The Loose Cannon Essayist of Post-Revolution America

by Stephen J. Gertz

"As the people of America may not be informed who Peter Porcupine is, the celebrated manufacturer of lies, and retailer oi filth, I will give you some little account of this pestiferous animal. This wretch was obliged to abscond from his darling Old England to avoid being turned off into the other world before, what he supposed, his time. It may be well imagined, that in a land of liberty and flowing with milk and honey, his precipitate retreat could not have been owing to any offence committed against the government very honourable to himself.

"Gnawed by the worm that never dies, his own wretchedness would ever prevent him from making any attempt in favour of human happiness. His usual occupation at home was that of a garret-scribbler, excepting a little night-business occasionally, to supply unavoidable exigencies; Grubb-Street did not answer his purposes, and being scented by certain tipstaffs for something more than scribbling, he took a French leave for France. His evil genius pursued him here, and as his fingers were as long as ever, he was obliged as suddenly to leave the Republic" (Paul Hedgehog, from the Preface).

"This Paul Hedgehog I know nothing of. I can hardly suppose that he is one of my cousins at New-York: if he be, for the honor of our family, I hope that he is a bastard. Let them write on, till their old pens are worn to the stump: let the devils sweat; let them fire their balls at my reputation, till the very press cries out murder. If ever they hear me whine or complain, I will give them leave to fritter my carcass and trail my guts along the street, as the French sans-culottes did those of Thomas Mauduit" (Peter Porcupine, from the Preface).

Porcupine and Hedgehog are one and the same animal, William Cobbett, the loose cannon of post-Revolution American journalism, an essayist who never let propriety get in the way of a colorful, unmercifully sarcastic attack based upon facts evidenced from his imagination. He was, in that regard, not unlike a few modern, self-pitying (and pitiful) political pundits on cable-TV: wildly irresponsible yet irresistibly entertaining for all except the objects of his scorn and their allies. His essays were, essentially, voodoo dolls with a volley of porcupine quills shot into them, his political opponents pin-cushions, his enemies dart boards. Times have changed. Cobbett, no matter where he settled, soon had to flee the consequences of his writing. Now, wacko pundits get book deals, the reward for throwing brickbats in the modern world.

William Cobbett (1763-1835). "British journalist, served in the army in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and fled to the U.S. (1792) to escape litigation resulting from his unsubstantiated exposés of army frauds. In Philadelphia he opened a bookstore, published Porcupine's Gazette (1797-1799), and with delightful effrontery got into one scrape after another, reflected in his vituperative Federalist pamphlets against the Republican friends in France. These include A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats (1795); A Kick for a Bite (1795); The Scare-Crow (1796); and the scurrilous Life of Tom Paine (1796). He also attacked Joseph Priestley as a radical and infidel in Observations on the Emigration of Dr. Priestley (1794). This era is described in good homespun prose in the Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796)" (Oxford Companion to American Literature).

In March of 1797, he attacked Noah Webster for "grammatical inaccuracy." In this assault with a poison quill, Cobbett declared Webster an "illiterate booby," "inflated self-sufficient pedant," a "very great hypocrite," and "something of a traitor." He didn't mince words; he minced the objects of his scorn, slicing and dicing with the brio of a master chef with a santoku knife. It was not unusual for his subjects to wake-up and discover that they had been julienned. He hurled invective like an Olympic hammer-thrower.

In one of his wilder moments he accused Dr. Benjamin Rush of criminal malpractice in the death of George Washington. In this, another fine mess he'd gotten himself into, he was convicted of libel, fled to England until things cooled-off, once a Tory became a radical, and eventually returned to the U.S.

The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine, "In brief...describes Cobbett's boyhood; flight to London; clerkship to an attorney; career in the army, mainly in New Brunswick, 1784-1791; discharge as Sergeant Major; marriage; to France in March 1792; to New York October 1792; letter from Jefferson November 5, 1792; his dispute with Thomas Bradford; the payments made to him by Bradford, ending in March 1796; accusations he was in British pay" (Gaines, Pierce W. William Cobbett and the United States 1792-1830. A Bibliography with Notes and Abstracts). 

