Vicarious

Partly because I can never remember the word whenever I have infrequent occasion to use it, the word “vicarious” has always interested me extraordinarily.  Another – and perhaps more cogent – explanation of the attraction is that the word was the source of one of my earliest legal lessons after law school when I undertook Articles with Macdonald, Affleck Barrs. & c., 100 Sparks St, Ottawa in 1973.

The lesson I was taught during Articles was an example of a broader legal narrative which I suspect derives from an unrelated philosophic enquiry into logic; namely, Nemo dat quod non habet (No one gives what he does not have). The instance in which I encountered this bracing bit of thought involved the need for a signature to a document.  The Party whose signature was required was not available; he was totally incommunicado. He wasn’t dead, but we were unable to contact him.

I had discovered that Party 1 (as I shall now call him for identification) had granted a Power of Attorney to Party 2. The trouble was – and this is where I made my mistake – Party 2 was not immediately available, but he was willing to appoint a stand-in for himself.  Now remember, this was early in my law career (over 50 years ago). It was long before computers and the internet. So the possibility of signing anything electronically was unheard of.

Anyway, I am contaminating the account of this simple matter. All I do recall is that, when I suggested Party 3 could sign the document in person upon the instruction of Party 2, a very astute member of my own or another law firm pointed out that, He who is nominated in the first instance hasn’t the right to extend that authority to another without the consent of Party 1.  Basically, You can’t give what you don’t have.  Party 2 could act for Party 1 to fulfill Party 1’s reasonable requirements but that authority did not include nominating an alternate (a logically impossible reasonableness to presume). Imagine, for example (and to use an absurd case for illustrative purposes) that a nomination was made of an idiot or of an infant or (in the vernacular of ancient law) of a married woman. As a result, Party 3 was out of the question. Clearly the document to be signed was of considerable import; and, accordingly its proper execution was paramount.

By the way, for those of you who have a Power of Attorney, and who might wish to afford the Attorney (that is, the appointee named to act in your stead) the further right to extend your authority to another, it is indeed possible to word the Power of Attorney to do so.  It is however an extension – not only beyond the limit of the usual practice but also beyond some certitude – commanding close attention to the person(s) to whom that authority may be extended.  Very often the extension is to another family member (whether by name or relationship). Naturally, if Party 1 had initially appointed an alternate Power of Attorney, this entire dilemma might have been overcome at the outset.  It was not however uncommon to see Powers of Attorney (particularly in commercial environments) restricted to one nominee as agent for Party 1.

What I hadn’t anticipated when I looked more deeply into the definition of the word vicarious was its (now obvious) association with vicar and the word wicked (which of course plays on the pronunciation of “w” as a “v” not uncommon in the German language.

vicar (n.)

c. 1300 (early 13c. as a surname), vicare, “one appointed to act as parish priest in place of a real parson,” from Anglo-French vicar, vicer, Old French vicaire “deputy, second in command,” also in the ecclesiastical sense (12c.), from Latin vicarius “a substitute, deputy, proxy,” noun use of adjective vicarius “substituted, delegated,” from vicis “change, interchange, succession; a place, position” (from PIE root *weik (2) “to bend, to wind”). From late 14c. also “one designated as earthly representative of God or Christ,” especially the Pope.The original Vicar of Bray (in proverbial use by Fuller’s time, 1660s) seems to have been Simon Allen, who held the benefice in Berkshire from c. 1540 to 1588, thus serving from the time of Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, being twice a Catholic, twice a Protestant, but always vicar of Bray.

*weik- (2)

Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to bend, to wind.”It forms all or part of: vetch; vicar; vicarious; vice- “deputy, assistant, substitute;” viceregent; vice versa; vicissitude; weak; weakfish; week; wicker; wicket; witch hazel; wych.It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit visti “changing, changeable;” Old English wac“weak, pliant, soft,” wician “to give way, yield,” wice “wych elm,” Old Norse vikja “to bend, turn,” Swedish viker “willow twig, wand,” German wechsel “change.”

By additional serendipity, today my erstwhile physician forwarded to me a copy of an article he was reading. While the article primarily spoke of the decline of British people to read the books about whose authors they speak so effusively, it too addressed the matter of “third person” representation.  It is indeed a heady and pervasive topic.

Because no one born in this country after 1986 knows which way up to hold a book. The number of pupils taking English A-level dropped from 89,000 in 2013 to 57,000 in 2023. The number embarking upon a degree in the subject fell by 20 per cent between 2012 and 2019.

But who cares? Slap a bonnet on your head and dance a quadrille with a load of other weepy incels in fancy dress above a Pizza Hut in Bath, and Jane Austen’s epoch-enabling invention of “free indirect speech” (which allowed access to the consciousness of characters through a third person narrator for the first time) will have been well worth the effort.

Giles Coren, the Times of London