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.