Some naughty Victorian Latin
Educated people in nineteenth-century Britain spouted Latin quotations and traded Latin tags. Two centuries later, this makes them seem desperately serious – but sometimes they used the ancient classics as a source for nudge-nudge naughty allusions in a very un-Victorian manner.
Twenty-first century readers cannot always penetrate Victorian discourse because, two centuries ago, educated people often expressed themselves through Latin phrases, and even extended quotations.[1] As a survivor from the days when the British school system still taught the language of ancient Rome, I struggle when I encounter such interpositions in speeches and essays, regretting that four years of excellent teaching in my teens have left me just about capable of identifying the subject matter but usually at a loss to translate its meaning.[2] Overall, the Victorian practice of trading classical tags (the real sadists among them used Greek as well) tends to create an impression of a deeply serious nation, populated by humourless and mechanical people.
Yet occasionally there are glimpses that the Victorians could use their Latin as a source of fun and even – and here we must challenge our narrow notions of Victorianism – as a veiled cover for innuendo. Indeed, occasionally, of course with the help of translation, we can even catch something of the cleverness and mirth of their application of classical tags to contemporary political issues. In 1830, when Lord Grey formed the Whig ministry that aimed to carry parliamentary reform, he faced a challenge in finding a suitable role for the massively popular but flamboyantly unreliable lawyer Henry Brougham. As Member of Parliament for the constituency of Yorkshire, Brougham was one of the few politicians who could genuinely claim to speak for large numbers of the people. He was also committed to reforming abuses in the legal system, and this offered a way of luring him out of the House of Commons. Grey persuaded him to accept the office of Lord Chancellor, in effect Britain's Minister of Justice, which gave Brougham the portfolio job that he wanted but effectively sidelined him into the House of Lords, thereby weakening his potential to mobilise the masses. (The job also carried an attractively large pension.) Although he was no aristocrat, Brougham caused some merriment when he showed his habitual vanity in choosing his title. It was no surprise that Henry Brougham should become Lord Brougham, but he also tacked on a claim to the revival of the ancient barony of Vaux (pronounced [Vox]), to which he insisted he had a right through obscure descent in the female line. It is possible that he had in mind the Latin tag, vox populi, vox Dei (the voice of the people = the voice of God), implying that he remained the spokesman for the masses.[3] Unfortunately in his new name, Lord Brougham and Vaux reminded the political world of another familiar Latin phrase, vox et praeterea nihil, 'a voice and nothing more'. It was a description of disembodied spirits from classical mythology that cruelly summed up Brougham's career blunder in abandoning the huge constituency of popular support that had made him a significant public figure before 1830.[4]
The definition of 'Victorian' in this Note is wider than the reign of the Great Queen herself (1837-1901), not least because habits of thought from her era can be traced before Victoria came to the throne and certainly survived her death for several decades. When he dictated his memoirs in the eighteen-fifties, the veteran Cambridge don Henry Gunning was still chortling over an incident from his student days sixty years earlier. In a translation class, a fellow undergraduate had confused merx (merchandise) with meretrix (prostitute). The passage under review came from a work by the seventeenth-century Dutch legal theorist Hugo Grotius, who counselled that intending customers should be on their guard if invited to purchase goods which could not be inspected. Understandably, in a robustly masculine world, this mistranslation produced a "roar of laughter".[5]
The buttocks have always represented an immature element in the English sense of humour, particularly when linked with embarrassed witticisms about corporal punishment. In 1850, a Royal Commission was established to investigate the affairs of Oxford and Cambridge. It was widely assumed, although less so within the institutions themselves, that England's two ancient universities were likely to be found to require severe correction. Punch observed that three of the commissioners appointed to scrutinise Oxford were current or recent headmasters of major academies for boys: the public schools Rugby and Westminster and the big city day school, King Edward's at Birmingham. In fact, this was not surprising, since such academies tended to appoint Fellows of Colleges to their headships – Oxford tended to be the preferred recruiting ground – and it made sense to involve the major suppliers of undergraduates in a review of the academic curriculum and teaching. However, Punch decided to engage in word-play based on two Latin phrases that described opposed methods of reaching a conclusion: a priori, dogmatic argument proceeding from first principles (a tag still in use), and a posteriori, deduction derived from observation of actual phenomena or the experience of events. The posterior overtones of the latter, coupled with the assumption that headmasters were experienced in the use of the birch, were too much for the satirical magazine. "We trust that these schoolmasters will not forget the scholastic maxim, that 'he who spares the rod spoileth the child' and that in dealing with the University they will not forget that there are strong a priori reasons for the same a posteriori treatment of Oxford Dons, which they are called on to administer to Westminster, Rugby, and Birmingham boys respectively."[6] The image of Oxford dons having their backsides thrashed was no doubt entertaining; the Latin phraseology gave it a slightly respectable veneer.
