The 'Right English' of Charles M. Doughty

Abstract

I have a story to tell here, the story of a devotion. But first must come a historical preamble, since most who will be drawn to try their interest in the story will have little acquaintance with Doughty's work, his work as a whole, and the course of his life and thought in relation to his work -and there will be some who will have no, or hardly any, acquaintance with the fact of Doughty. The name of this English poet (who was born in 1843 and died in 1926) was once, and not very long ago, familiar to the literarily informed, and, generally, to a small but distinguished readership, as that of an author of a prose book to be thought of as a work of grand rank-it was, indeed, in a limited way, if not a famous book, instantly, an agreed-on candidate for fame. The title was Travels in Arabia Deserta. The merit of the writing and the interest of the subject were solidly one. There was a strangeness in the writing that made it forbidding for some, the language used being an older English; it was used with scrupulous effort for rightness. 'My chaste and right English of the best time!' Doughty called his language, believing it one that by its nature was itself a guide to the good in language.