11 I Dare Say
In modern English this formula is never a strong affirmation. In that respect it is sharply distinguished from I venture to say, which, though modest in tone, ushers in a considered opinion that the speaker is prepared to defend. At its strongest, I dare say means something like ‘Probably’ or ‘I shouldn’t wonder if’; as when the doctor in Bleak House looks at the dead opium-eater and says. ‘He must have been a good figure when a youth, and, I dare say, good-looking’, or when Mr Jarndyce says, ‘Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all’. When slightly weaker than this, it is roughly translatable by perhaps: ‘I dare say you’re right.’ It can be weakened still further to express, not an affirmation, but a mere refusal to deny, as in W. S. Gilbert’s lines
Yet B is worthy, I dare say,
Of more prosperity than A—
where I dare say is equivalent to ‘for all I know to the contrary’. This usage often, perhaps usually, carries the implication that the proposition in question is not going to be denied nor indeed investigated chiefly because, even if true, it would be of no importance in the context. Thus in the story by Nesbit already quoted the children, who look as if they had no money, tell a shopkeeper that they would like to buy some of his stock, and he answers drily ‘I daresay you would’; with the implication ‘I couldn’t care less’. Similarly in Dorothy Sayers’s The Man Born to be King. Philip who has allowed himself to be cheated by a tradesman to the detriment of the common purse says, ‘I’m very sorry, everybody’ and gets from Simon the retort ‘I dare say you are, but—’. In other words, ‘you may be sorry, but how does that mend matters?’ In close argument I dare say, like the concessive quidem in Latin, grants for purposes of argument something which, if granted, leaves the speaker’s case unimpaired: ‘It is open to the noble lord to say that he would have decided differently. I dare say he would. But that doesn’t mean to the rest of us that he would necessarily have decided more wisely.’ Finally I dare say can be ironical. In another of E. Nesbit’s stories the children tell the cook ‘We’ll have a tinned tongue’, and she replies ‘I dare say’; that is, ‘A likely story!’ or ‘Don’t you wish you may get it?’
But if we extend our reading a few centuries backwards we shall discover that I dare say once bore a very different meaning. It was as strong as I venture to say and far less modest in tone, being in fact an assertion of the most uncompromising and resounding sort. Hence in some old contexts any intrusion of the weakened modern sense would produce absurdity. Sir Ector, ‘when he beheld Sir Launcelot’s visage, he fell down in a swoon. And when he waked it were hard any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his brother. Ah Launcelot, he said, thou were head of all Christian Knights, and now I dare say, said Sir Ector, thou Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, that thou were never matched of earthly Knight’s hand.’ Sir Ector certainly does not mean that, for all he knows to the contrary, Launcelot may perhaps never have met his match. I dare say here means literally ‘I dare to say. I take the full responsibility of saying’, probably with the implication that he will prove his words ‘in clean battle’ on the body of anyone who offers to deny them.
Two centuries later Bunyan’s Mrs Light-Mind speaks as follows: ‘I was yesterday at Madam Wanton’s . . . so there we had music and dancing and what else was meet to fill up the time with pleasure. And, I dare say, my lady herself is an admirably well-bred gentlewoman.’ The speaker is not putting forward what she regards as a merely probable opinion about Madam Wanton’s good breeding. She is asserting it as strongly as she knows how. If we were doing a modernised version we should have to render her I dare say by something like ‘Take it from me’ or ‘Upon my word’. Later in the same book, Christiana, as she pants up the Hill Difficulty, exclaims ‘I dare say this is a breathing [i.e. a breath-taking] hill’. Something like ‘I’ll warrant you’ is the nearest we can get to her sense.
As usual in such developments, the two extremes—Malory and the modern usage—are easily distinguished; but during the long period between them almost every instance of I dare say requires careful scrutiny. Jane Austen uses the formula very often. I find in her works many places where, I think, it cannot bear the modern sense; some where it may; and none where it must.
I will take first those where I think it can’t.
In Northanger Abbey the egregious Thorpe says of General Tilney, ‘A very fine fellow; as rich as a Jew. I should like to dine with him. I dare say he gives famous dinners.’ Thorpe would not wish to dine with a man merely on the ground that, for all he knew to the contrary, the dinners might possibly be good. I dare say here means ‘I bet’ or ‘I’ll be bound’.
In Emma old Woodhouse, speaking of his grandchildren to Harriet Smith, says ‘They are very fond of being at Hartfield’, and she replies, ‘I dare say they are, Sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.’ I dare say in any of the modern senses would be far too cold or too concessive for the gushing Harriet who herself finds Hartfield a social paradise. It would be almost pert. She means ‘But of course they are!’
Later in the same book, after Mrs Elton’s visit, Mr Woodhouse says to Emma ‘she seems a very pretty sort of young lady, and I dare say she was very much pleased with you’. Now Mr Woodhouse is the most doting and credulous of fathers, at once eager that Emma should be admired and very easily satisfied in the way of evidence for such admiration. That Mrs Elton should like Emma is not to him something merely possible, or even merely probable. His I dare say means something like ‘Depend upon it’ or ‘You may be very sure’.
The following examples are debatable.
John Dashwood, who is hoping that Colonel Brandon may marry Elinor, shows him some of her pictures with the words ‘These are done by my eldest sister and you, as a man of taste, will, I dare say, be pleased with them’. He may be finessing, taking the view that advertisement is most effective when disguised in mock modesty. If so, the modern sense (‘you may possibly care for them’) will do. But John Dashwood is a coarse, insensitive creature. More probably he means ‘I think I can predict’, or even ‘I don’t mind betting’.
‘I hope Mr Allen will put on his greatcoat when he goes,’ says Mrs Allen, ‘but I dare say he will not, for he had rather do anything in the world than walk out in a greatcoat.’ Here the modern sense will do very well. But so will the older and stronger. In view of her husband’s normal practice, Mrs Allen may well mean it’s a safe guess that he will go without his coat.
When Mrs John Dashwood is persuading Mr John Dashwood to disregard his father’s dying words she says, ‘He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one, he was light-headed’. Does I dare say mean ‘for all we know’, or is it nearly synonymous with ‘ten to one’?
Mrs Jennings in the same novel is also ambiguous. She is convinced that Colonel Brandon has an illegitimate daughter called Miss Williams. When he receives a letter and fails to tell the company anything about it, she says ‘Perhaps it is about Miss Williams—and, by the by, I dare say it is because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her . . . I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams’. It will be noticed that I dare say is preceded by perhaps and followed by I would lay any wager. It could be synonymous with either. It could have a shade of meaning intermediate between the two, as if the speaker’s conviction were increasing while she talked.
When Bingley urges Darcy to dance with Elizabeth he points her out ‘sitting down just behind you’ and says she ‘is very pretty and I dare say very agreeable’. Can this really have been the I dare say of modern conversation? It is just possible. But it is cold encouragement to say that a girl is ‘perhaps’ or ‘possibly’ or ‘for all you know to the contrary’ very agreeable, nor is it in keeping with the generous, sanguine, easily pleased Bingley. I think that if Bingley had been talking modern English he would have said, at the very least, ‘no doubt’, or (more probably) ‘I don’t mind betting’.
Perhaps hardly any of these passages would have struck us if we had not come to them with the examples from Malory and Bunyan in mind. Indeed I am ashamed to remember for how many years, as a boy and a young man, I read nineteenth-century fiction without noticing how often its language differed from ours. I believe it was work on far earlier English that first opened my eyes: for there a man is not so easily deceived into thinking he understands when he does not. In the same way some report that Latin or German first taught them that English also has grammar and syntax. There are some things about your own village that you never know until you have been away from it.