American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  Prince Edward Island. — The Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island and the Chancery Court;

  Saskatchewan. — The Supreme Court of Saskatchewan;

  Alberta. — The Supreme Court of Alberta, — to be styled Honourable during tenure of office.

  8. The Presidents and Speakers of the Legislatures of the Provinces to be styled Honourable during tenure of office.

  9. Executive Councillors of the Provinces to be styled Honourable while in office.

  10. Gentlemen who were Legislative Councillors in the Provinces at the time of the Union (1st July, 1867), to retain their title of Honourable for life.

  The following to be eligible to be personally recommended by the Governor-General for His Majesty’s permission to retain the title of Honourable: —

  (a) Speakers of the Senate and of the House of Commons on retirement after three years of office not necessarily continuous;

  (b) The above-mentioned Chief Justices and Judges on retirement.2

  In the other English dominions and colonies and in India the Hon. is commonly accorded to all important members of the government, including the Executive Council, and when there is a Legislative Council the members commonly assume it, sometimes with warrant of law and sometimes without. In the Crown colony of Hong Kong, before the unhappy events of 1942, the curious custom prevailed of inserting Mr. after Hon. in the style of members of the Legislative Council, even when their given-names were used. This custom was established by the fiat of Lieut. Col. the Right Hon. Sir Matthew Nathan, P.C., G.C.M.G., K.C.M.G., C.M.G., LL.D.,1 during his term as Governor of the colony, 1903–07. There was considerable opposition to the innovation in Hong Kong, and the people of the other Far Eastern colonies snickered, but Sir Matthew stuck to his mandate, and it was obeyed ever after.2 When a member of the Council happened to be knighted he became the Hon. Sir.3

  The American tendency to drop the the before hon., and likewise before rev., right rev., very rev., etc., is noted in AL4, pp. 279–82. Dr. Edward C. Ehrensperger has shown that, in the case of rev., the omission of the article preceded its use in England, and that American usage has thus an archaic foundation.4 The English, even today, sometimes drop it, but not as often as Americans. Episcopalians often use it, but members of the other Protestant denominations commonly omit it, and so do Catholics. Rather curiously, its use seems to be more frequently in the West than in the East. The use of Reverend as a vocative (usually pronounced revrun), with no name or title following it, seems to be American. The DAE does not list this form, but it goes back to 1877 at least, for in that year Mark Twain used it.5 It has been denounced frequently, usually on the ground that reverend is an adjective, but Ehrensperger argues that this objection is not valid. “No doubt,” he says, “Rev. is an adjective historically, but it is certainly not used as an adjective in modern English, for adjectives are not abbreviated before nouns, nor are they capitalized as is always the case with Rev.”1 Its use “immediately before a surname, especially in conversation,” he concludes, “is, in my opinion, certainly growing. The assaults of purists and grammarians may stop the practice temporarily, but I doubt very much if they can do anything permanent.” Not a few clergymen, revolting against being addressed as Reverend, and lacking the dignity of divinitatis doctor, have tried to induce their patients to call them Mr., but not often with success, for many Americans have a feeling that Mr. is rather too worldly and familiar for use in addressing a man of God.2 The Catholics get around the difficulty by using Father, and the High Church Episcopalians imitate them. In the South Reverend is used in addressing colored clergymen for the purpose of avoiding calling them Mr.3 The Style Manual of the Department of State bans it, and also insists that the precede Rev. Incidentally, it prefers Reverend to the abbreviation, just as it prefers the Honorable to the Hon.

