Boogie Street
What’s in a name or Jarndyce and Jarndyce
“The pencil in my hand unsteady
Shakily I start to write my own name
It’s all mine.
I’ve got something to celebrate” 1
Language is more than the sum of the way we speak, read and write, it defines us as human beings. Our competence in the use of language will very often determine our progress through life as well as the friendships we encounter and cultivate. You cannot separate the writer from the writing, the process of writing or the product because they carry our signature, a bit of our personality. Many people during their early development whether as performers or writers treat the disciplines of playing a musical instrument, singing, or writing as something separate from their individuality? Yet, the apparently simple act of writing ones signature, is a literacy event that goes beyond simplicity and declares to the world, who we are. Our name identifies us and sets us apart. Good singers like good musicians generally not only have to get the words and the notes of a song right but, they will also display their own personal style. As with reading, they will have a way of blending the notes and the sounds together, they will also have a rhythm and a personal style of expression.
Language as we experience it to day may perhaps be described as a series of historical and cultural tributaries, flowing from and through the Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Ancient Briton, Roman, Danish, Saxon, Celt, Norman, Spanish, Indian and American traditions. Looked at in this way, this stream of language moves ceaselessly, merging, as it does into a river-like influence that moves over lands and peoples until it reaches another body of language or cultural force such as that represented by Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens’, Victorian England. Then it is once again extended, redeveloped and renewed. The important thing for us to remember here is that the English language has been greatly influenced by all of these other languages and that it did not originate in England though it was culturally and historically shaped by it.
Some of our oldest words came to us from the tribes that invaded England. Some of those tribes coming from Northern Europe, for example, tended to crush the earlier civilisations they discovered. The Anglo-Saxon raiders that came had a small vocabulary of words mostly to do with the implements and utensils they used and the actions involved in using them in their everyday lives. We still use some of their words to this very day though the spelling may have changed. Words such as \bed\ came from their use of \bedd\, \field\ from \feld\, \milk\ from \milc\, \eat\ from \etan\, \walk\ from \wealcan\, \bite\ from bitan and so on are examples of this.
Later the Norman invaders came from what is now France and they brought with them words they had learned from the Romans and who at that time had already conquered France. The Roman language was called Latin and though some of the French words were in fact original others were Latin.
Because the Christian Church had its centre in Rome and had adopted the Latin language for its way of teaching it comes as no surprise therefore that the Latin language should become a considerable cultural shaper of European history and traditions. So, as Christianity spread over Europe through its churches, Monasteries and later through the Hedge-School tradition so too did the influence of the Latin language. The thing is this, if you did attend school in those days there was a very strong likely hood that you were taught Latin no matter what language you actually used at home. In many respects this is the way that the Latin language became the common language of all educated people.
Charles Dickens would have been acutely aware of the influence of language on historical and cultural Victorian Britton and vice versa. So, when he came to write his novel Bleak House, it was no accident that he choose to construct the novel round issues that arise in the Courts of Chancery, issues that centred round the importance of the process and language of court in the lives of ordinary people, as well as issues round the importance of the individuals name and signature, or mark as aspects of traceability.
For hundreds of years the only widespread way of ‘tracing’ the identity of an individual was through the signature, the written name was the first symbol of authorship and as such became testament to the fact that the document to which it was affixed was written, read and understood by the author. Dickens through his novel Bleak House manages to turn attention to a number of difficulties and injustices that are inherent in this basic and faulty assumption. Some of those difficulties include individual literacy levels, readability, meaning and understanding. Other difficulties with this language based traceability system of the court competing with the language of the testator, other advances in corporate identity, and the use of crossed marks as signatures, and the way people learn posed serious challenges for the existing social control mechanisms. Others writers such Thomas Hardy in his novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles also treats of some of these same issues relating to the science of tracing.
Although the use of the family or surname was prevalent in Ireland from an earlier date, it was common between the period 1300 -1600 for many people, usually artists or artisans, daring to leave their homeland to be known by their Christian names. Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo are examples of this practice. When confusion arose over the use of the first names it became the custom of adding the name of the town-land to the Christian name and so today we still have names such as Raphael da Urbino and Leonardo da Vinci. Other people such as the more ordinary peasant, or monk remained content with using their Christian names, given to them at baptism. To resolve some of this confusion, a verbal identification or label was added to lend additional ‘meaning’; the question was where to look for a good label. Four main kinds at first emerged, the use of the nickname often given by friends or colleagues: Big, Small, Tubby; the dwelling place: Hill, Woods; the trade or office: Smith, Marshall; and paternity John (son) or MacDonagh, which also means Donagh’s son.
