INTELIGENCIA ADUANERA

“Simplicity” was a favorite adjective for characterizing Quakers throughout the period. In the latter half of the nineteenth century—particularly in the North—the earliest truly

American character traits were imagined as “the sternness of the Puritan, the simplicity of the Quaker, and the elegant manners of the Cavalier;”27 a neat table was set with “Quaker

simplicity,”28 and a plain coat could be a “model of Quaker-like simplicity.”29 So, too, simple and direct speech was characterized as Friendly. Ralph Waldo Emerson imagined ancient Plato as “plain as a Quaker in habit and speech.”30 A tiny (non-Quaker) girl in John Norton’s 1855 novel Full Proof of the Ministry echoes the straightforward manner Emerson attributed to the ancient philosopher:

“Well, my little girl, do you wish to see me about anything?”— “Yes,” she answered, with Quaker simplicity—“Pappy wants you.”31

Despite the little girl’s worldly “you,” her language indicates that Quaker and simplicity had become synonymous, and Quaker speech implied a straightforward plainness and honesty.

The body of Quaker expressions were then and continue to be denoted as “plain speech” or “plain language.” Over the course of the nineteenth century in the United States, both of these phrases developed the additional, common meanings they retain today. As historian Kenneth Cmiel points out, in the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, the term “plain speaking” was uncomplimentary; it denoted an unrefined rhetoric, “valuing truth over politeness, no matter how hard the language might sound.”32 By the latter part of the

century, however, the directness and simplicity of “plain speech” had become the most respectable commodity—“the preferred style.”33 We retain this meaning in our own time; to tell someone the truth, in plain speech, is reckoned a commendable undertaking. The

designated “plain speech” or “plain language” of the Quakers, although it varied so widely from the unornamented style in vogue by the end of the century, must have benefited by association with the new, more widely held understanding of the phrase during the decades under consideration here.

When Quakers were represented in print, the words thee and thou were the most common and most immediate textual markers of their religious identity. Though plain dress

would have been the quickest way to identify a Friend in person, plain speech was the easiest way to indicate Quaker identity and its myriad associated virtues in print. The brief four- letter thee issuing from the mouth of a speaker carried an immense burden of meanings. Even when authors understood the original theological impetus for plain language, the represented Quaker thee and thou carried a range of associated values: simplicity, honesty, soberness and propriety, philanthropy, and a simultaneously humble and aristocratic caution in speech.

Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, Quakers were widely presumed to be scrupulously honest, having long since cast off their early colonial reputation as shrewd and occasionally untrustworthy businesspeople.34 Particularly during the antebellum era, Quaker speech and testimony often was figured as simple, dependable, and direct; by the 1870s, advertisers began to take advantage of this strong association, even as the distinctive Quaker idiom began to fade. An 1872 advertisement in Harper’s Weekly for the Beckwith sewing machine directed readers to:

Read what an honest Quaker says: Westchester, Pa., 7th month, 10th, 1872. Respected Friend:

We value the little Ten-Dollar Sewing Machine highly. . . . With a little care and patience in the beginning, it will do all that is promised for it.

Respectfully thy friend, Wm. P. Townsend35

This advertisement quoted the full letter penned by the “honest Quaker,” which included a great deal of detail about Townsend’s sickly wife and her remarkable achievements in sewing. Next month, the Beckwith advertisement featured only an excerpt of this letter, but by then Townsend had become “a highly esteemed Quaker” (who had written to the company on “8th mo., 15th day”).36 Which of the two dates was correct? Did the letter—or

Townsend—even exist? These questions matter less than the advertisements’ faithfulness to the speech patterns of the “honest Quaker.” Townsend addresses the company as a

“Respected Friend;” moreover, he makes use of the intimate and unlikely “thy” in a letter to the “world.” Quoting these words in the advertisement, along with preserving Townsend’s Quakerish dates, draws the Beckwith company via a halo effect into the trustworthy society of all “Friends.” Beckwith was only one of many companies who would take advantage of the public’s association between Quakers and honest dealings. As we will see in Chapter Six, 1877 heralded the birth of the world’s most famous advertising “Quaker.” He spoke in plain speech as late as the 1960s, claiming in a popular catchphrase that “Nothing is better for thee, than me”; he now probably smiles at you now from behind your cupboard door.37

The public willingness to hear and trust Quaker speech at the turn of the century was so great that thee could be turned to more sinister purposes. In 1902, a special item in the New York Times noted that an aged and “alleged swindler” in Chicago had taken advantage of the public trust in plain speech:

On charges of swindling Catholic schools, business houses, and private persons of money as an agent for the “Birds and All Nature Picture Company,” Thomas Cowley, seventy-one years old, is locked up. It is said that he made his victims believe he was a Quaker, sprinkling his speech with “thee” and “thou” when trying to get money on orders.38

The most curious aspect of this escapade is that Cowley had only to assume the thee and thou; these words were sufficient to assure his deceived bird-fanciers that he was a Quaker, trustworthy and true. It is not clear whether he ever asserted that he was a Quaker—did he dress as a Quaker? Did he introduce himself as “Friend”? Apparently, his charlatan’s costume consisted only of those two words, and his victims’ willingness to hear them.

Quaker plain speech had disappeared almost entirely from public life by 1909, when the New York Times ran a little anecdote on “The Quaker Shop Girl.” This item—quoted below in its entirety—hinted at the myriad meanings attached to Friends’ ever more “quaint” speech:

‘I bought this ribbon,’ said the shopper, ‘from a girl who sprinkled her conversation with Quaker “thee’s” and “thou’s.” I talked with her longer than was necessary, just to hear those Quaker expressions. She was the first person I have ever seen behind the counter who thee’d and thou’d her customers. I have bought goods of girls who spoke in every European accent imaginable, not to mention our different American dialects, but the Quaker phrases were a novelty. I let the girl know that I considered her a regular curiosity in a shop.

“Most people do,” she said. “Employers do not like the Quaker speech in a store because it makes the speaker so conspicuous. For business purposes I try to break myself of the habit, but the quaint old words will slip out now and then.”39

This shopper’s story, for all its quotations, might be a fiction. But its trajectory points to many of the associations linked with thee and thou. The shop girl’s simple and intimate words were inherently opposed to, and even suppressed by, a new economy of spending and shopping. They were imagined to be indicative of a long American pedigree, clearly

suggesting a woman somehow different and more attractive than those saleswomen who spoke recently learned English in “every European accent imaginable.” The Quaker was set apart even from the more commonplace run of American women behind the counter; her words called up a long Quaker reputation for honesty, simplicity, and piety. Moreover, these words, when spoken, drew her customer into the intimate space that was, by the turn of the century, restricted to family and Friends alone—the shopper lingers to hear “those Quaker expressions” addressed to her, to partake for a moment of the cozy and antique sphere created in the modern shop. Like rosary or millennial, Quaker pronouns and phrases were among the English words that had religious connotations. Unlike those words, however, the

very use of thee and thou was a religious testimony that both called up the language of the King James Bible and implicated the hearer in the widely understood virtues of the Quaker speaker. These words, like this shop girl, are associated with a time passed, a constructed and thoroughly “American” religious history made all the more compelling by its rapid fading.