Part 6

There remains the Cant of the grafters and guns, the coves that work upon the cross in the great cities. In England, as in France, this strange gibberish is the oldest and richest form of Slang. Whence it came is still a puzzle of the philologists. Harrison, in his 'Description of England' (1577), with a dogmatism which is not justified, sets a precise date upon its invention.

In counterfeiting the Egyptian rogues [says he of the vagabonds who then infested England], they have devised a language among themselves which they name Canting, but others Pedlars' French, a speech compact thirty years since of English, and a great number of odd words of their own devising, without all order or reason: and yet such is it that none but themselves are able to understand. The first deviser thereof was hanged by the neck,--a just reward, no doubt, for his deserts, and a common end to all of that profession.

The lingo, called indifferently Thieves' Latin or St Giles's Greek, was assuredly not the invention of one brain. The work of many, it supplied an imperious need. It was at once an expression of pride and a shield of defence. Those who understood it proved by its use that they belonged to a class apart; and, being unintelligible to the respectable majority, they could communicate with one another--secretly, as they hoped, and without fear of detection. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the flash tongue grew and was changed; it crossed the Atlantic with the early settlers, and it has left its marks upon the dialect of the American underworld. But its influence upon the common Slang has been light in America, as in England. It is as severely technical as the language of science, and is familiar chiefly to policemen, tramps, and informers. As Slang leaves the tavern and the street-corner, to invade the theatre, the office, and even the drawing-room, those who aim at a variety of speech need owe no debt to the Cant of the vagabonds, and it is not surprising that to-day the vulgar tongue, in America as in England, borrows more from "soldiers on the long march, seamen at the capstan, and ladies disposing of fish," than from the common cursetors and cony-catchers who once dominated it.

The use of Slang proves at once the wealth and poverty of a language. It proves its wealth when it reflects a living, moving image. It proves its poverty when it is nothing more than the vain echo of a familiar catchword.

At its best it is an ornament of speech; at its worst it is a labour-saving device. And it is for this reason that the vulgar American delights in the baser kind of Slang: it seems to ensure him an easy effect He must be picturesque at all costs. Sometimes he reaches the goal of his ambition by a purposed extravagance. What can be more foolish than the description which follows of a man equal to the most difficult occasion: "He can light his cigar, when the battle is on, with the friction of a passing cannon-ball." In yet worse taste is another piece of fustian, invented by the same author: "When a 'twister' off the hills gets ready to do business in a 20-knot sou'wester it sends no messenger boys ahead to distribute its itinerary handbills." There is no fault of style which these few lines do not display. They combine, with a singular success, commonness and pomp. The epic poets of old were wont to illustrate the life of man by the phenomena of nature. The vulgar American reverses the process--he illustrates nature from the pavement.

Exaggeration, then, is one easy artifice of effect. Another is the constant repetition of certain words and phrases which have lost their meaning by detrition and are known to all. Not to be disappointed is sometimes as pleasant as to be surprised. A catchword passed from one to another is often a signal of sympathy, and many a man has been taken for a wit merely because his tinkling brain has given back the echo which was expected. In stereotyped phrases, in ready-made sentences, in the small change of meaningless words, the American language is peculiarly rich. "To cut ice," "to get next to," "straight goods," {*}--these and similar expressions, of no obvious merit in themselves, long ago lost their freshness, and are not likely to assume a dignity with age. But they save trouble, they establish an understanding between him who speaks and him who hears; and when they are thrown into a discourse they serve the purpose of gestures, To exclaim "I should smile" or "I should cough" is not of much help in an argument, but such interjections as these imply an appreciation not merely of slang but of your interlocutor.

* To the Englishman who knows them not, the following quotations will explain their significance:--

"Tain't what ye ain't or what ye don't do that cuts ice with me."

"Well, invested capital has got to protect itself when the law won't do it. Ain't them straight goods?"

"Boston don't want Bishop Potter to come up here an' tell her 't she ain't next to the latest curves in goodness. Hully gee, no!"

