1601 / Mark Twain

 MARK TWAIN'S

                              [Date, 1601]

                              Conversation

                    As it was by the Social Fireside

                       in the Time of the Tudors

INTRODUCTION

"Born irreverent," scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, "--like all

other people I have ever known or heard of--I am hoping to remain so

while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of."

--[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, in the collection of the

F. J. Meine]

Mark Twain was just as irreverent as he dared be, and 1601 reveals his

richest expression of sovereign contempt for overstuffed language,

genteel literature, and conventional idiocies. Later, when a magazine

editor apostrophized, "O that we had a Rabelais!" Mark impishly and

anonymously--submitted 1601; and that same editor, a praiser of Rabelais,

scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others,

Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealed his huge

delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was

always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted

him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could

stir up in the world.

WHO WROTE 1601?

The correct and complete title of 1601, as first issued, was: [Date,

1601.] 'Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of

the Tudors.' For many years after its anonymous first issue in 1880,

its authorship was variously conjectured and widely disputed. In Boston,

William T. Ball, one of the leading theatrical critics during the late

90's, asserted that it was originally written by an English actor (name

not divulged) who gave it to him. Ball's original, it was said, looked

like a newspaper strip in the way it was printed, and may indeed have

been a proof pulled in some newspaper office. In St. Louis, William

Marion Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, had seen this famous tour

de force circulated in the early 80's in galley-proof form; he first

learned from Eugene Field that it was from the pen of Mark Twain.

"Many people," said Reedy, "thought the thing was done by Field and

attributed, as a joke, to Mark Twain. Field had a perfect genius for

that sort of thing, as many extant specimens attest, and for that sort of

practical joke; but to my thinking the humor of the piece is too mellow

--not hard and bright and bitter--to be Eugene Field's." Reedy's opinion

hits off the fundamental difference between these two great humorists;

one half suspects that Reedy was thinking of Field's French Crisis.

But Twain first claimed his bantling from the fog of anonymity in 1906,

in a letter addressed to Mr. Charles Orr, librarian of Case Library,

Cleveland. Said Clemens, in the course of his letter, dated July 30,

1906, from Dublin, New Hampshire:

"The title of the piece is 1601. The piece is a supposititious

conversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth's closet in that year,

between the Queen, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchess

of Bilgewater, and one or two others, and is not, as John Hay mistakenly

supposes, a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to

the sober and chaste Elizabeth's time; if there is a decent word findable

in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure you that it is

not printed in my published writings."

TWITTING THE REV. JOSEPH TWICHELL

The circumstances of how 1601 came to be written have since been

officially revealed by Albert Bigelow Paine in 'Mark Twain,

A Bibliography' (1912), and in the publication of Mark Twain's Notebook

(1935).

1601 was written during the summer of 1876 when the Clemens family had

retreated to Quarry Farm in Elmira County, New York. Here Mrs. Clemens

enjoyed relief from social obligations, the children romped over the

countryside, and Mark retired to his octagonal study, which, perched high

on the hill, looked out upon the valley below. It was in the famous

summer of 1876, too, that Mark was putting the finishing touches to Tom

Sawyer. Before the close of the same year he had already begun work on

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', published in 1885. It is

interesting to note the use of the title, the "Duke of Bilgewater," in

Huck Finn when the "Duchess of Bilgewater" had already made her

appearance in 1601. Sandwiched between his two great masterpieces, Tom

Sawyer and Huck Finn, the writing of 1601 was indeed a strange interlude.

During this prolific period Mark wrote many minor items, most of them

rejected by Howells, and read extensively in one of his favorite books,

Pepys' Diary. Like many another writer Mark was captivated by Pepys'

style and spirit, and "he determined," says Albert Bigelow Paine in his

'Mark Twain, A Biography', "to try his hand on an imaginary record of

conversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase of

the period. The result was 'Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen

Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation'

recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the

outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside

sociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, and

physical performance, and not by any bounds of convention."

"It was written as a letter," continues Paine, "to that robust divine,

Rev. Joseph Twichell, who, unlike Howells, had no scruples about Mark's

'Elizabethan breadth of parlance.'"

The Rev. Joseph Twichell, Mark's most intimate friend for over forty

years, was pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church of Hartford,

which Mark facetiously called the "Church of the Holy Speculators,"

because of its wealthy parishioners. Here Mark had first met "Joe" at a

social, and their meeting ripened into a glorious, life long friendship.

Twichell was a man of about Mark's own age, a profound scholar, a devout

Christian, "yet a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profound

understanding of the frailties of mankind." The Rev. Mr. Twichell

performed the marriage ceremony for Mark Twain and solemnized the births

of his children; "Joe," his friend, counseled him on literary as well as

personal matters for the remainder of Mark's life. It is important to

catch this brief glimpse of the man for whom this masterpiece was

written, for without it one can not fully understand the spirit in which

1601 was written, or the keen enjoyment which Mark and "Joe" derived from

it.

"SAVE ME ONE."

The story of the first issue of 1601 is one of finesse, state diplomacy,

and surreptitious printing.

The Rev. "Joe" Twichell, for whose delectation the piece had been

written, apparently had pocketed the document for four long years. Then,

in 1880, it came into the hands of John Hay, later Secretary of State,

presumably sent to him by Mark Twain. Hay pronounced the sketch a

masterpiece, and wrote immediately to his old Cleveland friend, Alexander

Gunn, prince of connoisseurs in art and literature. The following

correspondence reveals the fine diplomacy which made the name of John Hay

known throughout the world.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Washington

June 21, 1880.

Dear Gunn:

Are you in Cleveland for all this week? If you will say yes by return

mail, I have a masterpiece to submit to your consideration which is only

in my hands for a few days.

