Susy’s spelling—More remarks about SimplifiedⒶtextual note Spelling.
From Susy’s Biography. Ⓐtextual note
Ever since papa and mamma were married, papa has written his books and then taken them to mamma in manuscript and she has expergated them. Papa read “Huckleberry Finn” to us in manuscript just before it came out, and then he would leave parts of it with mamma to expergate, while he went off up to the study toⒶtextual note work, and sometimes Clara and I would be sitting with mamma while she was looking the manuscript over, and I remember so well, with what pangs of regret we used to see her turn down the leaves of the pages, which meant that some delightfully dreadful part must be scratched out. And I remember one part pertickularly which was perfectly fascinating it was dreadful, that Clara and I used to delight in, and oh with what dispair we saw mamma turn down the leaf on which it was written, we thought the book would be almost ruined without it. But we gradually came to feel as mamma did.
It would be a pity to replace the vivacity and quaintness and felicity of Susy’s innocent free spelling with the dull and petrified uniformities of the spelling bookⒶtextual note. Nearly all the grimness is taken out of the “expergating” of my booksⒶtextual note by the subtle mollification accidentally infused into the word by Susy’s modification of the spelling of it.
I remember the special case mentioned by Susy, and can see the group yet—two-thirds of it pleading for the life of the culprit sentence that was so fascinatingly dreadful and the other third of it patiently explaining why the court could not grant the prayer of the pleaders; but I do not remember what the condemned phrase was. It had much company, and they all went to the gallows; but it is possible that that specially dreadful one which gave those little people so much delight was cunningly devised and put into the book for just that function, and not with any hope or expectation that it would get by the expergatorⒶtextual note aliveⒺexplanatory note. It is possible, for I had that custom.
Susy’s quaint and effective spelling falls quite opportunely into to-day’s atmosphere, which is heavy with the rumblings and grumblings and mutterings of the Simplified Spelling Reform. Andrew Carnegie started this storm, a couple of years ago, by moving a simplifying of English orthography, and establishing a fund for the prosecution and maintenance of the crusade. He began gently. He addressed aⒶtextual note circular to some hundreds of his friends, asking them to simplify the spelling of a dozen of our badly spelt words—I think they were only words which end with the superfluous ugh. He asked that these friends use the suggested spellings in their private correspondence.
By this, one perceives that the beginning was sufficiently quiet and unaggressive; but of course the newspapers got hold of it; and they got as much fun out of it as they could have gotten out of a funeral, or any of the other things which to the average newspaper mind are particularly ludicrous.Ⓐtextual note
Next stage: a small committee was appointed, with Brander Matthews for managing director and spokesman. It issued a list of three hundred words, of average silliness as [begin page 274] to spelling, and proposed new and sane spellings for these words. The President of the United States, unsolicited, adopted these simplified three hundred officially, and ordered that they be used in the official documents of the Government. It was now remarked, by all the educated and the thoughtful except the clergy,Ⓐtextual note that SheolⒶtextual note was to pay. This was most justly and comprehensively descriptive. The indignant British lion roseⒺexplanatory note, with a roar that was heard across the Atlantic, and stood there on his little isle, gazing, red-eyed, out over the glooming seas,Ⓐtextual note snow-flecked with driving spindrift, and lashing his tail—a most scary spectacle to see.
The lion was outraged because we, a nation of children, without any grown-up people among us, andⒶtextual note with no property in the language, but using it merely by courtesy of its ownerⒶtextual note the English nation, were trying to defile the sacredness of it by removing from it peculiarities which had been its ornament and which had made it holy and beautiful for ages.
In truth there is a certain sardonic propriety in preserving our orthography, since ours is a mongrel language which started with a child’s vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched from every unwatchedⒶtextual note language under the sun, the spelling of each individual wordⒶtextual note of the lot locating the source of the theft and preserving the memory of the reveredⒶtextual note crime.