  It devotes nine pages to ecclesiastical titles, followed by a blank page for further notes. It begins with the Pope and runs down to the superiors of Catholic and Episcopal brotherhoods. There is no informal style, it says, for addressing the Pope: he is always His Holiness the Pope or His Holiness Pius XI on the envelope of a letter, and Your Holiness in the salutation thereof. A patriarch in the Eastern Orthodox Church is also usually Your Holiness, but there are exceptions which it does not list. A cardinal is His Eminence outside and Your Eminence inside. A Catholic bishop or archbishop is the Most Reverend outside and Your Excellency inside, an English archbishop is Your Grace, and an English bishop is My Lord Bishop, with My dear Bishop sufficing if you know him.1 All Episcopal bishops in the United States are the Right Reverend, save the presiding bishop, who is the Most Reverend. An archdeacon is the Venerable. The Style Book says that a Methodist bishop should be addressed as the Very Reverend, but this is an error, for the Methodists use Rev. for bishops and clergy alike.2 They address a bishop simply as Bishop. A Mormon bishop, as the Style Book notes, has no ecclesiastical title at all: he is plain Mr. The vexed question of the proper titles for different classes of monsignori is not tackled, but there is a note on it in AL4, pp. 282–83. On this head there is still some difference of opinion among Catholic experts. The bishops and archbishops of the United States have monopolized the Most Rev. for themselves, but there is no apparent authority for this in canon law. Nor is there any authority for the distinction made in America between monsignori who are Very Rev. and those who are Right Rev. The Style Book is vague about the proper form of address to the superior of a Catholic sisterhood: she may be, it says, either the Reverend Mother Superior, Mother Superior, or Sister Superior, according to the rules of her order. An interesting short article on addressing the members of such sisterhoods was printed in American Speech in 1940 by Sister Miriam, R.S.M.3 She said that Dear Sister is a proper salutation to a nun not a superior, save in the case of three orders which “give their members, after either final profession or an assigned number of years as professed members, the title of Mother.” Many American teaching nuns, in recent years, have become Ph.D.’s, but they are not to be addressed as doctor, though it is permissible to use such a form as Sister M. (i.e., Mary) Genevieve, followed by the initials of the sister’s order and Ph.D. “Usually nuns,” said Sister Miriam, “regardless of the number of degrees awarded them, confine the initials after their names to those of the order to which they belong.”

  The Style Manual of the Department of State clings to the doctrine that Mr. is good enough to be put on an envelope addressed to an ordinary American (p. 39), but it allows the use of Esquire (always spelled out) in addressing certain dignitaries who fall a little short of rating the Hon., e.g., consuls (p. 27), the mayors of small cities (p. 30) and court clerks (p. 36), and hastens to add that Esquire had better be used in addressing all Englishmen, “except in business communications.” My impression is that this position is somewhat outmoded: certainly there has been an increasing use of Esq. in the United States of late, no doubt under English influence.1 The NED devotes a column to a discussion of the honorific’s history and significance. In its original sense it meant a young aspirant to knighthood who carried a knight’s shield and gave him other service, but it was soon confused with equerry, which meant, properly speaking, a groom, and also with armiger, which first meant an armor-bearer and was then gradually extended to a man entitled to bear arms himself, in the heraldic sense. Since the Fifteenth Century esquire has been used in England to designate any gentleman below the rank of knight. Says the NED:

  The designation is now commonly understood to be due by courtesy to all persons (not in clerical orders or having any higher title of rank) who are regarded as gentlemen by birth, position or education. It is used only on occasions of more or less ceremonious mention, and in the addresses of letters, etc.; on other occasions the prefix Mr. is employed instead. When Esq. is appended to a name, no prefixed tide (such as Mr., Doctor, Captain, etc.) is used.

  To which may be added the following from “Titles and Forms of Address,” the chief English authority:

  The almost universal use of
this title for every man who cannot claim a higher one persists in spite of protests and objections from those who are really entitled to it.2 The rule has established itself that it is positively rude to address an envelope to anyone above the rank of working man as Mr.

  The NED says that “in the United States the title belongs officially to lawyers and public officers,” but this is an error. There is, so far as I know, no Federal or State statute which confers it upon anyone, and appending it to the name of a lawyer, or even of a judge, is a mere courtesy. In colonial America it seems to have belonged, as of accepted right, only to justices of the peace, but virtually every lawyer in good standing, at least in New England, was a J.P., so it gradually became extended to all lawyers.1 It was in his character as lawyer, no doubt, that Noah Webster described himself as Esquire on the title-page of his “Dissertations on the English Language,” in 1789. During the Seventeenth Century it was applied not only to magistrates, but also to all functionaries of higher rank, provided they had no other titles. The following is from a Massachusetts document of 1646, showing the seating of the principal dignitaries in the Boston meeting-house:

  John Winthrop, Sen., Esqr., Gou’nr.