Yours, very much worritted by the depravity of Christendom,

Hay

The second letter discloses Hay's own high opinion of the effort and his

deep concern for its safety.

June 24, 1880

My dear Gunn:

Here it is. It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bring

back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan

standard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anything

so classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The

Globe has not yet recovered from Downey's inroad, and they won't touch

it.

I send it to you as one of the few lingering relics of that race of

appreciative critics, who know a good thing when they see it.

Read it with reverence and gratitude and send it back to me; for Mark is

impatient to see once more his wandering offspring.

Yours,

Hay.

In his third letter one can almost hear Hay's chuckle in the certainty

that his diplomatic, if somewhat wicked, suggestion would bear fruit.

Washington, D. C.

July 7, 1880

My dear Gunn:

I have your letter, and the proposition which you make to pull a few

proofs of the masterpiece is highly attractive, and of course highly

immoral. I cannot properly consent to it, and I am afraid the great many

would think I was taking an unfair advantage of his confidence. Please

send back the document as soon as you can, and if, in spite of my

prohibition, you take these proofs, save me one.

Very truly yours,

John Hay.

Thus was this Elizabethan dialogue poured into the moulds of cold type.

According to Merle Johnson, Mark Twain's bibliographer, it was issued in

pamphlet form, without wrappers or covers; there were 8 pages of text and

the pamphlet measured 7 by 8 1/2 inches. Only four copies are believed to

have been printed, one for Hay, one for Gunn, and two for Twain.

"In the matter of humor," wrote Clemens, referring to Hay's delicious

notes, "what an unsurpassable touch John Hay had!"

HUMOR AT WEST POINT

The first printing of 1601 in actual book form was "Donne at ye Academie

Press," in 1882, West Point, New York, under the supervision of Lieut. C.

E. S. Wood, then adjutant of the U. S. Military Academy.

In 1882 Mark Twain and Joe Twichell visited their friend Lieut. Wood at

West Point, where they learned that Wood, as Adjutant, had under his

control a small printing establishment. On Mark's return to Hartford,

Wood received a letter asking if he would do Mark a great favor by

printing something he had written, which he did not care to entrust to

the ordinary printer. Wood replied that he would be glad to oblige.

On April 3, 1882, Mark sent the manuscript:

"I enclose the original of 1603 [sic] as you suggest. I am afraid there

are errors in it, also, heedlessness in antiquated spelling--e's stuck on

often at end of words where they are not strickly necessary, etc.....

I would go through the manuscript but I am too much driven just now, and

it is not important anyway. I wish you would do me the kindness to make

any and all corrections that suggest themselves to you.

"Sincerely yours,

"S. L. Clemens."

Charles Erskine Scott Wood recalled in a foreword, which he wrote for the

limited edition of 1601 issued by the Grabhorn Press, how he felt when he

first saw the original manuscript. "When I read it," writes Wood,

"I felt that the character of it would be carried a little better by a

printing which pretended to the eye that it was contemporaneous with the

pretended 'conversation.'

"I wrote Mark that for literary effect I thought there should be a

species of forgery, though of course there was no effort to actually

deceive a scholar. Mark answered that I might do as I liked;--that his

only object was to secure a number of copies, as the demand for it was

becoming burdensome, but he would be very grateful for any interest I

brought to the doing.

"Well, Tucker [foreman of the printing shop] and I soaked some handmade

linen paper in weak coffee, put it as a wet bundle into a warm room to

mildew, dried it to a dampness approved by Tucker and he printed the

'copy' on a hand press. I had special punches cut for such Elizabethan

abbreviations as the a, e, o and u, when followed by m or n--and for the

(commonly and stupidly pronounced ye).

"The only editing I did was as to the spelling and a few old English

words introduced. The spelling, if I remember correctly, is mine, but

the text is exactly as written by Mark. I wrote asking his view of

making the spelling of the period and he was enthusiastic--telling me to

do whatever I thought best and he was greatly pleased with the result."

Thus was printed in a de luxe edition of fifty copies the most curious

masterpiece of American humor, at one of America's most dignified

institutions, the United States Military Academy at West Point.

"1601 was so be-praised by the archaeological scholars of a quarter of a

century ago," wrote Clemens in his letter to Charles Orr, "that I was

rather inordinately vain of it. At that time it had been privately

printed in several countries, among them Japan. A sumptuous edition on

large paper, rough-edged, was made by Lieut. C. E. S. Wood at West Point

--an edition of 50 copies--and distributed among popes and kings and such

people. In England copies of that issue were worth twenty guineas when I

was there six years ago, and none to be had."

FROM THE DEPTHS

Mark Twain's irreverence should not be misinterpreted: it was an

irreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into the

well-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That Corrupted

Hadleyburg,' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger,' he tore the masks off

human beings and left them cringing before the public view. With the

deftness of a master surgeon Clemens dealt with human emotions and

delighted in exposing human nature in the raw.

The spirit and the language of the Fireside Conversation were rooted deep

in Mark Twain's nature and in his life, as C. E. S. Wood, who printed

1601 at West Point, has pertinently observed,

"If I made a guess as to the intellectual ferment out of which 1601 rose

I would say that Mark's intellectual structure and subconscious graining

was from Anglo-Saxons as primitive as the common man of the Tudor period.

He came from the banks of the Mississippi--from the flatboatmen, pilots,

roustabouts, farmers and village folk of a rude, primitive people--as

Lincoln did.

"He was finished in the mining camps of the West among stage drivers,

gamblers and the men of '49. The simple roughness of a frontier people

was in his blood and brain.

"Words vulgar and offensive to other ears were a common language to him.

Anyone who ever knew Mark heard him use them freely, forcibly,

picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language is

forcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make for

weakness--or let us say a cutting edge--but the old vulgar monosyllabic

words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax--and Mark was like that. Then

I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of

puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a

sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its own sake.

Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself--no more

obscene than a manure pile, out of which come roses and cherries. Every

word used in 1601 was used by our own rude pioneers as a part of their

vocabulary--and no word was ever invented by man with obscene intent, but

only as language to express his meaning. No act of nature is obscene in

itself--but when such words and acts are dragged in for an ulterior

purpose they become offensive, as everything out of place is offensive.

I think he delighted, too, in shocking--giving resounding slaps on what

Chaucer would quite simply call 'the bare erse.'"

Quite aside from this Chaucerian "erse" slapping, Clemens had also a

semi-serious purpose, that of reproducing a past time as he saw it in

Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, and other writers of the Elizabethan era.

Fireside Conversation was an exercise in scholarship illumined by a keen

sense of character. It was made especially effective by the artistic

arrangement of widely-gathered material into a compressed picture of a

phase of the manners and even the minds of the men and women "in the

spacious times of great Elizabeth."

Mark Twain made of 1601 a very smart and fascinating performance, carried

over almost to grotesqueness just to show it was not done for mere

delight in the frank naturalism of the functions with which it deals.

That Mark Twain had made considerable study of this frankness is apparent

from chapter four of 'A Yankee At King Arthur's Court,' where he refers

to the conversation at the famous Round Table thus:

"Many of the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great

assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen of the land would have made

a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea.

However, I had read Tom Jones and Roderick Random and other books of that

kind and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England

had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and

conduct which such talk implies, clear up to one hundred years ago; in

fact clear into our own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly

speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and the real gentleman

discoverable in English history,--or in European history, for that

matter--may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter

[Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the mouths of his

characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We

should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena

which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciously

indelicate all things are delicate."

Mark Twain's interest in history and in the depiction of historical

periods and characters is revealed through his fondness for historical

reading in preference to fiction, and through his other historical

writings. Even in the hilarious, youthful days in San Francisco, Paine

reports that "Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then,

as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose

himself in English or French history until his sleep conquered." Paine

tells us, too, that Lecky's 'European Morals' was an old favorite.

The notes to 'The Prince and the Pauper' show again how carefully Clemens

examined his historical background, and his interest in these materials.

Some of the more important sources are noted: Hume's 'History of

England', Timbs' 'Curiosities of London', J. Hammond Trumbull's 'Blue

Laws, True and False'. Apparently Mark Twain relished it, for as Bernard

DeVoto points out, "The book is always Mark Twain. Its parodies of Tudor

speech lapse sometimes into a callow satisfaction in that idiom--Mark

hugely enjoys his nathlesses and beshrews and marrys." The writing of

1601 foreshadows his fondness for this treatment.

"Do you suppose the liberties and the Brawn of These States have to

do only with delicate lady-words? with gloved gentleman words"

Walt Whitman, 'An American Primer'.

Although 1601 was not matched by any similar sketch in his published

works, it was representative of Mark Twain the man. He was no emaciated

literary tea-tosser. Bronzed and weatherbeaten son of the West, Mark was

a man's man, and that significant fact is emphasized by the several

phases of Mark's rich life as steamboat pilot, printer, miner, and

frontier journalist.

On the Virginia City Enterprise Mark learned from editor R. M. Daggett

that "when it was necessary to call a man names, there were no expletives

too long or too expressive to be hurled in rapid succession to emphasize

the utter want of character of the man assailed.... There were

typesetters there who could hurl anathemas at bad copy which would have

frightened a Bengal tiger. The news editor could damn a mutilated

dispatch in twenty-four languages."

In San Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain

and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful

Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica.

One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate

standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big

revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement," relates Paine in

his Biography.

"'Come here, Steve,' he said. 'I'm so chilled through I can't get a bead

on him.'

"'Sam,' said Steve, 'don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily

kill him at any range with your profanity.'

"Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain let go such a scorching, singeing

blast that the brute's owner sold him the next day for a Mexican hairless

dog."

Nor did Mark's "geysers of profanity" cease spouting after these gay and

youthful days in San Francisco. With Clemens it may truly be said that

profanity was an art--a pyrotechnic art that entertained nations.

"It was my duty to keep buttons on his shirts," recalled Katy Leary,

life-long housekeeper and friend in the Clemens menage, "and he'd swear

something terrible if I didn't. If he found a shirt in his drawer

without a button on, he'd take every single shirt out of that drawer and

throw them right out of the window, rain or shine--out of the bathroom

window they'd go. I used to look out every morning to see the

snowflakes--anything white. Out they'd fly.... Oh! he'd swear at

anything when he was on a rampage. He'd swear at his razor if it didn't

cut right, and Mrs. Clemens used to send me around to the bathroom door

sometimes to knock and ask him what was the matter. Well, I'd go and

knock; I'd say, 'Mrs. Clemens wants to know what's the matter.' And

then he'd say to me (kind of low) in a whisper like, 'Did she hear me

Katy?' 'Yes,' I'd say, 'every word.' Oh, well, he was ashamed then, he

was afraid of getting scolded for swearing like that, because Mrs.

Clemens hated swearing." But his swearing never seemed really bad to

Katy Leary, "It was sort of funny, and a part of him, somehow," she said.

"Sort of amusing it was--and gay--not like real swearing, 'cause he swore

like an angel."

In his later years at Stormfield Mark loved to play his favorite

billiards. "It was sometimes a wonderful and fearsome thing to watch Mr.

Clemens play billiards," relates Elizabeth Wallace. "He loved the game,

and he loved to win, but he occasionally made a very bad stroke, and then

the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in his more

youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently,

slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though

they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this

stream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives."

Mark's vocabulary ran the whole gamut of life itself. In Paris, in his

appearance in 1879 before the Stomach Club, a jolly lot of gay wags,

Mark's address, reports Paine, "obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs

of the world, though no line of it, not even its title, has ever found

its way into published literature." It is rumored to have been called

"Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism."

