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Autobiographical Dictation, 7 November 1906 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

TS1 ribbon      Typescript, leaves numbered 1372–80, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.
TS1 carbon      Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1372–80, revised.

If Clemens revised in what was by now his usual way, he first revised TS1 ribbon and transferred his revisions to the carbon; in this case the internal evidence does not point entirely one way. In any case, he clearly meant to bring the two copies into conformity with each other, neither has been specifically prepared for contemporary publication, and we accept all of Clemens’s revisions. The dictation remained unpublished until its inclusion in Letters from the Earth, where DeVoto claimed that it was “certainly written before” its ostensible date of 7 November 1906 (LE, 159–63, 291). The suspicion is inevitable; yet Hobby noted on the typescript that the dictating had taken two hours, and Clemens wrote on 7 November to Mary Rogers that he had “dictated a while, this morning—the first time for 19 days. On Simplified Spelling” (NNC). Possibly this talk on Simplified Spelling was planned as a speech to be delivered in Egypt, where, during a burst of enthusiasm in late October, Clemens had been planning to spend the winter; but he canceled those plans on 31 October. Perhaps he sought to salvage his Egyptian-themed speech by “reading it into” the Autobiography (Lyon 1906, entries for 27–31 October; MTB, 3:1325–26).

Wednesday, November 7, 1906

Simplified Spelling.

The first time I was in Egypt a Simplified Spelling epidemic had broken outexplanatory note, and the atmosphere was electrical with feeling engendered by the subject. This was four or five thousand years ago—I do not remember just how many thousand it was, for my memory for minor details has suffered some decay in the lapse of years. I am speaking of a former state of existence of mine, perhaps mytextual note earliest reincarnation;textual note indeed I think it was the earliest. I had been an angel previously, and I am expecting to be one again—but at the time I speak of I was different.

The Simplifiers had risen in revolt against the hieroglyphics. An uncle of Cadmus who was out of a job had come to Egypt and was trying to introduce the Phenician alphabet andtextual note get it adopted in place of the hieroglyphics. He was challenged to show cause, and he did it to the best of his ability. The exhibition and discussion took place in the Temple of Astarte, and I was present. So also was the Simplified Committee, with Croesus as foreman of the Revolt—not a large man physically, but a simplified speller of acknowledged ability. The Simplifiers were few; the Opposition were multitudinous. The Khedive was the main backer of the Revolt, and this magnified its strength and saved it from being insignificant. Among the Simplifiers were many men of learning and distinction, mainly literary men and members of college faculties; but all ranks and conditions of men and all grades of intellect, erudition, and ignorance, were represented in the Opposition.

As a rule, the speeches on both sides were temperate and courteous, but now and then a speaker weakened his argument with personalities, the Revolters referring to the [begin page 267] Opposition as fossils, and the Opposition referring to the Revolters as “those cads,” a smart epithet coined out of the name of Uncle Cadmus.

Uncle Cadmus began with an object lesson, with chalk, on a couple of blackboards. On one of them he drew in outline a slender Egyptian in a short skirt, with slim legs and an eagle’s head in place of a proper head, and he was carrying a couple of dinner pails, one in each hand. In front of this figure he drew a toothed line like an excerpt from a saw; in front of this he drew three skeleton birds of doubtful ornithological origin; in front of these he drew a partly constructed house, with lean Egyptians fetching materials in wheelbarrowstextual note to finish it with; next he put in some more unclassified birds; then a large kingtextual note, with carpenter’s shavings for whiskers and hair; next he put in another kingtextual note jabbing a mongrel lion with a javelin; hetextual note followed thistextual note with a picture of a tower, with armed Egyptians projecting out of the top of it and as crowded for room as the cork in a bottle; hetextual note drew the opposing army below, fierce of aspect but much out of drawing,textual note as regards perspective: theytextual note were shooting arrows at the men in the tower, which was poor military judgment, because they could have reached up and pulled them out by the scruff of the neck.textual note He followed these pictures with line after line of birds and beasts and scraps of saw-teethtextual note and bunches of men in the customary short frock, some of them doing things, the others waiting for the umpire to call game; and finally his great blackboard was full from top to bottom. Everybody recognized the invocation set forth by the symbols: ittextual note was the Lord’s Prayer.

It had taken him forty-five minutes to set it down. Then he stepped to the other blackboard and dashed off “Our Father which art in heaven,” and the rest of it, in graceful Italian script, spelling the words the best he knew how in those days, and finished it up in four minutes and a half.

It was rather impressive.

He made no comment at the time, but went to a fresh blackboard and wrote upon it in hieroglyphics:

“Attextual note this time the King possessed of cavalry 214,580 men and 222,631 horses for their use; of infantry 16,341 squadrons together with an emergency-reservetextual note of all arms, consisting of 84,946 men, 321 elephants, 37,264 transportation carts, and 28,954 camels and dromedaries.”