In November 1846, the Reverend Joseph Romilly was invited to Audley End, the Essex mansion of Lord Braybrooke. Romilly was a senior official of Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College which, at that time, automatically meant that he was a bachelor, since dons were not permitted to marry. He was a fairly frequent and evidently welcome guest at Audley End, and joined in the evening entertainments with much pleasure, even gambling mildly at whist. Lady Braybrooke regaled the party with Conundrums, jokes based on lively puns. One of them was both classical and anatomical, "What is the Latin for a Lady's bustle?" The bustle was a particularly inconvenient female fashion accessory, which piled layers of material under the skirt in order to accentuate the rearward contours. Lady Braybrooke's Latin translation? "Superbum."[7] Perhaps the most interesting point about this jest which, as we must frankly face, has not aged well, is that it came from a woman. This may explain why it was such poor Latin: the classical languages were beaten into upper-class boys but were rarely imparted to their sisters. Making a fake noun out of superbum, the accusative form of the adjective superbus ('proud'), was something of a stretch. Lady Braybrooke probably intended her coinage to be translated as 'upon the backside' and not, as we might assume today, 'very large buttocks'. She came from the stratospheric levels of the aristocracy, which perhaps explains her disdain for bourgeois narrow-mindedness. Born Lady Jane Cornwallis, she was the granddaughter of the Marquis Cornwallis, the general whose surrender at Yorktown in 1781 had finally lost the American colonies. Her distinguished forebear was also responsible for forcing the 1800 Act of Union upon Ireland, and twice served as Governor of British India. She herself had recently visited another Marquis, Lord Salisbury at Hatfield, where the guest of honour had been Queen Victoria herself. It is worth pausing for a moment to savour her indulgence in culturally enriched smut, which she felt appropriate to share with guests who included a middle-aged bachelor clergyman.
Of course, for juvenile vulgarity it is hard to beat the locker-room humour of two immature adult males. George Meredith, who features in this next cameo, was a novelist and poet whose writing did indeed set out to shock Victorian morality, while his partner in bawdiness, Samuel Lucas, was a radical journalist who stretched the limits of conventional politeness in political debate. In 1861, Lucas was editor of a periodical called Once a Week, and Meredith happened to be with him when he was checking proofs for the issue of 21 December. A key Latin-derived term that is still used in proof-correcting is 'stet', the third-person singular subjunctive of the verb stare, 'to stand'.[8] If suggested changes or corrections are indicated to a text at a preliminary stage of proof-reading, then the author or editor who retains the final say has the option of overruling them by the simple use of 'stet', meaning 'let it [the original] stand'. Once a Week carried a mixture of text and illustrations, and the issue that Lucas and Meredith were checking contained a picture that had alarmed the printer. It was a portrayal of the naked god Bacchus who, in the opinion of the God-fearing typesetter, was sporting an inconveniently large penis. This appendage had been circled, with a marginal note that suggested "Fig leaf?" Neither Lucas nor Meredith was prone to phallophobia, and presumably they decided that subscribers to Once a Week could also cope with the intrusion of well-developed male genitalia in their leisure reading. Lucas overruled the printer's suggestion by writing 'stet' in the margin, and the two took particular pleasure in applying to the divine erection the formula whose Latin meaning was "let it stand". Meredith's friend, William Hardman, thought it "one of the best jokes I have heard for a long time, and it is increased in value by being a fact".[9] Unfortunately, the story is to some extent undermined by the depiction of Bacchus that actually appeared in Once a Week. There is indeed no doubt about the gender of the naked god, but it is possible that his ingestion of alcohol had restricted his potency: the story, unlike the penis, seems to have grown in the telling. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the episode occurred at one of the most fraught moments in the Victorian era. The nation was plunged into mourning for the Queen's husband, Prince Albert, who had died a week before publication of the 21 December issue, making it a moment when a sensitive editor might have been expected to lean over backwards to avoid any hint of frivolity. There were also dark fears of war with the United States over the Trent Incident, the arrest by a Northern warship of two Confederate envoys travelling to Europe on a British steamer. All in all, it was an unlikely moment to encounter two literary gentlemen smirking over the depiction of an erection.
