Ere the Twainisms Meet, What They <i> Didn’t </i> Say Counts

Mark Twain scholars at Berkeley, according to an item in the paper the other day, have concluded, evidently having nothing better to do, that Mark Twain did not say, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

How do they know? They may have access to Twain’s papers, but how do they know he didn’t make the remark casually to some friend, perhaps in an Embarcadero saloon, who then repeated it to a third party and thus sent it winging its way down through posterity?

These cloistered academics have also decided that Twain did not say, “When I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it passes away.”

It’s about time. Since my youth I have heard that remark attributed to the late Robert Hutchins, the educator who was famous for eliminating football at the University of Chicago.

Inevitably a man as witty and outspoken as Twain gets credited with a lot of remarks he didn’t make. For example, “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” Twain often quoted this remark, but gave full credit to its true author, his contemporary humorist Bill Nye.

Twain also is often thought to be the author of “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” According to “They Never Said It” (Oxford), by Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George, the remark was quoted in the Hartford Courant by a friend of Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, and attributed to “a well-known American writer.” Twain gave Warner credit for it, but it has been attributed to Twain ever since (though sometimes to Will Rogers).

Another famous remark, “Go West, young man,” is attributed to Horace Greely, editor of the New York Tribune. The advice was actually given by John Babsone Soule in an article in the Terre Haute Express. Greely reprinted the article and gave Soule full credit, but “Go West” has been attributed to Greely ever since.

Revisionism is an obsession of our times. I deplore the wanton demolition of the late Sam Goldwyn’s lexicon of fractured English. It is now fashionable to deny that Goldwyn originated any of the many ingenious locutions attributed to him.

We are told that he did not say “Include me out.” He did not say, “An oral contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” He did not say, “I can answer you in two words-- im possible .”

But I interviewed Goldwyn once, and I can say that his English was indeed baroque. Although skeptics doubt it, I can easily believe that, when warned that a certain story was “too caustic for film,” Goldwyn answered, “Don’t worry about the cost. If it’s a good story we’ll make it. . . .”

On a higher plane, critics sometimes question the originality of John F. Kennedy’s famous Inaugural line: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

In The Dictionary of Misinformation (Oxford), Tom Burnam points out that Oliver Wendell Holmes said something similar: “It is now the moment . . . to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.” And the inept Warren Harding said, “We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it, and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.”

Kennedy’s more succinct and dramatic “Ask not” suggests, at least, that he had better writers.

As Mark Twain said (according to my memory): “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

Revisionists are not always mean-spirited. They have done a good deed in rescuing Marie Antoinette from the canard that, when told that the people had no bread, she said, “Let them eat cake.” Scholars have shown that the remark was attributed to “a great princess” by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his “Confessions” long before poor Marie is alleged to have said it.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy’s celebrated daughter, was noted around Washington for her wicked tongue. Alas, she reluctantly denied ever making the following reference to Thomas Dewey in his campaign for the presidency against Harry Truman: “How can the Republican Party nominate a man who looks like a bridegroom on a wedding cake?” Roosevelt said: “I didn’t say it, but I wish I had.”

She also was credited with saying, “Calvin Coolidge was weaned on a pickle.” Actually it came from her doctor, who got it from another patient. “Of course,” said Alice, “I repeated it to everyone I saw.”

It was Joe Louis, before his fight with Billy Conn, who said, “He can run, but he can’t hide.”

Try to revise that one.