The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain (top 5 ebook reader TXT) 📖

the reader. Let the cultivated English student

of human nature picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable

of doing the following-described things—and not only doing them,

but with incredible innocence PRINTING THEM calmly and tranquilly

in a book. For instance:

 

He states that he entered a hair-dresser’s in Paris to get shaved,

and the first “rake” the barber gave him with his razor it LOOSENED

HIS “HIDE” and LIFTED HIM OUT OF THE CHAIR.

 

This is unquestionably exaggerated. In Florence he was so annoyed

by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a

frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this.

He gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen

hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins

of the Coliseum, among the dirt and mold and rubbish. It is a

sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast-iron

program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances.

In Greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion,

but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form:

“We SIDLED toward the Piraeus.” “Sidled,” indeed! He does not hesitate

to intimate that at Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course,

he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again,

pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till

it was time to restore the beast to the path once more. He states

that a growing youth among his ship’s passengers was in the constant

habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals.

In Palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend

the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them;

yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was

an impossibility. He mentions, as if it were the most commonplace

of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jerusalem,

with Godfrey de Bouillon’s sword, and would have shed more blood IF

HE HAD HAD A GRAVEYARD OF HIS OWN. These statements are unworthy

a moment’s attention. Mr. Twain or any other foreigner who did

such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly

lose his life. But why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious

and exasperating falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one:

he affirms that “in the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople

I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime,

and general impurity, that I wore out more than two thousand

pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then

some Christian hide peeled off with them.” It is monstrous.

Such statements are simply lies—there is no other name for them.

Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades

the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly

good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods,

this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this INNOCENTS ABROAD,

has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several

of the states as a text-book!

 

But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance

are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. In one

place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man,

unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window,

going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike

simplicity that he “was not scared, but was considerably agitated.”

It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely

unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage.

He is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough

to criticize, the Italians’ use of their own tongue. He says they

spell the name of their great painter “Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy”—

and then adds with a na:ivet’e possible only to helpless ignorance,

“foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.” In another

place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase “tare

an ouns” into an Italian’s mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly

believes the legend that St. Philip Neri’s heart was so inflamed

with divine love that it burst his ribs—believes it wholly

because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung

after his name endorses it—“otherwise,” says this gentle idiot,

“I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner.”

Our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane

on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog—got elaborately

ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog.

A wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself,

but with this harmless creature everything comes out. He hurts

his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii,

and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed

in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains

of the ancient Street Commissioner, and straightway his horror softens

down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things.

In Damascus he visits the well of Ananias, three thousand years old,

and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water

is “as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday.”

In the Holy Land he gags desperately at the hard Arabic and Hebrew

Biblical names, and finally concludes to call them Baldwinsville,

Williamsburgh, and so on, “for convenience of spelling.”

 

We have thus spoken freely of this man’s stupefying simplicity

and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance.

We do not know where to begin. And if we knew where to begin,

we certainly would not know where to leave off. We will give

one specimen, and one only. He did not know, until he got to Rome,

that Michael Angelo was dead! And then, instead of crawling away

and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express

a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out

of his troubles!

 

No, the reader may seek out the author’s exhibition of his

uncultivation for himself. The book is absolutely dangerous,

considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements,

and the convincing confidence with which they are made.

And yet it is a text-book in the schools of America.

 

The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the

Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in

art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a

proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. But what is

the manner of his study? And what is the progress he achieves?

To what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures

of Italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at? Read:

 

“When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven,

we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a monk with a book and a pen,

looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know

that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a rock,

looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him,

and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome.

Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter

of baggage. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven,

but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are.

We do this because we humbly wish to learn.”

 

He then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these

several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed

simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen

“Some More” of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually

“begin to take an absorbing interest in them”—the vulgar boor.

 

That we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one

will deny. That is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the

confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown. That the book

is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent

upon every page. Having placed our judgment thus upon record,

let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this

volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks

of his own country and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make

himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive.

No one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs,

about life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada;

about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West,

and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of

gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the

moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows

to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the Humboldt

mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night.

These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing.

It is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind.

His book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it

just barely escaped being quite valuable also.

 

(One month later)

 

Latterly I have received several letters, and see a number of

newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about

the same tenor. I here give honest specimens. One is from a New

York paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is

from a letter from a New York publisher who is a stranger to me.

I humbly endeavor to make these bits toothsome with the remark that

the article they are praising (which appeared in the December GALAXY,

and PRETENDED to be a criticism from the London SATURDAY REVIEW

on my INNOCENTS ABROAD) WAS WRITTEN BY MYSELF, EVERY LINE OF IT:

 

The HERALD says the richest thing out is the “serious critique”

in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, on Mark Twain’s INNOCENTS ABROAD.

We thought before we read it that it must be “serious,” as everybody

said so, and were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it,

we are bound to confess that next to Mark Twain’s “Jumping Frog”

it’s the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we’ve come across in many

a day.

 

(I do not get a compliment like that every day.)

 

I used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading

the criticism in THE GALAXY from the LONDON REVIEW, have discovered

what an ass I must have been. If suggestions are in order, mine is,

that you put that article in your next edition of the INNOCENTS,

as an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor

in competition with it. It is as rich a thing as I ever read.

 

(Which is strong commendation from a book publisher.)

 

The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, “serious” creature

he pretends to be, I think; but, on the contrary, has a keep

appreciation and enjoyment of your book. As I read his article in

THE GALAXY, I could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh.

But he is writing for Catholics and Established Church people,

and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is

a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his

head with owlish density. He is a magnificent humorist himself.

 

(Now that is graceful and handsome. I take off my