Mark Twain Speaking

67. Army and Navy Club

MARK TWAIN SPEAKING -67225 An Army and Navy Club banquet, held on the birthday of General Grant, extolled theformer commander ofthe Union armies while charitably dwelling with less fervor upon his abilities as president. Captain V. B. Chamberlain, chairman, cited statistics on Grant's Memoirs, a best-seUerput out in 1886 by Mark Twain's publishing company: 44,350 square yards ofcloth in bindings, enough gold in lettering to make $15,446.47 ifcoined, 276 barrels of binder paste and 302,310 reams ofpaper used, and 19.5 miles ofshelfspace needed for the whole edition. Mark Twain's belligerent speech, drubbing the British critic, Matthew Arnold, struck the right note of outraged patriotism. The Courant remarked next day: "Mr. Clemens was interrupted with applause after every sentence, and it was sometime after he hadfinished before order was restored. " Dinner Speech Ninth Annual Reunion Banquet, Army and Navy Club of Connecticut, Central Hall, Hartford, April 27, 1887 I will detain you with only just a few words-just a few thousand words; and then give place to a better man-if he has been created. Lately a great and honored author, Matthew Arnold, has been finding fault with General Grant's English. That would be fair enough, maybe, if the examples of imperfect English averaged more instances to the page in General Grant's book than they do in Mr. Arnold's criticism upon the book-but they don't. It would be fair enough, maybe, if such instances were commoner in General Grant's book than they are in the works of the average standard author-but they aren't. In truth, General Grant's derelictions in the matter of grammar and construction are not more frequent than are such derelictions in the works ofa majority of the professional authors of our time and of all previous times-authors as exclusively and painstakingly trained to the literary trade as was General Grant to the trade of war. This is not a random statement; it is a fact, and easily demonstrable. I have at home a book called Modern English Literature: Its Blemishes and Defects, by Henry H. Breen, F.S.A., a countryman of Mr. Arnold. In it I find examples of 226 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING bad grammar and slovenly English from the pens of Sydney Smith, Sheridan, Hallam, Whately, Carlyle, both Disraelis, Allison, Junius, Blair, Macaulay, Shakespeare, Milton, Gibbon, Southey, Bulwer, Cobbett , Dr. Samuel Johnson, Trench, Lamb, Landor, Smollett, Walpole, Walker (of the dictionary), Christopher North, Kirke White, Mrs. Sigourney, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Lindley Murray, who made the grammar. In Mr. Arnold's paper on General Grant's book we find a couple of grammatical crimes and more than several examples of very crude and slovenly English-enough of them to easily entitle him to a lofty place in that illustrious list of delinquents just named. The following passage, all by itself, ought to elect him: "Meade suggested to Grant that he might wish to have immediately under him, Sherman, who had been serving with Grant in the West. He beggedhim not to hesitate ifhe thought it for the good ofthe service. Grant assured him that he had no thought of moving him, and in his memoirs, after relating what had passed, he adds," etc. To read that passage a couple of times would make a man dizzy; to read it four times would make him drunk. General Grant's grammar is as good as anybody's; but if this were not so, Mr. Breen would brush that inconsequential fact aside and hunt his great book for higher game. Mr. Breen" makes this discriminating remark: "To suppose that because a man is a poet or a historian, he must be correct in his grammar, is to suppose that an architect must be a joiner, or a physician a compounder of medicines." Mr. Breen's point is well taken. If you should climb the mighty Matterhorn to look out over the kingdoms of the earth, it might be a pleasant incident to find strawberries up there. But, great ScottI you don't climb the Matterhorn for strawberries! I don't think Mr. Arnold was quite wise; for he well knew that that Briton or American was never yet born who could safely assault another man's English; he knew as well as he knows anything, that the man never lived whose English was flawless. Can you believe that Mr. Arnold was immodest enough to imagine himself...