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diff --git a/3190-0.txt b/3190-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5eaabf1 --- /dev/null +++ b/3190-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1720 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of 1601, by Mark Twain + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: 1601--Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors + +Author: Mark Twain + +Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3190] +Last Updated: February 24, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1601 *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +1601 + +Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors + + +By Mark Twain + + + + +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 strictly 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 there to 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 riotous 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-six +yeres of age; ye Countesse of Granby, thirty; 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 thunderbust +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 subjct 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 coming 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 +II. + +The privately printed West Point edition, the first printing of the text +authorized by Mark Twain, of which but fifty copies were printed. The +story of this printing is fully told in the Introduction. + + +3. Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The +Tudors from Ye Diary of Ye Cupbearer to her Maisty Queen Elizabeth. +[design] Imprinted by Ye Puritan Press At Ye Sign of Ye Jolly Virgin +1601. + +DESCRIPTION: 2 blank leaves; p. [i] blank, p. [ii] fronds., p. [iii] +title [as above], p. [iv] “Mem.”, pp. 1-[25] text, I blank leaf. 4 3/4 +by 6 1/4 inches, printed in a modern version of the Caxton black letter +type, on M.B.M. French handmade paper. The frontispiece, a woodcut by A. +E. Curtis, is a portrait of the cup-bearer. Bound in buff-grey +boards, buckram back. Cover title reads, in pale red ink, Caxton type, +Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The +Tudors. [The Byway Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1901, 120 copies.] + +Probably the first published edition. + +Later, in 1916, a facsimile edition of this printing was published in +Chicago from plates. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 1601, by Mark Twain + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1601 *** + +***** This file should be named 3190-0.txt or 3190-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/9/3190/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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