Mind your language | 22 November 2008

Queen Victoria complained of Gladstone: ‘He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.’

Queen Victoria complained of Gladstone: ‘He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.’ At least, she said so according to G.W.E. Russell (1853-1919), who wrote biographies not only of Gladstone but also of Sydney Smith, E.B. Pusey and H.P. Liddon. It’s a good line, cleverly used by Jeremy Butterfield in Damp Squid (Oxford, £9.99), his new book about changes in the English language. ‘The quote from Queen Victoria,’ he writes, ‘suggests that even she may not have lived up to the standards set by some purists.’ In saying that, he introduces two more red rags to some purists: quote for quotation and may for might. But his point is about the subjunctive in conditionals.

Since Queen Victoria could not be a public meeting, grammar dictates that it should be ‘as if I were’. No one familiar with Queen Victoria’s vigorous, informal letters would take her for a model of orthopraxis. She did have the subjunctive up her sleeve for suitable occasions, such as 19 April 1885. ‘The anniversary of dear Lord Beaconsfield’s death,’ she exclaimed in her journal. ‘Oh! were he but still alive!’ But, then, Disraeli had noted that ‘Gladstone treats the Queen like a public department. I treat her like a woman.’ Dr Butterfield says that subjunctive expresses a hypothetical situation.

Not all hypotheticals need a subjunctive. ‘I’d be happier if I was warmer,’ is hypothetical but not unlikely. I see that a World Service website advises anxious English-learners always to say ‘If I were’. But the usage should be the same as for the third person; only the greater likelihood of an impossible hypothesis for the first person produces a higher incident of the subjunctive.