Today I finished David Hackett Fischer’s excellent Washington’s Crossing, which includes this passage: “Washington had been taught to treat people of every rank with civility and ‘condescension,’ a word that has changed its meaning in the modern era. In Washington’s world, to condescend was to treat inferiors with decency and respect while maintaining a system of inequality.”
Bumped again.
In a November 25, 1775 letter, John Adams wrote of the social and etiquette differences between New Englanders and Southerners, observing, “Without… the most considerate forbearance with one another and prudent condescension on both sides, they will certainly be fatal.”
Found in both The Works of John Adams and Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia.
There were no such times. From Boswell’s Life of Johnson:
Bumped.
After mistakenly printing a report in Sept. 1865 that the late President’s eldest son was in Paris, the Chicago Tribune ran a correction: “Capt. Robert Lincoln was at his usual place in this city last evening, in the enjoyment of good health, and was not aware of his being in Paris… all the papers commend the condescension of Capt. Lincoln in studying law and preparing to work for a living.”
Not just to speak, but to speak to them as an equal. Those grownups who speak to a child in high-pitched voices are condescending badly; those who pick their words to speak in terms the child will be more likely to understand are condescending correctly.
Bumped.
Excerpted from the Scripture reading in a recent memorial service that I attended:
14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.
Romans 12:14-16 (KJV).
Interesting!
In more modern-day translations:
New International Version:
English Standard Version:
The way Jane Austen uses the term is a direct reference to the concept of noblesse oblige. In essence - how generous of Lady Catherine to bother to speak to commoners.
Interesting as it’s close to being the opposite. This reminds me of another word I need to ask about, but that’s best left for another thread.
In a long-ago SD column, Cecil mention that the word “gay” had had a secondary meaning alluding to sexual activity, though not necessarily homosexual, for generations before it acquired its current usage.
Interestingly enough, a century or more ago, at least in NYC, to “get gay” with someone meant to make trouble with them or challenge them. I have this only from a P.G. Wodehouse story written in 1914, but Wodehouse was usually reasonably accurate in such matters. By that time, he had already lived in New York for a year, some years previously, and that year he moved there again and stayed there all through the first World War.*
In the novel, Psmith, Journalist, the character who says this is a major gang leader modeled on the real-life Monk Eastman.
*Due to poor eyesight he was rejected for military service.
I was once watching a movie made in the ‘30s, in which a handsome young couple (Lew Ayres and Jeanette MacDonald, maybe) are dressed to the nines and paintin’ the town red. When they’re done cuttin’ a rug, they go out on the terrace for a breath of air and the woman says (in a 1930s falsetto):
“Ha, ha, ha! Oh, Eddie! You’re such a gay boy! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
I wonder how much of the audience (they were not native English speakers) grasped the ambiguity of that sentence.
A “gay girl” was a common phrase in late Victorian and Edwardian times for anything between “a good-time girl” and a streetwalker. It didn’t become synonymous with homosexuality till the 60s or 70s.
In the Boris Karloff movie The Mummy, from 1932, you can hear two usages that would mean something rather different to us than they meant to contemporary audiences:
There is speculation that the reason the mummy was cursed is that “he got too gay with the vestal virgins.”
Later, the heroine says, “Don’t you think I’ve had enough excitement for one day, without a strange man making love to me?” (“Making love” here meaning “wooing” or “making a pass”).
I recently visited Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s HQ in Winchester, Va. Jackson was very religious and was quoted in one of the exhibits as having said, about a decade before the Civil War, “My Heavenly Father has condescended to use me as an instrument.”
Puts a whole new slant on “‘I’ll take the prisoner downstairs,’ said Tom condescendingly,'”
An expatriate Swiss artist painted a portrait of George Washington in Philadelphia in 1779, writing in his journal, “The general… came with [John Jay] to my house this morning & condescended with great good nature to Sit about ¾ of an hour for the above likeness.”
Bumped.
I recently visited Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, and the family plot. I noticed a small obelisk honoring his nephew Bushrod, who had a distinguished political and legal career, including service on the U.S. Supreme Court. The inscription on the obelisk includes the word “condescending” in praising him.
You can see the obelisk to the right, here: Bushrod Washington - Wikipedia
I’d see it as ‘he/she is high up in society, he would be justified in just ignoring us, but he descends to take some notice of us and interact with us, which he didn’t need to do.’
That’s certainly how I understand it would have been meant in Austen’s time, but you can see how easily that would have morphed into something much more pejorative, since the “condescending” might well have been delivered with more than a whiff of “de haut en bas” - “one does what one can for the little people”. (Cf Lady Catherine de. Bourgh or Mrs Elton).
Same sort of mechanism as for “patronising”, which is no doubt what makes them more or less synonymous
.
Just came across a reference to Benjamin Franklin’s 1746 essay Reflections on Courtship and Marriage: In Two Letters to a Friend. Wherein a Practicable Plan is Laid Down for Obtaining and Securing Conjugal Felicity.
Franklin wrote:
“We should… cultivate Dispositions of reciprocal Condescension, and such a Uniformity in our Tempers, that the Pleasures of One, may be the Pleasures of Both… The little Oversights and Sallies of Frailty, to which human Nature is ever liable, and from which the most perfect Characters are not exempt, should be passed over and die un-noticed. We should be ready to plead in Favour of each other in such Cases, and throw a Veil of Kindness and good humoured Condescension over them…” (emphasis added).