by Erin Moore
The verb by shall, States of fixed order shows;
Or States which Chance directs, as we suppose.
And shall those verbal Future States declares
Which for itself, an Object hopes or Fears,
Thinks of itself, surmises, or foresees;
But which for other objects it decrees.
The verb by will those Future States declares
For others, which an Object hopes or fears,
Of others thinks, surmises or foresees;
But for itself, States which itself decrees.
Confused?
The distinction between shall and will is breaking down even in England, and it’s no mystery why. Imagine the plight of the non-native speaker, contemplating a beam so narrow that even the English themselves do not always stick the landing. The younger and more international the crowd, the more likely they are to avoid the issue altogether by using contractions, or substituting will. Shall isn’t dead yet, though. Just two months after starting at an English nursery school, my daughter asked, “When shall we go to the park? Shall I get the umbrella?” I guess there are worse habits she could have picked up. In some English schools they still teach little girls to curtsy.
The attitude underlying shall endures although the upper-class credentials that redound to those who get it right are becoming less important, even to those who belong to the class in question. Anyone looking down his nose at someone for misusing shall in England today would be considered something worse than a stickler. Still, those who care might counter that while English may be perfectly intelligible without shall, any form of English that doesn’t include it will be the poorer.
Sir
In which the great and the good get gongs (and I explain what that means, in English).
It is our wedding day and people are all dressed up. Our American guests, having heard that the English contingent would be there, have made an effort with hats, like something out of a Richard Curtis movie. Most of the English guests have elected to leave their hats at home. It’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, not Cambridgeshire. But it is all taking place during the day, so many of the men are wearing morning suits—even my father, who prefers flip-flops. I am ridiculously young, and getting away with a pouf of white silk and a veil attached to what the English romantically call an “Alice band,” because Alice wore one in the Tenniel illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. To me it is a headband.
I compliment an older gentleman, whom I’ve never met before, on his tie. He says, “Thank you, darling. My wife gave it to me when I was ninety.” I say, “Really? But you don’t look a day over seventy-five.” He says, “No, darling, knighted!” We both laugh and I’m not sure who is more pleased. To me, he might as well be a member of the royal family. Actually, his title has been awarded on merit—as are most titles in England nowadays.
Twice each year—on New Year’s Day and on the queen’s birthday in June—the Cabinet Office publishes the Queen’s Honours List, “marking the achievements and service of extraordinary people across the UK.” There is a baffling array of orders within which honors may be awarded, depending on the type of service one has rendered to crown and country. These include (among others) the Order of the Bath, for senior civil servants and military officers (so named because of the ritual washing, symbolizing spiritual purification, that took place in late medieval times before investiture ceremonies); the Order of St. Michael and St. George, for diplomats and those who have served the UK abroad; the Royal Victorian Order, for people who have served the queen or the monarchy personally; the Order of the Garter, a rarefied order reserved for the king and twenty-five knights who have held public office or contributed in a meaningful way to national life; and the Order of the British Empire, which recognizes distinguished service to the arts and sciences, public services outside the Civil Service, and work with charitable and welfare organizations.
Within each order there are different ranks conferring gradations of prestige. For example, within the largest order, the Order of the British Empire, these are the MBE (member of the Order of the British Empire), for service that sets an example to others; the OBE (officer of the OBE), for a distinguished regional role in any field; the CBE (commander of the OBE), for work with a national impact; and finally the KBE/DBE (knight/dame commander of the OBE). To receive a knighthood or be made a dame, one has to have made a significant and inspirational contribution at a national level. Prominent people have been known to turn down honors that they did not feel were of a sufficiently exalted rank. Alfred Hitchcock turned down a CBE, but later accepted a knighthood. Evelyn Waugh also turned down a CBE in the hope of later being offered a knighthood, which, as it turned out, was not forthcoming.
Although it is the queen who bestows the honors, the Cabinet Office Honours and Appointments Secretariat handles the nominations at home, while the Foreign Office is responsible for the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List. Nominations may come from anyone, and there are nine independent committees who consider applications and make recommendations to the central honors committee before sending a list to the queen via the prime minister. It all sounds surprisingly corporate. The process is also competitive—so competitive, in fact, that many hopefuls pay specialist consultants to prepare their applications. The website for one of these organizations, Awards Intelligence, reads like a classier version of an ad for a personal injury attorney: “Are you ready for a queen’s honour nomination? . . . Do you know someone who may be deserving of a queen’s honour but you don’t know if they meet all the right criteria? . . . Do you want your nomination to have the best possible chance of success in the Queen’s Honours List? If you answered ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions contact us today.”