Ittextual note filled the board, and cost him twenty-six minutes of time and labor. Then he repeated it on another blackboardtextual note in Italian script and Arabic numerals,textual note and did it in two minutes and a quarter. Then he said,

“My argument is before you. One of the objections to the hieroglyphics is that it takes the brightest pupil nine years to get the forms and their meanings by heart; ittextual note takes the average pupil sixteen years; it takes the rest of the nation all their days to accomplish it—it is a life sentence. This cost of time is much too expensive. It could be employed more usefully in other industries, and with better results.

“If you will renounce the hieroglyphics and adopt writtentextual note words instead, an advantage will be gained. By you? No, not by you. You have spent your lives in mastering the [begin page 268] hieroglyphics, and to you they are simple, and the effect pleasant to the eye, and even beautiful. You are well along in life; it would not be worth your while to acquire the new learning; the aspect of it would be unpleasant to you; you will naturally cling with affection to the pictured records which have become beautiful to you through habit and use, and which are associated in your mind with the moving legends and tales of our venerable pasttextual note and the great deeds of ourtextual note fathers, which they have placed before you indestructibly engraved upon stone. But I appeal to you in behalf of the generations which are to follow you, century after century, age after age, cycle after cycle. I pray you consider them and be generous. Lift this heavy burden from their backs. Do not send them toiling and moiling down to the twentieth centurytextual note still bearing it, still oppressed by it. Let your sons and daughters adopt the words and the alphabet, and gotextual note free. To the youngest of them the hieroglyphics have no hallowed associations; the words and the alphabet will not offend their eyes; custom will quickly reconcile them to it, and then they will prefer it—if for no other reason, for the simple reason that they will have had no experience of any method of communication considered by others comelier ortextual note better. I pray you let the hieroglyphics go, and thus save millions of years of useless time and labor to a hundred andtextual note fifty generations of posterity that are to follow you.

“Do I claim that the substitute which I am proposing is without defect? No. It has a serious defect. My fellow Revolters are struggling for one thing, and for one thing only—the shortening and simplifying of the spelling. That is to say, they have not gone to the root textual note of the matter—and in my opinion the reform which they are urging is hardly worth while. The trouble is not with the spelling; it goes deeper than that; it is with the alphabet textual note explanatory note. There is but one way to scientifically andtextual note adequatelytextual note reform the orthography, and that is by reforming the alphabet; then the orthography will reform itself. What is needed is that each letter of the alphabet shall have a perfectly definite sound, and that this sound shall never be changed or modified without the addition of an accent, or other visible sign, to indicate precisely and exactly the nature of the modification. The Germans have this kind of an alphabet. Every letter of it has a perfectly definite sound, and when that sound is modified an umlaut textual note or other signtextual note is added to indicate the precise shade of the modification. The several values of the German letters can be learned by the ordinary child in a fewtextual note days, and after that, for ninety years, that child can always correctly spell any German word it hears, without ever having been taught to do it by another person, or being obliged to apply to a spelling book for help.textual note

“But the English alphabet is a pure insanity. It can hardly spell any word in the language with any large degree of certainty. When you see the word chaldron textual note in an English book,textual note no foreigner can guess how to pronounce it; neither can any native. The reader knows that it is pronounced chaldron textual note—or kaldron textual note , or kawldron textual note—but neither he nor his grandmother can tell which is the right way without looking in the dictionary; and when he looks in the dictionary the chances are a hundred to one that the dictionary itself doesn’t know which is the right way, but will furnish him all three and let him take his choice. When you find the word bow in an English book, standing by itself and without any informing text built around it, there is no American nortextual note Englishman alive, nor [begin page 269] any dictionary, that can tell you how to pronounce that word. It may mean a gesture of salutation, and rhyme with cow; and it may also mean an obsolete military weapon, and rhyme with blow. But let us not enlarge upon this. The sillinesses of the English alphabet are quite beyond enumeration. That alphabet consists of nothing whatever excepttextual note sillinesses. I venture to repeat that whereas the English orthography needs reforming and simplifying, the English alphabet needs it two or three million times more.”

Uncle Cadmus sat down, and the Opposition rose and combated his reasonings in the usual way. Those people said that they had always been used to the hieroglyphics; that the hieroglyphics had dear and sacred associations for them; that they loved to sit on a barrel under an umbrella in the brilliant sun of Egypt and spell out the owls and eagles and alligators and saw-teeth, and take an hour and a half totextual note the Lord’s Prayer, and weep with romantic emotion at the thought that they had, at most, but eight or ten years between themselves and the grave for the enjoyment of this ecstasy; and that then possibly these Revolters would shove the ancient signs and symbolstextual note from the main track andtextual note equip the peopletextual note with a lightning-expresstextual note reformed alphabet thattextual note would leave the hieroglyphictextual note wheelbarrowtextual note a hundred thousand miles behind and have not a damned association which could compel a tear, even if tears and diamonds stood at the same price in the market.textual note

