Touches of Sweet Henry Sweet 06

Still writing on with our formidable Henry Sweet.

You can see many resemblance between Henry Sweet and Henry Higgins from "Pygmalion". They both were eminent phoneticians, invented new writing systems, had overwhelming passion for their field of study which manifested as impertinent indelicacy towards others.

However, Shaw clearly says in the preface of the play that Higgins is not Sweet.

Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are touches of Sweet in the play. With Higgins's physique and temperament Sweet might have set the Thames on fire. 
("Pygmalion" Bernard Shaw)

There are only touches of Sweet in the play.

As we saw in Touches of Sweet 04, he was intolerant to people who did not share with him the same respect and understanding for phonetics and treated them with disdain. Although he was a genius and celebrated scholar of phonetics in Europe in his days, the highest and the most important academe of his native country, Oxford University, did not do justice to his eminence, owing to his extreme character. Shaw cynically defends Oxford for this failure of underrating Sweet's genius.

I do not blame Oxford, because I think Oxford is quite right in demanding a certain social amenity from its nurslings (heaven knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!): for although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and kindly relation with the men who underrate it, and who keep all the best places for less important subjects which they profess without originality and sometimes without much capacity for them, still, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, he cannot expect them to heap honors on him.  ("Pygmalion" Bernard Shaw)

Would his extreme character have been different if his genius was sincerely rated, I wonder.

Touches of Sweet -- Isaac Pitman and Henry Sweet 05

Among the many prominent phoneticians of 19th century, Issac Pitman was very successful business-wise. The Pitman shorthand which he invented in 1837 (Touches of Sweet 03) was the most widely used shorthand system in the United Kingdom until 1996, and the second most popular shorthand in the United States.

Pitman was a sharp businessman, and Shaw writes about Pitman's triumph of business organization in the preface of "Pygmalion".

There was a weekly paper to persuade you to learn Pitman, there were cheap textbooks and exercise books and transcripts of speeches for you to copy, and schools where experienced teachers coached you up to necessary proficiency. (Bernard Shaw, "Pygmalion")

Now, how was our not-so-sweet Henry Sweet?

Henry Sweet also invented a new writing system called the Current Shorthand in 1884. The Pitman Shorthand was then already very known and used in the country. Henry Sweet showed great contempt towards the popular Pitman system which he called the 'Pitfall' system. Although Shaw highly praises Sweet's Current Shorthand system, Sweet's disposition and his no interest in business were the fatal flaws to the diffusion of the system. Sweet had no interest in advertising the system, and it never became popular like the Pitman system.

Academic scholars, not just your zeal towards your subjects, but sweet disposition and a touch of business mind just might help you sail into a wider ocean.

Touches of Sweet -- Was Sweet sweet? 04

I have written before a little about the name and its meaning (Names and their meanings 01), and here I wonder what sort of person Henry Sweet was like. From what I read in "Pygmalion" and other articles about this formidable phonetician, his character seems to have been quite the opposite to his name.

Henry Sweet was an avid scholar of phonetics, and Shaw recalls him as the best of them all, but his extraordinarily fiery zeal towards his subject had ironically stood in his way to popularize his subject and his study outcomes and to entitle him to high official recognition.

Shaw writes in the preface of "Pygmalion" about Sweet's non-sweet character when Sweet was made as a reader of phonetics at Oxford:

...he had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed into something called Readership of phonetics there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of compliance with the university to which he nevertheless clung by divine right in an Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he has left any, include some satires that may be published without too destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an ill-natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly; and to him all scholars who were not rabid phoneticians were fools.

Too strong in character, too fiery as an academic, too narrow in sociability, but Shaw must have respected and loved Sweet very much.

to be continued.

Touches of Sweet -- new writing and Henry Sweet 03

Another entry on our formidable phonetician, Henry Sweet

As we saw in my previous entry Phoneticians as Reformers 02, phoneticians in the 19th century devoted their knowledge in inventing new systems of writing or orthography. They tried to find ways to sincerely represent their speech sound and words, to record more efficiently than longhand. Bernard Shaw invented the Shavian alphabet, Isaac Pitman invented the Pitman Shorthand, and our Henry Sweet was no exception. Sweet invented the Current Shorthand, and it is alluded in Shaw's "Pygmalion"

Henry Higgins in "Pygmalion" introduces himself to Colonel Pickering as the author of ''Higgins' Universal Alphabet'. Higgins seems to have invented and patented his shorthand, and in act three of the play, we find out that uses his shorthand in his regular correspondence:

Mrs. Higgins
No use, dear. I'm sorry; but I cant get round your vowels; and though I like to get pretty postcards in your patent shorthand, I always have to read the copies in ordinary writing you so thoughtfully send me.
(note: Bernard Shaw did not use apostrophes when he wrote.)

This scene is written from Shaw's experience of when he used to receive postcards from Henry Sweet in his Current Shorthand. There even was a manual published by the Claredon Press for a four and sixpenny in his days.

Shaw highly praises Sweet's Current Shorthand. He says in the preface of "Pygmalion" as below.

... the whole point of his Current Shorthand is that it can well express every sound in the language perfectly, vowels as well as consonants, and that your hand has to make no stroke except the easy and current ones with which you write m, n, and u, l, p and q, scribbling them at whatever angle comes easiest to you...  .... His true objective was the provision of a full accurate, legible script for our language...

Current Shorthand may have been perfect in describing the language, but it was not so widely received. Why? We have to see how sweet Sweet was in life.

to be continued.

Touches of Sweet, not so sweet, Henry Sweet 02

Another article on the probable model of Henry Higgins, the formidable Henry Sweet.

Although he belongs to the upper class, the character Henry Higgins does not show so often that well behaved manners of a gentleman. In "My Fair Lady", Higgins goes to his mother's box at Ascot horse race to ask her cooperation in testing Eliza's debut to the upper class. To Mrs. Higgins, her son's presence is "a disagreeable surprise"

Mrs. Higgnins

What a disagreeable surprise. Ascot is usually the one place I can come with my friends and not run the risk of seeing my son, Henry. Whenever my friends meet him, I never see them again.

From her words, we can see how easily Henry offends others.

Now, how about our Henry Sweet? There is an episode Shaw writes in his preface to "Pygmalion". Sweet was also a man who can easily get on the nerves of others.

Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libellous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight.

("Pygmalion" preface)

Shaw's big effort to bring the brilliant scholar into the limelight, it was flushed down the drain by the scholar by himself. Poor Shaw... 

Touches of Sweet, Henry Sweet 01

The musical "My Fair Lady" is based on the play "Pygmalion" written by Bernard Shaw. The original has a preface and an epilogue which are not included in the musical, and they relate to us some interesting aspects of early 20th century London.

There was a probable model of Professor Higgins, and Shaw mentions about him in the preface of "Pygmalion" : Henry Sweet (1845 - 1912), a formidable phonetician, philologist and grammarian of the late 19th century. From reading his preface, you can see that the new science, phonetics was IN in those days, and the specialists seemed to be in great need to salvage their English language from spreading chaotic mess. Shaw had great respect and admiration to Sweet, and he goes in length in writing how great Sweet was. However, we can see that Sweet was not a person who was easy to deal with, just like Higgins in "Pygmalion".

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His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best of them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics.  ("Pygmalion" preface  by Bernard Shaw)
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Satanic contempt... how heated could you get...
To Sweet, phonetics was the utmost subject of all academia.

to be continued.