Flagg is the memoirist, not the wit. The wording that survives in print comes from Flagg’s 1946 autobiography Roses and Buckshot, page 169, where he retells a story he got second-hand from Maisie La Shelle: Mark Twain, watching Adelina Patti at the old Academy, whispers to William Dean Howells that he’d rather sleep with that woman stark naked than with General Grant in full uniform. The popular form — Lillian Russell, and “Ulysses S. Grant in full military regalia” — is a later reshaping that Boller and George list among fake Twain quotes ↗, and even Twain’s own notebook records the joke as somebody else’s.
“I Would Rather Go To Bed With That Woman Stark Naked Than With Ulysses S. Grant in Full Military Regalia” Not James Montgomery Flagg. Flagg's 1946 memoir "Roses and Buckshot" (p. 169) prints the line as a second-hand anecdote about Mark Twain, said of the soprano Adelina Patti: "I would rather sleep with that woman stark naked, than with General Grant in full uniform!" The popular "Lillian Russell ... Ulysses S. Grant in full military regalia" wording appears nowhere in Twain's writings (Boller & George, They Never Said It, 1989, p. 123). — Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to James Montgomery Flagg. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
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Provenance
Where the words are actually printed
Printed in
Roses and Buckshot
Author & date
James Montgomery Flagg · G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1946 · page 169
Words assigned to
Mark Twain — second-hand; Flagg says Maisie La Shelle told him the story
Earlier record
Mark Twain’s own notebook, written May 1889 – August 1890, naming Adelina Patti
Flagg, retelling a story he had from Maisie La Shelle: Twain and William Dean Howells sat in the front row at the old Academy while Adelina Patti sang; Howells caught the leer in Twain’s eye and asked about it. Twain’s answer, as Flagg prints it: “I would rather sleep with that woman stark naked, than with General Grant in full uniform!”
Page 169
Note what is not here: no “go to bed with,” no “Ulysses S. Grant,” no “full military regalia,” and no Lillian Russell. Every one of those is a later retelling’s improvement on the line.
1889–90 — Mark Twain’s notebook, later printed in Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume III (University of California Press), pages 537–38, carries a Patti version that Twain frames as a report of someone else’s remark, per Quote Investigator ↗.
1942 — a theatre review collected in George Jean Nathan’s Theatre Book of the Year, 1942–1943 runs a Lillian Russell variant about looking at rather than sleeping with her, one of the citations assembled by Quote Investigator ↗.
1946 — James Montgomery Flagg prints the “that woman stark naked … General Grant in full uniform” anecdote on page 169 of Roses and Buckshot ↗, crediting the story to Maisie La Shelle.
1989 — Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George file the modern Lillian Russell wording under Mark Twain in They Never Said It ↗, page 123, and state that it is found nowhere in his writings.
No rights status can honestly be asserted for the popular wording, because no source contains it. The two texts that do carry versions of the line are both modern publications: Flagg’s Roses and Buckshot (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946) and the University of California Press edition of Twain’s notebooks — each published well after 1930 and therefore not to be treated as public domain. Twain’s own pre-1931 published books are public domain, but this sentence is not in them.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Three wrong labels on one joke
This line travels with almost everything about it mislabelled — the speaker, the woman, and the wording. Here is what each source actually supports.
✕
The speakerJames Montgomery Flagg Reporter, not speaker
Flagg’s Roses and Buckshot is where the “that woman stark naked” wording is printed, but Flagg puts it in Mark Twain’s mouth and states that Maisie La Shelle told him the story years after the fact. Page 169 of the scanned 1946 edition ↗ shows the anecdote as Flagg framed it.
✕
The wordingMark Twain Not in his writings
Boller and George put the Lillian Russell form of the popular sentence under Twain in They Never Said It and dismiss it: the remark can be found nowhere in Twain’s writings — page 123 of the 1989 edition ↗.
✕
The womanLillian Russell Later substitution
The early records name Adelina Patti. Russell appears in retellings from the 1940s onward — a 1942 theatre review, a 1975 Wall Street Journal column, a 1998 book of San Francisco literary lore — all gathered by Quote Investigator ↗, which calls the substitution a later modification.
~
The originatorMark Twain Possibly a repeater
Twain’s own notebook entry begins “He said” — he is writing down someone else’s remark. Quote Investigator ↗ notes it is possible Twain heard the quip and did not construct it himself, and Evan Esar filed it as a stock Patti gag.
✓What is documented is narrow: Twain’s notebook, written between 1889 and 1890, records a Patti-and-Grant version phrased as another person’s remark, and Flagg’s 1946 memoir prints a second-hand anecdote of Twain saying it aloud. Neither text is the sentence people quote — see Quote Investigator’s citation trail ↗.
Context
How a whisper became a slogan
The joke has a fixed shape and a swappable cast. In the oldest recorded forms the woman is Adelina Patti (1843–1919), the operatic superstar of the age, and the general is in “full uniform.” Twain’s notebook has it that way, and so does Flagg’s memoir. The Patti form was still circulating as an anonymous gag decades later: Evan Esar’s 1978 Comic Encyclopedia prints it as an oft-repeated Patti gag with no mention of Twain at all, per Quote Investigator’s survey of the citations ↗.
Then the cast changes. By 1942 a theatre review is running a Lillian Russell version, and by the 1970s the line has hardened into the crisp, quotable sentence people repeat today — “go to bed with,” a full presidential name, “full military regalia.” None of those upgrades appears in the early records. They are the polish a joke acquires from being retold, and the polish is exactly what makes the modern version unfindable in any primary text.
Every retelling made the sentence better and the provenance worse.
Why Flagg’s name gets attached at all
Flagg (1877–1960) is a famous name in his own right — the illustrator behind the 1917 “I Want YOU for U.S. Army” Uncle Sam poster. He knew Twain and painted him. So when reference works cite Roses and Buckshot as the place the anecdote is printed, the citation and the credit are easy to confuse, and Flagg quietly slides from witness to wit.
He was not even a witness. Flagg says plainly that Maisie La Shelle told him the story years after the fact, and he published it in 1946 — decades after Twain’s death in 1910. It is a second-hand anecdote in a memoir, which is worth something, but it is not a transcript.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1835–1910 · American writer, humorist and lecturer
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), writing as Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist — and the single most magnetic name in English for orphaned one-liners. This one has a real thread back to him: a passage in his own notebook, written between May 1889 and August 1890, sets the quip beside Adelina Patti and General Grant. But Twain phrased it as a report of someone else’s remark, and Quote Investigator concludes he may have been writing down a joke he heard rather than one he made.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Printed source of this wording
James Montgomery Flagg, Roses and Buckshot (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 169 — a second-hand anecdote of Mark Twain, and the source of the “that woman … stark naked” wording. A related passage stands in Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume III (1883–1891) (Berkeley: University of California Press), 537–38, cited by Quote Investigator. The popular “Lillian Russell … full military regalia” form is listed as unsourced in Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George, They Never Said It (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 123.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Would Rather Go To Bed With That Woman Stark Naked Than With Ulysses S. Grant in Full Military Regalia’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-would-rather-go-to-bed-with-that-woman-stark-naked-than/