  Thomas Dudley, Esqr., Dept. Gou’nr.

  John Endecott, Esqr., Assistant.

  Herbert Pelham, Esqr., Assistant.

  Increase Nowell, gent., Assistant and Secretary.

  William Pinchon, gent., Assistant.

  Mr. Rich. Russell, Treasurer.2

  Seats in the meeting-house were allotted according to rank, with the hot shots getting the best spots. This was called seating the meeting. It will be noticed that Esq., in those days, was regarded as superior to gent. The latter came into use in England as an indicator of rank, at first spelled out and then often abbreviated, early in the Fifteenth Century, and was brought to America by the English colonists. The DAE’s first American example is dated 1637. It ceased to have any legal significance after the Revolution, and was gradually abandoned.3 The NED says that the use of gent in common speech passed out about 1840, when “its use came to be regarded as a mark of low breeding.”4 Early in the Nineteenth Century, as the examples offered by the DAE show, Esq. began to be used very loosely, and presently came to signify only a male of respectable social position.1 J. H. Ingraham reported, in “The Southwest by a Yankee,” 1836, that the New Englanders in the new territories called themselves esquires as a sort of symbol of their superiority to the common run of immigrants, and in 1844 the Knickerbocker Magazine discovered that “a broker may be called a gentleman, visit in the first circles, and have those mysterious letters, E.S.Q., written after his name.”2 Sometimes Esq. was put before instead of after a surname.3 The NED says that it is the custom in England, when a man’s name is followed by a territorial designation preceded by of, to write Esq. after that designation, whereas in Scotland it goes before it and immediately after his surname. In England, again, Esq. follows any abbreviation for junior (usually Jun., not Jr., as in the United States), but in Scotland it precedes the abbreviation. In the British colonies Esq. is cherished by those who, on any plausible ground, believe they are entitled to bear it. In Hong Kong, before World War II, the chairman and chief manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation — always called, in the Far East, simply the Bank — added Esq. to their names in its advertisements, and also to those of such directors as did not rate, by virtue of membership in the colonial Legislative Council, the prefix of Hon. Mr.4

  Mr., an abbreviation of master, is traced by the NED to c. 1524. It originally indicated a certain social status, but, as the NED says, “the inferior limit for its application has been continually lowered,” and “at the present time [in England] any man, however low in station, would be styled Mr. on certain occasions, e.g., in the address of a letter.” In colonial America, as we have seen, it ranked in the hierarchy of honorifics below Esq. and gent. Gilliam, lately cited, says that in early Virginia “it would not have been improper to honor any freeman in the colony with the title of Mr.” and that it was applied in fact to “every member of the House of Burgesses who had no special colonial military title,” and then to all jurymen, and finally to “almost any property-owner, merchant or tradesman.” It became, he says, “a recognition of the right of the average citizen to attain a higher and freer dignity of individual personality than past emphasis on birth rather than personal worth had allowed it. It was one of the earliest colonial whispers of the democracy to come.” In parts of the South it is still customary for a married woman to address her husband as Mr., often followed by his first name instead of his surname. It is possible that this custom owes something to French influence.1

