Postscripts

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

Early in May of 1831, two young Frenchmen arrived in the United States to study American penology and prison systems. Alexis de Tocqueville, 26, and Gustave de Beaumont, 29, were scions of old aristocratic families. To prepare for their trip, they studied the available literature about America. Their inspection tour of American prisons was actually a polite cover for their real interest: to study the social and political institutions of the young republic.

Indefatigable researchers, Tocqueville and Beaumont crisscrossed the United States from Canada to Louisiana and from the East Coast to Michigan on the western frontier. Traveling by steamboat and stagecoach, they visited 17 of the 24 states then in the union. Upon returning home, they wrote a joint report suggesting that France copy the penitentiary system in America. Working from notes gathered in their travels, Tocqueville later published his masterpiece entitled Democracy in America. It is still read and widely quoted for its trenchant observations on American society and institutions.

C-Span's Error
After researching the nine-month journey of Tocqueville and Beaumont through the United States, in May of 1997 the C-Span network began broadcasting from each stop on their trip. The TV tour, which was billed as "In Search of Tocqueville's Democracy in America," began in May of 1997. It concluded in February of 1998, coinciding with and commemorating their departure from New York City for France on February 20, 1832.

To mark Tocqueville's journey, C-Span erected plaques at the places where he and Beaumont stopped. In Peekskill, N.Y., a plaque was placed at the new waterfront park, Riverfont Green, to mark his visit to the area. Here is how C-Span described Toqueville's itinerary on July 1, 1831, based on its research in available records: "Leave Yonkers by steamboat; stop in Peekskill long enough to go hike Anthony's Nose; board the steamboat North America headed for Albany." But there is no documentary evidence that Tocqueville and Beaumont ever stopped at Peekskill, much less hiked to Anthony's Nose, which is north of Peekskill, near the present Bear Mountain Bridge. If not Peekskill and Anthony's Nose, what settlement and mountain had they visited?

Separating historical fact from historical fiction is a task often reserved for professional historians who follow in later generations. Nevertheless, the amateur historian of minor talents may sometimes dare to walk where the academic lifts his robes and stalks away. The evidence from which C-Span concluded that Tocqueville and Beaumont had visited Peekskill, and then had hiked north along the river to Anthony's Nose was both tenuous and bothersome. In 1831, successive formidable barriers of Manitou Mountain, Anthony’s Nose, Mine Mountain, Canada Hill and Sugarloaf descended to the water’s edge and effectively blocked land travel north from Peekskill along the river. The main road north from Peekskill (the Albany Post Road) veered far to the east toward Continental Village,. After passing on the east of the mountainous barrier, travelers on the Albany Post Road (Route 9) headed northwest down the Old West Point Road (Route 403) to Garrison. It was not until 1922 that the Peekskill-Bear Mountain Bridge toll road was laboriously carved into the sheer slopes of Manitou Mountain and Anthony's Nose along the river to reach the Bear Mountain Bridge. Careful reading of contemporary sources offers strong evidence that Tocqueville and Beaumont probably did not stop in Peekskill and certainly did not "go hike Anthony's Nose."

Let's Look at the Record
On June 30, 1831, Tocqueville and Beaumont started their tour of the United States, sailing by sloop from New York City to Yonkers. Arriving unannounced at the home of the influential Livingston family, they were disappointed not to find them at home. To while away the day, Beaumont sketched the Hudson, and Tocqueville hunted birds with his fowling piece.

The following excerpt is from a letter Beaumont wrote to his brother Jules from Albany on July 4, 1831. It was printed in Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, a massive work by George W. Pierson, professor of history at Yale University and Yale's first official historian. It was based on Pierson's 1933 Ph.D. thesis. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938):

That night [June 30] we found in our inn two beds prepared in a kind of attic, so well-warmed by the last rays of the setting sun that I thought we should suffocate during the night. Finally the steamboat from New York to Preskill [Peekskill] came next morning to draw us from our hole. In taking this boat we were counting on having it carry us to Calwell.

