Conveying Fibs in a Volley of Oaths, Part II

In my previous post, I shared some of the impressions that Dr. Alexander Hamilton had of his fellow Americans as he traveled the Northeast in the 1740s.

One difficulty Hamilton faced was how local customs changed from one area to the next. For example, in Albany, New York, Hamilton found that when he met women, they expected to be kissed in the European style. Hamilton unkindly remarked, “This might almost pass for a penance, for the generality of the women here . . . are remarkably ugly.”

As to language, the good doctor found that he could barely understand many of his fellow colonists. In New York, Hamilton’s innkeeper had this to say about cooking:

“As to cuikry, I defaa ony French cuik to ding me, bot a haggis is a dish I wadna tak the trouble to mak. Look ye, gentlemen, there was anes a Frenchman axed his frind to denner. His frind axed him ‘What ha’ ye gotten till eat?’ ‘Four an’ twanty legs of mutton,’ quo’ he, ‘a’ sae differently cuiked that ye winna ken whilk is whilk.’”

Wait, I think I get it— No, I really don't.

Other adventures include the time Hamilton met a man with “buttons as large as a turnip,” and the time when Hamilton was napping beneath a willow tree and he had an encounter with a cow: “I was waked by a cow that was eating my handkerchief which I had put under my head. I pursued her for some time before I recovered it.”

So in reading Hamilton’s account, one finds that his fellow eighteenth-century Americans were variously funny, tough, wild, prejudiced, crude, pushy or shy, and rather greedy. For a different perspective, let’s look at what people from other countries thought of early Americans. In 1827, an Englishwoman named Frances Trollope moved to the United States. To document her culture shock, she wrote a book titled Domestic Manners of the Americans.

It was a pretty bad Manners. Trollope could forgive Americans for cursing and spitting all the time. She could have maybe gotten over how smug, preachy, and full of strong opinions they were. And while she was shocked at how avidly they grubbed for money, she could stomach it. But the Englishwoman would not stand for hypocrisy. As she put it:

“You will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing [on] the rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil [Native Americans], whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.”

Ouch. Famed novelist Charles Dickens toured the states not long after Trollope published, and he was struck at how Americans seemed to always view themselves the social equals of anyone, actual merits notwithstanding. In his American Notes for General Circulation (1842), the author (who was renowned for his warm-hearted charity) really let us have it:

“Their demeanour is invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humour, vivacity or the capacity for enjoyment.”

When an author as renowned for his kindess as Dickens conveys insults in a volley of vituperation, there is only one possible response: Zinger!

My sources are here.

Conveying Fibs in a Volley of Oaths, Part I

“Were these colonies left to themselves tomorrow, America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion.”
—James Otis, revolutionary from Massachusetts, 1765

Benjamin Franklin once described a group of typical Americans as “little better than Dunces and Blockheads.”

Harsh? Perhaps, but most early Americans were earthy, hardworking people; in 1830, farmers made up about 70 percent of the total United States population. (This was a time when livestock made an excellent birthday gift.) For a snapshot of these forefolks, let’s check in with Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712-1756). He's not the Alexander Hamilton shot by Aaron Burr, but rather a physician who traveled throughout the Northeast in the 1740s.

Hamilton kept a journal of his journeys in which he carefully described the manners of the people met. This was published in 1744 as Gentleman’s Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton. In it, Hamilton relates that one landlady heated up leftover clams in a bedpan. Oh my. And in taverns and coffee shops, he found many Americans who spoke so loudly they “spit in one’s face at three or four foot’s distance.” (Star-mangled manners?)

One thing that is clear in reading Hamilton's account is the interesting demographic mix to be found in cities. In Philadelphia, he described sitting down at a tavern’s great table to dine with a motley crew of twenty-five other guests:

"There were Scots, English, Dutch, Germans, and Irish; there were Roman Catholicks, Church men, Presbyterians, Quakers, Newlightmen, Methodists, Seventh day men, Moravians, Anabaptists, and one Jew."

As for entertainment, a seventy-five-year old man performed for Hamilton by jumping on his bum “without touching the floor with any other part of his body. Then he turned and did the same upon his belly.”

As he toured about, Hamilton was amazed by the attention people paid to a simple traveler like himself. Both Greenwich Village and Providence, Rhode Island, were full of bumpkins who stared with open mouths. The people “were as simple and awkward as sheep, and so wild that they would not appear in open view but kept peeping at me from behind doors, chests, and benches.”

But not everyone was shy. Hamilton was most offended by the bigmouths he met on his journey. At every turn, the doctor ran into brash know-it-alls, ignorant clods, and, most annoying, liars and cheats. In Pennsylvania, he wrote, a person “will tell a lie with a sanctified, solemn face; a Marylander, perhaps, will convey his fib in a volley of oaths.” Just like today!
(My sources are here.)