The Forgotten Founding Father- Noah Webster (33 page)

But Webster soon abandoned this school dictionary. The precise reason is unclear. In his memoir, he offered an incomplete explanation: “the plan not pleasing him, he [N.W.] destroyed the manuscript.” In contrast to his two Connecticut neighbors, Webster would focus solely on the adult marketplace and go far beyond just incorporating Americanisms. As he also noted in this initial press release, “A work of this kind is absolutely necessary, on account of differences between the American and English language. New circumstances, new modes of life, new laws, new ideas of various kinds give rise to new words. . . . The differences in the languages of the two countries will continue to multiply and render it necessary that we should have Dictionaries of the American Language.” Though a political reactionary, Webster was a linguistic revolutionary. He proposed to create an entirely new language, an American version of English. His dictionary would thus make obsolete the work of both Johnson and Johnson Jr.

The revelation that one of America’s foremost men of letters had officially entered the lexicography business was national news. However, the swift verdict rendered on Webster’s new vocation, which was nearly unanimous, was: ridiculous. Both Federalists and Republicans responded with contempt. Just three days later, a columnist in
The Gazette,
one of Philadelphia’s leading Federalist papers, advised Webster “to turn his mind from language-making to something really useful. . . . there is nothing I am more desirous to avoid than God’s curse in a confusion of tongues.” A generation after the Revolution, most Americans, including Webster’s Federalist allies, saw the linguistic status quo as sacred. In an article, “On the Scheme of an American Language,” published in his journal,
The Monthly Magazine and American Review,
that summer, Charles Brockden Brown traced this mainstream view back to the Hebrew scriptures, which had taught that “diversity of language” was an “evil.” As Brown argued, Webster was heading in the wrong direction: “This evil, like other evils inflicted by heaven, we are permitted to repair and diminish in some degree.” After all, in the preface to his dictionary, Samuel Johnson had also railed against the “caprices of innovation” in language. The lexicographer’s job, as Johnson defined it, was to create order out of chaos, and Webster, according to his critics, proposed to do just the opposite.

Likewise, on June 12, Joseph Dennie—the editor of Philadelphia’s other prominent Federalist paper,
The Gazette of the United States,
who four years earlier had written Webster a fan letter about
The Prompter
—also lambasted him. Dennie’s weapon of choice was a half page of missives from faux readers exemplifying the chaos that might ensue should Webster’s new publishing venture succeed. The following letters illustrate two potentially new forms of debased English:

Describing himself as “An Enemy to Innovation,” Dennie also added to the barrage: “If as Mr Webster asserts, it is true that many new words have already crept into the language of the United States, he would be much better employed in rooting out the noxious weed than in mingling them with the flowers. Should he, however, persist in his attempt to erect a revolution in our language, I trust that a system fraught with such pernicious consequences will meet with the contempt it deserves from all the friends of literature.”

Twenty-five years after Lexington and Concord, Webster’s plan to replace the King’s English had few takers; his linguistic revolution would be a lonely one.

The equally fierce Republican opposition was actually the more surprising. Though Republican editors had been vilifying Webster’s political views for nearly a decade, they might have been expected to embrace his “bottom-up” approach to lexicography. After all, Webster the wordsmith was a compiler, not a prescriber; in the dictionary, as in the speller, he championed the words of the common man—language as it was, not as it ought to be. But that June, Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of Philadelphia’s Republican paper, the
Aurora,
smeared Webster, calling him “this oddity of literature.” For Bache, in contrast to the Federalist editors, Webster’s whole career—not just his recent turn to lexicography—was an embarrassment:

But Bache was just heaping abuse on Webster. In reality, Webster had already made his money. For Webster, as opposed to his idol, Samuel Johnson, dictionary-making was not a means, but an end in itself.

Even Connecticut Federalists had nothing kind to say. In the fall of 1801, Warren Dutton—dubbed “a pupil of the Connecticut pope” because he had studied divinity under Timothy Dwight at Yale—repeatedly attacked Webster in his “Restorator” columns in the
New England Palladium,
a new Federalist paper out of Boston. On October 2, Dutton, who worked as assistant editor under Webster’s longtime friend Jedidiah Morse, mocked “the great lexicographer” for planning to add a bunch of silly words to the English language. Dutton didn’t think much of the locally grown “happify” (which Webster had used in his recent editions of his speller), “lengthy” or “belittle.” According to Dutton, Webster would be creating not an American dictionary but rather one solely of “the vulgar tongue in New England.” Noting that the explorer Sebastian Cabot had first discovered the eastern states, Dutton wondered, “Would it not be better to prefix to it [the dictionary] the epithet Cabotian?” In his November 2 column, “the Restorator” published an inflammatory letter by “Aristarchus” (the pen name of the Boston pastor John Gardiner). Concerned that Webster had not yet been “subdued,” Gardiner hoped to prevent the Connecticut lexicographer from injecting “barbarisms . . . into books.” “But if he will persist,” Gardiner lamented, “in spite of common sense, to furnish us with a dictionary which we do not want, in return for his generosity, I will furnish him with a title for it. Let, then, the projected volume of foul and unclean things bear his own Christian name and be called NOAH’s ARK.”