Beaumont quite obviously had difficulty either in transcribing local place names or in reading his own notes. Author Pierson could not identify the mysterious Calwell and noted "not sure about this" after the place name. Beaumont's letter continues:

We did in fact arrive at Calwell. There we took a charming promenade through woods and over rocks; and we sweat blood and water to get to the summit of a very high mountain from the top of which we saw one of the most beautiful spectacles and one of the most imposing tableaus the North River presents. On all sides we saw chains of mountains stretching out before us. There was near us especially a bay called Anthony's Nose, whose shape is all that is most picturesque. We waited until evening for a steamboat. At nine o'clock it arrived with its usual speed. It did not land where we were because that would have taken too much time, but it sent us off a boat into which we were thrown like packages with our trunks, and we found ourselves being towed by the steamboat until we caught up with it. All this happened so quickly, in such darkness and on such a vast sheet of water that there was something magical in our taking off.

Later in his letter, Beaumont identified the steamboat as the North America.

What Mountain, What Bay?
Calwell's geography sounds vastly different from that of Peekskill, then a comparatively large community dotting the gentle slopes at the mouth of Annsville Creek. and the area around it. But old maps do show a small community variously named Caldwell Landing or Caldwell's Landing on the opposite, west bank of the Hudson directly across from Peekskill. Caldwell Landing/Caldwell's Landing is today called Jones Point. This was obviously Beaumont's "Calwell." Timetables of the period reveal that, like Peekskill, the hamlet was a regular stop for steamboats then plying the river. A ferry once connected it to Peekskill. Caldwell's Landing also lay at the foot of an impressive mountain, Dunderberg, the southernmost peak of the Highlands west of the Hudson. The mountain up which Tocqueville and Beaumont toiled could not have been Anthony's Nose.

Anyone who has hiked in Harriman State Park is familiar with the Ramapo-Dunderberg trail (affectionately called the "R-D") and its red on white blaze on trees and rocks. With its eastern terminus at Jones Point, the R-D's course up the slopes of Dunderberg follows the trail taken by the French travelers. And what about the bay Beaumont reported sighting? Looking north today from the summit of Dunderberg as the two French travelers did, a hiker cannot miss the bay Beaumont described as "near us." Lying just below the viewer, between Dunderberg and the sprawling bulk of Bear Mountain, Doodletown Bight forms a deep loop in the Hudson shoreline. Bounded on the east by Iona and Round Islands and closed off on the south by Salisbury and Ring Meadows, this bay has remained picturesque to this day. Still learning English and somewhat shaky in the new tongue, Beaumont can perhaps be forgiven for misidentifying the bay as Anthony's Nose, especially since the bay and the prominence called Anthony's Nose are both visually on a direct line of sight from Dunderberg.

C-Span failed to identify and locate this crucial landmark bay. Yet on the slim evidence of the name of the mountain misapplied to the bay, the network mistakenly assumed that Tocqueville and Beaumont had climbed Anthony's Nose. It would have been a remarkable feat indeed for the two travelers to arrive at Peekskill from Yonkers on a morning boat, make an arduous trip to climb Anthony's Nose, and return to Peekskill to kill time waiting around for a northbound boat. Besides, Anthony's Nose was only a river pilot's navigational landmark--hardly an objective warranting so much effort. Moreover, Peekskill was a bustling and vibrant Westchester County village. A visit to it would have given them a chance to study an interesting community outside of New York City, and Beaumont would certainly have described it in his letter.

John Curran is Peekskill's official historian and curator of the Peekskill Museum who participated in the C-Span telecast from Peekskill. When Mr. Curran's attention was called to Beaumont's account by this writer, he conceded that Tocqueville and Beaumont had probably not visited Peekskill, nor could they have climbed Anthony's Nose. Beaumont's "Calwell" obviously was Caldwell's Landing, and his "very high mountain" clearly was Dunderberg.

