself in his own particular circle there may have been no positive harm, but it would scarcely have been open to a member of that fraternity to have walked down Fleet Street like an ancient Briton. The thinker also who takes upon himself to theorise in a manner apart from any considerable section of humanity, is no less bound to entertain a fitting respect for the notions, even to the mistaken notions, with which that section is animated. Whatever his own disposition towards an absolute freedom of expression, he is under the obligation of attiring his ideas in the manner habituated to the tastes of his listeners.

Happily, however, there is possible a middle course. We need not grovel in the sinks and cellars, neither need we ruminate upon the house-tops. We can settle ourselves as it were, in that easy, neutral smoking-room of literature, where we can put off broadcloth for fustian; and utter our heresies with still a chance left us of being forgiven. Here we may expect to meet only with that mature and seasoned criticism that holds the scale very evenly between the outspoken and the insolent. While by no means to be accounted friendly towards the vile excrescences of swearing, the ordinary man of the world is not to be repelled by every street oath, or put to lasting confusion by every passing word of unseemliness. To put it upon no higher ground than that of mere custom, it were too arrogant to assume abhorrence of a practice that is as trite and customary as the incidents of one’s daily rounds. Besides, there is another explanation for the supineness that is exhibited towards errors of this description. It could be shown how, by a slight mental process, the extravagances and the follies of other men are capable of offering a subtle compliment to a person’s understanding. They set it off. They adorn what he fancies to be his intellectual superiority, and he is not indisposed in consequence to extend a feeble patronage towards the very vices which, did he not experience ever so slight a benefit from them, he would otherwise be foremost in decrying. Again, it were too obviously inconsistent to take our repose in a tavern and yet direct our homilies at tavern habits, at the enormity of tobacco-smoking or of drinking drams. And yet it may be possible for most of us to go back to no distant time when we sickened at the scent of the finest Virginian and the juice of the juniper was bitter. It was not a great while ago certainly!

A great while ago! Say, courteous and gentle—nay, uncourteous and ungentle reader—can you so far travel back in your recollection as to recall your first parting from all that was homely and kindly and familiar? Do you remember the first separation from the half-score of faces that to you had peopled the earth and represented the whole sum and mystery of living? Can you now realise that desolate night, closing in upon the blank, colourless day, the lonely stages, the harsh grating of the wheels, all the impressions in fact of that long, pitiful journey that once came as a barrier between you and childish innocence? And then the arrival at that strange school; how hollow the laughter of the men, how shrill the chirp and twitter of the women! Do you remember the comfortless morrow that brought the first contact with your boy associates? They were probably harmless and good-natured enough, those uncouth, ill-fashioned boys, and doubtless there were among them many who would have been quick to requite a wrong and eager to soothe any injury. But how they pained you with their jests; how they bruised you in their boisterous play; how old they looked to your young eyes; how full of wiles and intrigue and savagery! And then their talk! not the mild caressing talk of the lips you loved, of the forms you knew, but loud and brazen, and savouring of cunning and high-handedness. And in their quarrels and their games, they swore—those boys swore; not all of them be it hoped, but the great giants and paladins among them who seemed to bear rule and mastery with whips and thongs. Many a time before, perhaps, you may have been seized with faintness and aversion at some imagined evil, that might as well have been enacted in some distant planet. But now the horror was no longer slumbering or remote; it was awake and crying at your door. Now, and within a few hours, were disclosed the sources of all the aimless brutalities, all the self-asserting iniquities that have played such havoc in an erring world. And, as these knowing fellows chattered over their scraps of worldly wisdom, and as their puny curses were bandied round, it seemed as if some great treason were being poured out, a trespass alike against God in heaven and the folks at home.

How could one know at that young age that all one heard was not really villainous, that much of it indeed was mere brusquerie, rough-ridden perhaps, but brisk and spirited? How should one understand that the tones which seemed so harsh and jarring belonged in truth to a very code of sprightliness? But a few weeks more perhaps, and you too had taken the ring of this brazen metal. You had perceived upon what measure of aggression, upon what rasping unkindnesses, the applause of your fellows was bestowed. To violate every rule with fearless indifference, to be abreast with every move that was daring or was dexterous, these were the feats by which approval was won. In the matter of swearing you might have remained only an unwilling dabbler, only a mixer and meddler in the luxury, were it not that occasion came when you were solemnly arraigned for the offence, and straightway branded as a culprit. It is in this way that offences come. So you may have received your punishment and have revolted under it; and perhaps you may have had a right to revolt. For our spiritual pastors, in judging of our virtues, too often endowed us with the capacities of children, and in judging of our vices they endowed us with the capacities of men.

In that our early play-time, of which we have been speaking, we distinctly call to mind two errant school-fellows, brought together by kindred tastes, though differing in temper and disposition. Each is of an age when the world resembles only some May-day morning, and at the moment we are recalling them they have no other occupation than that of dreamily rambling through the fields and lanes, delighted with the breezy country-side, and luxuriating in their own boyish outpourings. They had conceived this mutual liking because each felt the other to be in true sympathy with nature, and to be capable of discerning the wonderful enchantments of poetry and cadence. They had found a warm and unselfish delight in ministering to the other’s appreciation. They could drink in great draughts of beauty from the chalice so unsparingly held out by Shelley or Goethe, by Wordsworth or Byron. They could revel in the rugged measures of ‘Marmion,’ in the whirl and clatter of the ‘Last Minstrel.’ They could be gay with the loves of the Two Gentlemen, or kindle at the woes of Imogen or the sorrows of Effie Deans.

And so, in such senseless manner, they are now skirting the golden harvest-fields, recalling perhaps the bright fancy that has given the ‘Skylark’ to the world, or mindful of “liquid Peneus” and “darkened Tempe.” Presently there burst out of the thicket two ruffians, with rags torn and bespattered, caked with summer’s dust and mildewed by winter’s rain. As they approached their voices sounded devilish and unearthly. They raised one long plaint of deep-toned, hard-set blasphemy. Their every word was shotted with an oath. Hoarse with brandy, bitter with malevolence, they cursed at the plenty of the harvest—at the patient cattle grazing in the fields—at the crimson poppy blowing in the ditch—at the buzzing insects, at the ripening orchards. They cursed at the luck of the skittle-alley; they cursed at the insolence of the rulers of the land. When the devil made war with heaven, this must have been the roar of his artillery.

We looked at our friend—for this has become a personal narrative, as may already have been conjectured—and we marked the pain and sorrow of heart that had visibly overcome him. Silently he seemed to implore protection from the great span of universe surrounding us—for it was he who was the gentler and more loyal spirit of the two. Then, as the curses and ribaldry died away, he emerged slowly as from beneath a stupefying load. Presently he fell to talking of the strange perverseness with which men have always clung to this undying evil, and cited the Levitical story of “the son of the Israelitish woman,”—the impious oaths demanded of old time by emperors and satraps, and the resistance of the martyred Polycarp.

Who knows but that at that moment we may have thought our friend little better than a fool, and his words the drivel of idiotcy? We have said somewhere, speaking of morality, that we have no opinion of professions of it. It must be known that he was mild and retiring and submissive. He could not give blow for blow as other boys could; he could not cheat or lie or gamble as other boys did. He was more awkward of limb and coarser dressed. Anyhow, we have set down here some of our first impressions of swearing, and now we are cursorily writing its history.