Slang is better heard than read. The child of the street or the hedgerow, it assumes in print a grave air which does not belong to it, or, worse still, it is charged with the vice or the vagabondage which it suggests. And so it is that Slang words have a life as closely packed with adventure as is the life of those who use them with the quickest understanding. To ask what becomes of last year's Slang is as rash as to speculate on the fate of last year's literature. Many specimens die in the gutter, where they were born, after living a precarious life in the mouths of men. Others are gathered into dictionaries, and survive to become the sport of philologists. For the worst of their kind special lexicons are designed, which, like prisons and workhouses, admit only the disreputable, as though Victor Hugo's definition--"L'argot, c'est le verbe devenu forçat"--were amply justified. The journals, too, which take their material where they find it, give to many specimens a life as long as their own. It is scarcely possible, for instance, to pick up an American newspaper that does not turn the word cinch to some strange purpose. The form and origin of the word are worthy a better fate. It passed from Spain into the Western States, and was the name given to saddle-girths of leather or woven horse-hair. It suggests Mexican horsemanship and the open prairie. The explanation given in the Century Dictionary will make clear its meaning to the untravelled: "The two ends of the tough cordage, which constitute the cinch, terminate in long narrow strips of leather called latigos, which connect the cinches with the saddle, and are run through an iron ring, called the larigo ring, and then tied by a series of complicated turns and knots, known only to the craft." In the West the word is still used in its natural and dignified sense. For example: "At Giles's ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up." And then in the East it has become the victim of extravagant metaphor. As a verb, it means to hold firm, to put a screw on; as a noun, it means a grip or screw, an advantage fair or unfair. In the hand of the sporting reporter it can achieve wonders. "The bettor of whom the pool-room bookmaker stands in dread"--this flower of speech is culled from the 'New York World'--"is the race-horse owner, who has a cinch bottled up for a particular race, and drops into the room an hour or two before the race begins." The idea of bottling a cinch is enough to make a Californian shudder, and this confused image helps to explain the difference between East and West.

Thus words wander farther and farther from their origin; and when at last their meanings are wholly forgotten or obscured, they become part of the common speech. One kind of Slang may succeed to another, but cinch is secure for ever of a place in the newspaper, and in the spoken language, of America. Caboodle, also, is firmly established. The long series of words, such as Cachunk or Kerblunk, which suggest the impact of falling bodies with the earth, will live as expletives with Say, Sure, and many other, interjections which fill up the pauses of thought and speech. There are two other specimens of Slang beloved by the journals, for which it would be rash to prophesy a long life. To call a man or a thing or an act "the limit," is for the moment the highest step, save one, in praise or blame. When the limit is not eloquent enough to describe the hero who has climbed the topmost rung of glory, the language gasps into simplicity, and declares that he is It. "I didn't do a thing," says an eminent writer, "but push my face in there about eight o'clock last night, and I was It from the start." Though the pronoun is expressive enough, it does not carry with it the signs of immortality, and the next change of fashion may sweep it away into the limbo of forgotten words.

The journals do their best to keep alive the language of the people. The novelists do far more, since their works outlive by months or years the exaggeration of the press. And the novelists, though in narrative they preserve a scrupulous respect for the literary language, take what licence the dialect and character of their personages permit them. It is from novels, indeed, that future generations will best be able to construct the speech of to-day. With the greatest skill the writers of romance mimic the style and accent of their contemporaries. They put into the mouths of those who, in life, knew no other lingo, the highly-flavoured Slang of the street or the market. Here, for instance, is the talk of a saloon-keeper, taken from W. Payne's story, 'The Money Captain,' which echoes, as nearly as printed words can echo, the voice of the boodler:

"Stop it?" says the saloon-keeper of a journalist's attack. "What I got to stop it with? What's the matter with you fellows anyhow? You come chasin' yourselves down here, scared out of your wits because a dinky little one cent newspaper's makin' faces at you. A man 'd think you was a young lady's Bible-class and 'd seen a mouse.... Now, that's right," he exclaims, as another assailant appears; "make it unanimous. Let all hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all--all you moth-eaten, lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise with you--you sweet-scented skates."

It is not an elegant method of speech, but such as it is, it bears as close a resemblance to the dialect of Chicago as can be transferred from the ear to the eye.

If we compare the present with the past, we cannot but acknowledge that American Slang has grown marvellously in colour and variety. The jargon of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings possessed as little fire as character. These two humourists obtained their effect by the simple method, lately advocated by Messrs Roosevelt and Carnegie, of spelling as they pleased. The modern professors of Slang have invented a new style. Their pages sparkle with wit and allusion. They interpret their shrewd sense in words and phrases which have never before enjoyed the freedom of printer's ink. George Ade, the best of them all, has shown us how the wise ones of Chicago think and speak. His 'Fables in Slang' is a little masterpiece of humour in substance and wit in expression. To quote from it would be to destroy its effect. But it will discover the processes of Slang, as it is understood in the West, more clearly than any argument, and having amused the present generation, it will remain an historical document of enduring value.