Mr. Curran remarked somewhat ruefully to this writer that the C-Span incident was a reminder that a wise historian should always seek original sources to verify facts. "We [the Peekskill Museum] own a copy of the Pierson book," he said. "I should have checked it instead of relying on the work of the C-Span research staff. We'll have to have the plaque changed. It now says that Tocqueville visited Peekskill; it should have read that Tocqueville could see Peekskill from Caldwell's Landing across the river."

The Tocqueville Fraud
A deviation in the itinerary of Toxqueville and Beaumont is not the only mistake made by latter-day interpreters of the accoint of their journey through America. As a writer and principal author of record of Democrcy in America, Tocqueville is often quoted--but not always quoted accurately. Aside from the above-cited itinerary misinterpretation, Tocqueville has also been the subject of a long-standing hoax in which a widely used quotation is attributed to him. The following stirring but fake Tocqueville quotation has become popular with political speechwriters over the years:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers--and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce--and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution--and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

Stirring rhetoric--but not words Alexis de Tocqueville ever wrote or uttered. As part of a course assignment, a student of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California discovered that the quotation is nowhere to be found in Tocqueville's masterwork, Democracy in America. The exact origin of these sonorous words is unclear. It turns out that part of the spurious quotation was apparently lifted from a book by Raymond C. Knox titled Religion and the American Dream (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934).

At least three American presidents--Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton--have all used the counterfeit Tocqueville sentiment. In a campaign speech in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower quoted it, attributing it only to "a wise philosopher [who] came to this country." Ronald Reagan employed it in a 1982 speech, harking back to Eisenhower's quotation as the source. Two years later, Reagan used it again, declaring that Tocqueville "is said to have observed that 'America is great because America is good.'" Reagan speechwriters became so enamored of the phony Tocqueville passage, they inserted it into several other Reagan speeches.

In 1987, ultra-conservative Representative William Dannemeyer (R-Cal.) paraphrased the counterfeit quotation to "America ceased to be good in 1971, when America's promise to pay ceased to be good." What the congressman was referring to was President Richard M. Nixon's decision sixteen years earlier that the value of the dollar would not be linked to the amount of gold held in Fort Knox.

Bill Clinton told a Boston audience in 1992, "I believe in the essential core goodness of the American people. Don't forget that Alexis de Tocqueville said a long time ago that America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will no longer be great."

No historian, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) in 1993 not only embellished the false quote but ascribed an incorrect date to it, saying: "As the remarkable French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1850's, the source of American virtue . . . will always be found in the churches and synagogues of America." But Tocqueville's Democracy in America was published in 1835. Use of the false Tocqueville quote inevitably increased in campaign years. In May of 1996, in a speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), another presidential hopeful, used the fictitious Tocqueville line about America's pulpits "flaming with righteousness." Later that same year, Pat Buchanan worked the "America is great" theme into the speech launching his campaign for the presidency.

And so it goes; the misattribution continues. In 2001, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao repeated it and dated it to the mid-1800s. Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Chairperson of the American Red Cross, used the specious quotation in 2005, attributing it to Alex de Tocqueville. As recently as Thanksgiving Day 2006, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) repeated it as a Tocqueville quote. National and state elections are always in the offing, it seems. Despite their questionable heritage, ersatz Tocqueville quotations will continue to do yeoman service in the cause of politicians and public figures. Whenever you hear them repeated, listen closely. That noise you may hear in the background could be the sound of Alexis de Tocqueville turning over in his grave.

Labels: Alexis de Tocqueville, C-Span, Democracy in America, Gustave de Beaumont, Misquotations, Peekskill

LITERARY LORE

"You could look it up." So said colorful Casey Stengel, who led the New York Yankees to ten American League pennants and seven World Series championships. He was explaining how his team could have won 103 games in 1954 and still failed to win the pennant. "We had a splendid season," he was fond of saying afterwards, "but 'The Señor' (Al Lopez, manager of the Cleveland Indians) won 111 games and beat us. You could look it up."

