The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

An English woman who typifies the begueule may be spotless as snow; but she is presumed to have snow's other quality, and at the same time to be a thoroughly absurd and intolerable creature. Well, here is the point of difference. Fastidiousness of speech is not a direct outcome of Puritanism, as our literature sufficiently proves; it is a refinement of civilization following upon absorption into the national life of all the best things which Puritanism had to teach. We who know English women by the experience of a lifetime are well aware that their careful choice of language betokens, far more often than not, a corresponding delicacy of mind. Landor saw it as a ridiculous trait that English people were so mealy-mouthed in speaking of their bodies; De Quincey, taking him to task for this remark, declared it a proof of blunted sensibility due to long residence in Italy; and, whether the particular explanation held good or not, as regards the question at issue, De Quincey was perfectly right. It is very good to be mealy-mouthed with respect to everything that reminds us of the animal in man. Verbal delicacy in itself will not prove an advanced civilization, but civilization, as it advances, assuredly tends that way.