Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890

He said his wife talked him to death. Poor wretch.

As I read Mark Twain’s short writings from 1864-1890, I sometimes felt he was trying to talk me to death. But it would have been a good death.

While Twain is most well known for his humor and colloquial style, this collection reveals an incredibly complex, thoughtful mind. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, was America’s first great non-military, non-political celebrity (perhaps I could include Robert Fulton). He was a superstar before the term had been coined. And he was arguably the nation’s first public intellectual. This collection demonstrates why.

When I originally drafted this review, it was full of spoilers, which made it tedious. So here’s my blanket alert: this review is full of spoilers. But I couldn’t help myself, this review is more for me that it is for you. I want to leave behind some breadcrumbs to recognize how wonderful the journey was when I first took it. So if you think you might want to read this, stop reading now. The first 200 pages or so are mostly for Twain completists or scholars. There are a few memorable lines, but many of the selections are more of historical interest that shed light on the American West in the 1860s. But after that, this is a literary gold mine. Here are a few that I want to remember:

Twain the social critic comes through beautifully in “Female Suffrage,” an exchange of “letters” between Twain, his wife, and other women writing to his St. Louis newspaper. Magnanimously—at least in his opinion—he states he is against giving his wife the vote because it would lead the “destruction” of his family. She’s “qualified” for other things. She responds

And as for this wretch, he had better find something else to do than meddling with matters he is incapable of understanding. I suppose he votes—such is law!—such is justice!—he is allowed to vote, but women a thousand times his superiors in intelligence are ruled out!—he!—a creature who don’t know enough to follow the wires and find the telegraph office. Comment is unnecessary. If I get my hands on that whelp I will snatch hair out of his head till he is as bald as a phrenological bust.

Of course, later Twain encounters a woman who “said she was opposed to female suffrage, because she was not willing to see her sex reduced to a level of negroes and men!” (Which was repeated in a later writing, see p. 566 note below.) Through all the sarcasm and jokes the intent of his argument, a half a century before it was achieved, was that he was really for a woman’s right to vote.

The same commentator can be recognized in a series published from October 1870-January 1871, a group of “letters” written by a Chinese immigrant to his family as he journeys from China to find his fortune in America. All the while as he is cheated, abused, and vilified, he maintains his innocence and optimism. He even keeps up his spirits when being berated by a San Francisco policemen, “This Ching divil comes till Ameriky to take the bread out o’ dacent intilligent white men’s mouths, and whin they try to defind their rights there’s a dale o’ fuss made about it.” It would seem that there’s not much difference between how many Americans viewed immigrants in 1870 or at a recent Trump rally. The correspondent’s final thought, written after he is sentenced to prison even though he is innocent, also seem strangely contemporary. A “newspaper reporter [wrote an account]…(said an ancient Chinaman to me), in which he would praise all the policemen indiscriminately and abuse the Chinamen and dead people.”

There was also a dark side to his mostly progressive views. Just months before he wrote the piece above, Twain reveals a deep-seeded racism “The Noble Red Man” about Native Americans that gets harder to read and accept. Twain describes him as “nothing but a poor, filthy scurvy vagabond, whom to exterminate were a charity to the Creator’s worthier insects and reptiles he oppresses” adding “he is a good, fair, desirable subject for extermination if ever there was one.” And it gets worse. “All history and honest observation will show that the Red Man is a skulking coward and windy braggart…kills helpless women and little children…and then brags about it as long as he lives…” Nor does he spare those who have sympathy of the people he hates, “…it is this same Noble Red Man who is always greeted with a wail of humanitarian sympathy from the Atlantic seaboard whenever he gets into trouble…” I had hoped that I missed the intended sarcasm that was in his other writings about injustice, but it was in vain. It must have been inspired by personal experience he had in the West. As I looked online, I even found the most prominent neo-Nazi website to have a glowing review of it. But thankfully, this is a singular piece of this anthology.

After his stint as a journalist in Nevada in the mid-1860s, Twain spent a short time as an administrative assistant for a congressman in Washington, DC. That experience informed a hilarious story, “Cannibalism in the Cars,” in which a train full of congressmen from around the nation becomes stuck in the drifts of an epic snow storm in the middle of Illinois. They have no means of escape as they get frozen in. As the food runs out, the politicians, through proper and correct parliamentary procedure, decide on two congressmen to be their meals to survive the storm. They are properly cooked and the meal begins:

We improvised tables by propping up the back of the car-seats, and sat down with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our vision for seven torturing days…That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful life. The wind howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison-house, but they were powerless to distress us anymore. I liked Harris. He might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored, but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fibre, give me Harris. Messick has his good points—I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish to do it—but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be, sir—not a bit. Lean?—why, bless me!—and tough? Ah, he was very tough! You could not imagine it,—you could never imagine anything like it.More of a philosophical treatise, “The Curious Republic of Gondour,” is a political scientist’s examination of the governing rules of a mythical country.