So you could. Familiar quotations are often mangled, misquoted or misattibuted. Here are a few examples:

"Go west, young man, go west!" Everyone knows Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, was the author of these rousing words. He wasn't. The phrase was first used in an 1851 editorial by John B.L. Soule, in the Terre Haute Express. Greeley was so impressed with the editorial that he printed it in his Tribune and expanded its message to: "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country."

Greeley repeatedly disclaimed credit for originating the expression, yet he continued to be tagged with its authorship. To stem the spreading impression that he had said it, he even reprinted the piece from the Indiana newspaper in the Tribune. Misattributions die hard; despite Greeley's best efforts, the phrase has stuck to him.

"Lafayette, we are here!" This ringing phrase is often credited to General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, speaking on July 4th, 1917, at ceremonies at the tomb of Lafayette in the little-known Picpus Cemetery in Paris. The cemetery, in the 12th arrondissement, is on the grounds of a convent. Lafayette and his wife share it with victims of the Reign of Terror and their descendants.

The announcement apparently was made by Col. Charles E. Stanton, Pershing's chief disbursing officer and a nephew of Edward M. Stanton, Secretary of War during the Civil War. Colonel Stanton had been deputized by Pershing to speak for him. In My Experiences in the World War, published thirteen years after the Armistice, Pershing wrote that he could not recall having said "anything so splendid."

Despite Pershing's disclaimer, Naboth Hedin, a 33-year-old uniformed American war correspondent, asserted that he heard Pershing pronounce the famous words three weeks earlier on June 14th, the day after the American general arrived in Paris. Hedin said Pershing stepped up to Lafayette's tomb, saluted smartly and said in a loud voice, "Lafayette, we are here." Hedin insisted, "I was about twenty feet away."

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. This famous observation is often attributed to Mark Twain, who made frequent references to the weather in his writings. The words first appeared in an unsigned editorial in the Hartford Courant. Charles Dudley Warner, a close friend of Twain's, was the newspaper's editor.

In the editorial, the saying was attributed to "a well-known American writer." But Warner was also a well-known writer, having co-authored the novel The Gilded Age with Twain. Moreover, the expression does not appear in any of Twain's works. The jury is still out; some authorities give Twain the nod, others favor Warner.

As so often happens with quotations, "you pays your money and you takes your choice." This expression, by the way, is from a cartoon by John Leech in the British magazine Punch, January 3, 1846.

Mistaken Identities
It is not uncommon to hear the name Frankenstein applied to the wayward creature crudely put together from the body parts of corpses in the 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Frankenstein was not the monster, but the name of the man who created it: Victor Frankenstein. Even in dictionaries, the name Frankenstein has now taken on a life of its own and has come to mean any monster having the appearance of a man. Thus, in a sense, Frankenstein's nameless monster has destroyed its creator.

Horatio Alger is another example of literary transformation. Alger was not the hero of a series of 19th-century dime novels with a rags-to-riches theme, as many believe; he was their creator. Originally a Unitarian minister on Cape Cod, Alger turned from religion after being accused of sexually molesting young parishioners, traveled to New York and became a crusading author who preached the gospel of success.

Close, but No Cigar
"Blood, sweat and tears." Who doesn't remember Sir Winston Churchill's famous exhortation during the Second World War? Memory can play tricks. Churchill didn't quite say that. What he said in his first speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister in 1940 was, "I would say to the House, as I said to those who joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.'" Churchill was too canny a politician to end a memorable catch phrase on a defeatist note with a word like tears. The powerful line about blood, toil, tears and sweat was so effective, he used it again in five subsequent speeches.

The title of a traditional Christmas carol is usually rendered as God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen."Those in the know, however, will shift the comma to make it read God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. In 18th-century England, "God rest ye merry" was a common greeting.

"All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton was a British historian who is often quoted as having made that observation. What he actually said in an 1887 letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, professor of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge, was, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Mining the Bible
As might be expected, the Bible is the source of many a misquotation. For example, the cloud "no bigger than a man's hand" has become a standard allusion to any small, menacing omen. Go to the first book of Kings, however, and you'll find the reference actually reads, "There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand."

