Founding Grammars (5 page)

Webster's enthusiasm for language study rescued him from his misery. As the challenge of writing gripped him, his depression disappeared. He worked steadily through the spring and summer of 1782 on a speller that, in his view, would be “better adapted to assist the learner than that of Dilworth.” Writing about the project to a friend, he said, “Popular prejudice is in favor of Dilworth … but he is not only out of date; but is really faulty and defective in every part of his work.” At the end of the letter, Webster sounded the theme that would run through all his writing about language: “America must be as independent in
literature
as she is in
politics
—as famous for
arts
as for
arms.
”
28

Before Webster could publish his improved speller, however, he would have to overcome some obstacles. His friend and former classmate, the poet Joel Barlow, pointed these out in a letter. Barlow wrote, “You know our country is prejudiced in favor of old Dilworth, the nurse of us all, and it will be difficult to turn their attention from it.” He reminded Webster that printers could be sure of selling Dilworth, so they would print large runs of the book and “afford it very cheap.” If the unknown Webster printed such large runs, he was likely to be left with unsold books. Smaller runs, on the other hand, would be expensive to print. Webster would either have to charge more or earn fewer profits.
29

Barlow was right in thinking that printers would not be eager to take on the risk of an unknown author. Webster was finally able to convince Hudson & Goodwin, publishers of the
Connecticut Courant
newspaper, to undertake the printing at Webster's expense. As he didn't have the money to pay the printers in advance, he had to commit himself to repaying the costs once the book was printed. If the book failed to sell, he would be bankrupt.

Webster's gamble paid off.
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Part I
appeared in October 1783, priced at fourteen pence a copy (about fifteen cents) or ten shillings a dozen (about $1.50). By the following May the first edition of 5,000 copies had sold out. Hudson & Goodwin printed a second edition, this time paying the costs themselves. The book appeared at a good time. The war was over, and with peace came a renewed interest in education. The demand for schoolbooks was on the rise. Webster's speller was easy to use and its American slant appealed to newly independent patriots.

One of Webster's innovations was a pronunciation key. He assigned a number to the various long and short vowel sounds—for instance, “1” represents the long vowel sounds of
a, e, i, o, u.
When pupils encountered
find
or
lace
marked with a “1” over the
i
or
a,
they immediately knew how to pronounce the word. Webster also brought the representation of words ending in –
tion
more in line with reality by treating the ending as a single syllable. Dilworth and others artificially divided it into
ti-on
for recitation purposes although that pronunciation had disappeared from ordinary speech.

Material designed to appeal to Americans was scattered through the book. Webster Americanized a number of place-names that were still commonly spelled using the original French orthography.
Ouisconsin,
for example, became the more English-looking
Wisconsin.
His reading lessons and lists featured topics that would interest citizens of the new country, such as American money values, facts about the states, and how to pronounce American place-names.

Hudson & Goodwin had sold 12,000 copies by the end of 1785. By 1790 they were printing about 20,000 copies annually for sale in Connecticut, now with the simplified title
The American Spelling Book.
Webster had licensed printers in other cities to produce and sell thousands more copies in their regions. By 1807 an estimated 200,000 copies were selling each year. Webster's speller was on its way to becoming one of the largest-selling books in American history. Eventually it would become a fixture in American classrooms. Familiarly known as the “Blue-backed Speller” because of its blue cloth cover, this first volume of the
Grammatical Institute
sold an estimated 15 million copies by 1837, an astonishing number considering that the country's population in the 1830s was under 13 million.
30

After
Part I
of the
Institute
was published, Webster began writing the remaining two volumes.
Part II
, the grammar book, appeared in March 1784 and
Part III,
the reader, in February 1785. Hudson & Goodwin undertook to publish both. Unfortunately, neither of these volumes would sell nearly as well as the speller.
Part II
was the least popular of the three volumes. Americans preferred Lowth and other conventional grammar books, Latin and all.

*   *   *

A Grammatical Institute, Part II
was actually not as unconventional as Webster sometimes claimed. Because he wanted teachers to adopt it for the classroom, he followed a traditional format for the most part, borrowing elements from both Dilworth and Lowth. As his linguistic attitudes grew more radical, he would revise future editions of the grammar to reflect his changing ideas.

Although Webster's preface attacks Dilworth as being too dependent on Latin and “invariably wrong” when describing features that are specific to English, he nonetheless organizes his book along the same lines as Dilworth's grammar section. Like Dilworth, he uses a question-and-response format. Similar in style to a Sunday school catechism, the question-and-response method was believed to be the easiest way for students to memorize and recite the material. Questions started with the general—
What is grammar?
—and moved to the particular—
Where is the adjective to be placed?

Webster's answer to
What is grammar?
—“the art of speaking and writing our thoughts with propriety”—is almost identical to Dilworth's—“the art of writing and speaking properly and syntactically.”
31
In later editions, Webster would revise his definition to bring it more in line with his evolving views, saying that “the use of English grammar” was “to teach the true principles and idioms of the English language.” The more Webster thought and read about English, the more committed he became to idiomatic American English.

