6 The Style Manual does not specify how large a city has to be for its mayor to rate the Hon. It ordains (p. 8) that the mayors of small cities shall be addressed John Jones, Esquire, and notes that it is American usage to spell out the Esquire, whereas the English make it Esq.
1 The Style Manual warns all concerned (p. 10) that the form the Honorable Morgenthau, without a given-name, is not to be tolerated. In all cases it prefers the Honorable to the Hon.
2 The letter A in a page number indicates that it is in the Appendix to the Record.
3 He was entitled to the Hon., according to the Style Manual, while he was in service as secretary to the President. All persons so entitled to it continue in enjoyment of it, by congressional usage, for life.
1 Even the Vice-President of the United States, who is ex-officio president of the Senate, appears in its actual proceedings without the Hon. See Congressional Record, Sept. 14, 1943, p. 7599, top of col. 1.
2 The Hon. Reed Smoot (1862–1941), who was a Senator from Utah from 1903 to 1933, had been a Mormon bishop before he got into politics, and was promoted to the awful rank of apostle before his election to the Senate. Many other members of the two houses hold military rank, whether real or bogus, and almost all of those above the grade of big-city ward heelers have learned degrees, whether earned or honorary. Even the females have such degrees.
1 See, for example, the Congressional Record for May 6, 1938, p. 8467, wherein the Hon. Mrs. Norton, a congresswoman from New Jersey, describes herself in a motion to discharge a committee as “I, Hon. Mary T. Norton.” Again, on Jan. 19, 1938 (Record, p. 194) Congressman Ditter of Pennsylvania introduced a privileged resolution in which he referred to himself as Honorable J. William Ditter. Yet again, on May 11, 1943, three congressmen printed in the Record, p. A2474, a letter they had sent to the Hon. Carter Glass, signed Hon. Walt Horan, Hon. Hal Holmes, and Hon. Fred Norman. In the applications for war bonds sent out in 1943 the Secretary of the Treasury had himself addressed as Hon. Henry Morgenthau, Jr. See A. L. P. Digest, May, 1943, p. 250.
2 The hon. gentleman was born in Kansas in 1901 and has had a varied career. He says in his autobiography in the Congressional Directory, 78th Congress, 2nd Session; Washington, 1944, that he was “educated in public schools,” though “graduated from Yale College in 1923.” Subsequently he was a factory worker, a freight handler and a ranch hand and for a time had a job in an automobile assembly plant. He then “traveled in Germany for the Y.M. C.A.” and was a teacher in a farm-school in Illinois, director of the Dray Cottage Episcopal Home for Boys in Wyoming, and headmaster of the Voorhis School for Boys at San Dimas, Calif., which his family owned and eventually gave to the State, which now operates it as a vocational unit of the State university. The latter office, I assume, gave him the local rank and title of professor, but he does not use it.
3 Congressional Record, May 31, 1944. p. 5228.
1 For Daniels see the issue for Sept. 1, 1944, p. A4160; for Hillman, Aug. 24, 1944, p. A4036; for LaGuardia, Aug. 23, 194, p. A4011; for Willkie, June 13, 1944, p. A3215; and for Baruch, May 23, 1944, p. A2760.
2 April 24, p. A2088.
3 April 12, p. A1873.
4 Nov. 22, 1944, p. A4808.
5 Nov. 21, 1944, p. A4795.
6 Nov. 20, 1944, p. A4787.
7 Nov. 16, 1944, p. A4763.
8 Nov. 16, 1944, p. 8303.
9 April 12, p. A1883, and April 24, p. A2099.
10 Nov. 24, p. A4831.
11 Feb. 18, p. 876, and Sept. 13, p. A4341.
12 Feb. 17, p. A837.
13 Jan. 31, 1944, p. A539.
14 Jan. 31, 1944, p. A530; April 28, p. A2163; April 28, p. A2165; Sept. 29, p. A4577.
15 The old New York Sun, in the days before Frank A. Munsey bought it, always accorded the Hon. to the mountebanks it excoriated daily in its editorial pages. A great admirer of the Sun of that era, I borrowed the custom as a young journalist, and stuck to it throughout my days of writing on politics.