In Berlin, Mark asked Henry W. Fisher to accompany him on an exploration

of the Berlin Royal Library, where the librarian, having learned that

Clemens had been the Kaiser's guest at dinner, opened the secret treasure

chests for the famous visitor. One of these guarded treasures was a

volume of grossly indecent verses by Voltaire, addressed to Frederick the

Great. "Too much is enough," Mark is reported to have said, when Fisher

translated some of the verses, "I would blush to remember any of these

stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna."

When Fisher had finished copying a verse for him Mark put it into his

pocket, saying, "Livy [Mark's wife, Olivia] is so busy mispronouncing

German these days she can't even attempt to get at this."

In his letters, too, Howells observed, "He had the Southwestern, the

Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose one

ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish; and I was

often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters in which he

had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion; I could not bear

to burn them, and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to

look at them. I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying that

in it he was Shakespearean."

"With a nigger squat on her safety-valve"

John Hay, Pike County Ballads.

"Is there any other explanation," asks Van Wyck Brooks, "'of his

Elizabethan breadth of parlance?' Mr. Howells confesses that he

sometimes blushed over Mark Twain's letters, that there were some which,

to the very day when he wrote his eulogy on his dead friend, he could not

bear to reread. Perhaps if he had not so insisted, in former years,

while going over Mark Twain's proofs, upon 'having that swearing out in

an instant,' he would never had had cause to suffer from his having

'loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion.' Mark Twain's verbal

Rabelaisianism was obviously the expression of that vital sap which, not

having been permitted to inform his work, had been driven inward and left

thereto ferment. No wonder he was always indulging in orgies of

forbidden words. Consider the famous book, 1601, that fireside

conversation in the time of Queen Elizabeth: is there any obsolete verbal

indecency in the English language that Mark Twain has not painstakingly

resurrected and assembled there? He, whose blood was in constant ferment

and who could not contain within the narrow bonds that had been set for

him the roitous exuberance of his nature, had to have an escape-valve,

and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaningless obscenity--the

waste of a priceless psychic material!" Thus, Brooks lumps 1601 with

Mark Twain's "bawdry," and interprets it simply as another indication of

frustration.

FIGS FOR FIG LEAVES!

Of course, the writing of such a piece as 1601 raised the question of

freedom of expression for the creative artist.

Although little discussed at that time, it was a question which intensely

interested Mark, and for a fuller appreciation of Mark's position one

must keep in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had

been nothing like it before in American literature; there had appeared no

Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian England was gushing

Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cult of the Brahmins

of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm of the Atlantic. Louisa

May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, and Little Men in 1871. In

1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the

lily in the Gilded Age.

In 1880 Mark took a few pot shots at license in Art and Literature in his

Tramp Abroad, "I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is

allowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times--but the

privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed

within the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet could

portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have

plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed

to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech.

But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject;

however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every

pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has

been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent

nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.

Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing

it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing

about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid

marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and

ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do

really need it have in no case been furnished with it.

"At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of

a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they

hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatures have been

thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious

generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery

that exists in the world.... and there, against the wall, without

obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the

vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. It

isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the

attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the

attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, for

anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie,

for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls

stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly

at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic

interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy

indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting

average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all

that.

"In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage,

oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering

--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful

detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and

publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent,

they are inoffensive, being works of art. But suppose a literary artist

ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of

these grisly things--the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go,

it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost

hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the

consistencies of it--I haven't got time."

PROFESSOR SCENTS PORNOGRAPHY

Unfortunately, 1601 has recently been tagged by Professor Edward

Wagenknecht as "the most famous piece of pornography in American

literature." Like many another uninformed, Prof. W. is like the little

boy who is shocked to see "naughty" words chalked on the back fence,

and thinks they are pornography. The initiated, after years of wading

through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference

between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is

something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has

pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist."

"The words which are criticised as dirty," observed justice John M.

Woolsey in the United States District Court of New York, lifting the ban

on Ulysses by James Joyce, "are old Saxon words known to almost all men

and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally

and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical

and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe." Neither was there

"pornographic intent," according to justice Woolsey, nor was Ulysses

obscene within the legal definition of that word.

"The meaning of the word 'obscene,'" the Justice indicated, "as legally

defined by the courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to

sexually impure and lustful thoughts.

"Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and

thoughts must be tested by the court's opinion as to its effect on a

person with average sex instincts--what the French would call 'l'homme

moyen sensuel'--who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the same role

of hypothetical reagent as does the 'reasonable man' in the law of torts

and 'the learned man in the art' on questions of invention in patent

law."

Obviously, it is ridiculous to say that the "leer of the sensualist"

lurks in the pages of Mark Twain's 1601.

DROLL STORY

"In a way," observed William Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole

works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the

privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed,

an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in

the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from

Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say,

from the peasants of Thomas Hardy, outside of Hardy's books. And, though

it be filthy, it yet hath a splendor of mere animalism of good spirits...

I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic, save for one touch

toward the end. Indeed, it seems more of Rabelais than of Boccaccio or

Masuccio or Aretino--is brutally British rather than lasciviously

latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous as regards the language."

Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary of State, had

proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's

biographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 is a

genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than the

gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste

that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary

refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of Mark

Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of

environment and point of view."

"It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not," wrote

Clemens in his notebook in 1879. "I built a conversation which could

have happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601. I sent

it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and the

sender!"

But that man was a praiser of Rabelais and had been saying, 'O that we

had a Rabelais!' I judged that I could furnish him one.