Webster was not yet disillusioned with Lowth when he wrote
Part II
of the
Institute.
He praises Lowth in the book's preface, saying Lowth is “well acquainted with the origin and genius of the language,” although he thinks Lowth's “style and method are not suited to the capacities of youth.” He agrees with Lowth on various points that he will later attack. For instance, he advises using nominative case after
be
(
It is I
) rather than the more natural
It is me
. He also takes the same position as Lowth regarding stranded prepositions, writing that
Whom did you give it to?,
or even worse,
Who did you give it to?,
is “generally inelegant” and “in the grave and sublime styles is certainly inadmissible.”
32

Later,
Who did you give it to?
would be one of the constructions he strongly supported. In the 1800 edition of the
Institute,
he says, “It is the invariable practice to use
who
” rather than
whom
in such sentences, “except among people who are fettered by grammatical rules.” He continues, “In spite of rules,
Who is she married to?
is more agreeable than
Whom is she married to?
” In this same edition he changes his position on pronouns after
be,
coming down in favor of
It is me
and other objective-case pronouns (
It is him
or
her
) because they “have such a prevalence in English.”
33

Webster was moving gradually toward a defense of common American usages. He explains his new attitude in the preface to the 1800 edition, saying, “It is the business of grammar to inform the student, not how a language might have been originally constructed, but how it is constructed.… Anomalous phrases creep into a language in its infancy and become established idioms.… This is my reason for admitting some phrases as good English which the most respectable writers on this subject have condemned as ungrammatical.” His arguments would take on a more aggressive tone in later writings.

Webster adopts Lowth's idea of illustrating incorrect grammar with false syntax, but invents many of his own examples. These straightforward sentences are much simpler to follow than Lowth's literary illustrations. When writing about double negatives, he replaces Lowth's Milton quotation with the example
I do not know nothing about it,
a statement that would be familiar to students from their everyday speech.

Webster also provides a parsing exercise, but one distinctly different from Lowth's Bible passage. Instead he takes an excerpt from Henry Home's 1774
Sketches of the History of Man.
Because the book was only ten years old, the language would have sounded more modern than that of the Gospels. Still, it must have been daunting for young schoolchildren. The first sentence of the exercise reads, “A woman who has merit, improved by a virtuous and refined education, retains in her decline an influence over men more flattering than even that of beauty.” Webster suggests in a footnote that children use a pocket dictionary to help them understand the vocabulary.
34

The American flavor of the
Institute
comes through in some of Webster's examples. He lists
Mississippi
and
Philadelphia
as examples of proper nouns and demonstrates the use of articles before names with the phrase, “a traitor is called an Arnold.” In 1784, with the Revolutionary War just over, he knew his readers would immediately catch his reference to Benedict Arnold and approve of the sentiment expressed.

In his Baltimore lectures, given hardly more than a year after he wrote
Part II,
Webster would distance himself much more sharply from Lowth and other contemporary grammarians. Writing to his friend Timothy Pickering, Webster says that he “most pointedly” opposed Lowth in his talks and received no argument from the audience. He admits to Pickering, however, that although lecture audiences accepted his criticisms of popular grammar books in theory, they continued to buy them in preference to his own volume. He notes ruefully, “I convince the judgment, tho' I may not reform the practice.”
35
Webster's
Part II
was the first American grammar to achieve widespread classroom adoption, but it never reached the popularity of the British imports.

*   *   *

Webster's travel plans gained a new focus with the success of his Baltimore lecture series on the English language. Although he had already been on the road for six months, he decided to take the lectures to other cities. He still wanted to sell books, but now that wasn't his only goal. He also wanted to convince Americans to abandon Latin-based grammars and embrace the natural structure of English. He wrote enthusiastically to his friend, “I shall make one
General
effort to deliver literature and my countrymen from the errors that fashion and ignorance are palming upon Englishmen.”

Webster's decision meant another round of travel, no light undertaking in the late eighteenth century. Travel in colonial America was slow, uncomfortable, and often hazardous. Most roads were poorly maintained. So-called “corduroy” roads, made out of unfinished logs laid in rows, were treacherous for horses and wagons. In the South, where most people lived on remote plantations rather than in towns, roads were scarce. Unless travelers were headed for a courthouse, church, or other public gathering place, they had to forge their own path across fields and through forests.

Webster traveled on horseback most of the time, carrying his personal belongings in two heavy saddlebags and sending his books down the coast by sloop. Occasionally, he traveled by sloop himself or took the stagecoach. Both methods were uncertain. A sailing trip from Norfolk to Charleston, which should have taken only a few days, stretched out to nearly three weeks as squalls were followed by lack of wind. On one ill-fated stagecoach trip from Baltimore to Alexandria, the vehicle overturned on a corduroy road, leaving Webster to “curse all stage wagons” and return to town, where he hired a horse.

Webster would spend the next seven months speaking in cities all along the Eastern Seaboard, including Philadelphia, Dover, Trenton, and Albany. At the end of May 1786, thirteen months after setting out, he finally returned to his home in Hartford. He didn't stay long, however. By mid-June he was lecturing again, first in Hartford and New Haven, then farther afield—Boston, Providence, Salem, Newport.

Besides lecturing on grammar, Webster kept up a steady stream of essays on topics that interested him. He wrote an essay on manners and one on government. He wrote frequently to the newspapers, putting forth his opinions about language and politics and often drawing heated responses. News of Webster's contentious ways traveled to his father in West Hartford, who wrote advising him to “have courage but temper the same with prudence.”
36

On a return trip to Philadelphia he was offered a teaching post at the Episcopal Academy, where he stayed for several months. The chance to teach was a lucky opportunity for Webster to earn some extra money. Financial gain had not been the only reason for Webster's lecture tour, but he had hoped to earn more than he did. Webster's typical audiences, at around thirty or forty, had been disappointingly small, although he occasionally drew a crowd as large as three hundred. Sales of
A Grammatical Institute, Part II
also continued to lag well behind sales of the speller.