I found that the nation had at first tried universal suffrage pure and simple, but had thrown that form aside because the result was not satisfactory. It had seemed to deliver all power into the hands of the ignorant and non-tax-paying classes; and of a necessity the responsible offices were filled from these classes also.

Their solution was to build a system that valued education, because “Learning goes usually with uprightness, broad views, and humanity…” They devised a new system of voting that valued education over commerce. “Votes based upon capital were commonly called ‘mortal’ votes, because they could be lost; those based upon learning were called ‘immortal’…” Individuals could also have multiple votes. A businessman might have 22 “mortal” votes and 2 “immortal” votes, an astronomer, with no money, might have 9 “immortal” votes, which under their system could swing an election by as much as 150 total votes. “Competitive examinations were the rule in all official grades.” This led a citizen to remark, “Well, you will not find any fools or ignoramuses among our officials.” They had a Grand Caliph who was elected for a 20 year term, but the ministries and parliament governed. Women also served in senior positions. But education remained the most important qualification:

I inquired about public schools. There were plenty of them, and of free colleges too. I inquired about compulsory education This was received with a smile, and the remark,—

“When a man’s child is able to make himself powerful and honored according to the amount of education he acquires, don’t you suppose that that parent will apply the compulsion himself? Our free schools and free colleges require no law to fill them.”

But even that led the political scientist to conclude there was a certain smugness in the land, and he was happy to return home.

“Recent Carnival of Crime in Conn.” crosses the boundaries of philosophy and slapstick in which Twain confronts his conscience, which has a human form but normally remains invisible. He meets “a shriveled, shabby dwarf…not more than two feet high [that] seemed to be forty years old [that] was a deformity as a whole—a vague, general, evenly-blended, nicely-adjusted deformity.” After futile attempts to catch and kill his conscience, they finally settle down to have a conversation. Twain complains to his conscience, “Now tell me, why is it that a conscience can’t haul a man over the coals once, for an offense, and then let him alone?” But his conscience replies that he hasn’t had it easy either. He didn’t always look the way he did:

“Confound you. I was n’t consulted about your personal appearance.”

“I don’t care, you had a good deal to do with it, nevertheless. When you were eight or nine years old, I was seven feet high and pretty as a picture.”

When his conscience dozes off to sleep from exhaustion, Twain tears him to shreds and kills him. He is finally “a man WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE!” whose life became “all bliss…”

I settled all my outstanding scores, and began the world anew. I killed thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks—all of them on account of ancient grudges. I burned a dwelling that interrupted my view. I swindled a widow and some orphans out of their last cow, which is a very good one, though not thoroughbred.

Life without a conscience might be more than it’s cracked up to be!

Perhaps the two strangest pieces bordered on 19th century pornography. “Conversation, as it Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors” only had six privately published editions and was shown to the Rev. Joseph Twichell, a close personal friend, author William Dean Howells, and John Hay, a private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State to Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1880 he had a private copy published for the library of West Point, the U.S. Army Academy. Written in Elizabethan English, it is a scene with Queen Elizabeth and a group of 14 people including Sir Walter Raleigh and Ben Jonson. Couched in archaic language, normally associated with Shakespeare’s plays, the dialogue takes bawdy turns.

Ye Queene. — O’God’s name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yr 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 mousse-squeak before thou earnest to blow a hurricane like this. Was’t you, my learned and ingenious Jonson?
Jonson. — So fell a blast hath ne’er mine ears saluted, not 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.

In other words, Elizabeth asks who let out that loud and smelly fart and Jonson answers, I never heard or smelled anything like it, it was done by a pro and it was not me. The rest of the scene is a discussion of the group as they figure out, in modern parlance, who dealt it. Then the conversation turns to sex. Elizabeth compliments the sexual prowess of Lord Beaumonte:

Ye Queen. — 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 maid in thy good time, an’ they cod-piece be as handy as thy speeche.

Translation: Beaumonte, you are endowed like a horse and your silver tongue is gonna get you a lot of ladies in your day. And near the end of the scene, the narrator describes an awkward turn in the conversation:

There was silent uncomfortableness now: ’twas not a good turn for the talk to take, sith if ye queen must find offense in a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loath to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company is sinless; behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not 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, behold, were not ye Lady Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye cradle?

