dear

   This has been one of the commonest terms of address in English since the thirteenth century. In a count of fifty novels dealing with fairly contemporary life, ‘dear’ used on its own as a friendly term occurred 243 times. There were a further 138 examples of ‘my dear’. Hundreds of further instances occurred where ‘dear’ was a vocative element, as in: dear boy, dear + first name, my dear fellow, my dear + first name, my dear chap, my dear boy, etc. ‘Dear’ is occasionally the head-word in a vocative group. One recalls Mr Pickwick’s horror when Mrs Bardell suddenly calls him ‘you kind, good, playful dear’:

   ‘Oh, you dear - ’ said Mrs Bardell. Mr Pickwick started. ‘Oh, you kind, good, playful dear,’ said Mrs Bardell; and without more ado, she rose from her chair and flung her arms around Mr Pickwick’s neck, with a cataract of tears and a chorus of sobs. ‘Bless my soul!’ cried the astonished Mr Pickwick. Mrs Bardell’s misunderstanding of Pickwick’s intentions leads to the famous breach of promise case in The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens. Dickens, who is a superb commentator on vocative usage, as on most other subjects, remarks humorously in one of his Sketches that the word ‘dear’, used by one young lady to another, ‘is frequently synonymous with “wretch”’.

   It is certain that the word does not always have its face value. In writing, as a conventional beginning to a letter, its degree of friendliness depends upon the word that follows. ‘Dear John’ may well be positive; ‘Dear Sir’ is merely an empty formula. In speech, everything depends on how the word is spoken and in what circumstances. It can also depend on the listener’s attitude to the word. Many young people, especially, regard the word as condescending, and would echo the comment in Edna O’Brien’s The Girl with Green Eyes. ‘I hate people who call me “dear”.’ With this compare the comment by Dr Phillip Gosse in his autobiographical An Apple a Day. ‘I took to that old lady from the very first, for she always addressed me as “dear”, and no man can help liking a lady who does that’ In Bless me, Father, by Neil Boyd, a priest says to a penitent: ‘What are your sins, dear?’ The author adds: ‘I was pleased with that. “Dear” was a good indefinite English word with which to address a child whose age and sex were undetermined.’

   This ‘indefiniteness’ probably holds good in the vast majority of cases where ‘dear’ is used, the listener interpreting it as a friendly noise. Problems arise when it is used conventionally, the speaker’s true feelings not matching the apparent meaning of the word. ‘Now run away, and don’t let me have any more of this nonsense - dear,’ says a father to his child in Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner. The author adds: ‘The last word was a terrible effort’ ‘Dear’ was only added, in fact, because a visitor was present; it is clear from the context that had there been no-one else there the vocative would probably have begun with ‘you little…’, ending not with ‘dear’ but a harsher word. In Festival, by NJ.Crisp, occurs: ‘“You think you’ve conned everybody, but you haven’t, not quite, dear.”

   The word was not used affectionately. It was loaded with contempt’ Mrs Craik, in Olive, pauses in her story-telling to remark:

   Reader, did you ever notice the intense frigidity that can be expressed in a “my dear”! The coldest, cruellest husband we ever knew once impressed this fact on our childish fancy, by our always hearing him call his wife thus. Poor, pale, broken-hearted creature! He ‘my-deared’ her into her grave.

   One wonders just how close to home this experience was for the author. The thumbnail description of a man who ‘my-deared’ his wife into her grave is certainly a vivid one. A milder kind of insincerity is noted in Life at the Top, by John Braine, when the narrator is talking to his wife:’ ‘“Yes, dear. Sorry, dear. Just as you say, dear,” I said, parodying meekness.’

   Minor references to the social aptness of ‘dear’ as a term in its own right or as a vocative element are sometimes found. In The Needle, by Francis King, an elderly woman who calls two women doctors ‘dear’ outside the surgery is very careful to return to ‘Doctor’ when visiting them as a patient. Sinclair Lewis, in Gideon Planish, remarks that ‘Mrs Bull was the first of many influential women who he was to call “dear lady”.’ In Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Rhett Butler touchingly asks Scarlett O’Hara’s permission to call her ‘dear’, suggesting that the term would be a meaning-ful one to him, not a conventional noise. In Catriona, by R.L.Stevenson, a young woman’s objection to being called ‘my dear’ is precisely because she interprets the words as a real endearment: ‘I am not your dear,’ she said, ‘and I defy you to be calling me the words.’ Inevitably there are characters in novels, as there must be in real life, who joke about the ‘expensive’ meaning of ‘dear’. ‘Dear old William’, says a speaker in An Error of Judgement, by Pamela Hansford Johnson. He replies: ‘Not dear. Cheap old William.’ The Contenders, by John Wain, has ‘“Dear” seemed a funny thing to call Myra, unless he meant expensive.’ In spite of attendant problems, ‘dear’, ‘my dear’, etc., continue to be well used. In Britain it is probably true to say that, whereas ‘dear’ on its own is used at all social levels, as is ‘my dear’, longer vocative groups which begin with ‘my dear’, such as ‘my dear fellow’, ‘my dear chap’, are far more likely to be used by the middle classes. Working-class men do not greet one another as ‘My dear John’, or whatever. Those middle-class speakers who do use this formula leave the listener with a decision to make about its degree of sincerity. It is easy to forget that use of ‘dear’ could at one time arouse an impassioned response. When the romantic Mr Tupman, in The Pickwick Papers, is accidentally shot, Rachael Wardle murmurs ‘Dear - dear - Mr Tupman’ when he closes his eyes for a moment. Dickens continues:

   Mr Tupman jumped up - ‘Oh, say those words again!’ he exclaimed. The lady started. ‘Surely you did not hear them!’ she said bashfully. ‘Oh, yes, I did!’ replied Mr Tupman; ‘repeat them. If you would have me recover, repeat them.’

   This word ‘dear’, it would seem, can either send people to their grave or save them from it.