While well-represented in institutional collections, this book is a true scarcity in the marketplace.  Since ABPC began, in 1923, to index auction results only two copies have come to market, in 1938 and 1957. A faint penciled note to the titlepage verso indicates that this copy was bought for $1.50 in January, 1878, from Hockwood, Brooks & Co. It's now a four-figure book.

It is a measure of his sarcastic, ironic, sometimes self-deprecating humor that the subtitle to Cobbett's The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine is, A Sure and Infallible Guide for All Enterprising Young Men Who Wish To Make a Fortune by Writing Pamphlets. Christopher Hitchens, a relentlessly  more talented slayer of saints and dragons whose relationship to the truth, irony, and wit was keen rather than crazy-like-Cobbett, could not have expressed it better.

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[COBBETT, William]. The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine, with a Full and Fair Account of All His Authoring Transactions; Being a Sure and Infallible Guide for All Enterprising Young Men Who Wish To Make a Fortune by Writing Pamphlets. By Peter Porcupine Himself. Philadelphia: Printed for, and Sold by, William Cobbett, 1796.

First edition. Octavo (8 x 4 3/8 in; 203 x 113 mm). viii, [9]-58, [1, advert.], [1, blank] pp.

This copy bound in later red calf in period-style over original early 19th-century marbled boards. Gilt-lettered spine. Light scattered foxing. Bookplate ghost to front free endpaper. Bookplates of Newburyport Athenaeum (Massachusetts) and L.F. Dimmick, pastor of the North Church in Newburyport, to front paste-down endpaper.

Howes C-519. Evans 30212. Gaines 19b, variant with misaligned type on p. 19 corrected.
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Image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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To Bee or Not Bee? That is the Spelling Question

by Stephen J. Gertz

Verne (H.G.) [The] Spelling [rebus:] Bee.
A Humourous and Original Comic Song ...
Sung Nightly with the Greatest Success.
Music at Hopwood and Crew’s. 1876.

“On Thursday evening last, your correspondent attended the much talked of ‘Spelling Bee’ held in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, and enjoyed it exceedingly” (Bucks County Gazette, April 1, 1875).

“The spelling fever is playing bob with our pet phrases; ‘too diaphanously attenuated’ is now the substitute for ‘too thin’” (Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, March, 1875).

"The spelling-bee mania has spread over all England, and attacked London with especial virulence" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June, 1876).

1876 was a banner year for spelling bees. In addition to The Spelling Bee, a c. 1876 collection of popular English Music Hall songs, COPAC records a flood of spelling bee-related titles in that year; the craze spelled enjoyable, wildly popular recreation on both English-speaking sides of the Atlantic. But the English really went mad for them, bees in their bonnets abuzz.

"Informal spelling contests among neighbours or in schools had long been held for recreation or instruction or as tests. They were called spelling matches, a name which appears in the USA in the 1840s. The term spelling bee wasn’t applied to them at the time, since bee was then firmly attached to the idea of communal manual work (yet another, spelldown, modeled on hoe-down, only arrived at the end of the century). The basis for most of these competitions was the famous Blue-Back Speller of Noah Webster, The Elementary Spelling Book, a work which sold more than 80 million copies in the 100 years after its publication in 1783" (Michael Quinion).

In May of 1875, the Staffordshire Sentinel, a newspaper in Stoke-on-Trent, reported that “On Monday evening an entertainment of novel, amusing, and instructive character, was given in the Temperance Hall, Dresden — a spelling match, or what the Americans call a spelling bee.”

As the fad caught momentum spelling bees actually became fashionable. “The ladies will be behind the age if they don’t have a spelling bee,” the Oakland Daily Evening Tribune reported in March, 1875.

Alas, all fevers eventually break, and fashion is fleeting.

"The craze didn’t last long: as early as May 1875 the Daily Gazette And Bulletin of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, remarked that 'The spelling fever has almost entirely subsided, and the buzz of the bee is scarcely heard any more.' This was premature, at least for other parts of the USA, but the evidence suggests it was not a long-lived fashion; spelling bees went back to being popular in a low-key way, as they had been before the craze erupted" (Quinion).

