“Gordon Bennett! What a crowd.” We probably all know the term of surprise or shock, but who was the original Gordon Bennett, and how did he come to be immortalised in the English language? It is a euphemism for what might occasionally have been expressed in my bowls club in its blasphemous version.
There were two famous Gordon Bennetts who have sometimes been confused as the source - a father and his son, both called James. The father, who emigrated from the north-east of Scotland in 1819 with very little in his pocket, went on to found the New York Herald, and died as probably the richest men in America. His son, born in New York in 1841, the international playboy, successor to his father as owner-editor of the Herald, gave the explorer Stanley a couple of years-worth of blank cheques to go and find Livingstone in darkest Africa, and, more to the point, – legend has it – at his engagement party at his future in-laws, was so drunk he relieved himself into the front-room fireplace. If that was not bad enough, news of this provoked an (illegal) duel with his no-longer-to-be future brother-in-law, and also led to his own social banishment from polite New York society. Thereafter, he spent most of his time in France, often on his luxury yacht with two cows for fresh milk, from where he managed to run his newspapers by transatlantic telegraph, one cable for which he laid himself, through a company he founded with a Mr. Mackay.
But where’s the evidence to link the phrase “Gordon Bennett” with either man? Did the son have a sister called Flaming Norah, as someone suggested? No, but he had a niece called Norah, the daughter of his sister Jeannette, who had the doomed Arctic exploration ship named after her.
There are linguistic specialists who have argued that the creation of the expression was not necessarily related to any real person. A former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary wrote “[t]he expression is probably just a euphemistic variation of ‘God dammit!’ or ‘Gawd dammit!’, turned into a proper name to weaken the swear-word, in the same way that ‘[May] God blind me’ became ‘gorblimey’.iJohn Simpson edited the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (1982) and co-edited the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (1992). His memoir, The Word Detective. A Life in Words: From Serendipity to Selfie, was published in October 2016 by Little Brown. The same process of linguistic change is at work as in ‘Gor’ blimey’ replacing ‘God, blind me’ – both are examples of turning a profanity into a more acceptable expression for the speaker’s interlocutor. ‘Gordon Bennett’ as a euphemism for ‘God, dammit’ – ‘Gawd’ replacing ‘God’ – is quite easy to imaging happening, provided its origins are in a south-eastern British English dialect.
What is known about when and where the expression was used? The first time the expression appears in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1967, a long time after the Bennetts’ Banffshire and New York connections.
I used to think this modern usage’s appearance in popular culture, on radio and television, was a pure invention by Galton and Simpson, the writers of Steptoe and Son. Look at this excerpt (from 1962)for the perfect usage of the term.
Harold: Well that's that then. … I said “That's that then”.
Albert: What's that then?
Harold: That is! I've finished for the day!
Albert: Have you fed the horse?
Harold: Of course I've fed the horse - I wouldn't have said “That's that then” if I hadn't.
Albert: You wrapped him up?
Harold: Yes, I have wrapped him up. Look, when I say “That's that then” it means I've done it all, it means I’ve finished. Gordon Bennett, if you don’t know that after all these years.2Steptoe and Son, BBC television comedy, written by Ray Galton & Alan Simpson – a 1962 episode ‘The Bird’. Source The Phrase Finder http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gordon-bennett.html 2006. It was later used in the TV sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf.
Now, I can only say that, given the huge viewing figures and popularity of the show, this specific use of the term may well have been very important in reviving the term in modern-day parlance.
Another influential modern usage (longer lasting, but reaching a far smaller audience) is in Steve Bell’s If… cartoon strip in The Guardian – his main characters were introduced during the 1982 Falklands War as Royal Navy seaman Reginald Kipling and his friend The Penguin, and the captain of Kipling’s ship, called Gordon Bennett.
However, the earliest usage found in print – so far – is in a 1937 novel about low-life characters written by James Curtis entitled You’re in the Racket, too! It includes the phrase: “He stretched and yawned. Gordon Bennett, he wasn’t half tired.”3Curtis, James, (pseudonym of Geoffrey Basil Maiden, born Sturry, Kent on 4 July 1907). You’re in the Racket, too. A novel. London: Jonathan Cape, 1937. pp. 288. [Humanities and Social Sciences, St Pancras Reading Rooms, NN.27710]. Reported in ‘The real Gordon Bennett’ Evening Standard, October 19th 2007 http://www.standard.co.uk/news/revealed-real-gordon-bennett-6634362.html. “The exclamation [Gordon Bennett] and 33 other words have been updated in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) after the public helped to trace their history.” Also a source is Michael Quinion’s "Gordon Bennett: A puzzling British exclamation", World Wide Words, http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/gordon.htm Curtis – interestingly – was often quoted as a source for new slang words by the lexicographer Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Curtis_(author) Their source is given as "Carving a career in style", by Jonathan Meades.
What is also interesting is that the American dictionaries and reference books of American slang confirm what a number of sources allege – that this usage of Gordon Bennett is not part of American vocabulary. ‘Gawd’ becoming ‘Gordon’ does suggest a London origin, rather than New York or Scottish.
There is anecdotal evidence that it was used in Britain between the two World Wars.5Donald Barr Wells, bilingual in (Swiss-)French and English and Honorary President of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Alliance Française in the 1990s, affirmed he had heard it used between the wars in its current usage. But it became a common expression again in later 20th century British English – probably more so in the London area. But I have heard it in the 21st century on Tyneside.
My firm conviction is that the reputation in Britain of James Gordon Bennett Jnr for surprising and shocking behaviour fitted the phonetic similarity of the term. Read on to discover the life and times of the real Gordon Bennett.