When the printer submitted the proofs for the 21 December 1861 issue of Once a Week, he was said to have suggested the addition of a figleaf to veil an inconvenient erection in the picture of the naked god Bacchus. The editor, Samuel Lucas, took delight in using the standard Latin proof-reading term stet (let it stand) to overrule the change. As the picture shows, the story had grown in the telling rather more notably than the phallus. At the time, Britain was in mourning for the death of the Prince Consort.
It might be expected that the Cambridge of the eighteen-eighties would produce a mildly improper allusion that was both classical and theological. With an undergraduate population mostly composed of prosperous young men, the town had a problem with prostitution. Since some students were very wealthy indeed, it is no surprise that some of the sex workers were elegant women, whose skills were not only sexual but social. Although ordination was ceasing to be a requirement for an academic career, most senior members of the University were still in holy orders. In a small town, there was potential for accidental social interaction between clerics and courtesans. One such encounter happened at a public event, where a venerable don found himself in conversation with an intriguing but unidentified young woman. On taking his departure, he asked an informed colleague who she was. "A lady of a suspicious character", was the reply. The elderly Doctor indicated that he was not surprised, mysteriously adding that "there was something Athanasian in her looks". The Athanasian Creed was a confession of Christian faith inherited from the early Church. Officially it formed part of the Anglican belief system but many theologians were uncomfortable with its inflexibility. Its menacing tone was signalled in its opening words "Quicunque vult salvus esse…" ("Whosoever wishes to be saved"). The ancient don was asked to explain how this Hellfire document could possibly characterise a female who sold sex. "She seemed to be a Quicunque vult," was his enigmatic reply, using "Whosoever wishes" as a coded term for a woman of easy virtue.[10]
From around 1870, a reformist group amongst English classicists campaigned intermittently for the adoption of a revised form of Latin pronunciation which they claimed was based on the way the Romans had spoken their language. There were some modifications to vowel sounds, but the key changes were to two consonants: 'v' became 'w', while 'c', usually rendered as 'ch' (in Church Latin) or 's', became a hard 'k'. Thus Caesar's laconic description of a victorious campaign, veni, vidi, vici ("I came, I saw, conquered") was changed from the traditional ecclesiastical-style pronunciation, [veenee, veedee, veechee] to the more austere [waynee, weedee, weekee]. These reforms were by no means universally welcomed: as late as 1907, it was reported that "a large number of thinking persons still prefer 'v' to 'w', and cannot put up with 'weekee' as the final word in Caesar's message to the Senate." Some public schools refused to admit that their teaching had been flawed, while Oxford had no difficulty in identifying, and hence rejecting, a new idea.[11] However, Cambridge embraced reform, a point that is key to the final two examples of slightly naughty Latin.