"Then I took it to one of the greatest, best and most learned of Divines

[Rev. Joseph H. Twichell] and read it to him. He came within an ace of

killing himself with laughter (for between you and me the thing was

dreadfully funny. I don't often write anything that I laugh at myself,

but I can hardly think of that thing without laughing). That old Divine

said it was a piece of the finest kind of literary art--and David Gray of

the Buffalo Courier said it ought to be printed privately and left behind

me when I died, and then my fame as a literary artist would last."

FRANKLIN J. MEINE

THE FIRST PRINTING

Verbatim Reprint

[Date, 1601.]

CONVERSATION, AS IT WAS BY THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE, IN THE TIME OF THE

TUDORS.

[Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the

Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth's cup-bearer. He is

supposed to be of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these

literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath, to see the queen

stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels that his nobility

is defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay

there till her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.]

YESTERNIGHT

toke her maiste ye queene a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and had

to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, and such like, these

being my lord Bacon, his worship Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and

ye child Francis Beaumonte, which being but sixteen, hath yet turned his

hand to ye doing of ye Lattin masters into our Englishe tong, with grete

discretion and much applaus. Also came with these ye famous Shaxpur. A

righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blode with mean, ye more in

especial since ye queenes grace was present, as likewise these following,

to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-two yeres of age; ye Countesse

of Granby, twenty-six; her doter, ye Lady Helen, fifteen; as also these

two maides of honor, to-wit, ye Lady Margery Boothy, sixty-five, and ye

Lady Alice Dilberry, turned seventy, she being two yeres ye queenes

graces elder.

I being her maites cup-bearer, had no choice but to remaine and beholde

rank forgot, and ye high holde converse wh ye low as uppon equal termes,

a grete scandal did ye world heare thereof.

In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an

exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore,

and then--

Ye Queene.--Verily in mine eight and sixty yeres have I not heard the

fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it

was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat

against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so waste

a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand

comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye offspring.

Will my Lady Alice testify?

Lady Alice.--Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thundergust

within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same

and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humble whereby to

shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich

o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further.

Ye Queene.--Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor?

Lady Margery.--So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighte and

drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tender unto

them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained this wonder,

forsoothe wolde I have gi'en 'ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye

dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it

sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life with violence,

rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, your maisty.

Ye Queene.--O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yt

a fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young Master

Beaumont--but no; 'twould have wafted him to heaven like down of goose's

boddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen--nay, ne'er blush, my child;

thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak before

thou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned and

ingenious Jonson?

Jonson.--So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stench

so all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, good your

maisty, but one of veteran experience--else hadde he failed of

confidence. In sooth it was not I.

Ye Queene.--My lord Bacon?

Lord Bacon.-Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burst forth, so

please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as grete performance;

and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity this miracle hath

issued.

[Tho' ye subjoct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning

pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade

all places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to

leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.]

Ye Queene.--What saith ye worshipful Master Shaxpur?

Shaxpur.--In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine

innocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of

this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its

quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement

in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; but had said the pit

itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven's artillery hath shook

the globe in admiration of it.

[Then was there a silence, and each did turn him toward the worshipful

Sr Walter Ralegh, that browned, embattled, bloody swashbuckler, who

rising up did smile, and simpering say,]

Sr W.--Most gracious maisty, 'twas I that did it, but indeed it was so

poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt in

sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine in so august a presence.

It was nothing--less than nothing, madam--I did it but to clear my nether

throat; but had I come prepared, then had I delivered something worthy.

Bear with me, please your grace, till I can make amends.

[Then delivered he himself of such a godless and rock-shivering blast

that all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come so dense

and foul a stink that that which went before did seem a poor and trifling

thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed and was

confused, I perceive that I am weak to-day, and cannot justice do unto my

powers; and sat him down as who should say, There, it is not much yet he

that hath an arse to spare, let him fellow that, an' he think he can. By

God, an' I were ye queene, I would e'en tip this swaggering braggart out

o' the court, and let him air his grandeurs and break his intolerable

wind before ye deaf and such as suffocation pleaseth.]

Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and

Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein

was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye

headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's

member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in

England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted

neither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpur did

likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a

certain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddes

in ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain two

and twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied;

whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor's

superior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes 'twixt sun and sun; and

after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath

enrich'd whole acres with his seed.

Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermost

parts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres of

age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven

yeres.

Ye Queene.--How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send thee

thither and preserve thy belly?

Lady Helen.--Please your highnesses grace, mine old nurse hath told me

there are more ways of serving God than by locking the thighs together;

yet am I willing to serve him yt way too, sith your highnesses grace hath

set ye ensample.

Ye Queene.--God' wowndes a good answer, childe.

Lady Alice.--Mayhap 'twill weaken when ye hair sprouts below ye navel.

Lady Helen.--Nay, it sprouted two yeres syne; I can scarce more than

cover it with my hand now.

Ye Queene.--Hear Ye that, my little Beaumonte? Have ye not a little

birde about ye that stirs at hearing tell of so sweete a neste?

Beaumonte.--'Tis not insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls and

bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is

found in ye downy nests of birdes of Paradise.

Ye Queene.--By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neat-turned compliment. With

such a tongue as thine, lad, thou'lt spread the ivory thighs of many a

willing maide in thy good time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thy

speeche.

Then spake ye queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned of

fifteen, and he did tell her of a man his father knew that had a double

pair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning the most

just way to spell the word, ye contention running high betwixt ye learned

Bacon and ye ingenious Jonson, until at last ye old Lady Margery,

wearying of it all, saith, 'Gentles, what mattereth it how ye shall spell

the word? I warrant Ye when ye use your bollocks ye shall not think of

it; and my Lady Granby, be ye content; let the spelling be, ye shall

enjoy the beating of them on your buttocks just the same, I trow. Before

I had gained my fourteenth year I had learnt that them that would explore

a cunt stop'd not to consider the spelling o't.'