The much-quoted "prophet without honor in his own country" is, to be exact, "not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house," in the Gospel according to Matthew.

"Money" is today universally condemned as "the root of all evil." But in the first epistle to Timothy, Paul tells us it is "the love of money" that causes all the mischief.

"The voice crying in the wilderness," is really "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, according to Isaiah.

"Pride goeth before a fall" is widely quoted. It turns out that in Proverbs, we read, "Pride goeth before destruction," and "an haughty spirit" before a fall."

Try to find this in your Bible: "Esau sold his birthright for a mess of potage." You won't; this phrase does not appear in any currently used Bible. It can be found only in the so-called "Geneva Bible," popularly called the "Breeches Bible" for its rendering of a verse in the first chapter of Genesis. First published in 1560 and a favorite with the Pilgrims, it was displaced by the King James version. That the phrase still has wide currency is a testament to the power of folk sayings alone to transmit religious texts.

Similarly, "the good Samaritan" is never called that in the Bible. In the Gospel according to Luke, we read only that "a man from Jerusalem" had been set upon by thieves and was wounded. "A certain Samaritan . . . had compassion on him." The Samaritans and the Jews were traditional enemies; any Samaritan performing a kind deed for a Jew must implicitly have been "good."

Brush up Your Shakespeare
In the final scene in John Huston's 1941 film made from Dashiell Hammett's classic detective novel The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) holds the worthless replica of the elusive statuette. Detective Sergeant Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) asks him what it is. Spade laconically lisps, "The stuff dreams are made of." Great ending--but bad Shakespeare. What the Bard of Avon had Prospero tell Ferdinand in The Tempest was, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

Many writers think the Bard wrote in "Hamlet" that "the engineer is hoist by his own petard." A petard was a bell-shaped, gunpowder-filled bomb, ancestor of the IEDs, improvised explosive devices so lethal to American troops in Iraq. In siege warfare in Shakespeare's time, specialized troops tunneled under fortifications and exploded the petard--often simultaneously blowing themselves up in the process. Hamlet planned to turn the tables on the fawning courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. By altering the letters they are carrying, he hoped that they will be killed instead of him. He tells his mother of his plan and admits it would be "knavery," but adds, "'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard."

"To gild the lily." On close examination, this vivid Shakespearean phrase, shortened and corrupted in popular use makes no sense at all. In "King John," the Earl of Salisbury deplores as unnecessary the crowning of the king a second time, and says: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw perfume on the violet . . . is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

How often have we heard someone declaim, "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well"? Unfortunately, Hamlet never says it. When a grave digger identifies a newly unearthed skull as that of Yorick, the king's jester, Hamlet takes it and says to his friend Horatio, "Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

Could anything be wrong with the quotation from "The Merchant of Venice" that says, "All that glitters is not gold."? What the Prince of Morocco really says in that play, dating from about 1596, is "All that glisters is not gold." The first use of glitters in this saying did not come until 1687--by John Dryden, English essayist and poet laureate, in his poem, "The Hind and the Panther."

Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not write "a poor thing, but my own" often used to describe a work less than perfect. The exact words can be found in Act 5, Scene 4 of As You Like It. When Touchstone describes Audrey, a sluttish country wench he is introducing to Jacques, he calls her, "a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own."

Phrases that Backfired
Sir Samuel Wotton, a British diplomat, is frequently misquoted as having defined an ambassador as "an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country." What he actually wrote was, "an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." The cleverness of the adage depended on his placement of the verb "lie." In the 17th century, "to lie" meant "to stay," so "to lie abroad" meant "to live abroad." Intended as a clever private joke written in the album of a friend, Wotton's little jest was published and caused him to lose favor with King James I.

Quotable quotes occasionally give birth to other quotable quotes. Paraphrasing Wotton's wit a century and a half later, Samuel Johnson defined a journalist as "a man without virtue who lies at home for his own profit."