16 The Advance of Honorifics, New Yorker, Aug. 17.
17 For example, the Charlottesville, Va., Progress, Aug. 19, 1935. “Of all the titles abroad in the land,” it said, “none is so absurd or meaningless as that of the Hon. Even a Kentucky colonel has to get a commission from Governor Ruby Laffoon and to pay a fee for being registered, but the title honorable is one that a man simply gives himself. It is enjoyed by all mayors, all district attorneys, all governors, all congressmen, and practically every ward-heeling politician in the country.”
1 In the issue of True Detective for May, 1935, p. 5, for example, it is accorded to Eugene W. Biscailuz, sheriff of Los Angeles county, California. In the issue of Bolivia for Jan.-Feb., 1942, it is accorded to all Bolivian consuls in the United States, including honorary consuls, and under the flagstaff of the magazine the consul-general in New York, who publishes it, is mentioned as the Hon. T. Hartmann.
2 The Present State of Virginia; London, 1724; reprinted, New York, 1865. I am indebted for this reference to Words Indicating Social Status in America in the Eighteenth Century, by Allen Walker Read; American Speech, Oct., 1934, p. 205.
3 This invaluable record was first published in 1890, edited by Edgar Stanton Maclay.
4 Said the American Museum (Philadelphia) in Oct. of the same year, p. 202: “Nothing shows the propensity of Americans to monarchy more than their disposition to give titles to all our officers of government. Honorable and esquire have become as common in America as captain in France, count in Germany or my lord in Italy.”
5 A Narrative of a Journey of 5,000 Miles Through the Eastern and Western States of America; London, 1818.
1 A writer in Harper’s Weekly, Jan. 9, 1892, quoted by the DAE, said: “It is only permissible in the United States to place before the name of one man the prefix Hoacrable, and that man is the Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, upon whom the title is conferred by law.”
2 Two vols.; Philadelphia, 1833, Vol. I, p. 241.
1 Second ed.; London, 1929, p. 35. See also Whitaker’s Titled Persons; London, 1898.
2 A county judge’s His Honor is retained after he retires.
3 The NED traces Right Hon. in English use to the Paston letters, c. 1450. It was used by Shakespeare in his dedication of Venus and Adonis to “the Right Hon. Henrie Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield.” The NED’s first example of Hon. preceding a given name is dated 1674. It was then applied to Robert Boyle the chemist, who was a son of the Earl of Cork. Hon. has been accorded, in England, to corporations as well as individuals, e.g., the Hon. East India Company.
4 The Style Manual of the Department of State, p. 58, gives the form the Right Honorable for a member of Parliament, but that is an error — unless, of course, he is entitled to the honorific on some other ground. See Titles and Forms of Address, before cited, p. 116, and A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, by H. W. Horwill, p. 169.
1 But not if he is actually a learned man. A Ph.D. would be simply the honorable gentleman. Only lawyers, by House of Commons rules, can be learned.
2 Dec. 24.
3 The NED’s first example of honorable gentleman is dated 1783 and comes from a speech in the House of Commons by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
4 Winston Churchill referred to Lady Astor as the noble lady in a debate in the House of Commons in Sept., 1938. See The Astors, by Harvey O’Connor; New York, 1941, p. 453.
1 Not to be confused with Privy Councillors of Great Britain.
2 It will be noted that this official list shows the English spelling of honourable, though the American honorable is used by virtually all Canadian newspapers. The French of Canada use l’honorable. See Études sur les parlers de France au Canada, by Adjutor Rivard; Québec, 1914, p. 256.
1 It is thus, precisely, that he described himself in Who’s Who.
2 I am indebted here to the late F. H. Tyson of Hong Kong. The matter is dealt with in Marriage at 6 A.M., by Tom Clarke; London, 1934.
3 There was, in the
old days, a Chinese member of the Legislative Council named Chow Shou-son, who had become the Hon. Mr. on his appointment in 1921. When, five years later, he was knighted, he became the Hon. Sir Shouson Chow, for Chow was his surname, and it was necessary, in order to avoid a solecism, to take it out of its Chinese position in front and put it in the English position behind. See the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 23, 1936.
4 The Use of the Abbreviation Rev. in Modern English, American Speech, Oct., 1931, pp. 40–43.
5 On Aug. 3, 1944, Lieut. Gen. Mark W. Clark, in a letter of thanks to the Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, D.D., B.D., LL.D., chaplain of the United States Senate, thanking him for a rousing prayer delivered from the Senate rostrum on June 6, addressed him as “Dear Reverend Harris.” General Clark is a native of New York State, but Dr. Brown is an Englishman and the salutation must have struck him as somewhat strange. It is not, however, wholly unknown in England, for a correspondent writes: “The chaplain of my college at Oxford was always referred to by the servants as the Reverend Ridley, and occasionally as Reverend Ridley, but he had married an American.”