Sr W.--In sooth, when a shift's turned up, delay is meet for naught but

dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid

into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly

thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot,

spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair

white flesh about it, wherefore when ye priest's prayer was done, his

chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little maid had but ye one cunt, and

that was already occupied to her content.

Then conversed they of religion, and ye mightie work ye old dead Luther

did doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpur

did rede a part of his King Henry IV., ye which, it seemeth unto me,

is not of ye value of an arsefull of ashes, yet they praised it bravely,

one and all.

Ye same did rede a portion of his "Venus and Adonis," to their prodigious

admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but

paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had

got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain

zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy

ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him.

They talked about ye wonderful defense which old Sr. Nicholas Throgmorton

did make for himself before ye judges in ye time of Mary; which was

unlucky matter to broach, sith it fetched out ye quene with a 'Pity yt

he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his doter's

maidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed.' And ye quene did give ye damn'd

Sr. Walter a look yt made hym wince--for she hath not forgot he was her

own lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twas

not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in

a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe

to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless;

behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child

when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater

roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? Was not ye little Lady

Helen born on her mother's wedding-day? And, beholde, were not ye Lady

Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye

cradle?

In time came they to discourse of Cervantes, and of the new painter,

Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty-wrought

phrases from the ladies now, one or two of them being, in other days,

pupils of that poor ass, Lille, himself; and I marked how that Jonson and

Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not

in the presence, the queene's grace being ye very flower of ye Euphuists

herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring

it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can

abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quene waxed

uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady

Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite

exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was

done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O

shit!' Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde

foolish bitche.

Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingenious

Margrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to suffer

rape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save her

maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thy

holy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would

not rise again.

FOOTNOTES

To Frivolity

The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that Twain must have given

the subject considerable thought. The author was careful to speak only

of men who conceivably might have been in the Virgin Queen's closet and

engaged in discourse with her.

THE CHARACTERS

At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old. She speaks of

having talked to "old Rabelais" in her youth. This might have been

possible as Rabelais died in 1552, when the Queen was 19 years old.

Among those in the party were Shakespeare, at that time 37 years old; Ben

Jonson, 27; and Sir Walter Raleigh, 49. Beaumont at the time was 17, not

16. He was admitted as a member of the Inner Temple in 1600, and his

first translations, those from Ovid, were first published in 1602.

Therefore, if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither by age

nor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible to attend such a gathering

of august personages in the year 1601; but the point is unimportant.

THE ELIZABETHAN WRITERS

In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne's Essays. These were

first published in 1580 and successive editions were issued in the years

following, the third volume being published in 1588. "In England

Montaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph of

Shakespeare in a copy of Florio's translation showed his study of the

Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, and

especially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand the poet

was acquainted with the essayist." (Encyclopedia Brittanica.)

The company at the Queen's fireside discoursed of Lilly (or Lyly),

English dramatist and novelist of the Elizabethan era, whose novel,

Euphues, published in two parts, 'Euphues', or the 'Anatomy of Wit'

(1579) and 'Euphues and His England' (1580) was a literary sensation.

It is said to have influenced literary style for more than a quarter of a

century, and traces of its influence are found in Shakespeare. (Columbia

Encyclopedia).

The introduction of Ben Jonson into the party was wholly appropriate,

if one may call to witness some of Jonson's writings. The subject under

discussion was one that Jonson was acquainted with, in The Alchemist:

Act. I, Scene I,

FACE: Believe't I will.

SUBTLE: Thy worst. I fart at thee.

DOL COMMON: Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen, for love----

Act. 2, Scene I,

SIR EPICURE MAMMON: ....and then my poets, the same that writ so subtly

of the fart, whom I shall entertain still for that subject and again in

Bartholomew Fair

NIGHTENGALE: (sings a ballad)

Hear for your love, and buy for your money.

A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney.

A preservative again' the punk's evil.

Another goose-green starch, and the devil.

A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter

The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters.

What is't you buy?

The windmill blown down by the witche's fart,

Or Saint George, that, O! did break the dragon's heart.

GOOD OLD ENGLISH CUSTOM

That certain types of English society have not changed materially in

their freedom toward breaking wind in public can be noticed in some

comparatively recent literature. Frank Harris in My Life, Vol. 2,

Ch. XIII, tells of Lady Marriott, wife of a judge Advocate General,

being compelled to leave her own table, at which she was entertaining Sir

Robert Fowler, then the Lord Mayor of London, because of the suffocating

and nauseating odors there. He also tells of an instance in parliament,

and of a rather brilliant bon mot spoken upon that occasion.

"While Fowler was speaking Finch-Hatton had shewn signs of restlessness;

towards the end of the speech he had moved some three yards away from the

Baronet. As soon as Fowler sat down Finch-Hatton sprang up holding his

handkerchief to his nose:

"'Mr. Speaker,' he began, and was at once acknowledged by the Speaker,

for it was a maiden speech, and as such was entitled to precedence by the

courteous custom of the House, 'I know why the Right Honourable Member

from the City did not conclude his speech with a proposal. The only way

to conclude such a speech appropriately would be with a motion!'"

AEOLIAN CREPITATIONS

But society had apparently degenerated sadly in modern times, and even in

the era of Elizabeth, for at an earlier date it was a serious--nay,

capital--offense to break wind in the presence of majesty. The Emperor

Claudius, hearing that one who had suppressed the urge while paying him

court had suffered greatly thereby, "intended to issue an edict, allowing

to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension

occasioned by flatulence:"

Martial, too (Book XII, Epigram LXXVII), tells of the embarrassment of

one who broke wind while praying in the Capitol,

"One day, while standing upright, addressing his prayers to Jupiter,

Aethon farted in the Capitol. Men laughed, but the Father of the Gods,

offended, condemned the guilty one to dine at home for three nights.