Textual Notes Wednesday, November 7, 1906
  my ●  the my  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  reincarnation; ●  one; reincarnation;  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  and ●  and to  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  and to ‘and’ canceled and restored  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  wheelbarrows ●  wheel- | barrows (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  king ●  King (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  king ●  King (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  javelin; he ●  javelin; . H he period mended to a semicolon; ‘H’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  this ●  this  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  bottle; he ●  bottle; . H he period mended to a semicolon; ‘H’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  drawing, ●  drawing,  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  perspective: they ●  perspective. T they ‘T’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS ribbon-SLC)  perspective: . T they period mended to a colon; ‘T’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  scruff of the neck. ●  hair of the head. scruff of the neck.  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  saw-teeth ●  saw- | teeth (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  the invocation set forth by the symbols: it ●  it. :It ◇◇ the invocation set forth by the symbols: it ‘It’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’, then whole word deleted  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  it. :It the invocation set forth by the symbols: it ‘It’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’, then whole word deleted  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  hieroglyphics: [¶] “At ●  hieroglyphics: ¶ “At (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  emergency-reserve ●  emergency reserve (TS1 ribbon)  emergency-reserve (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  [¶] It ●  It (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  blackboard ●  black- | board (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  numerals, ●  numerals (TS1 ribbon)  numerals,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  heart; it ●  heart; . I it period mended to a semicolon; ‘I’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  written ●  written  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  of our venerable past ●  of our venerable past  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  our ●  your (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  twentieth century ●  Twentieth Century (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  go ●  set them go  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  comelier or ●  comelier or or corrected miswriting  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  a hundred and ●  not in  (TS1 ribbon)  a hundred and  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  root  ●  root (TS1 ribbon)  root ‘root’ underscored  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  alphabet  ●  alphabet ‘alphabet’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  scientifically and ●  scientifically and  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  scientifically and rationally  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  adequately ●  adequately (TS1 ribbon)  adequately followed by a canceled caret  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  umlaut  ●  umlaut, ‘umlaut’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  umlaut, ‘umlaut’ underscored  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  sign ●  sign,  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  few ●  couple of few  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  person, or being obliged to apply to a spelling book for help. ●  person. , or being obliged to apply to a spelling book for help.  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  chaldron  ●  chaldron ‘chaldron’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  chaldron ‘chaldron’ underscored  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  book, ●  book (TS1 ribbon)  book,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  chaldron  ●  chaldron ‘chaldron’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  kaldron  ●  kaldron ‘kaldron’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  kawldron  ●  kawldron ‘kawldron’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  nor ●  nor (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  except ●  expect except  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  to ●  at to  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  shove the ancient signs and symbols ●  banish them shove the ancient signs and symbols  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  banish them hieroglyphics shove the ancient signs and symbols  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  main track and ●  earth and main track and  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  the people ●  them people  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  lightning-express ●  ligntning-express (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  that ●  which that  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  hieroglyphic ●  Egyptian hieroglyphic  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  wheelbarrow ●  wheel-barrow marked to close up
  tears and diamonds stood at the same price in the market. ●  it would save his soul. tears and diamonds stood at the same price in the market.  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC) 
Explanatory Notes Wednesday, November 7, 1906
 

The first time I was in Egypt a Simplified Spelling epidemic had broken out] This dictation was first published in Letters from the Earth, edited by Bernard DeVoto (1962), who suggested that it had been “interpolated in a dictation” of 7 November 1906 but was “certainly written before that day” ( LE, 159–63, 291). The suspicion is natural; yet Hobby made her standard notation on the typescript that it took two hours to dictate, and Clemens wrote on the same day to Mary Rogers that he had “dictated a while, this morning—the first time for 19 days. On Simplified Spelling” (NNC). No manuscript has been found, but it is likely that Clemens had written it as a speech to be delivered in Egypt, where, during a burst of enthusiasm in late October 1906, he had been planning to spend the winter. But he canceled his plans on 31 October, and perhaps sought to salvage his Egyptian-themed speech by reading it into the Autobiography. Andrew Carnegie agreed to financially support the Simplified Spelling Board in January 1906, believing that the irregular orthography of English was impeding its adoption as “the world language” (“Carnegie Assaults the Spelling Book,” New York Times, 12 Mar 1906, 1). Clemens agreed to be a member of the board, and he publicized Simplified Spelling in various speeches and articles. In this dictation, he alludes to Carnegie under the name of “Croesus,” and to Theodore Roosevelt as “the Khedive.” Twelve days later, in the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 November 1906, he goes on to discuss the origins of the Simplified Spelling movement and Roosevelt’s ill-fated support for it (Lyon 1906, entries for Oct 27–31; MTB, 3:1325–26; “Simple Spellers Start with 300 Pruned Words,” New York Times, 13 Mar 1906, 6).

 

The trouble is not with the spelling . . . it is with the alphabet] Clemens developed this line of thought in a speech at a banquet honoring Andrew Carnegie on 9 December 1907 and in one of his manuscripts, “A Simplified Alphabet” (“Mark Twain Jeers at Simple Spelling,” New York Times, 10 Dec 1907, 2; SLC 1909a; for a text of the speech see Fatout 1976, 597–600; see also AD, 10 Dec 1907).