Why is it that I have intruded into this turmoil and manifested a desire to get our orthography purged of its asininities? Indeed I do not know why I should manifest any interest in the matter, for at bottom I disrespectⒶtextual note our orthography most heartily, and as heartily disrespectⒶtextual note everything that has been said by anybody in defenceⒶtextual note of it. Nothing professing to be a defenceⒶtextual note of our ludicrous spellings has had any basis, so far as my observation goes,Ⓐtextual note except sentimentality. In these “arguments”Ⓐtextual note the term venerable is used instead of mouldy, and hallowed instead of devilish;Ⓐtextual note whereas there is nothing properly venerable or antique about a language which is not yet four hundred years old, and about a jumble of insaneⒶtextual note spellings which were grotesque in the beginning, and which grow more and more grotesque with the flight of the years.
However, I like to have a hand in whatever is going on, and so I took a hand in the Spelling Reform and made a speech upon the subject before the Associated Press delegates, last SeptemberⒺexplanatory note, in these words:
IⒶtextual note am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except thru you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe—only two—the sun in the heavens and theⒶtextual note Associated Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and intellects, as you—except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannotⒶtextual note do it without your help. If theⒶtextual note Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties are at an end.
[begin page 275]Every day of the 365 the only pages of the world’s countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and angels and devils that can read, are those pages that are built out of Associated Press dispatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you—oh, I implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily, constantly, persistently, for three months—only three months—it is all I ask. The infallible result?—victory, victory all down the line. For by that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted to the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we shall be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt it.
Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests. In 1883, when the Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note movement first tried to make a noiseⒺexplanatory note, I was indifferent to it; more—I even irreverently scoffed at it. What I needed was an object lesson, you see. It is the only way to teach some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling along, earning the family’s bread on magazine work at sevenⒶtextual note cents a word, compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present. I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to write ten pages on this revolting text: “Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”
Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so as to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can ever remember any part of a business-talkⒶtextual note except the part that’s got graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, “Read that text, Jackson, and let it go on the record; read it out loud.” He read it: “Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the ornithorhyncus as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects.”
I said, “You want ten pages of those rumbling, great long summer thunder-peals and you expect to get them at sevenⒶtextual note cents a peal?”
He said, “A word’s a word, and sevenⒶtextual note cents is the contract; what are you going to do about it?”
I said, “Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What’s an average English word?”
He said, “Six letters.”
I said, “Nothing of the kind; that’s French, and includes the spaces between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half. By hard honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can put 1,200 words on your page, and there’s not another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is worth $84 to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your magazine page with long words as it does with short [begin page 276] ones—four hours. Now then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours. I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family’s sake I’ve got to be. So I never write ‘metropolis’ for sevenⒶtextual note cents, because I can get the same money for ‘city.’ I never write ‘policeman,’ because I can get the same price for ‘cop.’ And so on and so on. I never write ‘valetudinarian’ at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for sevenⒶtextual note cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteenⒶtextual note. Examine your shameful text, please; count the words.”
He counted, and said it was twenty-fourⒶtextual note. I asked him to count the letters. He made it 203.
I said, “Now, I hope you see the whole size of your contemplated crime. With my vocabulary I would make sixtyⒶtextual note words out of those 203 letters, and get $4.20 for it; whereas for your inhuman twenty-fourⒶtextual note I would get only $1.68. Ten pages of these sky-scrapersⒶtextual note of yours would pay me only about $300; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same labor would pay me $840. I do not wish to work upon this scandalous job by the piece, I want to be hired by the year.” He coldly refused. I said:
“Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you ought at least to allow me overtime on that word ‘extemporaneousness.’ ” Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I was not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous ornithorhyncus, and rotten to the heart with holophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God forgive me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours!
From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member of that heaven-born institution, the International Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with the Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work.
Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally, sanely—yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn’t it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she never saw a spelling bookⒶtextual note in her life. The spelling is her own. There isn’t a waste letter in it anywhere: it reduces the fonetics to the last gasp—it squeezes the surplusage out of every word—there’s no spelling that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And as for the punctuation, there isn’t any. It is all one sentence, eagerly and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The letter is absolutely genuine—I have the proofs of that in my possession. I can’t stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter presently and comfort your eyes with it:—
“Miss —— dear freind i took some Close into the armerry and give them to you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to truble you but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll woole Shevyott With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and passy menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about It. I thoght she was willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am [begin page 277] and she Has got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For her i gess you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True freind. i liked your appearance very Much.”
Now you see what Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note can do. It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions like a spellbinderⒶtextual note. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print all your dispatches in it.
Now, I wish to say just one entirely serious word:
I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because, in the little while that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with these old-fashioned forms, and I don’t propose to make any trouble about it at all.
There are eighty-two millionsⒶtextual note of us people that use this orthography, and it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present condition to satisfy a millionⒶtextual note people who like to have their literature in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the forms as they are while we have got a hundred thousandⒶtextual note people coming in here from foreign countries every month and they have got to struggle with this orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn. There is really no argument against reform except merely sentimental argument.
People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spenser and ShakspeareⒶtextual note and a lot of other people who did not know how to spell anyway, and it has been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to continue to preserve it because of its ancient and hallowed associations. If that argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness for them on account of the associations.Ⓐtextual note
pleading for the life of the culprit sentence . . . that it would get by the expergator alive] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 9 February 1906 (AutoMT1, 349). The long passage in the Huckleberry Finn manuscript in which Jim describes his midnight encounter with a cadaver in a medical school dissecting room, which Clemens deleted before publication, was probably one of the “delightfully dreadful” passages ( HF 2003, 531–38).
Andrew Carnegie started this storm . . . The indignant British Lion rose] Clemens was one of many literary men who signed the pledge circulated by spelling reformers in May 1905 to adopt simplified forms of twelve common words such as program, prolog, and thru. Andrew Carnegie’s financial support was contingent upon the gathering of these pledges. Satisfied, in early 1906 he organized the Simplified Spelling Board under the leadership of critic Brander Matthews. The board soon issued an amplified list of three hundred recommended spellings. On 27 August, Roosevelt ordered the government printer to use the simplified system in all publications of the executive departments. American response was bemused, but the British response was unexpectedly fierce. The Pall Mall Gazette called Roosevelt an anarchist, and the Evening Standard reminded him that the English language “was ours while America was still a savage and undiscovered country.” The Globe vowed that British resistance to spelling reform would be tougher than Filipino resistance to American rule, while the Leader said: “Of kors if Ruzvelt, backed up by Karnegi, sez we hav got to reform our speling we shal hav to, and that wil be the end of it, for Karnegi has awl the dollers and Ruzvelt has awl the branes” (“England in Fury Yelps at Ruzvelt,” Chicago Tribune, 26 Aug 1906, 1). Against this tide of anti-American, anti-Roosevelt feeling, Carnegie protested that spelling reform was neither American nor Roosevelt’s: it was an international movement and the reformed spellings had all been recommended in 1883 by an Anglo-American committee. But American support was also lacking: on 13 December the House of Representatives went on record against Roosevelt’s presidential order, and he promptly rescinded it (Scott 1905; New York Times: “Carnegie Assaults the Spelling-Book,” 12 Mar 1906, 1; “Spelling Changes Came from England—Carnegie,” 7 Sept 1906, 1; Matthews to SLC, 21 May 1905, CU-MARK; U.S. Government Printing Office 1906, 5–6; “New Spelling Dies,” Washington Post, 14 Dec 1906, 1).
speech . . . before the Associated Press delegates, last September] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 5 October 1906, note at 245.36–246.1.
In 1883, when the Simplified Spelling movement first tried to make a noise] In 1883 the Philological Society of London and the American Philological Association joined in recommending three thousand standardized spellings (“Spelling Changes Came from England—Carnegie,” New York Times, 7 Sept 1906, 1).
Source documents.
TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1389–94, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1389–94, revised.