Since that time, miserable Aethon, when he wishes to enter the Capitol,

goes first to Paterclius' privies and farts ten or twenty times. Yet, in

spite of this precautionary crepitation, he salutes Jove with constricted

buttocks." Martial also (Book IV, Epigram LXXX), ridicules a woman who

was subject to the habit, saying,

"Your Bassa, Fabullus, has always a child at her side, calling it her

darling and her plaything; and yet--more wonder--she does not care for

children. What is the reason then. Bassa is apt to fart. (For which

she could blame the unsuspecting infant.)"

The tale is told, too, of a certain woman who performed an aeolian

crepitation at a dinner attended by the witty Monsignieur Dupanloup,

Bishop of Orleans, and that when, to cover up her lapse, she began to

scrape her feet upon the floor, and to make similar noises, the Bishop

said, "Do not trouble to find a rhyme, Madam!"

Nay, worthier names than those of any yet mentioned have discussed the

matter. Herodotus tells of one such which was the precursor to the fall

of an empire and a change of dynasty--that which Amasis discharges while

on horseback, and bids the envoy of Apries, King of Egypt, catch and

deliver to his royal master. Even the exact manner and posture of

Amasis, author of this insult, is described.

St. Augustine (The City of God, XIV:24) cites the instance of a man who

could command his rear trumpet to sound at will, which his learned

commentator fortifies with the example of one who could do so in tune!

Benjamin Franklin, in his "Letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels" has

canvassed suggested remedies for alleviating the stench attendant upon

these discharges:

"My Prize Question therefore should be: To discover some Drug, wholesome

and--not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that

shall render the natural discharges of Wind from our Bodies not only

inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes.

"That this is not a Chimerical Project & altogether impossible, may

appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of

means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale Flesh,

especially with much Addition of Onions, shall be able to afford a stink

that no Company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on

Vegetables only, shall have that Breath so pure as to be insensible of

the most delicate Noses; and if he can manage so as to avoid the Report,

he may anywhere give vent to his Griefs, unnoticed. But as there are

many to whom an entire Vegetable Diet would be inconvenient, & as a

little quick Lime thrown into a Jakes will correct the amazing Quantity

of fetid Air arising from the vast Mass of putrid Matter contained in

such Places, and render it pleasing to the Smell, who knows but that a

little Powder of Lime (or some other equivalent) taken in our Food, or

perhaps a Glass of Lime Water drank at Dinner, may have the same Effect

on the Air produced in and issuing from our Bowels?"

One curious commentary on the text is that Elizabeth should be so fond of

investigating into the authorship of the exhalation in question, when she

was inordinately fond of strong and sweet perfumes; in fact, she was

responsible for the tremendous increase in importations of scents into

England during her reign.

"YE BOKE OF YE SIEUR MICHAEL DE MONTAINE"

There is a curious admixture of error and misunderstanding in this part

of the sketch. In the first place, the story is borrowed from Montaigne,

where it is told inaccurately, and then further corrupted in the telling.

It was not the good widows of Perigord who wore the phallus upon their

coifs; it was the young married women, of the district near Montaigne's

home, who paraded it to view upon their foreheads, as a symbol, says our

essayist, "of the joy they derived therefrom." If they became widows,

they reversed its position, and covered it up with the rest of their

head-dress.

The "emperor" mentioned was not an emperor; he was Procolus, a native of

Albengue, on the Genoese coast, who, with Bonosus, led the unsuccessful

rebellion in Gaul against Emperor Probus. Even so keen a commentator as

Cotton has failed to note the error.

The empress (Montaigne does not say "his empress") was Messalina, third

wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was uncle of Caligula and foster-father

to Nero. Furthermore, in her case the charge is that she copulated with

twenty-five in a single night, and not twenty-two, as appears in the

text. Montaigne is right in his statistics, if original sources are

correct, whereas the author erred in transcribing the incident.

As for Proculus, it has been noted that he was associated with Bonosus,

who was as renowned in the field of Bacchus as was Proculus in that of

Venus (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). The feat of

Proculus is told in his own words, in Vopiscus, (Hist. Augustine, p. 246)

where he recounts having captured one hundred Sarmatian virgins, and

unmaidened ten of them in one night, together with the happenings

subsequent thereto.

Concerning Messalina, there appears to be no question but that she was a

nymphomaniac, and that, while Empress of Rome, she participated in some

fearful debaucheries. The question is what to believe, for much that we

have heard about her is almost certainly apocryphal.

The author from whom Montaigne took his facts is the elder Pliny, who,

in his Natural History, Book X, Chapter 83, says, "Other animals become

sated with veneral pleasures; man hardly knows any satiety. Messalina,

the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of an

empress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the

most notorious women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute;

and the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day,

at the twenty-fifth embrace."

But Pliny, notwithstanding his great attainments, was often a retailer of

stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writer who

heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in the

Annals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlier

days of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as he may be, is little more

than an anecdotist. Juvenal, another of her detractors, is a prejudiced

witness, for he started out to satirize female vice, and naturally aimed

at high places. Dio also tells of Messalina's misdeeds, but his work is

under the same limitations as that of Suetonius. Furthermore, none but

Pliny mentions the excess under consideration.

However, "where there is much smoke there must be a little fire," and

based upon the superimposed testimony of the writers of the period, there

appears little doubt but that Messalina was a nymphomaniac, that she

prostituted herself in the public stews, naked, and with gilded nipples,

and that she did actually marry her chief adulterer, Silius, while

Claudius was absent at Ostia, and that the wedding was consummated in the

presence of a concourse of witnesses. This was "the straw that broke the

camel's back." Claudius hastened back to Rome, Silius was dispatched,

and Messalina, lacking the will-power to destroy herself, was killed when

an officer ran a sword through her abdomen, just as it appeared that

Claudius was about to relent.

