Bumbling About

Dr Hopper is described on two occasions in the diary as 'a bumbling buffoon'.   It transpires, after an astute Casebook Forum poster called 'The Baron' pointed it out, that the concept of someone being described as a bumbling [anything] in a derogatory sense is exclusively twentieth century.

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One simply doesn't seem to find mentions of a 'bumbling fool' or 'bumbling idiot' in the nineteenth century, nor 'bumbling buffoon'.

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The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that an 1886 book by Eliza Lynn Linton, a writer from the North Country, entitled 'Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser', contains a reference to a rector's son as 'a big bumbling young fellow'  (being the first nineteenth century example of this expression provided by the dictionary) but that doesn't sound terribly insulting and is surely not the same as calling someone a bumbling fool or idiot. The full quote from the book is that the guy in question, named Frank Harcourt, is 'a big bumbling young fellow with lint-white hair, a skin that tanned red, and as awkward as a mastiff puppy or nestling cuckoo'. To me that gives the impression of clumsiness or awkwardness, and indeed we see the expression 'as awkward as a mastiff puppy' as opposed to bungling incompetence. 

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Linton had actually used the expression 'bumbling fellow' in a novel called 'Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg' a full twenty years earlier in similar fashion to describe a parson.  In the same book, another character looked at his own 'trim, slight, well-knit figure' and said that he was 'by no means of the "bumbling" order' which doesn't seem to make much sense if 'bumbling' was being used as we would understand it today.  It is true, however, that 'bumbling' was a North Country dialect word for 'bungling', and Linton was from the North Country, so perhaps she did mean it in that way.

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According to the online etymology dictionary, 'bumbling' only came to mean 'confused, blundering, awkward' in 1886 and that is presumably on the basis of Linton's use of the word in her book of that year. As I've mentioned, however, it was a North Country dialect word for some years prior to this (and it was a Scottish dialect word with the same meaning, but with a different spelling).  Nevertheless, it would appear to be the case that 'bumbling' wasn't a word actually used to mean 'blundering' or 'incompetent' in the English language, as generally spoken, during the nineteenth century.  It doesn't appear in a number of dictionaries of the period (including in the early twentieth century) and, although it is given that meaning in one dictionary published in 1888, it is said to have been obsolete, and the evidence of actual usage suggests that it was generally regarded as such.   

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I set out at the end of this article what I've discovered about the etymology of 'blundering' including the evidence that it was North Country (and Scottish) dialect.  But a historical discussion in the abstract only takes us so far. In order to test the theory that 'bumbling' did not exist as a word in the English language at the relevant time, other than in respect of the sound of a bumble bee, I entered (in September 2020) as many expressions relating to 'bumbling' as I could think of into three databases which all go back to the eighteenth century (the British Newspaper Archive, The Times Digital Archive and Google Books) including as many occupations I could think of, because to put blundering before an occupation is to be derogatory of it, or rather of that person.  The results were absolutely startling. Everything that I entered came back as twentieth century without exception. Although we get a 'bumbling fool' from a 1909 book ('Why, God stiffen it you bumbling fool!') this would seem to be the absolute earliest of such usage.  Here is the list of search terms I entered with their earliest date from the three databases in parentheses:

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Bumbling fool (1909)  

Bumbling old [something] (1931) - we do find 'dear rumbling, bumbling old automobiles' in a 1903 book but I think that the 'bumbling' there is probably related to the humming of the engine, like a bumble bee or bittern, which is another definition of the word. 

Bumbling mayor (1933) 

Bumbling sheriff (1933) 

Bumbling Englishman (1935) 

Bumbling minister (1936) 

Bumbling politician (1937)

Bumbling colonel (1938)

Bumbling man (1938) - there is a 1926 reference to a high priest as 'a genial, bumbling man with a blue twinkle in his eye' but I'm not convinced that the meaning of 'bumbling' here is related to bungling incompetence due to the context. 

Bumbling American (1938) 

Bumbling police (1941)  

Bumbling doctor (1943) 

Bumbling admiral (1945) 

Bumbling detective (1949) 

Bumbling scientist (1949) 

Bumbling professor (1950) 

Bumbling barrister (1950) 

Bumbling sidekick (1951)

Bumbling person (1951) 

Bumbling sergeant (1952) 

Bumbling friend (1953) 

Bumbling major (1953) 

Bumbling vicar (1953) 

Bumbling captain (1953) 

Bumbling idiot (1954) - although the O.E.D. gives an example from 1948 in a Texas newspaper being: 'a bumbling idiot of a policeman'. 

