Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1768-1830). Dundas was the trusted lieutenant of William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), Prime Minister in 1783-1801 during the difficult years of the French Revolution and the war France then brought to our door, and again in 1804-1806 when Napoleon Bonaparte was staking his claim to Empire. He was a lawyer by profession, but after serving as Lord Advocate (a Scottish legal post) he held a series of cabinet posts in London, though this by no means lessened his influence in Scotland. The Dundas Islands on the north coast of British Columbia, Canada, the Shire of Dundas in Western Australia, and Dundas Street in Hong Kong, are all named after him.
Introduction
Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was one of Georgian Britain’s most influential Scottish statesmen, who served officially in William Pitt’s cabinet as Home Secretary, President of the Board of Control, Secretary of State for War, and First Lord of the Admiralty, but unofficially as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’. Some fellow MPs from north of the Border tried to blend in with our English ways, but not Dundas.
THERE was a great ambition on the part of the Scottish politicians of that day to divest themselves of their native notes.* Lord Mansfield* contrived to get rid of his accent, although Lord Shelburne says that he always spoke “in a feigned voice like Leoni the Jew singer.”* Wedderburn took extraordinary pains to acquire the English method of pronunciation, as his biographer, Lord Campbell, relates in a piquant chapter.* Boswell* took lessons in utterance and delivery from Love of Drury Lane,* and from Thomas Sheridan, the father of the statesman,* and was gratified when Johnson said to him, “Sir, your pronunciation is not offensive.”* Dundas never betrayed any ambition to acquire an English accent, and clung to the speech and tones of his native land.
* Scots English, even lowlands Scots, can differ bafflingly from the English of London in pronunciation, spelling, idiom and vocabulary. In John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1916) Richard Hannay spoke to a fellow Scot in their own dialect so that the crew of an English submarine could not understand what he said.
‘Maister Tammy,’ I cried, ‘what for wad ye skail a dacent tinkler lad intil a cauld sea? I’ll gie ye your kail through the reek for this ploy the next time I forgaither wi’ ye on the tap o’ Caerdon.’
(Skail = knock over, capsize; tinkler = tinker, ragamuffin; gie a kail through the reek = give a thorough dressing-down; tap o’ Caerdon = the top of Cardon/Chapelgill Hill in the Culter Hills near Biggar in the Scottish Borders.)
* William Murray (1705-1793), 1st Earl of Mansfield, was born in Scone Palace in Perthshire, and educated in Perth until he was thirteen, when he went to Westminster School in London. Widely acknowledged in his day as one of the finest debaters in Parliament, he is remembered now chiefly for his judgment in Somerset’s Case, which proved to be the first falling stone in what became slavery’s landslide into abolition.
* William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne (1737–1805), Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1782 to 1783. Michael Leoni was the stage name of Myer Lyon (?1750-1797), one of the most celebrated operatic countertenors of his generation, so Shelburne may be implying (rather ungraciously) that Mansfield’s attempt to shed his Scots accent led him to an abnormally high pitch. Lyon was also a cantor at the Great Synagogue in London, and drew many non-Jews there to hear him, including John Wesley; Lyon’s rendition of the Jewish hymn Yigdal became so popular that a well-loved Christian hymn, The God of Abraham Praise, came out of it and its tune is named after him.
* Alexander Wedderburn (1733-1805), 1st Earl of Rosslyn, was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain from 1793 to 1801. An MP from 1761 to 1780, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Loughborough. Campbell relates that in the 1750s Wedderburn (who was painfully conscious of his strong Scots accent) had been drawn into a harebrained scheme to impose ‘proper English’ on Scotland, and ‘The Society for promoting the reading and speaking of the English Language in Scotland’ was duly formed. “According to all accounts,” wrote Campbell, “never since the confusion of tongues at Babel was there such an exhibition. Few persevered in the attempt more than twenty-tour hours, and it was soon discovered that they might as well have petitioned Parliament for a law forbidding red hair, or high cheek-bones, in any part of Scotland!”
* James Boswell (1740-1795) is remembered today chiefly as the biographer of his friend Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), whom he met on a visit to London in 1762-63. He subsequently gathered together a glittering circle of friends from the political and literary world of Georgian England.
* James Love was the pseudonym of British poet, playwright and actor James Dance (1721–1774), remembered today for an early poem on the game of cricket. He is thought to have founded the Theatre Royal in Richmond upon Thames.
* Irishman Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788) was the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), the playwright and politician. Thomas published several treatises on eloquence and elocution.
* He was not always so flattered by the attention of an Englishman. At a theatre in London, so he tells us in his London Journal (1762-63), Boswell saw officiers from Scottish regiment verbally abused by the audience. “My heart warmed to my countrymen, my Scotch blood boiled with indignation. I jumped up on the benches, roared out, ‘Damn you, you rascals!’, hissed and was in the greatest rage. I am very sure at that this time I should have been one of the most distinguished of heroes. I hated the English; I wished from my soul that the Union was broke and that we might give them another battle of Bannockburn.”
Précis
In the eighteenth century, English political life was blessed with an influx of able men from Scotland. Some felt it necessary to smooth away their Scottish accent and dialect, seeking out tutors in elocution and enjoying frankly mixed success. Henry Dundas disdained to follow their example, yet rose to some of the highest positions in the land. (57 / 60 words)
In the eighteenth century, English political life was blessed with an influx of able men from Scotland. Some felt it necessary to smooth away their Scottish accent and dialect, seeking out tutors in elocution and enjoying frankly mixed success. Henry Dundas disdained to follow their example, yet rose to some of the highest positions in the land.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, besides, despite, if, or, otherwise, unless.
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