DID Mark Twain Write GRant's Memoirs? Any Historical Consensus?

[astorian]

Since the release of Bill Clinton’s memoirs, I’ve seen a number of reviews that say, essentially, “Ulysses S. Grant was the only president to leave behind memoirs worth reading… and even then, it’s because they were likely ghost-written by Mark Twain.”

True enough, Grant’s memoirs were well worth reading. Whatever his flaws as a man, and whatever his sins as President, Grant’s memoirs are fascinating, and commendably honest (Grant was quick to take full blame for all his failures, and just as quick to share credit for his successes).

Still, I know that people have wondered about the authorship of Grant’s memoirs since the day they were published. That’s partly because the memoirs were so well written and so thoughtful, people had a hard time believing that Grant (who was widely perceived as a drunken dullard) could have written them.

So… is there a consensus among historians and literary experts? Do most reputable experts think Grant wrote the memoirs himself, that Twain wrote them, or that Twain did a massive polishing job on the texts Grant left behind?

[Polycarp]

@astorian

Since the release of Bill Clinton’s memoirs, I’ve seen a number of reviews that say, essentially, “Ulysses S. Grant was the only president to leave behind memoirs worth reading… and even then, it’s because they were likely ghost-written by Mark Twain.”

True enough, Grant’s memoirs were well worth reading. Whatever his flaws as a man, and whatever his sins as President, Grant’s memoirs are fascinating, and commendably honest (Grant was quick to take full blame for all his failures, and just as quick to share credit for his successes).

Still, I know that people have wondered about the authorship of Grant’s memoirs since the day they were published. That’s partly because the memoirs were so well written and so thoughtful, people had a hard time believing that Grant (who was widely perceived as a drunken dullard) could have written them.

So… is there a consensus among historians and literary experts? Do most reputable experts think Grant wrote the memoirs himself, that Twain wrote them, or that Twain did a massive polishing job on the texts Grant left behind?

I’ll wait for American History experts to come by and give the proper answer.

However, Grant, for all his failings as a businessman and as President, was a brilliant man, and could well have written a pretty good set of memoirs without help. But Twain, as I recall, heavily invested in Grant’s memoirs, having money at the time and expecting them to sell well. And it’s a longstanding tradition that he did an edit and polish job on them. How true this is, and whether the apocryphal story that he actually wrote them from Grant’s reminiscences has any validity, is something an expert needs to comment on.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Justin Kaplan, in Mr. Clemens and Mr. Twain, gives an emphatic no.

Some excerpts:

At the end of April Clemens took Susy with him to visit Grant… Clemens came away encouraged, for Grant was back at work again on the unfinished work. That morning he had spent two hours dictating an account of Appomattox, and his manuscript needed no revision at all.

As always, however, there were enemies out there to be dealt with… There were rumors that he was writing the book himself. At the end of April he decided to go after the New York World – “that daily issue of unmedicated closet paper” – for publishing the manifest lie that Grant’s aide General Adam Badeau was the authors of the Memoirs…

But the major problem had been, of course, whether Grant would live long enough to finish the book… In a hoarse whisper he talked his book to a stenographer for hours at a time… “He had dictated 10,000 words at a single sitting,” Clements [sic] noted in awe and envy.

Kaplan also notes comments made about the book that hardly read like Twain’s work:
“remarkable… for its muscular directness and its lack of chest-thumping and martial rhetoric.”

“an English without charm and high breeding” - Matthew Arnold

“mistakes in grammar”

Twain himself said:

This is the simple soldier, who, all untaught of the silken phrase-makers, linked words together with an art surpassing the art of the schools and put them into something which will still bring to American ears, as long as America shall stand, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his marching hosts."

Kaplan is an acknowledged master of biography, but this book was written in 1966. Perhaps scholars have dredged up new material on the subject, but I hadn’t thought there was still a controversy at all.

[Chefguy]

A side note to this discussion: beware of buying a signed edition of Grant’s memoirs. It was published after his death and signed by others.

[David_Simmons]

I believe that the consensus is that Grant wrote his own memoir and Mark Twain saw to it that he got enough money out of it to support Mrs. Grant.