Bumbling villain (1954) 

Bumbling policeman (1954) 

Bumbling engineer (1954) 

Bumbling deputy (1957) 

Bumbling lawyer (1958) 

Bumbling inspector (1960) 

Bumbling novice (1960) 

Bumbling clown (1961) 

Bumbling solicitor (1961) 

Bumbling incompetent (1961)

Bumbling simpleton (1962)

Bumbling nurse (1963)

Bumbling teacher (1963) 

Bumbling aristocrat (1964) 

Bumbling assistant (1966)

Bumbling accountant (1966) 

Bumbling half-wit (1967)

Bumbling enemy (1967) 

Bumbling lieutenant (1967) 

Bumbling dentist (1969) 

Bumbling artist (1969) 

Bumbling manager (1969) 

Bumbling chaplain (1970) 

Bumbling constable (1971) 

Bumbling actor (1972) - although in a 1916 autobiography the author describes himself as having been 'a bumbling actor bee buzzing around' which must be related to the bumbling of a bee. 

Bumbling associate (1972) 

Bumbling criminal (1974) - although there is a 1946 reference to 'bumbling criminal incompetence' but 1974 is the first reference to a person as a bumbling criminal. 

Bumbling MP (1975) 

Bumbling twit (1980) 

Bumbling woman (1983) - there is a 1904 result from Harper's magazine (reader's letter) which says that, 'men should be aware of what I call the “bumbling” woman – the respectable woman past her youth, who has never had her share of attention and appreciation, and who by appealing for sympathy or advice, or by cultivating his tastes and by the most subtle arts of flattery, almost imperceptibly draws a man into confidential relations, and sometimes makes him think he loves her. Even if the “bumbling” woman does not go so far, the man’s wife sees what is going on; she knows her women friends see it, and she is miserable with a misery she is almost powerless to combat.  There should be a special place of torment prepared for the woman who “bumbles” about a married man.'    Clearly, ‘bumble’ here isn’t the same as the modern understanding and the fact that the writer of the letter chose the phrase ‘bumbling women’ with this definition shows to me that the word ‘bumbling’ was not in common use (in America) at the time to describe an incompetent person. 

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Anyone can play this game and enter as many other 'bumbling' occupations or expressions as you can think of.  I'm confident they will ALL come back from the twentieth century.  I also tested a selection on newspapers.com and a few other databases, such as Gale, with the same results.

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Now that's one thing.  But what was really amazing was what happened when I entered those same expressions into the British Newspaper Archive except with the word 'bumbling' replaced by 'blundering' or 'bungling' .  I found that almost without exception they came back with plenty of examples from the nineteenth century!  Where I couldn't find a single 'bumbling' expression from that century for love nor money, now I was overwhelmed by them when using 'blundering' or 'bungling'.  In fact, the only ones I couldn't find in the nineteenth century from the BNA for 'blundering' were: sidekick, chaplain, vicar twit and halfwit (although we do find 'blundering,  halfwitted people' in 1859) and, for 'bungling': sidekick, major, deputy, mayor, halfwit, American, chaplain and aristocrat.  I suspect I could have found nineteenth century examples for at least some of these in Google Books but I didn't bother, for there was no need.

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The earliest BNA result for 'blundering idiot' was 1823 and for 'bungling idiot' was 1841.  For 'blundering fool' this went back to 1808 and 'bungling fool' went back to 1836.  I checked these two expressions in Google Books and not only were there plenty of examples but they went back to 1828 for 'blundering idiot' and 1810 for 'blundering fool' and 1870 for 'blundering idiot' and 1838 for 'blundering fool'.

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I won't list them all from the BNA but it's worth noting that some of them went back to the eighteenth century such as 'bungling politician' (1740), 'bungling engineer' (1750) and 'bungling admiral' (1756) while we also have 'blundering mayor' (1778) and 'blundering politician' (1764).  A large number of the rest of the expressions from the nineteenth century could be found in the early part of the century such as 'blundering lawyer' (1802), 'blundering friend' (1807), 'blundering person' (1818), 'bungling lawyer' (1818), 'bungling dentist' (1823), 'bungling doctor' (1825) 'blundering clown' (1825) and 'blundering aristocrat' (1828).  You can try it yourself.  The difference between these results and the results for 'bumbling' people is absolutely extraordinary and not only supports but, in my opinion, proves the theory I set out at the start.

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You can even do the same with 'blustering' as we find the earliest mention of 'blustering idiot' being 1835 in the BNA and 1862 in Google Books.  For 'blustering fool', this can be found in 1829 in the BNA and 1808 in Google books. 

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In terms of buffoons, we find 'blustering buffoon' from 1826 in the BNA and 1848 in Google Books.  There seems to be a mention of a 'blundering buffoon' in the BNA from 1818 and in Google Books from 1833.  For 'bungling buffoon' we have an example for 1854 in Google Books and the only real anomaly is that the BNA's first example is not until 1936.  

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But that's really by the by.  People simply did not use the word 'bumbling' in the nineteenth century to describe someone as blundering or incompetent. It just wasn't in general usage.  While it was used by one writer in 1909, it evidently took time to filter its way into the general English language.  It wasn't a particularly necessary word with both 'blundering' and 'bungling' (and, of course, also 'blustering') already available.  We can see that it picked up in popularity during the 1930s before coming into general use in the 1940s and 1950s which is exactly when we find the first use of 'bumbling buffoon'.