King Henry V111 as well as local rulers became increasingly concerned about the mobility of labour. Self interest in the area of religious conformity and tax collection among other things motivated him to decree that every person take or be given a surname. But it appears that this Royal interest in the concept of the ‘self’ had social implications beyond what was intended. The Royal decree suddenly had the affect of raising the status of the ordinary man closer to that of a noble lord, Heraldry, each fully distinguished by a ‘family’ name and a coat of arms. This in no small measure serves to explain the central place and the value placed on our ‘surname’ as a means to personal identity. It goes someway too, in explaining why J.A.M. wrote her poem, Literacy. But there is more to J.A.M’s assertion. She was not just able to write her name she was able to write to such a level that she felt she could affix it to a document with confidence, where she was the author, and capable of reading and understanding what she had written.
This to me is the whole point of Charles Dickens’ reason for drawing attention to literacy in Bleak House, he was acutely aware of the need of Chancery Courts to become more comprehendible to ordinary people and to draw attention to the extracurricular ways that people teach and learn language. Above all he was acutely aware that literacy is a fundamental starting point for academic education and provides the critical scaffolding necessary for the development of most other vocational training.
“Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so many cottages, going on with Charley’s education, and writing long letters to Ada every day,” 3
From this extract we can see Dickens indicate that through social contact, developed friendships and Family Learning, ordinary people learn and develop their language and it is not Latin. They learn as well a host of other skills, and social values, about decency and truth, about social justice, fairness and traceability. And he expands on this illustration in a further extract.
“There were many little occurrences which suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had to sign the register. The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the school; and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and admiration stood in her bright eyes, “He’s a dear good fellow, miss; but he can’t write, yet — he’s going to learn of me — and I wouldn’t shame him for the world!” Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man’s daughter!” 4
But the importance of the self in terms of name and signature goes to the core of what literacy is about. In choosing to style the case Jarndyce and Jarndyce (Mr Jarndyce being a well established stock literary character, with qualities of generosity and fairness) and repeatedly refers to it in those terms when he knew that in legal terms it would be referred to as Jarndyce V Jarndyce; he was pointedly telling us that there were no adversaries here other than the Judges, the administrators, the lawyers, and the politicians. Come to think about it Dickens saw in Jarndyce V Jarndyce what Lord Wolf came to see in the BCCI case almost 150 years later, proof as if it were needed, that more often than not it takes a scandal to produce change. 5
Ironically, when JAM came to write her poem in the late 1990’s, she speaks to us of the currency she places in being able to write her name. She speaks to us as an adult, one who is painfully aware of testamentary issues herself. In pointing up the importance of signature to herself she affirms in us the importance of the personal ‘signature’ as a vital part of the ‘self’ concept. This is where she derives her self esteem from, her self confidence, her integrity and her pride. And these are the same qualities she shares with the Maori chiefs that signed –”Te Tiriti”– (signed in Waitangi NZ on the 6th February 1840) 6 These are the same qualities she shares with the Indian literacy population of Jaipur and the American Indian of Wounded Knee. 7 Though argument continues to this day about the meaning of some of the English words used by William Hobson (an Irish emigrant and Royal Navy officer) in the –”Te Tiriti”– three short paragraphs that go to make up the Waitangi treaty; considering that it was drafted in the language of the coloniser it can come as no surprise that this argument continues. So how can such treaties be represented as having signatories with ‘real’ authors present. How can it be said that the Chiefs who affixed their names to such documents actually read, wrote and understood them. To aid our understanding here I repeat a short extract from Bleak House for emphasis.
“The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the school” 8
The making of a mark, of itself is no evidence of the presence or absence of literacy competency in fact it can be seen from the extract above that the bride feigned ‘illiteracy’ so as not to embarrass her husband. This anomaly still continues to this day, but this time in otherwise industrial literate societies it manifests itself as a ‘stigma’ but the same vulnerability to shame that was highlighted in the novel Bleak House occurs.