Webster felt betrayed. On November 10, he fired back with a letter to the
Palladium
in which he accused Dutton of attempting “to vilify a fellow citizen . . . whose whole life has been devoted to . . . the honor and . . . the rights of his country.” Webster replied that it was reasonable to add many well-established words to English lexicons; all that mattered was that the new definitions were “correct.” To put Dutton in his place, Webster clarified the meaning of his pseudonym: “As the word Restorator is the least known in this country, I might take the liberty of defining it according to the sense it bears in the gentleman’s own writings,
viz, a man who . . . retails ordinary fare
.”

One of the few sympathetic voices was William Rind, editor of the
Washington Federalist,
who expressed his hope that Webster, “heedless of the sarcasms of those who are fond of
belittling
every thing American. . . . will bestow on his mediated undertaking all that attention and investigation which have marked his former writings.” But even without any encouragement, Webster was prepared to go on. This loner was used to fighting against the rest of the world. Though nothing could stop him now, completing his two planned dictionaries would prove much more difficult than he ever imagined.

W
hen will Squire Webster be returning home?”

That’s what Rebecca Webster, eight months pregnant with the couple’s sixth child (who would turn out to be Eliza), kept hearing from her Water Street neighbors throughout December 1803. Though she wasn’t sure herself, Rebecca would answer, “At Christmas.”

But Webster wouldn’t be back until after the beginning of the New Year.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, Webster headed to Philadelphia to procure types for the revised version of his spelling book. During his two-month hiatus, New Haven was not quite the same. Without its leader, the choir at the Brick Meeting House ceased singing.

During his travels, Webster stayed in touch by mail. The letters from his two eldest daughters, Emily, then thirteen, and Julia, then ten, provide a unique glimpse into how the Webster children related to their paterfamilias.

Feeling put upon by all the activity in his bustling household, the socially awkward scholar demanded not only submission to parental authority but also cheerfulness. He was a topsy-turvy parent, tending to look to his children for affection and support rather than the other way around. His manner was intimidating, and his preferred mode of communication was the lecture. When writing from upstate New York that summer, he tried to turn his itinerary into a pedagogical exercise: “Such is my progress my dear girls and you must take your maps and trace it out. . . . It will help you to remember the geography of this country.” Quick to anger, Webster could get highly animated about matters of principle. And jokes with double entendres or coarse references of any sort could set off a tirade. While he mostly directed his outrage toward other adults (rather than family members), his children often felt fear in his presence. After witnessing a harsh rebuke toward a particular “culprit,” one of the girls once blurted out, “Papa makes me siver [shiver] like a top.” Webster also had a punitive streak. While on a trip years later, he wrote to Eliza, “If my name is a terror to
evil doers
at home, I hope there will be little occasion to use it. Tell Louisa there must be no
evil doings
at home & if I do not learn that she is a good girl, I shall not bring her pretty things when I return.”

In their letters that winter, both Emily and Julia tried their best to win their father’s favor. Unfortunately, this tack meant internalizing his critical temperament and burdening themselves with feelings of inadequacy. On November 24, 1803, an apologetic Emily had a hard time putting pen to paper, writing from her father’s study, “However, as it [this letter] is intended for my father’s perusal, and he well knows what an ignoramus his Emily is—I will scribble just what pops into my head first.” Identifying with Webster, Emily, too, lapsed into the third person to talk about herself; likewise, just as he often complained about family intrusions into his dictionary-making, the teenager expressed annoyance with her rambunctious younger siblings—namely, her sisters Harriet and Mary, and the two-year-old William: “Pardon, Dear Pappa, the many mistakes and blots I have made occasioned by frequent interruptions and the noise of the children in the next room.”

A couple of weeks later, Rebecca, Emily and Julia all passed on their thoughts in a joint update to Webster. Keenly missing her husband, Rebecca was upset that a time had not yet been set for his return: “It is now three
long
weeks since you left us.” She also complained of ill health, stressing, “Yet I am as well as I can
reasonably
expect to be.” In contrast, Emily’s tone was more lighthearted; she reported on how she and her siblings, no doubt patterning themselves after the eminent wordsmith, made fun of the baby’s pronunciation errors: “William grows fat and very funny. . . . Some times we speak a hard word on purpose to hear his little blunders for he repeats every word we say.” Up next, Julia hoped to impress her father with her industriousness and attention to detail, writing, “I go to school very steadily & pass 8 or 9 hours there every day, there are 68 scholars. . . . I have began [
sic
] ciphering [arithmetic] and have got to multiplication. & I have almost finished a little cap—for somebody.” After finishing her remarks, Julia signed off with “your most dutiful daughter,” omitting her name.

The day after Christmas, Emily shared some joyful news with her father: “The dear babe is plump and weighs 8 pounds; we wait for your consent to call it Elizabeth.” In that letter, Emily also added a poignant plea for his love: “We have just received your kind letter, but I am half angry to think that papa would say William needed beauty when he is so much handsomer than any of us so that is as much as to say we all [
sic
] ugly as witches, but it is a truth I always knew and tho wanting in beauty I hope I am not wanting in affection to my dear papa.”

 

 

“HAVE YOU COMPLETED your dictionary?” So asked Webster’s uncle, Eliphalet Steele, in a letter dated May 20, 1801, at which time the forty-two-year-old retired newspaper editor had hardly begun.

Webster would face this query time and time again over the next twenty-seven years, and he eventually gave up trying to respond. As he would write his brother-in-law Thomas Dawes several years later, “I am often asked what progress I have made in the compilation of my proposed dictionary; and when in all probability it will be completed. To these questions I am not able to give precise answers, as the field of inquiry enlarges with every step I take.”