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Fine talk, bad grammar
I am very surprised that the Earl's speech is in a new school textbook
Anybody who watched the funeral service of Diana, Princess of Wales will remember the force of her brother's extraordinary address. It was both moving and shocking. It was moving in its tenderness for his dead sister, whose coffin lay so close to him, and shocking in its angry reproach to the Royal Family, who were sitting there in front of him in Westminster Abbey.
Earl Spencer's speech caught exactly the mood of grief and resentment that millions of people felt at the time. How real their grief and how well-directed their resentment may have been is not the point; the point is that, like his sister, Lord Spencer made the people feel that day that he felt as they did, and that he spoke for them. In that sense his speech was a piece of extremely effective oratory. All the same, I am very surprised that it has been included in a new secondary school textbook, Grammar in Context, as one of the great examples of the effective use of English.
In fact Lord Spencer's speech is a great example of the effective use not of English but of dramatic effect. He made extraordinarily powerful use of his own bearing, his own delivery, the high drama of the moment, and above all he made astonishing use of the power of surprise, by breaking several conventions at once, in rebuking the Royal Family on their own premises, so to speak, and in front of the entire world.
It wouldn't have mattered at all how he expressed himself; the lese majeste alone was spell-binding. The way he actually expressed himself - his use of English - though perfectly acceptable, was clumsy and wordy at times. I thought so then, and on reading his speech now I see that it was also grammatically wobbly here and there. He spoke of "ignorance at the anguish of Aids" and the risk of being "immersed by duty". In criticising the media he spoke of "a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down".
Dodgy prepositions don't matter much, I suppose, but to say "on their behalf" instead of "on their part", which has a very different sense, is a mistake that anyone seriously interested in the English language could not make; at any rate it is a mistake that has no place in a grammar book. It is a sign of the undisciplined thinking that made him write of the temptation to "canonise" Diana's "memory": only people can be canonised. Of course it may sound like quibbling to raise such points; people knew what he meant at the time, more or less, and that is what matters. Why, in his grief, should be poor man have been expected to produce deathless prose?
I would entirely sympathise with the objection, except that this speech, with Charles Spencer's permission, is now to be held up to children as an example. The author of Grammar in Context claims that it is a "work of quality" that an insight into the use of vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar, and sometimes "verges on the poetic".
Can this be yet another case of declining standards in schools? Or is it yet another case of an author exploiting the Princess of Wales for publicity? Or both? I find it all rather depressing. The usual talk of "relevance" as against old and "arid texts" is all too predictable, and patronising to children.
Incidentally, speaking of relevance, Charles Spencer's daring assault on the Royal Family will be completely lost on anyone unaware of the royal gossip of the day, which by now must mean any child under 12. It is true that his speech was sensational when he made it, and that it was heard by perhaps the largest audience in recorded history. But it is a great mistake to suppose that a speech that makes a mass sensation at the time it is made must necessarily be a good speech, or will survive the passage of time.
Great oratory does not depend on context, though it always exploits it. Great oratory depends above all on extreme discipline of language. That does not necessarily mean using perfect syntax and grammar, though it might. It means the most precise attention possible to the meaning and placing of every word; great orators are not only trained to pay such attention; they do so naturally. They see the meanings with their inner eyes, and they cannot help hearing the cadences of their own phrases as they think.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is one of the most dazzling examples of this astonishing poetic control. It is short and deceptively simple. Actually the thought and the tradition that formed it were extremely complex and so were its effects. Lincoln loved grammar. He was particularly precise, always, in his choice of words. He read and thought widely about classical rhetoric; he lived at a time of great oratory. He was deliberately trying to create an American myth. And he was a genius.
In the Gettysburg Address Lincoln avoided blaming anyone for the carnage of the battlefield. He spoke neither of North nor of South. He didn't mention slavery. He translated the sacrifice of the dead into hope for the future; in doing so, he helped to shape the future. That was funeral oration at its most classical and its most dazzling. And it is not a ridiculous exaggeration to say that all modern political prose descends from the Gettysburg Address, even in homeopathic dilution, Tony Blair's.
If one is looking from grammar in an exciting context, for beautiful English that is "relevant" today, and for something that will not test the attention span of today's schoolchild, it is not necessary to ask Lord Spencer for help. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is all you need. And it's only 272 words long.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, April 25, 1999
