Phwoarr
Possibly surprisingly for a blog about words, this post is actually about a person. And when I say person, I mean massive pedant. Let me introduce you to Alexander Cruden or, as he was more usually known, Alexander the Corrector. Yes, he was so pedantic about spelling and grammar, that he had a full-on nickname. I could only dream of such an honour.
So why have I decided to devote a blog post to Alexander? Because he saw it as his personal mission to safeguard Britain’s spelling and grammar. He even carried a sponge around with him which he used to rub out signs with grammatical or spelling errors. As someone who once parked her car illegally to add an apostrophe to a road sign outside Colchester (it’s Britain’s oldest recorded town (now city), not Britains). Alexander also spent a lot of time in madhouses, which I can relate to as well – it’s tough being a pedant.
Who the fuck is Alex?
Alexander Cruden was born in Aberdeen in Scotland in May 1699. After the usual education stuff, according to Wikipedia he ‘began to show signs of insanity owing to a disappointment in love’ (we’ve all been there, Al). After he recovered he dyed his hair (kidding) and moved to London (not kidding). There he became a private tutor, eventually getting a job with the 10th Earl of Derby. Unfortunately that didn’t last very long, as he was sacked for being really bad at pronouncing French words (in my head he’s like Joey in that episode of Friends). Determined to better himself, he went and lodged with a load of Frenchmen in Soho (I bet there were a lot of baguettes there) in the hope of getting back in with the Earl. Sadly the Earl refused to see him when he returned to his house in Lancashire, marking the end of his career saying French words. Quel dommage.
The Earl’s loss is pedantry’s gain
Alexander’s most famous work is ‘Cruden’s Bible Concordance’ which was first published in 1737, and hasn’t been out of print since. A concordance is basically an index – so it lists Biblical words alphabetically, then tells you where to find them. Let’s just think about the work involved in putting that together. Because he’s a bloody legend, by working alone from 7am to 1am every day, Alexander finished most of the work in less than a year (I’ve been working on this blog post for longer than that. That’s not even a joke). Here’s a picture of the first page:
It’s not your eyes – it’s a blurry picture
Alexander spent so much time on his concordance that the bookshop he ran ran out of stock and, presumably, customers. Luckily he was able to present his book to Queen Caroline (wife of George II). Unluckily she died a few days later (hopefully not of boredom), which meant he didn’t get any rewards. In fact, he’d had to go into debt to get the thing printed in the first place. He did manage to present the second edition to George III (yes, the mad one – coincidence…?), and got £100 for his trouble. Don’t feel bad though – that’s £10,246.23 in today’s money, and he could have bought 14 horses with it, if he wanted (how do I know that? There’s a website, obviously).
Safeguarding the nation’s grammar
At some point after 1754, Alexander decided to add ‘the Correcter’ to his name. This was because he saw a decline in spelling and grammar as a sign of a decline in moral standards. So he went on a one-man crusade to fix it, armed only with that sponge (imagine what he could have done with a Sharpie). He was particularly concerned with misspelt signs, graffiti and swearing. So he would have hated this blog post, for fuck’s sake. He also deleted the number 45 wherever he found it. That’s because 45 was the symbol of John Wilkes, a radical journalist and politican he didn’t approve of. (I just ended a sentence with a preposition, which he also probably wouldn’t have approved of. Oops, did it again.) It must have been quite irritating for anyone who lived between numbers 44 and 46 (I checked and apparently house numbering started in the early 16th-century, so this admittedly-not-that-good joke does work).
Not content with doing all the sponging himself, Alexander appointed deputy correctors at Cambridge University, as well as Eton, Windsor, Tonbridge and Westminster schools. And all of this pedantry culminated in the longest book title I’ve ever seen (take a deep breath): ‘The Corrector’s Earnest Address to the Inhabitants of Great-Britain. Shewing That the Late Earthquakes, ... are Loud Calls From Divine Providence for ... Corrector’s Honest Designs for That Purpose’, which was published in 1756. Ironically, where this is listed on Wikipedia, it’s missing an apostrophe in ‘Correctors’.
Correcting the madness
The Oxford University Press style manual says that ‘If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad’. And it looks like this happened to Alexander quite a lot. He was institutionalised several times during his life. A writer called Julia Keay has argued that he wasn’t actually mad, but was put away to stop him criticising all the incestuous marriages among the nobility, and later by women who rejected his unwanted affections (hmmm). He seemed to have a few run-ins with women who weren’t interested in him, and he was also confined in an asylum in Chelsea after getting into a street brawl in 1755. Maybe he sponged the wrong person’s sign (or wife).
No more correcting
Alexander died in his lodgings in Camden Passage on 1 November 1770, while praying (which seems like a big old kick in the religious teeth). He left his property to various relatives and to the City of Aberdeen, instructing that they use it to buy religious books for the poor. There are now two plaques – one in Camden and in Cruden’s Court in Aberdeen, where he was born (which I assume is named after him – otherwise it’s one helluva coincidence) – commemorating this sadly misunderstood (though possibly a bit rapey), ultimate pedant.
*Did I write this whole post just so I could use this pun? Maybe.