Concerning Mr. Euphues

— To ANY CONTRIBUTOR OF THE CLUB : Dear Sir or Madam, — A word in complaint against our good friend Mr. Euphues, Junior. And first, it does seem captious to find fault with so excellent a person for no better reason than that his manner of speech, his vocabulary, his idioms, are not to one’s liking. But it is useless to attempt to reason away antipathies of this sort. There must be an odium grammaticale as well as an odium theologicum ; and if so, the one is as stubborn as the other.

When you meet Mr. Euphues, you have a sure prevision that each one is to suffer a series of shocks at the hands (or rather at the tongue) of the other. At least, that is my experience of the encounter. My hodden-gray Saxon must settle like a wet blanket upon his sensibilities ; while his “ genteel ” — somewhat shabby “genteel” —Latinity and his fin de siècle (inevitably fin de siècle) Gallic borrowings will come no better to my ear than tinkling cymbals. We have each, virtually, a different vernacular. Are we speaking of some book in hand to read, Mr. Euphues always “commences it,” whereas I “begin it.” I have my “neighborhood” and “conditions ; ” Mr. Euphues lives and has his being amidst what he terms his “ environments” and his “ atmosphere ” (which latter he sometimes “creates” himself). I should have said, at first, that he rarely “talks” with anybody, but frequently “ converses.” He is never “ hopeful,” yet you will often find him “confident” about projects in which he is interested, although he has intervals in which he is not a little “apprehensive.” Do not expect him to “ take a risk ; ” he will, however, “ assume a responsibility,” if he is “ desired ” so to do. A “ shiftless ” man is discharged at his tribunal as “ irresponsible ” merely, and a “ penniless ” one afflicts him less in contemplation by being characterized as “ impecunious.” A “drunkard” may take comfort to learn that he is only a “ confirmed inebriate ” in Mr. Euphues’s lexicon, in which well-expurgated volume the word “ crazy” is not found, “ insane” is obsolescent, while “ deranged ” is always in good usage.

I suppose you are also well aware that he is greatly interested in the “ amelioration of the race,” and of the “ colored ” race particularly ; for neither Mr. Euphues nor any member of his family could ever he induced to speak of the “ blacks ” or the “ negroes,” though what humane distinction is to his mind implied in the adjective “ colored ” I was never able to guess. (He, however, never “ guesses.”)

Speaking of the excellent family to which Mr. Euphues belongs : if I go to drive with any member of the household, he invariably refers to the driver as “ our Jehu.” On the same principle, he would describe a sportsman as “ a Nimrod ; ” a rich man is characterized as “ Crœsus ” or “ Dives,” while a wise counselor is invariably “ Mentor,” and so on.

Now, my dear Contributor, lest you should think me a shade malicious in these discriminations, I will disclose the real animus of the same. I grant, what you may very justly remind me, that Mr. Euphues has as good a right to exercise his own taste in his selection of the Queen’s English (or the President’s American) as you or I have to exercise ours. But Mr. Euphues employs certain little tests of language, which might be called charactergauges or caste-metres. What remark so frequently in his mouth as, “ No gentleman or lady will ever say ” — then follow sundry verbal specifications to the use of which he is himself not well disposed. These gauges and metres, I must add, are not by any means static. I have known Mr. Euphues many, many years. I knew him first in the days when any person of absolute trust was by him pronounced “ reliable.” There was a later period of our acquaintance when, according to Mr. Euphues’s strictures, a person of culture might be discriminated from one not possessing that indefinable advantage by the former’s wholesome abhorrence of the word “ reliable.” And it was only the other day that I heard our friend making an eloquent and chaste plea for the restoration of certain words that had fallen from their first estate. Among these longsuffering parts of speech was the word “ reliable ” !

I have sometimes thought Mr. Euphues’s chief failing to be a lack of the sense of humor. But I await, dear Contributor, your opinion on this matter, and subscribe myself, Yours obediently,

DORIC.