writers—namely, use a singular verb on all such occasions, is only depressing to those who place the letter before the spirit which is life.
Mr. Hughes is even more emphatic. There must be an end, he argues, to all weak submission to English precept and example. What is needed is "a new Declaration of Independence." Then he goes on:[1]
Could anyone imagine an English author hesitating to use a word because of his concern as to the ability of American readers to understand it and approve it? The mere suggestion is fantastic. Yet it is the commonest thing imaginable for an American author to wonder if the word that interests him is good "English," or, as the dictionaries say, "colloquial U. S." The critics, like awe-inspiring and awe-inspired governesses, take pains to remind their pupils that Americanisms are not nice, and are not written by well-bred little writers. When you stop to think of it, isn't this monstrously absurd, contemptible, and servilely colonial?…Why should we fail to realize that all our arts must be American to be great? Why should we permit the survival of the curious notion that our language is a mere loan from England, like a copper kettle that we must keep scoured and return without a dent? Have we any less right to develop the language we brought away with us than they have who stayed behind?
Mr. Hughes, whose own novels are full of racy and effective Americanisms, describes some of his difficulties in England. "A London publisher," he says, "once wrote of a book of mine that it was bewildering in its Americanism. He instanced, among others, the verb tiptoed as an amazing and incredible thing. On tiptoe, or a-tiptoe, he could well understand because he had seen it in print at home. But the well-recognized truth that our language is largely made up of interchangeable facts did not calm his dismay. We know what a foot is; therefore we can say 'she footed it gracefully,' or speak of foot-troops or footers. To toe the mark is a legitimate development from the noun toe. Tiptoed is a simple employment of the franchise of our language, a franchise that Shakespeare and countless others have taken full advantage of. In fact, Richardson used it in 'Clarissa Harlowe' as far back as 1747: 'Mabel tiptoed it to her door.' But even if he did not, why should not I?" Mr. Hughes is bitter against the "snobbery that divides our writers into two sharp classes—those who in their effort to write pure English strut pom-
- ↑ Our Statish Language, Harper's Magazine, May, 1920, p. 846.