1 Neither part of this is invariably true. The rev. clergy is often encountered.
2 Mr. for Rev., Time, Nov. 27, 1939, p. 50.
3 The amusing rhymed protest against Reverend in AL4, p. 280, was written by the Right Rev. Douglas H. Atwill, now Protestant Episcopal missionary bishop of North Dakota. He was at that time rector of St. Clement’s Memorial Church, St. Paul, Minn., and the verses made their first appearance in his parish paper, St. Clement’s Chimes, on July 25, 1925. I am indebted here to the Rev. E. H. Eckels, Jr., of Tulsa, Okla., and to Bishop Atwill himself.
1 An English archbishop or bishop drops his surname when he is consecrated and uses the name of his see instead. Thus the Archbishop of York signs himself William Ebor— Ebor being an abbreviation of Eboracum, the ancient Latin name of York. So far as I know, only one American bishop has ever ventured to adopt this style. He was William Croswell Doane (1832–1913), bishop of Albany from 1869 until his death. He subscribed himself William of Albany. When an English bishop resigns his bishopric he becomes simply Bishop —. See Inconsistency or Convenience?, John o’ London’s Weekly, Oct. 8, 1937. The rules of the American Postoffice require that, in sending an international money order, one must give “he surname and the initial letters” of the payee’s name, unless he be “a peer or a bishop, in which case his ordinary title is sufficient.”
2 I am indebted here to Dr. George McCracken of Otterbein College. But the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading colored paper, uses Right Rev. to designate a bishop of the A.M.E. Zion or C.M.E. Church.
3 Saluting Nuns, Oct., 1940, pp. 338–39.
1 Mr. is also preferred for American men by Frank O. Colby, author of Your Speech, and How to Improve It, and the conductor of a newspaper column on speechways. In a pamphlet entitled Forms of Address and Precedence; Houston, Tex., 1942, p. 3, he says that Esq., in America, is still “rare.” But I doubt it.
2 The nature of this right is not defined, but I suppose that it is identical with the right to use a coat-of-arms.
1 I am indebted here to Dr. S. E. Morison.
2 I take this from Curiosities of Puritan History, Putnam’s Monthly, Aug., 1853, p. 136.
3 Charles Edgar Gilliam says in Mr. in Virginia Records Before 1776, William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, April, 1939, p. 144, that it appears in the early Virginia records “after the names of the following classes of public servants without regard to their right to it by birth: vestrymen, wardens, sheriffs, justices, trustees of towns, etc.”
4 It seems to have moved to the United States after this. Said Harper’s Magazine in July, 1852: “There is a certain London cockneyism that begins to obtain among some persons even here — and that is the substitution of the word gent for gentleman. It is a gross vulgarism.”
1 Pickering said that it was frequently coupled with Honorable as in the Honorable A. B., Esq. “In Massachusetts,” he added, c. 1816, “they say in their proclamations, ‘By his Excellency Caleb Strong, Esquire,’ which must seem a perfect solecism among the English.… In the British West Indies they use Esquire with Honorable, as we do.”
2 Schele de Vere said in his Americanisms, 1872, p. 467: “Esquire is a title in England still given only to certain classes of men, and long reserved in the United States also to lawyers and other privileged persons [but it is] now, with republican uniformity, given alike to the highest and the lowest who does not boast of a military or other title, the result being that it is strictly limited to the two extremes of society.”
3 The NED shows that this was done in England in the Eighteenth Century, apparently in an effort to dignify Squire. The DAE’s only American example is dated 1845.
4 Hong Kong Daily Press, Sept. 25. 1935.
1 Says Mr. Gordon Gunter of Rock-port, Tex., who was brought up in Louisiana: “My wife’s grandmother, now ninety years old, always called her husband to his face or in speaking of him M’sieu Hilaire, which was his first name. The old lady can’t speak English. The French or at least the older set often called a man by his first name preceded by Mister or M’sieu. In small communities, as a matter of fact, they must have forgot what the man’s last name was in some instances, for his wife was also called by his first name, decorously preceded by Madam. My grandfather Gunter’s first name was Miles and to all of her French-speaking friends my grandmother was known as Madam Miles.”