The adverb vicissim ("by turns") gives us the English noun "vicissitudes", usually employed in the plural since a single vicissitude makes little sense. The derived term has acquired mildly pejorative overtones, since vicissitudes usually represent some form of setback. But the Cambridge don, G.F. Browne, who volunteered to teach young women who intended to study at Girton, the pioneer female college, found that "the modern pronunciation of Latin caused some hesitation when the students had to recite lists of adverbs, and came to 'vicissim [we kiss 'im], By turns."[12] Of course, this was not a particularly shocking story and, in fact, it was a fairly common jest in the world of classical studies. However, by the time he included it in his memoirs, Browne was the Bishop of Bristol, and hence a role model for absolute propriety. Hence it is mildly surprising that he decided to savour the story.[13]
The v-as-w pronunciation had another mildly risqué Cambridge outing in the post-Victorian epilogue of the nineteen-twenties. In 1924, J.B.S. Haldane, Reader in Biochemistry, began a relationship with a journalist, Charlotte (Franken) Burghes, who was trapped in an unhappy marriage. The couple were open about their intention to become man and wife, duly providing legally attested evidence of their adultery in order to secure Charlotte's divorce. This raised an issue for the University: since fornication by undergraduates was a punishable offence, it seemed inconsistent to overlook adultery by a member of staff. (Haldane had also provoked conservative opinion by energetically promoting his partner's career, which led to accusations that he was blowing his own strumpet.) The University's six-man disciplinary body initially ruled that Haldane was guilty of "gross immorality" and deprived him of his Readership. This was overturned on appeal to a specially convened panel whose members determined that Haldane's conduct, while immoral, had not been grossly so, an interesting exercise in logic chopping. Haldane himself poked fun at his inquisitors. It was probably unavoidable that a court of discipline would be made up of very senior academics, called upon to reach a verdict upon an ardent younger colleague accused of activities which no longer tempted his judges. Cambridge had long since switched its day-to-day administration into English, but the University's formal bodies retained Latin titles. It was unfortunate that the six venerable men who formed the court of discipline were styled the Sex Viri. The revised pronunciation, as their victim pointed out, made them the "Sex Weary", a jest that undermined their moral credibility. The episode effectively marked the end of any attempt by Cambridge University to police the private lives of its staff. In 1939, during a routine revision of its statutes, an extra member was unobtrusively added, and the seven-person body was quietly renamed the Septem Viri.[14]
These random episodes certainly remind us that the educated Victorian world was deeply permeated by familiarity with Latin. However, I hope that they may also offer glimpses that can persuade us that those distant figures, smirking in their frock coats and giggling about their ladies' bustles, were capable of finding fun, often of an immature and sometimes even salacious kind, in the grammatical canyons of what seems to us a suffocating ancient culture.
ENDNOTES My thanks to Terry Barringer, Christopher Howse, Andrew Jones and Christopher Row for comments and reassurance.
[1] Charles Stewart Parnell was no great classical scholar, but in his 1885 'March of a Nation' speech, he told the citizens of Cork that nobody had the right to declare "ne plus ultra" ("no further") to the expansion of Irish nationhood. Presumably he assumed that they – or the newspaper readers who would peruse his remarks in print – had enough Latin to understand his meaning. As late as 1992, when Elizabeth II described the year as her annus horribilis ("horrible year"), a mass circulation British newspaper chose to elide annus with anus, translating the Queen's remark as "We've had a bum year". The interesting point here is that newspaper evidently assumed that its readership would understand the jest.
[2] If there is any illusion of classical scholarship conveyed by this Note, it is owed mainly to the Internet, and to kind friends.
[3] 'Vox populi, vox Dei' is not classical Latin. The phrase is attributed to Alcuin of York (died 804), who thought it was a bad idea.
[4] R. Stewart, Henry Brougham … (London, 1985), 254; M.S. Hardcastle, ed., Life of John, Lord Campbell, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain… (2 vols, 2nd ed. London, 1881), 494 (30 November 1830).
[5] H. Gunning, Reminiscences … from the Year 1780 (2 vols, London, 1864), i, 17. Meretrix (unhelpfully pronounced [merry-tricks]) is the source of our adjective 'meretricious'.
[6] Punch, xix, 31 August 1850, 100. In his 1914 poem, 'The Motor Bus', A.D. Godley declined the two title words as if they were Latin, exploring the various cases in protest against a new form of transport recently introduced on the streets of Oxford ("Dative be or Ablative / So thou only let us live"). It was predictable that "the smell and hideous hum" pointed to the accusative Motorem Bum, but Godley evidently intended to be grammatically witty rather than linguistically smutty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motor_Bus.
