Accents of Town.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 45, 22 February 1908, Page 10

Accents of Town.

A wistful protest was made a while since by tho headmaster of a public school against tho incursion of th© Cockney accent, but having made a single effort with the broom to keep ' back the tide he apparently gave up 'the struggle. For this I do not blame him. Even for the headmaster of a public school life is too full to permib of time being wasted in fighting against overwhelmingly big battalions j it is possible he remembered the story of the father who, having swiftly prospered in business at Stepney, desired, in recognising that his own accent was incurable, that his boy should undergo a course of treatment. The head of an expensive establishment guaranteed t« elfect a remedy in the course of a brief period, and tho boy was sent. A fortnight later the father received a telegram, "Come Und fetch your son away at once," and took the train cheerfully. ■'Mean to tell me," ho said to the head expectantly on arriving, "that you've bin and managed and succeeded in ridding my kid of his awk'ard 'abit of speaking already?" The other gavo a gesture of regret. "It is he who has succeeded," answered the principal. "He has succeeded in giving his accent to all the other boys !" Every man, remarked Colonel Newcome, would like to come of an ancient and honourable race, and it is obvious that, we should all prefer to speak a pure and unadulterated language. But though the tongue might be willing, it is difficult to say where the type of correctness is found. I shudder to think of a time when all the folk in Somers Town will speak in precise imitation of the manner adopted by (say) clergymen in Uelgravia, and I ought to confess, beloro going any further, that the Oxford voicb has the unique power of causing mo to writhe with pain. Others I can bear with equanimity. The Devonshire accent is, to me, soothing- and motherly ; tho Yorkshire accent sounds like a capital joke ; the Scots accent means hospitality and candour ; 'I should bo useless in the House of Commons, for I never can contest any statement made in the persuasive accents of Ireland. Tho point is this. Folk who come from the north of Berwick-on-T\veed, or the western side of the Irish Sea, are permitted to retain, their idiosyncrasies of speech without a protest. Only the Londoner appeaa-s to bo singled out and bullied into reform. It is true he drops his aitches, but why should aitches be as pirated? The order is not included amongst the Teu Commandments; it forms no part of our criminal code; there is not; even a railway comp«.ny v a 'by-law on the subject. A few years cine© people living west of the Wellington Statue decided to drop the final letter in words that ended with ing, and nobody but Mr. Anstey dared to remark on tho circumstance ; they were folk who had enjoyed the terrors of an expensive education with a rap on tho knuckles when they said shillin', but they, claimed the right, once free- from scholastic control, to decide the matter of pronunciation for themselves ; thenceforth to say shilling was held to betray the fact that you *vero indebted for your tuition to the County Council. At any moment this free and untrammelled se% may decide that the letter "h" at the beginning of a word need no longer entail special exercise^ ~ot -breathing powers. It will bo a great day for Lisson-grove. An accent is something possessed by other people. There lives a- distinguished musician who has the London tongue without knowing at, and tells etones illustrating the peculiarities. I i have 'heard VJiim give .'.the anecdote .-of the, little girl- who 1 said at ttj,B tea-tablei "Mother," can 'I have 'a piece mor* kike?" and received the reply, "You shouldn't say kike,, dear; you should say kike!" The well-known musician, in telling this, adds,. "And all the time tney both thought , they , .woro , saying kike !" If a, man Buffers from headaches and is not aware that Ke Suffers from 'headaches, he gives no order to the rhemist ; so long as we can possess an accent, and not be aware of it, nothing will be done. For myself, there in a South London whine which always makes me think the user wishes me to buy groundsel, and for this I have no affection; but to the other shades of the London accent I can always listen with pleasure. You find it at its best perhaps, in* Hoxton, where it is quick, sharp, determined f strict economy practised, with the words snapped out, a repartee always ready. If I can do bo without pretence of authority, I should like to_ make a protest against the methods of the printer in recording the London accent (it is impossible* to believe that the fault is with the- writers) ; the ground idea appears ' to be that if you can but grossly distort the word and wrench it away from all similitudo to the original, then you are making a phonographic reproduction of the voices of town. In a short story that I have been reading, curate is given as "enrick," "forked is given for talked, spot is given as "spavvt"; these are deplorable errors, and I can only assumo that they occurred on the day following the annual dinner of the Correctors of the Press. I make an appeal on behalf of liberty of speech, as one who likes these identifying signs of birthplace?. A touch of the Midland accent, and I can see the Market Place at Nottingham with tho cries of "Daffies, a panny a boonch !" A word from the southern counties and I can see a village cricket match of Married v. Single, a middle-stump down, and, "Dan'ged if that yer ball didn't upset his timber-yard, and no mesta-ke, nutherl" A voice that comes from North Wales, and the valley go. ing from Festiniog to Portmadoc is before me, with a shining stream making its leisurely way to the sea. I am probably the only person who asks nnneceeBary questions of City constables just for the interest of discovering, by the answer, the position of their county. Entire absence of affectation constitutes the great charm ; a suggestion of the presence of this,' forces one instantly into a state of truculent animosity Messn,. Spiers and Pond would, I aai sure, pay a better dividend if tho young women who assit them in tho serving of the public made a less resolute attempt to be refined and aristocratic. Any essay of imitation in any direction whatever is sure to cari'y one just a little too far, reaching the edge of j caricature ; and this is well and good when dono fur the purposes of entertainment, but poor and bad when tho j intention is to impress favourably. Whilst ws need not invent peculiarities of speech for ourselves, there is no reason why we should violently rid ourselves of our natural manner, or why wo should bo ashamed of certain tricks of tho voice which have not been deliberately acquired. The desire in some quarters appears to be to mould us all into one form mid one manner and one speech, and this anxiety on the part of tutors may be understandable ; so soon as their control is withdrawn a considerable freedom is exercised, and most of us aro aware that tho vocabulary of a public-school boy mainly consists of words not to be found in the dictionary. In giving sympathy ,to ' those responsible for guidance of youths who do notwish to be guided, one may wish them, in all sincerity, a moderate success ; to ourseh'£3 the. hope can bo expresred thai, the day is distant 'tie voice* of