Slang is the only language known to many thousands of citizens. The newly arrived immigrant delights to prove his familiarity with the land of his adoption by accepting its idioms and by speaking the American, not of books but of the market-place. And yet this same Slang, universally heard and understood, knocks in vain for admission into American literature. It expatiates in journals, in novels of dialect, and in works, like George Ade's, which are designed for its exposition. But it has no part in the fabric of the gravely written language. Men of letters have disdained its use with a scrupulousness worthy our own eighteenth century. The best of them have written an English as pure as a devout respect for tradition can make it. Though they have travelled far in space and thought, they have anchored their craft securely in the past. No writer that has handled prose or verse with a high seriousness has offended against the practice of the masters--save only Walt Whitman. The written word and the spoken word differ even more widely in America than elsewhere. The spoken word threw off the trammels of an uneasy restraint at the very outset. The written word still obeys the law of gradual development, which has always controlled it. If you contrast the English literature of to-day with the American, you will find differences of accent and expression so slight that you may neglect them. You will find resemblances which prove that it is not in vain that our literatures have a common origin and have followed a common road. The arts, in truth, are more willingly obedient than life or politics to the established order; and America, free and democratic though she be, loyally acknowledges the sovereignty of humane letters. American is heard at the street corner. It is still English that is written in the study.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

There can, in fact, be no clearer proof that the tradition of literature is stronger than the tradition of life than the experience of America. The new world, to its honour be it said, has discovered no new art. The ancient masters of our English speech are the masters also of America. The golden chain of memory cannot be shaken off, and many of those who raise with the loudest voice the cry of freedom have shown themselves the loyal and willing slaves of the past.

The truth is that from the first the writers of America have lagged honourably behind their age. The wisest of them have written with a studious care and quiet reverence. As if to mark the difference between the written language and the vernacular, they have assumed a style which belonged to their grandfathers. This half-conscious love of reaction has been ever present with them. Tou may find examples at each stage of their history. Cotton Mather, who armed his hand and tongue against the intolerable sin of witchcraft, wrote when Dutch William was on our throne, and in style he was but a belated Elizabethan. There is no other writer with whom we may compare him, save Robert Burton, who also lived out of his due time. Take this specimen of his prose, and measure its distance from the prose of Swift and Addison, his younger contemporaries: "Wherefore the Devil," writes Mather in the simplicity of his faith, "is now making one Attempt more upon us; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprising, more snarl'd with unintelligible Circumstances than any that we have hitherto Encountered; an Attempt so Critical, that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet." In sound and structure Mather's style is what the critics call "archaistic." It is all untouched by the influences of another world, and though "the New Englanders were," in Mather's view, "a People of God settled in those, which were once the Devil's Territories," they carried their prose from the old country, and piously bowed before an old tradition.

Thus has it been with each generation of men. Thoreau fondly believed that Walden had brought him near to nature, and he wrote with the accumulated artifice of the centuries. Hawthorne's language was as old in fashion as the Salem which he depicted, as "the grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor, who came so early with his Bible and his sword, and trode the common street with such stately port, and made so large a figure as a man of war and peace." But it was. upon Emerson that tradition has most strangely exercised its imperious sway. Now Emerson was an anarch who flouted the conventions of art and life. It was his hope to see the soul of this world "clean from all vestige of tradition." He did not understand that what is? proceeded inevitably from what was He affected to spurn the past as a clog upon his individuality. Anticipating Walt Whitman, he would have driven away his nearest friends, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." So lightly did he pretend to esteem history that he was sure that an individual experience could explain all the ages, that each man went through in his own lifetime the Greek period, the medieval period--every period, in brief--until he attained to the efflorescence of Concord. "What have I to do with the sacredness of tradition," he asked proudly, "if I live wholly from within?" So much had he to do with it that he never wrote a line save in obedience. Savage as he was in the declaration of his own individuality, he expressed it in the gracious terms of an inherited art. To this age Emerson's provincialism appears sad enough. It would not have been remembered had it not been set forth in a finely studied and mellifluous prose. No sooner did Emerson take pen in hand than his anarchy was subdued. He instantly became the slave of all the periods which he despised. He was a faithful follower of the best models, a patient student of masters dead and gone. Though he aspired to live wholly from within, he composed his works wholly from without, and fashioned an admirable style for himself, more antique in shape and sound than the style affected by the Englishmen of his time. But it is Edgar Allan Poe who most eloquently preached the gospel of style, and who most honourably defended the cause of art pursued without the aid of the pulpit. Taste he declared to be the sole arbiter of Poetry. "With the intellect or the Conscience," said he, "it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally it has no concern whatever either with Duty or Truth." Not that he belittled the exigence of Truth; he did but insist on a proper separation. "The demands of Truth," he admitted, "are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do." And thus it followed that he had small sympathy with Realism, which he denounced in the clear spirit of prophecy many years before it had become a battle-cry of criticism:

The defenders of this pitiable stuff [he wrote] uphold it on the ground of its truthfulness. Taking the thesis into question, this truthfulness is the one overwhelming defect. An original idea that--to laud the accuracy with which the stone is hurled that knocks us in the head. A little less accuracy might have left us more brains. And here are critics absolutely commending the truthfulness with which the disagreeable is conveyed! In my view, if an artist must paint decayed cheeses, his merit will lie in their looking as little like decayed cheeses as possible.