  Such forms as Mr. President, Mr. Justice, Mr. Mayor and so on are traced by the NED, in English use, to c. 1524. They were brought to the United States by the early colonists, and the DAE traces Mr. Sheriff to 1703. The Style Manual of the Department of State ordains that letters to the President of United States shall bear the simple inscription, The President, the White House, on the envelope, and that he shall be addressed inside as The President (very formal; official), Mr. President (formal) or My dear Mr. President (informal). The First Congress debated his style and appellation at great length. John Adams put the question before the Senate by inquiring if Washington, on coming to New York to be inaugurated, should be addressed as Mr. Washington, Mr. President, Sir, or May it please your Excellency. A committee of both Houses was appointed to consider the matter, and it reported that his title should be simply The President of the United States. The House of Representatives agreed to this, but the Senate disagreed and a new committee advocated His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of Their Liberties. The Senate was willing, but the House objected, and the recommendation of the first committee finally prevailed. Adams, who was Vice-President, was strongly in favor of a more sonorous title, and had the active backing of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. “Is it not strange,” wrote the other Virginia Senator, William Grayson, to Patrick Henry on June 2, 1789, “that John Adams, the son of a tinker and the creature of the people, should be for title and dignities and preeminences, and should despise the herd and the ill-born?… He was primum mobile in the Senate for the titles for the President, in hopes that in the scramble he might get a slice for himself.” On April 7, 1789 John Armstrong, a Representative from Pennsylvania, wrote to General Horatio Gates that “even Roger Sherman [then a Representative from Connecticut] has set his head to work to devise some style of address more novel and dignified than Excellency.” In all probability it was the influence of Washington himself that induced Congress to abandon all such follies.1

  The English, in their newspapers, commonly withhold Mr. from professional players of such games as cricket and football, but are careful to use it in referring to amateurs. The former are called players and the latter gentlemen.2 No Englishman would put Esq. on his visiting-card: the proper title for all commoners is Mr. Any Englishman of condition, whether real or imaginary, would be offended, however, by receiving a letter addressed Mr: in that use it is reserved for tradesmen and the like. But it is considered correct, in enclosing an addressed reply-envelope, to describe one’s self on it as Mr., not as Esq. The English, though they are careful to use all titles according to the mode when they must be used at all, avoid them as much as possible in conversation between presumed equals. The simple surname is employed by friends of any intimacy, even in addressing peers, and the excessive mistering that goes on on certain levels in the United States is unknown. An Englishman, in speaking of his wife, commonly uses the formal Mrs. Smith only when he is addressing strangers or inferiors. To his friends she is my wife and to his intimates Mary. The American overuse of Mrs. Smith has been attacked for many years by reformers, but without much effect.3 Nor has the frequent belaboring of the mistering madness abated it appreciably. Nor has much success attended the occasional effort to establish the simple surname in the gap between Mr. and the given-names and nicknames of Rotary. O
f this last William Feather said in 1942:1

  If the University of Chicago Round Table, broadcast on Sunday afternoons, had no other merit I would have a friendly feeling for it because the participants are required to address each other by surname, thus eliminating handles like Mister, Doctor, and Professor, and familiarities like Bob, Dutch, Doc, and T. V. The American idea is that you address a man as Mister or you call him by his given name or a corruption thereof. The University of Chicago is doing its part to correct the custom. Personally, I like the homely tags, but there are innumerable situations that have passed the Mister stage but have not and properly never should reach the Bob stage.… Once, when I called a professional man by his last name, he told me that he was either Mr. or he was Rudolph, to me.

  Not many American newspaper editors seem to agree with Feather. They are, in large part, assiduous members of Rotary and the other clubs of organized lovey-dovey, and they profess to see a useful and even a noble purpose in the somewhat strained bonhommie enforced by the rules thereof. Thus the Dayton News on those of Rotary:2

  One of the oddities of that once much laughed-at order was a rule that members must know each other by their first names. The minister member was John or Bill; the eminent merchant or manufacturer was George or Jake. The dignified doctor was Henry or Mike. It all seemed artificial and funny and helped the Henry Menckens mightily in their efforts to make the movement a joke. Yet the idea stuck and the habit grew. New organizations, seeing that something subtly friendly followed the practice, adopted the rule for themselves. From these or whatever beginnings there has come a nearly universal vogue of the first name. Members of the United States Senate largely address each other, in private at least, by their first names. The President of the United States to hundreds of his friends is simply Frank. Daniel Webster would have frozen stiff the person, however near, who called him Dan.… Let the psychologist say whether or not this first-name movement isn’t the most democratizing and humanizing force that has come to bless this country in fifty years.