Mark Twain's "spelling match" speech

Southern Quarterly, Fall 2002 by Smith, Harriet Elinor, Frank, Michael B

ON THE EVENING OF 12 MAY 1875, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) participated in a spelling match-part of a fund-raising fair-at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut. Presiding over the event was Clemens's good friend Joseph H. Twichell, pastor of the church. Although Clemens had publicly announced his retirement from the paid lecture platform the previous year, he was usually willing to speak on behalf of local charities. He accepted Twichell's invitation to make a brief introductory speech, which was reported the next morning in the Hartford Courant article transcribed here. Among the other participants were several leading citizens and church members: James S. Tryon, Sr., a trustee of the Mechanics Savings Bank; Elisha Carpenter (1824-97), a state supreme court judge and church deacon; Harriet Carpenter, his daughter;John S. Ives, proprietor of a dry-goods store on Main Street; Samuel E Jones, an attorney; William J. Fletcher (b. 1844), assistant librarian at Watkinson Library; Theodore Lyman, the church clerk; and the Reverend Nathaniel J. Burton (1824-87), pastor of Hartford's Park Congregational Church. Charles Durand (1820-1900), speaker of the Connecticut house of representatives in 1875-76, was in the audience.

Early in his speech Clemens mentioned "Blind Tom," an "enthusiast in orthography," whose phonetic spelling style he later came to espouse. Thomas Greene Bethune (1849-1908) was born blind and autistic, but with extraordinary music talent. At age four he began to play the piano, and was soon able to repeat any piece he heard. He toured widely beginning in the late 1850s, and became celebrated for his prodigious and inexplicable abilities.

Clemens's remarks "introducing these approaching orthographical solemnities" were light-hearted, but his underlying interest in the complexity and difficulty of English spelling was serious and abiding. In 1906, for example, he endorsed the "simplified spelling" reforms proposed by Andrew Carnegie and supported by President Theodore Roosevelt, publishing "The Carnegie Spelling Reform" in Harper's Weekly on 7 April of that year. On 19 September he spoke on simplified spelling at an Associated Press Banquet in New York. And on 7 and 19 November he devoted his Autobiographical Dictations to the subject. In the first of these he showed that he had not forgotten the 1875 Hartford spelling match, choosing "chaldron," the word which had caused his ejection from the match, as an example of a word that reflected the "insanity" of the English alphabet. He concluded, "I venture to repeat that whereas the English orthography needs reforming and simplifying, the English alphabet needs it two or three million times more." In 1909, in "A Simplified Alphabet," he outlined just such a simplification, on "phonographic," or phonetic, principles. "That is the only competent alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in our Ianguage.

SPELLING MATCH AND FESTIVAL.

Interesting Contest at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church Last Night-An Amusing Speech by "Mark Twain."

The contestants seated themselves on the platform and Mr. Twichell called upon Mr. Samuel L. Clemens for a few preliminary remarks. The latter mounted the platform beside the pulpit and spoke as follows:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-I have been honored with the office of introducing these approaching orthographical solemnities with a few remarks:-The temperance crusade swept the land some time ago-that is, that vast portion of the land where it was needed-but it skipped Hartford. Now comes this new spelling epidemic, and this time we are stricken. So I suppose we needed the affliction. I don't say we needed it, for I don't see any use in spelling a word right-and never did. I mean I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me, there is such a breezy unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells Kow with a large K. Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow. Superb effects can be produced by variegated spelling. Now there is Blind Tom, the musical prodigy. He always spells a word according to the sound that is carried to his ear. And he is an enthusiast in orthography. When you give him a word, he shouts it out-puts all his soul into it. I once heard him called upon to spell orang-outang before an audience. He said, "O, r-a-n-g, orang, g-e-r, ger, oranger, t-a-n-g, tang, orangger tang." Now a body can respect an orang-outang that spells his name in a vigorous way like that. But the feeble dictionary makes a mere kitten of him. In the old times people spelled just as they pleased. That was the right idea. You had two chances at a stranger then. You knew a strong man from a weak one by his ironclad spelling, and his handwriting helped you to verify your verdict.