Valet and Varlet
Pardon My French
As a rule, British blokes of properly posh persuasions pronounce imported idioms in a way that reflects their original enunciation. If you doubt this, listen to an episode or two of The Rest is History, paying special attention to the way that Tom Holland says things like avant la lettre, entente cordiale, à bientôt, and plus français que les français.
That said, the toffs who occupy the top drawer of social ladder of the ‘green and pleasant land’ will, from time to time, throw a curve ball. (If it weren’t for mixed metaphors, I’d have no metaphors at all.)
Consider, if you will, the case of ‘valet’. French folk seldom speak the terminal ‘t’. Indeed, the final consonant only appears in nearby ears when followed by a vowel, as in the title of eighteenth century play Le Valet à Trois Maîtres (The Valet with Three Masters). In imitation thereof, Americans will only pronounce the ‘t’ in ‘valet parking’ when making fun of people who pronounce the ‘t’ in ‘valet parking’. If, however, you watch Jeeves and Wooster, Downton Abby, or Upstairs, Downstairs, you will notice that characters in those program[me]s invariably ended ‘valet’ with an able-bodied ‘t’.
This apparent anomaly reminds us of the Rule of Recent Rambling. Americans say ‘valet’ à la française because it entered our lexicon in the past century or so. (American hotels began to offer ‘valet service’ in the 1920s and ‘valet parking’ in the 1950s.) Old timey Limeys, however, said ‘valet’ because the word crossed the English Channel in the days of doublets and hose. Indeed, in the days before standardized spelling, OG Anglophones would sometimes add an extra ‘t’ to the end of the word, thereby making ‘valett’.
In the land of its birth, the fraternal twin of ‘valet’ described a servant who cared for things less elevated than the person of his employer. (Thus, while a valet de chambre helped his master to dress, a varlet de chiens cared for the latter’s canine companions.) Alas, while valet survived the demise of the powdered wig, varlet had, by the end of the eighteenth century, suffered the fate of Marie Antoinette.
As a result, those who wish to observe ‘varlet’ in the wild (so to speak) will find themselves obliged to tune into old Looney Tunes cartoons, where they will hear Yosemite Sam employ it as an all-purpose term of abuse for his many antagonists, long-eared and otherwise.
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