Reading this brought a smile to my face as I tried to envision an esteemed reverend, one of the most well respected writers of his age, arguably the greatest American statesman of the late 19th century, and a bunch of young cadets at the most esteemed military academy in the nation sitting around in private snickering as they read. I loved snickering with them.

Another along these lines was less private. Included in the latter half of this book are a number of speeches that Twain, now rich, famous, and in demand. In a speech he gave in Paris in 1879 to the Stomach Club Dinner, he chose the topic “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism.” A bawdy speech on masturbation must have had the audience rolling on the floor. A selection from the introductory paragraph gives us a glimpse:

Some writers have taken one side, some the other. Homer, in the second book of the Iliad, says with fine enthusiasm, “Give me masturbation or give me death!” Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken a friend; to the aged and impotent it is a benefactor; they that be penniless are yet rich, in that they still have a majestic diversion.” In another place this excellent observer has said, “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.” Robinson Crusoe says, “I cannot describe what I owe this gentle art.” Queen Elizabeth said, “It is the bulwark of virginity.” Cetewayo, the Zulu hero remarked that “a jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The immortal Franklin has said, “Masturbation is the mother of invention.” He also said, “Masturbation is the best policy.”

These selections add to the understanding of a tongue-in-cheek piece he wrote about being the perfect presidential candidate, “I recommend myself as a safe man—a man who starts from the basis of total depravity and proposed to be fiendish to the last.”

In “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightening” Twain proves that he could have been a great writer of slapstick comedies. Mrs. McWilliams, who had a great fear of thunderstorms and lightening, hears booming in the distance and drives her husband, Mortimer, crazy as they try prepare for the approaching danger. As the storm gets closer, she remembers that they have a German book about storms and how to prepare for them. As noises get louder, she reads to him:

“Mortimer, it says, ‘Während eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle, wie, z.B., Ringe, Uhren, Schlüssel, etc., von sich und halte sich auch nicht an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit andern Körpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Oefen, Eisengittern u. dgl.�� What does that mean, Mortimer? Does it mean that you must keep metals about you, or keep them away from you?”

“Well, I hardly know. It appears to be a little mixed. All German advice is more or less mixed. However, I think that that sentence is mostly in the dative case, with a little genitive and accusative sifted in, here and there, for luck; so I reckon it means, that you must keep some metals about you.”

Hilarity ensues as we learn that the booming has nothing whatsoever do to with thunder or lightening. He revived the McWilliams couple in a story about a burglar alarm years later.

As his ability with the German language above shows, Twain was a world traveler; it is arguable that few traveled as widely as he did in his historical age. And everywhere he was asked to give speeches. One of my favorite was an excerpt of a speech he gave in Montreal in 1881.

I suppose one must come in the summer to get the advantages of the Canadian scenery. A cabman drove me two miles up a perpendicular hill in a sleigh and showed me an admirable snowstorm from the heights of Quebec. The man was an ass; I could have seen the snowstorm as well from the hotel window and saved my money. Still, I may have been the ass myself; there is no telling; the thing is all mixed up in my mind; but anyway there was an ass in the party; and I do suppose that wherever a mercenary cabman and a gifted literary character are gathered together for business, there is bound to an ass in the combination somewhere.

Lastly, later in the collection there were a couple of items that would apply to today’s politics. In 1884, “Mock Oration on the Dead Partisans,” he laments the power of political parties. He describes “a meek and docile, cringing and fawning, dirt-eating and dirt-preferring slave; and Party was his lord and master…the only true freedom of thought is to think as the party thinks; that the only true freedom of speech is to speak as the party dictates; that the only righteous toleration is the toleration of what the party approves; that patriotism, duty, citizenship, devotion to country, loyalty to the flag, are all summed up in loyalty to the party.” I thought of this a lot today as the American media is dominated by the rebuke of Trump by a senator of his own party. Twain emphasized his views in “The Character of Man,” writing:

Look at the tyranny of party—at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty—a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes—and with turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.

Is anything more relevant today?

In closing, I read parts of this book while flying and waiting in airports. I read the following as an annoying person sitting next to me in the terminal chatted on her phone:

I consider that a conversation by telephone—when you are simply sitting by and not taking part in that conversation—is one of the solemnest curiosities of this modern life.

If that isn’t proof that Twain’s writing is always relevant, I don’t know what is. And if you’ve read this far, please take some time to read the quotes below that I noted as a I read. It’s a gold mine of wisdom.