1 I take this from The Inauguration of Washington, by Clarence Winthrop Bowen, Century Magazine, April, 1889, p. 823.
2 Mr., New Statesman and Nation (London), May 8, 1937, pp. 766–67.
3 I denounced it myself so long ago as 1911, to wit, in the Baltimore Evening Sun, Dec. 26. Mrs., an abbreviation of mistress, is traced by the NED to 1615. It is a curious fact that neither it nor Mr. has an English plural. To designate more than one Mr. the French messieurs is used, commonly abbreviated in writing to Messrs., and to designate more than one Mrs. there is mesdames. The NED traces Messrs. to 1793 and mesdames to 1792. The former is commonly pronounced messers in the United States. Down to the end of the Eighteenth Century Mrs. was applied to both married and single women. Until that time Miss, which goes back to c. 1660, was reserved for very young girls. In 1940 Motion Picture launched mrandmrs as an (unpronounceable) designation for a married couple, but it did not catch on. See American Speech, April, 1940, p. 131.
1 William Feather Magazine, June, p. 6.
2 First Name Land (editorial), Jan. 5, 1934.
1 Yes, Sir (editorial), reprinted in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, July 21, 1939.
2 The DAE traces Sir as “a respectful term of address” to 1805, and as a mere intensive, as in No, sir (or siree) and Yes, sir, to 1799. The latter is marked an Americanism.
1 Pittsburgh Courier, April 27, 1940.
2 Journalistic Headache, Ken, March 9, 1939, pp. 62 and 63.
3 Part II, p. 1083.
1 The Present State of Virginia; London, 1724; reprinted, New York, 1865, p. 63.
2 Words Indicating Social Status in America in the Eighteenth Century, American Speech, Oct., 1934, p. 205.
1 General John J. Pershing, who was made a G.C.B. (Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath) in 1918 thereby became Sir John Pershing by English law and custom. See Titles and Forms of Address, p. 75. But he never used the honorific.
2 In his account of himself in Who’s Who (English) Sir William does not mention his service as editor (jointly with Dr. James R. Hulbert) of the DAE, though he notes that he is professor emeritus of English at the University of Chicago. Even in Who’s Who in America there is no mention of the DAE. There was none of his knighthood in Who’s Who in America until the 1942–43 volume, which put (Sir) before his name.
3 Said William Hickey in the London Daily Express, June 15, 1939: “From a New York paper: ‘Lord Sassoon, Briton, dies,’ meaning Sir Philip. From a New York paper: An open letter to the King and Quee
n of England: ‘Your royal highnesses,’ meaning majesties.”
4 Continental usages are also unfathomable to him. So long ago as 1880 Wendell Phillips wrote to Harper’s Magazine (Dec., p. 149) protesting against the current treatment of the name of the author of Démocratie en Amérique, not only by journalists, but also by such bigwigs as William Graham Sumner, Francis Bowen of Harvard, and the editor of Harper’s. “The rules of the French language,” he wrote, “require that when we omit the Alexis or the Monsieur, and give only the family name, it should be simply Tocqueville. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Names of one syllable, like De Thou, retain the de, and names beginning with a vowel.” American copy-readers refuse, however, to drop the de, or the von in German names.
5 For example, they ordain (p. 50) that a formal letter to a duke may begin either My Lord Duke or Your Grace, whereas Titles and Forms of Address gives only My Lord Duke, reserving His Grace the Duke, etc., for the envelope. Again, they pass up altogether, as apparently beyond American grasp, the complicated and baffling rules for addressing such personages as dowager marchionesses and earls’ daughters who have married commoners.
1 A Step Toward Democracy?, Nov. 26, 1942, p. 26.
2 Every Man a Mr. (editorial), Dec. 3, 1942. That Colonel McCormick found some supporters in England is probable, but if so they were kept silent by the censorship. So long ago as Oct. 5, 1935 Lord Camrose’s Daily Telegraph reported that the Socialist Party Conference, in session at Brighton, debated a resolution saying: “This conference deprecates the acceptance by members of the party of titles or honours other than those which a Labour Government finds necessary for the furtherance of its own business in Parliament” — in other words, for packing the House of Lords. This resolution was carried with an amendment instructing the National Executive Committee of the party “to frame rules setting forth the conditions, if any, under which members of the party should accept honours from capitalist governments.”
1 March 18. Maryland Historical Magazine, Sept., 1944, p. 252.
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