Even earlier, referring to Julius Caesar, in his Ad Atticum, Marcus Tullius wrote, "He is his own worst enemy." This must have been a tall order, given the number of Caesar's hostile adversaries. When the saying was used in Sir Winston Churchill's presence about someone he disliked intensely, the crusty old prime minister grumped, "Not whilst I live!"

Mangled Phrases
Topsy is a humorous character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's absurdly sentimental antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. An eight-year-old slave who has been brought to Miss Ophelia to be educated, Topsy is often quoted when making comparisons with someone or something that "jest growed." But this phrase does not appear in the novel's text. When asked who made her, her artless answer in the book is, "I 'spect I grow'd."

Miguel de Cervantes' knight, Don-Quixote, is an impractical idealist bent on correcting the ills of the world. When he mistakes windmills for giants and attacks them, we've all heard this described as "tilting with windmills." The proper usage, of course, is "tilting at windmills." Cervantes' satirical chivalric novel also has given rise to another persistent misquotation, "if worse comes to worst." What Cervantes wrote was, "Let the worst come to the worst."

Does music have charms "to soothe the savage beast"? Not in the opening lines of William Congreve's play The Mourning Bride, dating from 1697. In it, he claimed that "music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."

No Basis in Fact
Some quotations do not bear close scrutiny. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales, "His palfrey [horse] was as broun as is a berry." Of course, there are no brown berries. It has been suggested that the reference is to roasted coffee beans--but coffee in any form was unknown to Chaucer.

Also mistaken was the poet, theologian and hymn-writer Isaac Watts, author of more than 600 hymns, including "Joy to the World" and "O, God, Our Help in Ages Past." In his 1715 book "Divine and Moral Songs for Children," Watts wrote, "Birds in their little nests agree; and 'tis a shameful sight when children of one family fall out, and chide, and fight." Animal behaviorists know only too well that--in their nests or out--birds do not agree. They are among the most contentious creatures in the animal kingdom and spend their lives in an atmosphere of violence toward other birds.

Some misquotations are pure fabrications. Millions believe that Voltaire wrote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." The words were actually invented by British author Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of S.G. Tallentyre.

She enclosed the sentence in quotation marks in her 1906 study titled The Friends of Voltaire. Later she expressed hurt surprise on learning that readers regarded the words as a direct quotation from the French philosopher. Voltaire was many things--a champion of justice, tolerance, and freedom of conscience and speech--but he was not foolish enough to risk his life defending an empty sentiment most often repeated by politicians in the well of the U.S. Senate or by argumentative drunks in neighborhood bars.

In contrast to the pompous promise falsely credited to him, what Voltaire actually said in his Essay on Tolerance was more than enough to comfort today's civil libertarians: "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too."

Cinderella's glass slipper is perhaps the most famous example of what can happen when literary busybodies get to work. In 1697, Charles Perrault told the story of "Cendrillon," a fairy tale in which the heroine escapes from a life of drudgery to marry a handsome prince. The same book also marked the first appearance of such stories as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Tom Thumb" and "Sleeping Beauty."

In the English-language version of Perrault's story she wears elegant slippers of glass ("verre," in French) to the masked ball, and loses one on the stairs in her hasty midnight departure. Never mind that slippers of unyielding glass would make for an miserable evening of dancing. Perhaps taking their cue from that prospect, apologists later claimed that Perrault had written "pantoufles en vair" (slippers of white squirrel fur).

In translating this charming escapade to English, the claim is that the translator mistook "vair" (fur) for "verre" (glass). As a result, down through the years the Prince has been searching desperately for a young woman whose foot would fit an inflexible slipper of glass. Go back to Perrault's original, however, and you will find that he indeed described the material as "verre," glass. That was the whole point of his story: a foot of almost any size could be squeezed into a slipper of fur. But a slipper of glass would fit only one female foot: Cinderella's.

You could look it up.

Labels: Literary Lore, Misquotations, Quotations, Writers and Writing