In the early years of development being able to first utter your name is followed soon after by the desire/necessity to write your own name and as such one is becoming aware of the self. Later still, there is a desire to perfect or ornament ones signature seeking this time to set one’s self apart from those others bearing the same name and at the same time adhering to the notion of traceability.
As a result of all of the advances made in the nineteenth century the hope that we would never again have to visit the likes of a case as Jarndyce and Jarndyce were shattered when British high court once again had to entertain a ludicrously long, drawn-out suit brought by the liquidators of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI, Deloitte) against the Bank of England. This case was launched about 13 years ago, with the hearing opening about three years ago. When it did come to court it managed to set a few judicial records it hosted the longest opening statement (80 days), the longest response (119 days) and that was before even a single witness was heard. Legal costs were estimated to have accumulated in the amount of £140 million.
Mindful of this, one is not surprised by the way Charles Dickens’ character Carstone grew progressively madder at his prospects in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. The question needs to be raised as to how much more difficult it is for the average man on the Clapham Omnibus (if this term is any longer valid) to receive justice when his/her literacy level is below that of the BCCI/Deloitte or combined literacy skills of the representatives of the Bank of England. How much more difficult is for a learner with basic skills to receive justice where they have managed to affix their signatures to a document to which they were not ‘full’ authors. Dickens himself remarked, cynically I believe, that “The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.” That being the case the same could be said of any national system of education. However, to avoid such travesties of justice one has to accept that while literacy is an essential first step, it is clearly not enough. The Chancery Court system for all of the criticism still remains a central and most valuable part of our justice system today.
Change is a central part of the life cycle whether that cycle refers to the individual, a corporate body or a system. The interesting thing to note here though is that the signature remains essentially the same. Francis Spufford and others have said… “Individuals are constantly shedding clues that can be linked to them alone; that we move, snail like, through the world leaving an endless array of trails behind us. This goes a further step in explaining why being able to write our signature is so important to us. But going from being able to ‘make a mark’ to being able to write ‘my name’ confidently as JAM does at the end of a text as author – being able to say in effect ‘I am the author of this, I have read it and I understand it is quite another matter because the affixing of the signature places the writer at the centre of the text otherwise why sign it at all.
But isn’t this just the point of literacy, and for all of the fog and mist that surrounds, Chesney Wold isn’t the precise point of Dickens’ elucidation of Jarndyce and Jarndyce to open to us the importance of comprehension. Reading and writing for all of its importance must be accompanied by understanding if it is indeed to lead to growing literacy levels. Most of us today will admit that we can write and read and yet we daily affix our signatures to a host of things and documents we either do not read, or if we do, we do not understand. Very often we may read ‘mortgage documents’, bank agreements, or a host of other legal documents but, we need others to explain them to us. Sometimes, the explanation comes too late or the advice is poor and when we do sign. Sometimes the consequences can be disastrous all because we live in an incongruous information age world one where people are differently literate, and others have difficulty with learning. All through our lives we are, or ought to be, trying to identify and cultivate literacy events. Strangely the earliest of those is learning to write ones own name. We learn to write our names in the sand, carve them into trees, we meet celebrated sports people and ask for their autograph, we seek to buy the 1st edition of a novel the one the author has signed, and our signatures can be and often are interpreted by others.
There is indeed something strangely interesting about all of this, the way our name, our signature is so deeply rooted in our language, culture and history and yet so much a part of the present self. So, what’s in a name, what is there in signing that name that is so strange? The answer has to be that this seemingly mundane act has become such a routine literacy event, signing delivery notes, social welfare forms, tax returns, receiving parcel post and so on, that we may forget what importance and currency there may be in our name and signature. In the process we may also lose sight of the hidden pleasures and secrets the individual signature holds. A better resolve might be to take a page from the life of life of Sir Thomas More and perhaps instead to sometimes refuse to sign things until we understand more clearly what in fact we are being asked to sign. After all, as J.A.M. puts it, it is our language and we should be able to understand it before we give our consent.
- from the poem Literacy, 1998, J.A.M. ↩
- Monaghan Name in Chinese ↩
- Charles Dickens, Bleak house. ↩
- Bleak house. ↩
- refer to topic link on Bleak House. ↩
- refer to topic link on Te Tiriti agreement. ↩
- refer to the topic link for Wounded Knee as historical example ↩
- Bleak House. ↩
- Queries or comments mailto: info@frankmonaghan.com ↩