Bee that as it may, they have persisted, if for no other reason than they are, perhaps, the geekiest of all geek-fests yet enjoyed by all. It's always a humbling thrill to marvel at  a 10-year old who can spell antidisestablishmentarianism when many adults can't spell relief without TUMS.

In 2002, Spellbound, a documentary about guess what, was released to wide critical acclaim. Following the trials of nine contestants in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee, it won an Emmy award and, in 2008, was voted one the Top Five Documentaries of All Time by the International Documentary Association.

Given current popular culture, I suspect the audience for spelling bees and participants would dramatically increase if "spelling bee" was tossed over the side in favor of "spelling smackdown." I see the WWF's Vince McMahon in the ring announcing the contestants, who have to pin their opponents for a three-count before victory is declared. Cardinal Spellman, 'natch, on deck to provide last rites should the action get too violent and 12-year old Sammy "The Animal" O'Shaunnessy require a visa to Valhalla after dropping that pesky "h" in floccinaucinihilipilification (the act or habit of describing or regarding something as worthless, the word floccinaucinihilipilification, for instance).

Of course, anyone writing about spelling bees would be remiss if not acknowledging the Great Aunt of All Bees:

Now, Barney, if you want a piece of shoo-fly pie
you'll have to spell floccinaucinihilipilification first.

( ! )

Mention must be made of some other ditties within The Spelling Bee, which present what appears to be an all too familiar and tragic narrative:

Fair English Girls; A Little Lock of Hair; Naughty Young Man; Georgie, Georgie, Do; Another Good Man Gone Wrong; I've Gone Wrong for the Sake of Sarah. At this point, things take a really sad turn, the following song providing a denouement of defeat, resignation, and questionable family relations:

Tommy Make Room for Your Uncle.

I omit The Galvanic Battery. For the sake of Sarah, too shocking. I done her wrong already. That's "wrong" with a silent "w."
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Verne (H.G.) [The] Spelling [rebus:] Bee. A Humourous and Original Comic Song ... Sung Nightly with the Greatest Success. Music at Hopwood and Crew’s. [Followed by the titles of nearly 100 songs].  J.T. Wood & Co., [c. 1876],  Folio, [8] pp. Title with very large woodcut of a magnified bee (forming the rebus element of the title), printed on very thin paper, the songs printed in microscopic type in seven columns.

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Image courtesy of Blackwell Rare Books, with our thanks. They are currently offering this scarce title.
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Michael Quinion's World Wide Words has an excellent article about spelling bees here.
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New Online Dictionary For Word Mavens

In the beginning there was the Word.

But without a dictionary no one knew how to spell it, pronounce it, how to use it in a sentence, if there was another word that was its opposite or meant the same thing, or where the word came from. In short, the whole story of the word was unavailable to the speaker.
For the writer, fugetaboutit; tough enough to carve out those cuneiforms, you had to wing it on spelling and all the rest.

Thence wrote Samuel Johnson his dictionary. Then Noah Webster. The Oxford English Dictionary followed. (Yes, I know I’m leaving out the Grimm Bros. - yes, those Grimm brothers - Deutsches Wörterbuch of 1838, the largest early dictionary, and a bunch of others but I’m stickin’ to lexicons I can actually read and use).

Over the decades, however, the amount of info provided on a particular word in dictionaries has declined as the number of new words added has increased. Much has been lost.

For wordsters with a yen for everything you ever needed to know about a word, the good ship lollipop has weighed anchor and its name is Wordnik, a new online dictionary that aims to have it all.


Launched by Erin McKean, former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik is a word-feast offering a summary, definitions from dictionaries old and new, related words, pronunciations, real-world usage examples, etymology, synonyms, antonyms, cross references, and usage statistics. One of its great advantages is the example sentences pulled from sources ranging from Twitter to newspaper articles. It even includes photos from Flickr to illustrate words.

"You can buy a camcorder that is almost as good as a professional video recorder. You can buy cooking equipment for your home that could be used in any restaurant," she said in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. "We don't have the pro-am version of a dictionary yet."

Wordnik is her very promising attempt to provide the amateur and professional writer, as well as the word-junkie, with a modern tool to satisfy their needs.

Workers of the word unite - and rejoice!
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