"THEN SPAKE YE DAMNED WINDMILL, SIR WALTER"

Raleigh is thoroughly in character here; this observation is quite in

keeping with the general veracity of his account of his travels in

Guiana, one of the most mendacious accounts of adventure ever told.

Naturally, the scholarly researches of Westermarck have failed to

discover this people; perhaps Lady Helen might best be protected among

the Jibaros of Ecuador, where the men marry when approaching forty.

Ben Jonson in his Conversations observed "That Sr. W. Raughlye esteemed

more of fame than of conscience."

YE VIRGIN QUEENE

Grave historians have debated for centuries the pretensions of Elizabeth

to the title, "The Virgin Queen," and it is utterly impossible to dispose

of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appears to be in

the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attending the

marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, and Elizabeth

finally announced that she would become wedded to the English nation,

and she wore a ring in token thereof until her death. However, more or

less open liaisons with Essex and Leicester, as well as a host of lesser

courtiers, her ardent temperament, and her imperious temper, are

indications that cannot be denied in determining any estimate upon the

point in question.

Ben Jonson in his Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden

says,

"Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass;

they painted her, and sometymes would vermillion her nose. She had

allwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and

she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herself

fortunate. That she had a membrana on her, which made her uncapable of

man, though for her delight she tried many. At the comming over of

Monsieur, there was a French Chirurgion who took in hand to cut it, yett

fear stayed her, and his death."

It was a subject which again intrigued Clemens when he was abroad with

W. H. Fisher, whom Mark employed to "nose up" everything pertaining to

Queen Elizabeth's manly character.

"'BOCCACCIO HATH A STORY"

The author does not pay any great compliment to Raleigh's memory here.

There is no such tale in all Boccaccio. The nearest related incident

forms the subject matter of Dineo's novel (the fourth) of the First day

of the Decameron.

OLD SR. NICHOLAS THROGMORTON

The incident referred to appears to be Sir Nicholas Throgmorton's trial

for complicity in the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey Queen of England,

a charge of which he was acquitted. This so angered Queen Mary that she

imprisoned him in the Tower, and fined the jurors from one to two

thousand pounds each. Her action terrified succeeding juries, so that

Sir Nicholas's brother was condemned on no stronger evidence than that

which had failed to prevail before. While Sir Nicholas's defense may

have been brilliant, it must be admitted that the evidence was weak.

He was later released from the Tower, and under Elizabeth was one of a

group of commissioners sent by that princess into Scotland, to foment

trouble with Mary, Queen of Scots. When the attempt became known,

Elizabeth repudiated the acts of her agents, but Sir Nicholas, having

anticipated this possibility, had sufficient foresight to secure

endorsement of his plan by the Council, and so outwitted Elizabeth, who

was playing a two-faced role, and Cecil, one of the greatest statesmen

who ever held the post of principal minister. Perhaps it was this

incident to which the company referred, which might in part explain

Elizabeth's rejoinder. However, he had been restored to confidence ere

this, and had served as ambassador to France.

"TO SAVE HIS DOTER'S MAIDENHEDDE"

Elizabeth Throckmorton (or Throgmorton), daughter of Sir Nicholas, was

one of Elizabeth's maids of honor. When it was learned that she had been

debauched by Raleigh, Sir Walter was recalled from his command at sea by

the Queen, and compelled to marry the girl. This was not "in that olde

daie," as the text has it, for it happened only eight years before the

date of this purported "conversation," when Elizabeth was sixty years

old.

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

The various printings of 1601 reveal how Mark Twain's 'Fireside

Conversation' has become a part of the American printer's lore. But more

important, its many printings indicate that it has become a popular bit

of American folklore, particularly for men and women who have a feeling

for Mark Twain. Apparently it appeals to the typographer, who devotes to

it his worthy art, as well as to the job printer, who may pull a crudely

printed proof. The gay procession of curious printings of 1601 is unique

in the history of American printing.

Indeed, the story of the various printings of 1601 is almost legendary.

In the days of the "jour." printer, so I am told, well-thumbed copies

were carried from print shop to print shop. For more than a quarter

century now it has been one of the chief sources of enjoyment for

printers' devils; and many a young rascal has learned about life from

this Fireside Conversation. It has been printed all over the country,

and if report is to be believed, in foreign countries as well. Because

of the many surreptitious and anonymous printings it is exceedingly

difficult, if not impossible, to compile a complete bibliography. Many

printings lack the name of the publisher, the printer, the place or date

of printing. In many instances some of the data, through the patient

questioning of fellow collectors, has been obtained and supplied.

1. [Date, 1601.] Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the

Time of the Tudors.

DESCRIPTION: Pamphlet, pp. [ 1 ]-8, without wrappers or cover, measuring

7x8 inches. The title is Set in caps. and small caps.

The excessively rare first printing, printed in Cleveland, 1880, at the

instance of Alexander Gunn, friend of John Hay. Only four copies are

believed to have been printed, of which, it is said now, the only known

copy is located in the Willard S. Morse collection.

2. Date 1601. Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the

time of the Tudors.

(Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the

Pepys of that day, the same being cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth. It is

supposed that he is of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these

literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the Queen

stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels his nobility

defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay

there till Her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.)

DESCRIPTION: Title as above, verso blank; pp. [i]-xi, text; verso p. xi

blank. About 8 x 10 inches, printed on handmade linen paper soaked in

weak coffee, wrappers. The title is set in caps and small caps.

COLOPHON: at the foot of p. xi: Done Att Ye Academie Preffe; M DCCC LXXX||