Sandy Hobbs and David Cornwell | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 1, 1995
In April, 1887, Mark Twain published in Century Magazine an article entitled “English As She Is Taught”. Caroline LeRow, a Brooklyn teacher, had sent him a manuscript, asking for his views on whether it was suitable for publication. Twain was enthusiastically in favour and his article “English As She Is Taught” was in effect a publicity blurb for LeRow’s forthcoming book of the same name (LeRow, 1887). Twain gave the following explanation of the origins of LeRow’s book:
From time to time, during several years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his recitations; this teacher and her associates have privately set that thing down in a memorandum-book; strictly following the original, as to grammar, construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this literary curiosity. (Twain, 188 7:932)
Of course, although Twain did not stress it, almost all of what Ms LeRow and her colleagues found “quaint or toothsome” could also be termed “errors”.
Some time after the article appeared, Twain received a letter from an English schoolmaster, J.F. Cornish, which drew attention to an article entitled “Boys’ Blunders” which he himself had contributed to the Cornhill Magazine in June of the previous year (Cornish, 1886). Cornish remarked on the “similarity, amounting in one or two cases to identity, between some of the answers quoted” and some given in his own earlier paper, also supposedly based on the collection made by himself and schoolmaster colleagues. Cornish wondered if Ms LeRow might have “jotted down a few specimens and forgot their source”. In other words, he was politely raising the question of unintentional plagiarism. Twain forwarded Cornish’s letter to LeRow, but we do not know what reply, if any, was sent (Twain, 1979).
Could Cornish’s suspicions have been correct? There are similarities between the two collections. We may start with a short simple example. Cornish (l886:622) mentions a boy who defined “Republican” as “sinner”. LeRow (188 7:7) gives the definition:
Republican – a sinner mentioned in the Bible.
The wording is not identical, but the central error is the same, a confusion of “republican” and “publican”. If we think the error is a likely one for a child to make, then it is not difficult to imagine an American child and a British one each making the same mistake independently.
Other similarities are not quite so easy to explain a ccoincidence. For example, Cornish (1886:623) quotes the following iitem:
Socrates was no use at fighting; he was very ugly; he had a flat nose, his eyes stuck out; he destroyed some statues, and had to drink the shamrock.
LeRow (1887:65) has:
Socrates was no use at fighting. He destroyed some statues' and had to drink shamrock.
Here then we have three features in common.
A third case is even more telling. First, from Cornish (1886:623), this passage:
Luther introduced Christianity a thousand years ago; his birthday was in November 1883. He was once a Pope; he lived at the time of the Rebellion of Worms.
Now LeRow (1887:61):
Luther introduced Christianity into England a good many thousand years ago. His birthday was November 1883. He was once a Pope. He lived at the time of the Rebellion of Worms.
It is surely difficult to imagine two children independently producing such similar nonsense. So what is the most likely relationship between the Cornish and the LeRow texts? The presence in the latter of the extra phrase “into England” and the idea of “many thousands of years” suggests that she did not merely copy Cornish’s text but elaborated it. More likely is the supposition that neither published text was a truly original and authentic error collected by the authors. Cornish and LeRow both acknowledge that they received texts from colleagues. Both may therefore have accepted as genuine items of dubious provenance.
It is not of particular concern to us whether Cornish in England and the Mark Twain/Caroline LeRow partnership in the United States were the first to go into print with howlers. Their special significance lies in the fact that they clearly indicate the existence at that time of the practice of collecting and passing on amusing errors made in school. Earlier collections of printed howlers might still emerge, possibly from some more obscure periodical. What is clear, however, is that soon after the publications by Cornish and LeRow, printed examples became common. We have found them, for example, in Boy's Own Paper, Girl’s Own Paper and the Journal of Education (Anonymous, 1889, 1896, 1898).
Neither Cornish nor LeRow used the term “howler”. The word emerged about that time, however, and indeed the earliest appearance in print of the word (carrying this particular meaning) seems to have been 1890. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites from the Athenaeum for that year. A later OED citation, dating from 1894, significantly refers to “the specimen of schoolboy blunders which, under the head of “howlers”, are so popular in our journals”. It has been argued that this meaning of “howler” derives from the phrase “howling blunder” which OED cites as occurring in 1884. It is possible that the emergence on a substantial scale of this practice of collecting and passing on “blunders” gave rise to a need for a distinctive term for them, which “howlers”, for a time at least, served. In the course of our investigations into the history of the howler, we have come across a number of terms which are used in roughly the same way. The Table below summarises some of the key points about these words as they are treated in OED. These terms are not necessarily identical in meaning, and some may be more likely to be used in one type of situation rather than another. They all have in common the fact that they allude to errors. However, in no case is “error” or “mistake” regarded as a sufficient definition. One way of distinguishing these words is that they refer to the size of the error, as indicated by “gross", “bad” and “very great”. However, we doubt if we will gain much by stressing size in itself, since there are so many different ways in which one might judge such a characteristic. For example, one might consider the causes of the error, the effects of the error, the reaction of other people, and so on. We suspect that it is in the reaction of other people that we are most likely to find the distinguishing features of “howlers”. What is not clear from OED definitions, but emerges from the observation of actual usage, is that these terms are used when the errors are treated as amusing. This comes through in definitions offered elsewhere. For example, The Comic Encyclopaedia (Esar, 1978) refers to “howler” as the British term for “an amusing classroom mistake”, and cites “boner” as the equivalent American term.
However, we wish to suggest that the fact that an error evokes amusement is not in itself sufficient to identify the distinctive characteristics of “howler” and similar terms. Our proposal is that howlers are best considered reported errors which evoke amusement; this “secondhand” nature of the howler is recognized, then it helps us better to interpret the great body of examples which are to be found in the various howler collections.
Words Indicating Emphatic Mistakes
| recorded* | word | meaning** | notes on derivation*** |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1706 | blunder | gross mistake/error due to stupidity or carelessness | (confusion, disturbance) |
| 1846 | bull | bad blunder | (self contradictory proposition) |
| 1889 | bloomer | very great mistake | < blooming error |
| 1890 | howler | glaring blunder/esp. in examination | < howling error (1884) |
| 1912 | boner | mistake/blunder | < bone-head (1908) |
| 1923 | brick | “drop a brick” = “make a bloomer” | |
| 1934 | boob | foolish mistake or blunder | < booby |
| 1947 | blooper | blunder/ howler esp. public or politically embarrassing | < bloop = howling noise |
| 1948 | clanger | mistake that attracts attention | < clang |
| 1954 | boo-boo | boob | < boob |
* earliest quotation cited in OED with this meaning.
** key words from definition in OED.
*** ( ) signifies an earlier meaning of the word;
< signifies earlier word or phrase from which it is derived.
References
Anonymous. (1889). “Cross questions and crooked answers", Boy's Own Paper, 1 1, 699-700.
Anonymous (1896). “Not a natural death", Girl’s Own Paper, 11 July, 653.
Anonymous. (1898). “Fresh howlers”, Journal of Education, February, 102.
Cornish, J.F. “Boys’ blunders”, Cornhill Magazine, 6, 619-628.
Esar, E. (1978). The Comic Encyclopaedia. New York: Doubleday.
LeRow, C. (1887). English As She Is Taught. New York: Cassell.
Twain, M. (1887). “English as she is taught", Century Magazine, 11, 932-936. . .
Twain, M. (1979). Mark Twain’s Notebooks And Journals, Vol. 3. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.