Of this wise doctrine Poe was always a loyal exponent. The strange veiled country in which he placed the shadows of his creation lay not within the borders of the United States. He was the child neither of his land nor of his century. Dwelling among men who have always worshipped size, he believed that there was no such thing as a long poem. A fellow-citizen of bustling men, he refused to bend the knee to industry. "Perseverance is one thing," said he, "genius quite another." And it is not surprising that he lived and died without great honour in his own country. Even those of his colleagues who guarded the dignity of their craft with a zeal equal to his own, shrank from the pitiless logic of his analysis. They loved his work as little as they respected his life. They judged him by a censorious standard which took no account of genius. And Poe shared with dignity and without regret the common fate of prophets. If he is still an exile in American esteem, he long since won the freedom of the larger world. He has been an inspiration to France, the inspirer of the nations. He did as much as any one of his contemporaries to mould the literary art of our day, and in the prose of Baudelaire and Mallarmé he lives a life whose lustre the indifference of his compatriots will never dim.

Whence comes it, this sedulous attention to style, which does honour to American literature? It comes in part, I think, from the fact that, before the triumph of journalism, American men of letters were secluded from their fellows. They played no rôle in the national drama. They did not work for fame in the field of politics. They were a band of aristocrats dwelling in a democracy, an imperium in imperio. They wrote their works for themselves and their friends. They made no appeal to the people, and knowing that they would be read by those capable of pronouncing sentence, they justified their temerity by a proper castigation, of their style. And there is another reason why American literature should be honourably formal and punctilious, If the written language diverges widely from the vernacular, it must perforce be studied more sedulously than where no such divergence is observed. For the American, accustomed to the language spoken by his countrymen and to the lingo of the daily press, literary English is an acquired tongue, which he studies with diligence and writes with care. He treats it with the same respect with which some Scots--Drummond, Urquhart, and Stevenson--have treated it, and under his hand it assumes a classic austerity, sometimes missed by the Englishman, who writes it with the fluency and freedom bred of familiar use. The stately and erudite work of Francis Parkman is a fair example. The historian of 'Montcalm and Wolfe' has a clear title to immortality. Assuredly he holds a worthy place among the masters. He is of the breed of Gibbon and Michelet, of Livy and Froude. He knows how to subordinate knowledge to romance. He disdains the art of narrative as little as he disdains the management of the English sentence. He is never careless, seldom redundant. The plainest of his effects are severely studied. Here, for instance, is his portrait of an Indian chief, epic in its simplicity, and withal composed with obvious artistry:

See him as he lies there in the sun, kicking his heels in the air and cracking jokes with his brother. Does he look like a hero? See him now in the hour of his glory, when at sunset the whole village empties itself to behold him, for to-morrow their favourite young partisan goes out against the enemy. His head-dress is adorned with a crest of war-eagle's feathers, rising in a waving ridge above his brow, and sweeping far behind him. His round white shield hangs at his breast, with feathers radiating from the centre like a star. His quiver is at his back; his tall lance in his hand, the iron point flashing against the declining sun, while the long scalp-locks of his enemies flutter from the shaft. Thus gorgeous as a champion in panoply, he rides round and round within the great circle of lodges, balancing with a graceful buoyancy to the free movements of his war-horse, while with a sedate brow he sings his song to the Great Spirit.

That is the language of classicism. The epithets are not far-sought. They come naturally to the mind. The hero's shield is round and white; his lance is tall; long are the scalp-locks of his enemies. Thus would Homer and Virgil have heightened the picture, and Park-man is clearly attentive to the best models. Even when he describes what his eye has seen he cannot disengage his impression from the associations of literature. It is thus that he sets before us Braddock's line of march:

It was like a thin, party-coloured snake, red, blue, and brown, trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping round inaccessible heights, crawling over ridges, moving always in dampness and shadow, by rivulets and waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy steeps. In glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains, flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in dreamy blue.

As you read these words you are less keenly conscious of a visual impression than of a verbal effect, and it may be said without reserve that never for a page of his many volumes does Park-man forget the demands of dignity and restraint.