This memoir of Grant is a fascinating one, but then so is Grant. (Note,
incidentally, that the surname “Grant” is monosyllabic, and starts with the
consonantal group “Gr” – is this casuality, or causality?)
McEvoy comments:
“Who, pray tell, is the mysterious Oxonian philosopher who[se surname] begins
with "Gr"? So intriguing. I was going to guess "Grunebaum", but then I don't
think he's Oxonian.”
McEvoy’s not thinking that Grunenbaum is Oxonian is possibly equivalent
(logically) to McEvoy’s thinking that Grunenbaum is NOT Oxonian, but I
disgress.
One virtue of Grant’s memoir is its understatedness. As Pears’s Encyclopaedia
has it, under ‘understatement’: “understatement is a very English thing.” Pears
is English and it’s nice he recognised this virtue in his lot.
McEvoy:
“Grant's understatedness and impliedness reminds me of God, no less, who lacks
a surname. God's "Ten Commandments" leave so much understated or implied -
"Thou shalt not kill", for example, where it is not stated what we must not
kill, only implied that it is "other humans", and in fact originally only that
subset within the tribes of Israel.”
While I take the point, I realise that in the instance cited by McEvoy God is
communicating (or ‘conversing,’ shall we say) with Moses, a human. Since
Moses’s religion is mono-theistic (as opposed to the Graeco-Roman one), God
cannot have a conversation with other gods – and it may be argued that God’s
“understatedness and impliedness,” to use McEvoy’s conjunctional phrase, is due
to the fact that God is communicating with a member of the class non-God. But I
possibly disgress.
McEvoy does not seem to care that God’s ‘commandments’ are human-directed, and
adds:
“And without God making clear such killing (as is prohibited) is a very bad
thing, not just inadvisable or a bit cheeky. That's a lot of understatement.
And a lot of impliedness. You would think God is just speaking off-the-cuff,
rather than making Commandments. If laws were drafted this way, there'd be no
end of trouble. On the other hand, God probably realised it was not feasible to
draft watertight Commandments because the tablets would be too heavy for Moses
for carry down the mountain. Hence God make implicature central to
understanding everything.”
While I take the point that Grant compares to God in their use of
‘understatedness and impliedness,’ I think there are further divergences. Grant
is writing a memoir. God isn’t.
And, as Calvin Trillin once said, “memoir is an atrocity arms race.”
If Grant and God are into, er, to use McEvoy’s phrase, “implicature,” Trillin
alas ain’t. That adage by Trillin “memoir is an atrocity arms race” does
OVERstate things a bit, even if he may have a point, and if you’re into
metaphor.
But why do we say that Grant is being Oxonian?
The author of perhaps the most widely acclaimed of all memoirs endured dark
personal struggles, but uttered nothing about them.
Stranger still, Grant barely acknowledges in his memoir that he has served two
terms as president of a country. (It might be argued that, as this Oxonian
philosopher would say, Grant is taking that ‘for granted,’ i.e. as part of the
‘common ground’ between he, uttering his ‘memoir’ and the intended addressee).
What gives this peculiarly reticent memoir its power?
Above all, authenticity – or as Baroness O’Neill would say, ‘trust’: “We tend
to trust the man.”
If Grant’s voice is, unlike perhaps Plath’s, never confessional, it almost
never rings false. As Baroness O’Neill would say, “he comes out as a pretty
trustworthy chap.”
Matthew Arnold, a snob who once said that “only the poor LEARN at Oxford,”
found Grant to be “humane, simple, modest; from all restless self-consciousness
and desire for display perfectly free.”
As the addressee of Grant’s memoir (rather than, say, the recipient of the
tablets from God, to use McEvoy’s simile), you want to believe — you have to
believe, nay — that an absence of artifice defines Grant the man as well as
Grant the ‘utterer’. I think it did.
He once advised his son that, in order to win respect, “never deceive nor act
an artificial part. Be simply yourself.”
It might be argued that God is not artificial. Da Vinci once said to a friend:
“Nature, to me, is God’s art”. (They were discussing the ‘natural/artificial’
distinction, which Da Vinci thought a dogma).
That distinguishes Grant from many of his contemporaries.
They liked a big show, and even admired affectation. The Union general George
McClellan defends the “frequent reviews,” or parades, that he holds in
Washington rather than march his men toward the Confederate capital. “A general
with a quick eye can see things when riding at a gallop which would seem
impossible to a civilian,” he notes. “These reviews also had a good effect in
accustoming the troops to see me, although they saw so much of me in their
camps and on the picket-lines that this was of minor importance.”
It is hard to see the appeal of McClellan’s self-regard and concocted grandeur.
It’s easier to like, nay love, Grant (whose surname is monosyllabic, and starts
with the consonantal group “Gr-”)
In his memoir, Grant expresses his “rigorous distaste” for “ceremony, theatre
and, mostly, oratory” by describing two generals of the war against Mexico, in
which Grant fights bravely as a West Point graduate.
Grant admires the unaffected Zachary Taylor, who “dressed himself entirely for
comfort,” in civilian clothes.
But Winfield Scott “always wore all the uniform allowed by law,” Grant
observes: “dress uniform, cocked hat, aiguillettes,” loops of braid at the
shoulder, “saber, and spurs.”
While Grant respects Scott’s ability, he does not quite respect his ‘tone.’
Grant notes that Scott is “not averse to speaking of himself, often in the
third person, and he could bestow praise upon the person he was talking about
without the least embarrassment.”
There is a Gr- term for that ‘illeism,’ not to be confused with Victorian
majestic plural (“We ARE amused.”) – but, to use McEvoy’s term of art, the
‘implicatures’ are comparable (but then everything is comparable – more
formally, for any x and y, x and y can ALL WAYS be compared).
That’s funny — Scott’s illeism -- almost Calvin-Trillin funny, if you want —
but we hear the bite.
As modest and decent as he is, Grant appears to have clutched in his pocket a
little squirming snake of resentment.
After the war against Mexico, Grant fails in the Army because of one secret
shame (some call it “alcoholism,” if you mustn’t) at a time when temperance was
a major cultural force.
Grant scrabbled hard in the years that followed, trapped in a desert of poverty.
Grant returns to duty in the Civil War and wins victory after victory, rising
so high that Congress resorts to creating new ranks for him.
His enemies retaliate by making his shame public, charging him with drunkenness.
He felt the scorn of patricians like Henry Adams, who concluded he was
“pre-intellectual and would have seemed so even to the cave-dwellers.”
Here and there, Grant shows how much it hurt, though.
In cutting Scott, Grant goes beyond a mere lack of affectation into positive
derision, mocking the pretensions of the Society that mocked him.
“Perhaps never has a memoir so objective in form seems so personal in every
line,” Edmund Wilson observes, and I agree.
But I disagree that Grant’s voice is “aloof and dispassionate.” Nobody whose
surname starts with “Gr-“ and is monosyllabic (the surname, I mean) can be
dispassionate.
Pain flickers behind the stolid pillars of Grant’s memoir.
Grant (but hardly God, to refer to McEvoy’s analogical argument) reflects his
internal state off external surfaces, as with Taylor and Scott.
Early on, Grant describes how as a boy he botched a negotiation for a horse — a
telling anecdote, as financial failures agonized him — and the ensuing
ridicule. (God would hardly have botched a negotiation for a horse).
“Boys enjoy the misery of their companions, at least village boys in that day
did; and in later life I have found that all adults are not free from the
peculiarity.” (On the other hand, to say that God is an adult is theologically
controversial).
Cheers,
Speranza