[7] M.E. Bury and J.D. Pickles, eds, Romilly's Cambridge Diary 1842-1847 (Cambridge, 1994), 178n (2 November 1846). Miss Barringer contests my assumption that gender-stereotyped education would have hampered Lady Braybrooke's command of Latin, pointing out that many privileged young males received their first lessons in the language from their mothers. Perhaps the cleverest Victorian Latin pun was the work of a teenage girl, Catherine Winkworth, who was studying Latin in 1844. Sir Charles Napier, a British Army commander in India, was ordered to intervene in the province of Sindh to suppress disorder. Sindh was not under British rule, and he was forbidden to impose permanent control. Exceeding his instructions, Napier controversially annexed the territory outright. Catherine Winkworth suggested that he should have announced his defiance in a single-word report: "Peccavi" ("I have sinned"). The pun was published in Punch on 18 May 1844, and became famous. Typically, Sir Garnet Wolseley attributed Peccavi to a "clever man". However, Wolseley clarified the origin of another enduring tag that I had wrongly assumed to have originated in Punch. When General Sir Colin Campbell relieved the city of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny, he was said to have reported Nunc fortunatus sum ("I'm in luck now"). Wolseley insisted that the phrase was coined by Major the Honourable James Dormer, Campbell's aide-de-camp. It "amused many at a time when even a small joke was thankfully received". I cannot trace it in Punch. [G.] Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier's Life (2 vols, Westminster, 1903), i, 341. Dormer was later killed by a tiger.
[8] Stare contributed to the culture of Stowe, a public school founded in 1923. The first headmaster decreed that boys should respond at roll-call with the Latin for "I stand": Sto. N. Annan, Roxburgh of Stowe…. (London, 1965), 86n. The conceit is another example of the penetration of Latin into elite British culture, even into the twentieth century.
[9] S.M. Ellis, ed., A Mid-Victorian Pepys… (London, 1923), 74; Once a Week, 21 December 1861, 713.
[10] R. Nevill, Unconventional Memories... (London, 1923), 78-9. Some versions of the Athanasian Creed use "Quicumque". I do not know why.
[11] L.P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry (Cambridge, 1963), 3-5; Spectator, 6 April 1907, 526-7. One battleground was the first-person singular pronoun, ego. The revised system made this [eggo] but traditionalists clung to [eego], the pronunciation used in its English loan word. At Coronations, the pupils of Westminster School, one of the hold-out institutions, still greet the new monarch with the chant of 'Vivat' ("long live"), the first syllable rhyming with 'eye'. The revised pronunciation substituted a short 'i' sound.
[12] G.F. Browne, The Recollections of a Bishop (London, 1915), 127n.
[13] Another version runs thus: "A newly appointed and bashful young curate was visiting a young ladies' school in his parish. The ordeal of facing so many blooming young misses was endured until, the class in Virgil having been found ill-prepared and the teacher having requested that the translation be made word for word, he was startled by the declaration made by a pretty young lady, "We kiss him in turn" (Vicissim, in turn), whereupon he ungallantly fled." E.B. Ordway, The Handbook of Conundrums (New York, 1914), xiii. Punch had published a verse as early as 1857 that illustrated the revised pronunciation. Riding in Wales, a gentleman called Morse had encountered a pretty girl. Recklessly, he leaned from his saddle to kiss her. She took a sharp step backwards and he fell from his horse. "Pallidus Morse / He fell off his horse, / In asking the Welsh girl to kiss him; / For a kiss, he forgot, / Isn't quite always what / Petimusque damusque vicissim." Punch, xxxiv, 26 September 1857, 131. The final line was barbarised from "damus petimusque vicissim", a phrase in the Ars Poetica of Horace, which means "we give and we seek in return". The author of the squib was not named but was described as a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Wilkinson (Golden Latin Artistry, 4) refers to a later Punch cartoon in which female students dance around a male don reciting the contested adverb: I have not yet traced this. My Latin class was told the story in c. 1960 by our honoured schoolmaster, 'Johnny' Morley. In his version, the motto of a girls' school was Vicissim Jubet, pronounced [we kiss 'im, you bet]. Its meaning, "she (or he) commands in turn", made it an unlikely school motto.
[14] T.E.B. Howarth, Cambridge between Two Wars (London, 1978), 54-7; https://www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/about-us/history/establishing-the-department/haldane-and-the-sex-viri.