Inflated résumés and "encouraged memory'

As an 11-year-old in 1857, William F. Cody worked briefly for the western freighting partnership of Russell, Majors & Waddell, carrying messages on horseback from the firm's headquarters in Leavenworth City, Kansas Territory, to the telegraph office at Fort Leavenworth, three miles to the north. Three years later, Russell, Majors & Waddell secured a permanent place in American history by launching the legendary Pony Express, a relay system by which riders on fast ponies delivered mail between the Missouri River and California in the then-unheard-of time of just eight days.

Years later, in the process of promoting himself as "Buffalo Bill" for his wildly popular "Wild West Show," Cody seized upon this slender connection to claim that he had once been a Pony Express rider himself. These claims were demonstrably false: In the summer of 1860, when Cody said he was hired by the Pony Express in what is now Wyoming, he was living in Denver with his uncle; the records of the Pony Express (incomplete, to be sure) contain no mention of him; and Cody's alleged Pony Express mentors and companions were all conveniently dead (and thus unavailable to refute his stories) by the time he began trumpeting his Pony Express exploits in 1879.

Cody can surely be forgiven for yearning to attach himself to such a thrilling tradition, nor can he be faulted for delivering to his Eastern audiences the Wild West fantasy that they yearned to experience. Indeed, thanks to his skill as a showman and self-promoter, Cody established himself as the personification of the Old West, ultimately becoming more famous than any real pioneer cowboy.

Yet strangely, after Cody became a celebrity, a real former Pony Express rider named Charles Becker claimed to have known Cody as one of his Pony Express colleagues. To some Western history buffs, Becker's recollections constitute proof that Buffalo Bill really did ride for the Pony Express. To me, it's an example of a rarely discussed phenomenon that I call "encouraged memory," by which an obscure person attaches himself to the narrative of a famous person, even when he knows deep down that the narrative is false.

(Encouraged memory is not to be confused with "recovered memory," by which psychiatrists induce adults to recall how they were molested as infants.)

Albert Greenfield's high school?

Something similar occurred in the 20th Century concerning the Philadelphia real estate and department store magnate Albert M. Greenfield, the subject of my forthcoming biography. Like many another immigrant, Greenfield reinvented his past, claiming in countless interviews to have been brought to America from Russia as a toddler, when as far as I can determine he was actually eight and a half when he arrived. Greenfield also frequently claimed to have attended Philadelphia's academically elite Central High School— a remarkable feat at a time (the turn of the 20th Century) when most Americans left school after eighth grade and Philadelphia operated only four public high schools.

Central's enrollment records— which are complete all the way back to 1838— contain no mention of Greenfield's presence there. (More likely, he attended Central Manual High School, a commercial and vocational school located a few blocks away.) Nevertheless, in the 1920s, when Greenfield was perhaps the most powerful man in Philadelphia, he received a letter from a New Yorker claiming to have been his classmate at Central High, as well as a letter from a former Central High teacher claiming to have taught him there.

The "classmate," so far as I can determine, never attended Central either; the former teacher, Cheesman Herrick, subsequently became president of Girard College and so had reason to persuade himself (and others) that he had helped to mold a famous and wealthy power-broker way back when.

Publisher as war hero

The human capacity for self-delusion is infinite. Most of us doctor our personal résumés to suit our particular fantasies. Our listeners generously trust us when we talk about our poverty-stricken childhood, our high school sports heroics or our youthful friendship with Liz Taylor or Duke Ellington. As we grow older there are fewer people around to challenge us, assuming anyone is inclined to do so in the first place.

Robert R. McCormick, the longtime proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, claimed throughout his life to have fought in the Battle of Cantigny, the first American offensive in World War I; he even named his suburban Chicago estate "Cantigny." In fact, McCormick was a staff officer assigned to a desk a few miles away from the battle. But who can really blame him for attaching himself to this semi-historic moment and cementing his place in military history through repeated references in his own newspaper?

The veteran NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, similarly, has lately reinvented herself as a glamorous Washington insider, married to the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. In her 2006 memoir, Talking Back, she erased all memory of her distant (and, to my mind, admirable) past as (a) an outspoken champion of ordinary-looking women and (b) the loyal wife of a husband who could only be described as the ultimate outsider. (For my review of that book, click here.)

All-City, or All-America?

So it goes. The Philadelphia lawyer and former prosecutor Bob McAteer was chosen for Philadelphia's All-City basketball team as a LaSalle University senior in 1964; but nowadays, he recently joked to me, "I tell people I was an All-American. It was so long ago, who's going to correct me?"

You would think that people in the public eye would hesitate to tamper with their personal stories for fear of exposure, but the opposite seems to be true: If an exaggeration or fantasy is trumpeted enough times, it becomes part of the historical lexicon. And no one, in my experience, tampers with his or her résumé quite like journalists, if only because we control the narrative, and consequently it's difficult to challenge us.

A TV celebrity I know claims he played football in college; I happen to know that the fellow never suited up for a single game. But why should I spoil his fantasy, when I have nothing to gain and perhaps a valuable contact to lose? As Mark Twain observed, "Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel."

At least, that epigram has been attributed to Mark Twain. The Mark Twain House in Connecticut says it has no evidence that Twain ever uttered the phrase. But it's so easy to attribute any witty aphorism to Mark Twain, especially if I want to catch your attention. And if Mark Twain's name is attached to it, who would question it? Do you see what I mean?

To my mind, "encouraged memory" is a phenomenon worthy of further exploration— especially since, these days, you don't need a barrel of ink to reinvent yourself; a Facebook page will suffice. On the other hand, these days a single amateur blogger can expose even the pompous politician or celebrity. The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away.♦


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