When the long-awaited lists are released, inevitably it is the actors, footballers, and entertainers who receive the most publicity. But the overwhelming majority of those who get these coveted prizes, or “gongs,” as the English call them, are not famous. The official website of the British monarchy notes that they could be charity volunteers, members of the emergency services or armed forces, industrial pioneers, or specialists in various professions. A prestigious award from the queen helps draw attention to their work and increase support for their causes. A friend who knows several recent OBE award-winners said that even the lefties (and ostensible antiroyalists) among them gushed about the experience of meeting the queen, and actually teared up when describing how proud their mothers were. It is also a huge ego boost, whether one likes to admit it or not. A gag in the popular 1980s political sitcom Yes Minister illustrates the point. Jim Hacker, the minister for administrative affairs, has asked his private secretary, Bernard, to explain the abbreviations for honors emanating from the Foreign Office (all under the Order of St. Michael and St. George):
BERNARD: . . . in the service, CMG stands for Call Me God. And KCMG for Kindly Call Me God.
HACKER: What about GCMG?
BERNARD: God Calls Me God.
Other titles exist in England, of course. There is the peerage, with ranks in descending order from duke, to marquess, earl, viscount, and baron. But today these titles are relics—like classic cars passed down from father to son—since only four new nonroyal hereditary peerages have been created since 1964 (and two went to men with no sons). The Life Peerages Act of 1958, in a very English gesture toward egalitarianism, made it possible to confer a life peerage on an accomplished individual without giving his heirs the right to the title in perpetuity. Membership in the House of Lords ceased to be automatic for peers in the late nineties anyway, so these titles now derive most of their cachet from reflected glory (and, of course, HELLO! magazine).
The word knight originally carried the sense of a servant or soldier, and service is still central to what it means to be a knight or a dame. People from other nationalities—even Americans—can be given honorary knighthoods. Bill Gates, former New York City may
or Rudolph Giuliani, presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and Steven Spielberg are among those who have received this honor. But honorary knights are not “dubbed” with the sword by the queen, and they are not permitted to style themselves “Sir.” Where’s the fun in that?
Being known as “Sir” apparently can be more trouble than it is worth. Alistair Cooke, author of the popular Letter from America radio broadcast—weekly talks on American life that aired between 1946 and 2004—met a knighted actor who, having moved to Hollywood, complained that American service providers assumed his title meant he was “a very wealthy lord with twenty thousand acres . . . so where I normally gave a quarter tip I had to give a dollar and . . . where the car parking attendant used to get a dollar, now, unless I give him five, he positively sneers and mutters ‘cheapskate.’” Cooke (who had given up his British citizenship) was later awarded an honorary knighthood himself, for his outstanding contributions to Anglo-American understanding.
The royal family is the source of all titles and the seat of hereditary privilege in England. Americans tend to be less critical and (if anything) more fascinated by the royals than the English. Cynics would say that is at least partly because Americans are not being taxed for their upkeep, unlike the English. England’s antimonarchists (somewhat confusingly known as republicans) would like to abolish the whole business, and the Queen’s Honours are just one manifestation of the nobility that they sneer at. Numerous nonrepublicans have turned down honors in the past for reasons other than snobbery, whether in protest or because they simply didn’t want the attention or the title—these include C. S. Lewis, David Hockney, Nigella Lawson, the comedy duo French and Saunders, Roald Dahl, and J. G. Ballard, who called the Honours system a “preposterous charade.” It isn’t uncommon for someone to be criticized for accepting a knighthood—especially if it seems at odds with his public persona. Keith Richards was apoplectic when Mick Jagger was knighted in 2003, calling the honor “bollocks” and saying (among other, less-printable things), “It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?”
Still, about 80 percent of Britons approve of the monarchy. And, as Olga Khazan reported in The Atlantic, the royal family—while born to their titles—works quite hard representing the UK. According to the British tourism agency, the royal family generates close to five hundred million pounds in revenue per year. Their estimated cost to the taxpayer likely falls somewhere between Buckingham Palace’s estimate of 33.3 million pounds (or fifty-three pence per person) and the republicans’ estimate of two hundred million pounds per year. Either way, the royal family looks like a bargain. More than most members of modern society, they could be said to be “in service”: giving up any semblance of a normal life and their privacy, spending most of their time attending official events, and having to appear flawless in public at all times, without complaint. Not everyone is equal to that level of scrutiny, and it is more than most of us would be willing to put up with. Even so, like anyone refusing a knighthood or other honor from the queen, they must know that many others would gladly take their place.
As for my cousin by marriage, Bill Cotton, who had been knighted for his roles as head of light entertainment at the BBC and vice president of the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity, he died a few years ago. His memorial service packed St. Martin-in-the-Fields to the rafters, and no one noticed, I’m sure, that my American mother-in-law and I were among the only ones wearing hats. We’d assumed (embarrassingly? touchingly?) that hats would be the done thing. But we were so honored to be counted among Sir Bill’s family, friends, and admirers: some of them knighted, some ninety, others not a day over seventy-five.
Yankee
In which we delve into the origins of a controversial nickname and uncover its unexpected relationship to pie.
