Fnurban #31 Mr. Spectator and Mystifying Military Jargon

Many years ago I discovered  the works of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, in particular The Spectator, the daily paper which they jointly produced in London in 1711-1712.  Having started from a Penguin Classics edition with a small selection of their pieces, eventually I found a complete 'pocket edition' ( published around 1900) in six volumes containing all 555 numbers - but this has sat on my bookshelf mostly unread for well over 20 years!  Recently I made a resolution to actually read them, and have tried to do so as a typical reader would have done in 1711 - one issue per day, with my morning coffee.  I have been enjoying them and will keep up with my daily habit - it's like a small daily trip back in time to the London of 1711. The premise is that the paper is written by the titular gentleman ( who is never actually named ), who rarely speaks, but appears in many settings in London society and pays careful attention to what is being talked of. He has a 'club' of friends who meet at a coffee-house, as gentlemen of the time would, and who are a convenient mix of different sorts, allowing him to report from different sections of society - the most famous being 'Sir Roger de Coverley', an old-fashioned and mildly eccentric country squire. In a rather nice series of papers, Mr Spectator spent the month of July 1711 reporting from an extended visit to Sir Roger's country estate, before returning to the bustle of  'town'. 

Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

The Spectator is in effect the ancestor of all newspaper opinion columns ( and possibly internet blogs, too? ). Each issue consisted of a short essay on a topic of current interest, and it aimed to enlighten a rising middle-class readership,  and promote politeness, good manners  and civility, perhaps as a response to what was seen as the rather loose morals of  English society in the 'Restoration' period of the past few decades.  In this they were  highly successful, the paper was very popular from the start,  and no eighteenth or nineteeth century gentleman's ( or gentlewoman's, since the authors  made a particular effort to interest women readers )  library would be complete without an edition of the collected issues.  If you visit stately homes even today, where the library has been preserved you may still see them.  It spawned many an imitator in Britain and abroad in the following years, and of course the title was revived in the following century for a political magazine which still runs - albeit with an outlook that the original authors would perhaps not have agreed with..   

Sir Richard Steele (1671-1729)

Addison and Steele were literary men, but also  political 'insiders' who supported (and held government jobs in ) the Whig administration which had been in power for the past several years, and which had prosecuted the War of Spanish Succession and  appointed the Duke of Marlborough as commander of the British army in Flanders, during his period of great battles  at Blenheim, Ramilles, Oudenarde and Malplaquet.  As a result, the ongoing war does get some attention in the papers, often looking at the powerful influence of French fashions and manners, despite the ongoing hostilities. Recently I was interested by Spectator no. 165, published Saturday, 8th September 1711, in which Mr. Spectator protests at the number of French phrases being adopted in English:   'the present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words, that it would be impossible for one of our great-grandfathers to know what his posterity have been doing, were he to read their exploits in a modern newspaper. Our warriors are very industrious in propagating the French language, at the same time that they are so gloriously successful in beating down their power'....  For my part, by that time a siege is carried on two or three days, I am altogether lost and bewildered in it, and meet with so many inexplicable difficulties, that I scarce know which side has the better of it.. 

He goes on to publish a letter which he says he had a copy of, from the year of  Blenheim, written by a young gentleman in the army to his father, a man of good estate and plain sense :     

SIR, upon the junction of the French and Bavarian armies they took post behind a great morass which they thought impracticable. Our general the next day sent a party of horse to reconnoitre them from a little hauteur, at about a quarter-of-an-hour's distance from the army who returned again to the camp unobserved through several defiles, in one of which they met with a party of French that had been marauding, and made them all prisoners at discretion. The day after a drum arrived at our camp, with a message which he would communicate to none but the general; he was followed by a trumpet, who they say behaved himself very saucily, with a message from the Duke of Bavaria. The next morning our army being divided into two corps, made a movement towards the enemy; you will hear in the public prints how we treated them, with the other circumstances of that glorious day. I had the good fortune to be in the regiment that pushed the gens d'armes. Several French battalions, who some say were a corps de reserve, made a show of resistance; but it only proved a gasconade, for upon our preparing to fill up a little fosse, in order to attack them, they beat the chamade, and sent us Carte Blanche. Their commandant, with a great many other general officers, and troops without number, are made prisoners of war, and will I believe give you a visit in England, the cartel not yet being settled. Not questioning but these particulars will be very welcome to you, I congratulate you upon them, and am Your most dutiful son, &c. 

Mr Spectator continues The father of the young gentleman upon the perusal of the letter found it contained great news, but could not guess what it was.. ' he talks of a saucy trumpet, and a drum that carries messages: then who is this Carte Blanche?'...   'when he writes for money he knows how to speak intelligibly enough: there is no man in England can express himself clearer, when he wants a new furniture for his horse'.            

I thought this was all rather interesting - many wargamers with an interest in the 'horse and musket' period will be quite familiar with the military slang that confounds the soldiers' father, but it's fascinating to see how much of that language rather suddenly came into English, and mostly from the French, in quite a short period once the British got involved in wars on the continent in the 1690s and 1700s.  This sudden explosion of  martial jargon clearly raised eyebrows back in 'blighty', and it's easy to see parallels with the mass of new phrases and usages that came into the language  during the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars  ( and who can forget 'Yomping' and 'Exocet' etc, from 1982? ). 

The use of letters is a speciality of the Spectator; often an issue would be based around correspondence received from 'readers', though equally often it's presumed that the letters were actually contrived by the authors themselves to add a little literary colour. But judging from a footnote in my edition, this example may well  be a real letter that had been passed on to Addison, who wrote this number of the paper. 

Well, it all amused me, and I hope it's of some interest to you, in turn. If you are interested, you can see the whole paper  on-line at Project Gutenberg. 

I will admit that not much time has been available for hobby activities recently, as we were away on holiday - but I did have the privilege of joining one one Jon Freitag's remote games last night, commanding a force of Sumerians and getting a 'driving lesson' on their  powerful, but somewhat unpredictable 'battle carts' . Great fun was had by all, and I'm sure Jon will put up his usual excellent battle report, In the meantime he passed on a picture from the heat of battle, as my cart unit crashed into their opposite number : 

when battle carts collide...

 

Many thanks to Jon, and the other players, for a great game!  I think I need to get back into a painting routine now, and also run a solo game or two, and I hope, report on them in the near future. In the meantime keep well, everyone. 

p.s. can't resist a little nudge at the General Election here in the UK tomorow: 

 

(only a joke, I thought it quite witty - let's not get into serious discussions. I hope all sides can take a little gentle ribbing - that should be part of a healthy democracy, after all..)