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Perhaps the most interesting discovery of my searches was in respect of Dogberry, a constable in Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing'.  Most modern books refer to him as 'the bumbling Dogberry' and Google books gives us 1965 as the earliest appearance of this expression. However, while we don't find any such description in the nineteenth century, the BNA gives us a result from 1842 for 'blundering Dogberry' while the notes to the play from 1806 in Google Books also give us 'The blundering Dogberry'.  I can't think of a better example of showing how the word 'bumbling' came to replace 'blundering' as a word of choice during the twentieth century, having not been available to writers during the nineteenth century.  It's right there in front of our very eyes!

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On the basis of the results of my searches, I think The Baron must be right when he said, 'I will take this phrase Bumbling Buffoon any day in the week as a proof that the Diary is a fake'.  Diary Defenders who wish to show that the diary was created during the nineteenth century really do need to provide an example of someone in that century referring to a bumbling buffoon or similar.  

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And they also need to find an example of 'one off instance' or similar but I'm afraid that will be impossible.

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In response to the 'bumbling buffoon' discovery, Caroline Morris-Brown (in #107 of the google ngrams thread on Casebook) was reduced to suggesting that a nineteenth century hoaxer of the diary possibly just happened to invent the expression 'bumbling buffoon' about sixty years before anyone else used it by comparing Hopper (who he thought of as a buffoon) to a bee and imagined him bumbling around, thus creating his own expression of 'bumbling buffoon'.  It is, of course, a ludicrous suggestion to anyone who gives it any thought and who compares it to actual usage of the expression, or rather non-usage, in the nineteenth century.

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I should just add that anyone who wishes to respond to this article or to do searches of their own.  Please don't make a muppet of yourself by confusing 'humbling' or 'tumbling' with 'bumbling' in any search results and check the date of any result in Google Books is correct (which you can usually do by searching the word 'copyright' to give you the correct date of publication) and also beware of the Laredo Times on newspapers.com which produces false results said to be from the 1890s of twentieth century editions.

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As an aside, we may note that popularity of the bumbling buffoon in cinema and on TV in the UK in the post-war period has been huge.

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It starts, I think, with Nigel Bruce's portrayal of Dr Watson opposite Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in a series of films produced between 1939 and 1946.  He may not have been described as a bumbling buffoon during that period (bearing in mind that the earliest known example found so far is from 1949) but, when he died in 1953, Time magazine referred to him as being 'best known for his characterizations of Sherlock Holmes's bumbling friend, Dr Watson'.  Leslie Halliwell's 1977 'The Filmgoer's Companion' says that he was 'Hollywood's most bumbling import from Britain' who 'usually played well-meaning upper class buffoons' while The Sherlock Holmes Journal published in 1982 says of Bruce that he 'did play him as the bumbling buffoon, and yet made a success of it'. Similarly the Times of 28 July 1984 says of Bruce that he 'played Watson as a rather dim, bumbling buffoon'.  So whether or not Bruce's Watson was commonly referred to as a bumbling buffoon in the 1940s (or 1950s, 1960s or 1970s) he certainly was in the 1980s!     

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Another personification of the bumbling buffoon was, of course, Peter Sellars as Inspector Clouseau although you will usually find reference to him as a 'bumbling detective' or 'bumbling inspector'.  The Times of 28 January 1965, for example, referred to the 'bumbling Inspector Clouseau'.   The Liverpool Echo of 12 February 1965 likewise called him 'the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of the Paris Surete'.  In the 1975 Film Review Digest Annual, Clouseau is said to be 'too entirely the buffoon'.  The 1980 TV Guide refers to 'the immortal Inspector Clouseau, master bumbler and buffoon'.  In the Times of 26 February 1985 he is described as 'the bumbling French detective'.  On 25 April 1986, the Times said of the FBI agent, Ronald Miller, charged with passing secret documents to the Russians, that his defence team 'portrayed him as a bumbling buffoon, "an overweight Inspector Clouseau who took on Bondian fantasies in order to salvage his reputation"'.   This is another example of how common the expression of bumbling buffoon was in the 1980s.

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Another character in the 1980s described as a 'bumbling buffoon' was Ade Edmonson's Guy Fuddle in the 1985 BBC TV comedy series 'Happy Families' (e.g. Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush Gazette of 11 October 1985, Reading Evening Post of 24 October 1985 and Derby Daily Telegraph of 7 June 1988).

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So it was a perfectly common, well known and well understood expression in the UK during the 1980s (but most certainly NOT in the 1880s!!!).   It's funny, though, because when I first posted about 'one off instance' back in 2016, Caroline Morris-Brown made exactly the same ludicrous suggestion that it wasn't a common expression during the 1980s!  She is absolutely terrified of anything linking the diary to the Barretts!!  It's extraordinary, and to avoid the authorship of the diary pointing to the Barretts through the use of expressions which were very common in the 1980s, such as 'one off instance' and 'bumbling buffoon', she tries to twist and deny reality to pretend they were obscure phrases that Mike and Anne wouldn't have heard of.