Ask Not for Whom Shall I Say Is Calling

The reverberations continue over my report on Prince Charles and his tirade against the English educational establishment, which he accused of teaching English “so bloody badly” that his own staff couldn’t write a proper letter.

You may recall that I accused reader Conrad Thomas of being “pedantic in the extreme” for questioning my suggestion that England has need of a Prof. Higgins and for citing, as proof of Prof. Higgins’ incompetence, that in “My Fair Lady” the professor’s housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, says “Whom shall I say is calling?” and Eliza Doolittle says “You wouldn’t care if I was dead.”

Thomas argued that if Prof. Higgins had indeed been a perfect teacher, his pupils would have said “ who “ instead of “ whom ,” and “ were dead “ instead of “ was dead .”

Thomas understandably protests that I “slandered” him in calling him a pedant, especially a pedant “in the extreme.” I admit that the phrase was excessive, though if I did either, I libeled him, not slandered him. (Or is that being pedantic in the extreme?)

Thomas now points out that saying who when whom is correct is common and carries no stigma. The opposite, however, whom for who , impresses “only the hopelessly ignorant and exposes the speaker to contempt among those who really know their English.”

I had argued that Mrs. Pearce was probably of the lower classes and had used whom in the misbelief that it was elegant, and would please the professor. Having just seen a tape of the movie, however, I see that Mrs. Pearce’s English is flawless, so I might have assumed that her whom was the screenwriter’s error. (We do not know that Higgins ever taught her.)

Obviously Eliza, in her anger at being discarded without a thank you after her triumph at the embassy reception (where she is mistaken for a Hungarian princess who speaks English impeccably), regresses to the language of the gutter. There is no doubt that Eliza’s transgression was either emotional or spiteful.

Michael Shere of Pasadena notes that in George Bernard Shaw’s play, “Pygmalion,” the scene reads as follows:

Higgins: What does it matter what becomes of you?

Liza: You dont care. I know you dont care. You wouldn’t care if I was dead. I’m nothing to you--not so much as them slippers.

Higgins: (thundering) Those slippers.

Liza: (with bitter submission) Those slippers. I didn’t think it made any difference now.

The movie keeps the scene intact. It is obvious that Liza knows better, and that her lapses are not a result of the professor’s failure.

“As you suggested,” Shere says, “Shaw does, indeed, have Eliza revert to her native way of speaking when she is upset. Far from being an error, it is a clever bit of theater.”

Shere also notes that the scene in which Mrs. Pearce asks Freddy “Whom shall I say is calling” does not appear in the play. And in the published version of “My Fair Lady,” Mrs. Pearce correctly says “Who.” She does say “Whom” in the movie; I suspect it was the director’s fault.

Protesting my comment that “many literate people today avoid the subjunctive,” Thomas cites the sainted H. W. Fowler’s authoritative “Modern English Usage” to the contrary. Fowler, while conceding that some forms of the subjunctive are dead, says a “Survival” use in “if...were” clauses “expressing a hypothesis that is not a fact” is beyond suspicion of pedantry.

Obviously “if I were dead” is a hypothesis that is not a fact, and the subjunctive were is permissible. “Modern English Usage” has been my bible for many years. However, it was first published in 1926. Fowler died in 1933. Though the book has been revised periodically, it still reflects the purist and sometimes archaic thinking of its author.

The Second Edition, revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, says: “The best proof that the subjunctive is, except in isolated uses, no longer alive, and one good reason for abstaining from it even where, as in the “Survival” examples, it is permissible, are provided by a collection, such as anyone can gather for himself from any newspaper, of subjunctives that are wrong.”

Granted that the subjunctive mood is still used in “if I were dead,” it is true that many people today avoid it.

But Eliza was not being modern; she was just being perverse.