To the English, all Americans are Yankees. An American can usually tell, depending on the context and the speaker, whether or not the term is being used affectionately. Yankee is a word with baggage—it’s complicated. Within the United States, the word is more strictly defined. Only New Englanders living in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are likely to be considered, or to call themselves, Yankees. And the nearer you get to the Yankees themselves, the narrower the definition becomes. E. B. White explained it well:
To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
Of course, White meant the classic American double-crust fruit pie (and you might struggle to find an American who hasn’t eaten pie for breakfast—especially the day after Thanksgiving). In England, a fruit pie is usually made with only a top crust, and if you see a double-crust pie it is more likely to be savory, containing pork or some other meat. Although the pie-for-breakfast line may seem like a joke to outsiders, Vermonters have taken it seriously enough. Act 15 of the 1999 session of the Vermont Legislature enshrined the importance of pie eating—and certain standards for how it ought to be done—as law:
When serving apple pie in Vermont, a “good faith” effort shall be made to meet one or more of the following conditions:
(a) with a glass of cold milk,
(b) with a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of 1/2 ounce,
(c) with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Just as Americans can be doctrinaire about what is and isn’t correct to serve with pie, they are very particular about who they do—and don’t—consider to be a true Yankee. Linguist Mark Liberman, in the blog “Language Log,” recalled that, during his childhood in rural eastern Connecticut, “it was understood that only some of the people in our village were called ‘Yankees’ . . . Later on, I learned that these people were the descendents of the English immigrants who had settled the area in the late 17th century, but when I was six or so, the characteristics that I associated with ‘Yankees’ included keeping a few farm animals on the side, trapping to earn a little extra money from furs, making hooked rugs from old socks, and shooting at garden pests . . . Although I participated in such activities with friends and neighbors, mine was certainly not a Yankee family in the local sense, and so it still takes me aback when I realize that some Texan or Virginian regards me as a Yankee.”
America may not have as long a history as England, but nevertheless there is a lot of snobbery about whose ancestors got there “first.” (Native Americans, naturally, excepted.) Mayflower bragging rights accrue to the descendants of the earliest settlers from England, who are considered the bluest of the blue-blood Yankees. In a country without a nobility, this is as close as one can get. This may explain why some people go to extraordinary lengths to trace their lineage back to the original Mayflower passengers who landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, only about a quarter of whom survived long enough to reproduce. A cursory glance at the daunting application requirements for the Mayflower Society would be enough to discourage most of the estimated twenty to thirty million descendants; still, the society has about twenty-seven thousand members. But a Yankee wasn’t—and still isn’t—always admired. Experts disagree on the origin of the word Yankee, but one thing we know for sure is that who qualifies as a Yankee, and whether or not that person is being mocked, has always depended on who you ask.
Prior to the American Revolution, Yankee was an insult. British soldiers had nothing but contempt for the soldiers of the American colonies, who seemed to them a ragtag army of amateurs. The song “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” now familiar to all American children, was once sung by the English to tease their rivals: “Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony. Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.” Doodle was a synonym for a fool or a simpleton, and macaroni was what the dandies of the day were called in England. So the song describes a bumpkin—an object of ridicule without style
or guile. To Americans, however, muddling through despite a lack of experience or equipment can be a point of pride (see Scrappy).
Robert Hendrickson, in Yankee Talk: A Dictionary of New England Expressions, describes the way Americans began to claim the term Yankee:
It wasn’t until the Battle of Lexington, the first battle of the Revolution in 1775, that New Englanders began applying the nickname Yankee to themselves, making it respectable. Soon after, the process of dignification began and the story about the Yankos Indians was invented. In this tale a mythical tribe of Massachusetts Indians are said to have been defeated by a band of valorous New Englanders. The defeated Yankos so admired the bravery of their victorious adversaries that they gave them their name, Yankos, which meant Invincibles, and was soon corrupted to “Yankees.”
Another theory is that the word comes from the Cherokee word eankke, which means “coward.” How embarrassing. Yet Hendrickson’s anecdote shows the extent to which Americans wanted to take this moniker from their enemies and own it for themselves. It did help that they won the war. “Yankee Doodle” soon became a triumphal march, and was adopted as the country’s first national anthem. It remains the state song of Connecticut. The plucky spirit of Americans was, for a time, known as “Yankee-doodle-dandeeism,” and America itself nicknamed “Yankeedoodledom.”
But that’s far from the end of the story. Even within America, Yankee can still be an insult. During the Civil War era, Confederates used the word to describe Federalists and other Northerners on the opposite side of the conflict. It is said in the South that there are three types of Yankees: A Yankee is someone who was born and still lives in the North. A Damned Yankee is one who visits the South. And a Goddamned Yankee is one who moves there permanently. They may be joking, but the jokes occasionally have an edge that would surprise most foreigners. Even though the official North–South conflict ended a long time ago, antagonism remains. These days the division in American culture is more likely to be described in terms of politics—the red (Republican) states vs. the blue (Democratic) ones. A quick glance at the map confirms that the Yankee states are mostly blue, and the Southern states mostly red.