Circular Mark Twain on Simplified Spelling, Simplified Spelling Board Circular No. 9, 10 November 1906; revised copy attached to TS1 ribbon, unrevised copy attached to TS1 carbon: ‘I am . . . the associations.’ (274.33–277.33).
NAR 19pf Galley proofs of NAR 19, typeset from the revised TS1 carbon (the same extent as NAR 19), ViU.
NAR 19 North American Review 185 (7 June 1907), 243–45: Monday . . . 1906’ (273 title); ‘Ever since . . . the years.’ (273.3–274.29).
The first two paragraphs of this dictation (following the Susy extract)—i.e., ‘It would be a pity . . . had that custom.’—derive from Clemens’s manuscript “Notes to Susy’s Biography,” probably written in 1902 (ViU). The likeliest scenario is that Clemens read the passage aloud to Hobby; but it is not certain. The texts are identical, quite consistent with documentary copying, except that the manuscript has one final phrase which does not appear in TS1 (‘and have it yet.’). Since Clemens can be seen to have “adapted” the manuscript text, and seems to have done it in dictating, the manuscript is not considered as a witness.
Clemens transferred his revisions on TS1 ribbon to TS1 carbon, which he further revised. An intention to bring the two into conformity is evident, and where a revision is made on one typescript and not the other we adopt the revised reading.
In this dictation Clemens inserts the pamphlet Mark Twain on Simplified Spelling, an authorial act causing editorial difficulties out of all proportion to the length of the text. The text of this speech (originally delivered at a dinner of the Associated Press on 19 September 1906) is based on the printed pamphlet (Circular) produced by the Simplified Spelling Board. (No manuscript of the speech is extant.) Copies of the Circular were attached by Clemens to both TS1 ribbon and TS1 carbon.
The genesis of the Circular is as follows: when Clemens’s speech was reported in the press, Brander Matthews, as managing director of the Simplified Spelling Board, asked Clemens to revise it for publication as a pamphlet; Clemens acceded, and requested a printed copy of the speech to revise (Matthews to SLC, 27 September 1906, CU-MARK; 3 October 1906 to Matthews, NNC). Collation suggests that Matthews supplied him with the printing in the New York Times (“Spelling and Pictures and Twain at Dinner,” 20 September 1906, 4). In revising, Clemens slightly shortened the speech. The Circular, “revised expressly for the simplified spelling board,” was published with the date 10 November 1906. In the Circular, three words are given their “simplified” spellings (‘thru’, ‘fonetic’ and ‘fonetics’); these were not present in the New York Times printing and could have been supplied either by Clemens or by the Simplified Spelling Board. They have been allowed to stand, on the rationale that it is paradoxical to eliminate them from a speech which explicitly recommends them, and that they may be Clemens’s fleeting contribution to the spelling reform to which he was lending his support. Our text is based upon the copy of the Circular which Clemens caused to be attached to TS1 ribbon.
The inclusion of the Circular inevitably involves the duplication of a text used earlier in the Autobiography: the first “Jennie Allen” letter, inserted by Clemens into the AD of 29 August 1906. The text of the letter as given in the Circular has passed through many stages of transmission—from (1) Grace Donworth’s original, to (2) intermediary copies circulated among her friends; (3) the copy Clemens kept and made available to the press; (4) the New York Times article, thence to (5) the typesetting of the Circular (for Donworth see AD, 5 October 1906). This tortuous process has in fact had suprisingly little effect on the accidentals of the letter, when compared to the version given in the August dictation. The few differences have been allowed to stand.
On the Circular attached to TS1 ribbon he canceled the title, subtitle and publication information, since he was introducing the speech as a speech, rather than as a document; he failed to cancel some extraneous editorial text at the end of the pamphlet, which we omit. On the last leaf of TS1 carbon a copy (unrevised) of the Circular was likewise fastened.
Galley proof for NAR 19 exists but bears no revisions. It can hardly have been read carefully by Clemens or anyone else, as it contains an error which resulted in the loss of a whole line of text. The error was corrected in NAR 19 (see the entry at 273.6).
Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR