Unsolicited Lectures on Manners and More

 

A bit presumptuous, no? When “the Hungarian general Klapka, had been invited… to serve in our army during the civil war, he wrote to Gen. McClellan, giving his terms. Those terms were that he should be paid $100,000. in cash; that his annual salary should be $23,000; that he should serve as Gen. McClellan’s chief of staff for a short time, until familiar with English, and should then take McClellan’s place at the head of the American army...” above, Hungarian General György Klapka, was not only one of the most important Hungarian generals during their War of Independence of 1848–1849, but a politician as well as the deputy War Minister and a member of the Hungarian Parliament.– Public domain image of the General Klapka

The Benevolent Foreigner

Mrs. Micawber, in “David Copperfield,” when about to sail with her alway impecunious husband for Australia, announces that she wishes that husband to take his stand upon the vessel’s prow and firmly say. “This country I have come to conquer! Have you honors? Have you riches? Have you posts of profitable pecuniary emolument? Let them be brought forward. They are mine.” Fiction is always behind reality, and no fancied Micawber ever carried his effrontery so far as many instances, well authenticated, in actual life. 

When, for instance, the Hungarian general Klapka, had been invited by some agent of Mr. Seward’s to serve in our army during the civil war, he wrote to Gen. McClellan, giving his terms. Those terms were that he should be paid $100,000. in cash; that his annual salary should be $23,000; that he should serve as Gen. McClellan’s chief of staff for a short time, until familiar with English, and should then take McClellan’s place at the head of the American army. There was nothing unexampled about this. 

We meek and patient Americans are constantly in the position of being lectured on manners by foreigners so ill bred that, were they Americans, they would never have a second invitation into well bred company; on pronunciation and language by persons unable to make themselves heard before an audience; on the graces of literature and art by orators who cannot even dispose of their own arms and legs without the greatest discomfort long suffering at we are by nature, Americans have had so much put upon them in these ways that the revenge taken in Europe by Barnum and Buffalo Bill seems hardly too severe an international retribution.— T. W. L. , 1889

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