The Governor’s Island Reading
On 11 November 1886, Mark Twain read from the manuscript of A Connecticut Yankee before an audience of notables at a meeting of the Military Service Institute on Governor’s Island (see the introduction, pp. 6–7). After reading from the first three or four chapters, which were much as they are in the finished book, he went on, as he said in his notebook, “with an outline of the probable contents of the future book” ( N&J3 , p. 79). Among the many readings he gave from the manuscript, this one is of particular interest because it shows something of how Mark Twain conceived of his story at a very early stage in its composition. Three newspaper accounts of the reading are presented here: one from the New York Sun, one from the New York Herald, and one from the New York World, all of 12 November 1886. Typographical errors have been silently corrected, but the names of those in the audience are spelled as each newspaper printed them.
YANKEE SMITH OF CAMELOT.
MARK TWAIN EXPLORES A NEW LEGEND
OF THE ROUND TABLE.
A Fellow From Connecticut and the Nineteenth
Century Wanders Into King Arthur’s Domain
and Takes Charge as
Soon as He Gets Acquainted
with the Folks.
Last night’s monthly meeting of the Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island was made entertaining by Mark Twain, who read a paper, the announcement of which caused the thronging of the old museum hall. Gen. W. T. Sherman and Gen. Schofield were present. Gen. James B. Fry presided.
Mr. Clemens said that that which he was about to read was part of a still uncompleted book, of which he would give the first chapter by way of explanation, and follow it with selected fragments, “or outline the rest of it in bulk, so to speak; do as the dying cowboy admonished his spiritual adviser to do, ‘just leave out the details, and heave in the bottom facts.’ ”
Mr. Clemens’s story is the autobiography of Sir Robert Smith of Camelot, one of King Arthur’s knights, formerly a manufacturer of Hartford, Conn. Robert Smith says of himself:
I am a Yankee of the Yankees, a practical man, nearly barren of sentiment or poetry—in other words, my father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was both. Then I went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade—learned to make everything, guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, electric machines, anything, in short, that anybody wanted anywhere in the world. . . . I became head boss and had a thousand men under me. Well, a man like that is full of fight—that goes without saying. With a thousand rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of amusement.
Well, at last I met my match; I got my dose. It was during a mis- [begin page 499] understanding conducted with iron crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack and seemed to make every joint of my skull lap over on its neighbor, and then the world went out in darkness and I felt nothing more, knew nothing more for a while, and when I came to again I was standing under an oak tree and the factory was gone.
Standing under an oak tree on the grass with a beautiful broad country, a landscape spread out before me—all to myself. No, not quite, not entirely to myself. There was a fellow on a horse looking down at me—a fellow fresh out of a picture book. He was in old-time armor from his head to his heel. He had a helmet on like a cheese box with slits in it, and he carried a shield and a sword and a prodigious spear. And his horse had armor on, too, and gorgeous silken trappings, red and green, that hung around him like a bedgown to the ground. And this apparition said to me:
“Fair sir! Will you joust?”
Said I, “Will I which?”
“Will you joust? Will you break a lance for land or lady?”
Said I, “What are you giving me? You go along back to your circus, or I’ll report you.”
Now what does this fellow do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come tilting at me, as hard as he could drive, his cheese box down close and his long spear pointed straight at me. I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when he arrived. Well, he allowed I was his property; the captive of his spear. Well, there was argument on his side and the bulk of the advantage, so I judged it best to humor him, and we fixed up an agreement. I was to go along with him, and he wasn’t to hurt me. So I came down, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse, and we marched comfortably along through glades and over brooks that I could not remember to have seen before. It puzzled me ever so much, and yet we didn’t come to any circus, or any sign of a circus, so I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an asylum. But we never came to any asylum, so I was up a stump, as you may say.
And so the two wander on together, and amid scenes of human life that afford the author many opportunities for quaint philosophic contrasts and dry humor, until they come to Camelot, to the court of King Arthur. Fanciful and curious are the reflections of the transposed Yankee about that place—which he at first thinks must be the asylum—in its country of soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream and lonesome as Sunday; where the air was full of the smell of flowers and the buzzing of insects and the twittering of birds, [begin page 500] and there were no people or wagons or life or anything going on.
Very vividly he portrays the scene at Camelot, where King Arthur, with his knights, sits at a round table as big as a circus ring, and 300 dogs fight for bones around them, while the musicians are in one gallery high aloft and the ladies in another. But before he gets in there he seeks information from a plain-looking man in the outer court, saying to him: “ ‘Now, my friend, do me a kindness. Tell me, do you belong to the asylum or are you just here on a visit, or something like that?’ And he looked me over stupidly and said: ‘Marry! Fair sir—’ ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘That will do. I guess you are a patient.’ ” To another he said: “ ‘Now, my friend, if I could see the head keeper just a minute, only just a minute.’ He said: ‘Prithee do not let me.’ ‘Let you what?’ ‘Do not hinder me, if the word please thee better,’ and he was an under cook, and had no time to talk, though he would like to another time, for it would just comfort his very liver to know where I got my clothes.”
Then another, a lad, came to him saying that he was a page. “ ‘Oh! go along,’ I said; ‘you ain’t more than a paragraph.’ ” The page happened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the year 513.
It made the cold chills creep over me. I stopped and said, a little faintly, “Now, maybe I didn’t hear you just right. Would you say that again, and say it slow. What year did you say it was?” “513.”
“And, according to your notions, according to your lights and superstitions, what year is it now?” “Why,” he said, “the year 528, the 19th of June.” Well, I felt a mournful sinking of the heart, and muttered: “I shall never see my friends again—never see my friends any more: they won’t be born for as much as a thousand years.”
The speaker had often been interrupted by laughter, but at the originality and fun of that conceit his auditors laughed until they cried, and kept on laughing with renewed outbursts over and over again. How the cute Yankee determined to get at the bottom facts about the year by watching for a total eclipse of the sun that he remembered the almanac of 1884 had spoken of as having occurred in 528, will have to be learned from the book when it appears.
I made up my mind to two things. If it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunatics and couldn’t get away I would boss that asylum or know the reason why, and if, on the other hand, it was [begin page 501] really the sixth century, all right. I didn’t want any better thing; I’d boss the whole country inside of three months, for I judged I’d have the start on the best educated man in the kingdom by 1,300 years. . . . But I’m not a man to waste time, so I said to the boy, “Clarence, if your name should happen to be Clarence, what’s the name of that duck, that galoot, who brought me here?”
The galoot turned out to be Sir Kay, the Seneschal. In the natural course of the story came the charming description of the interior of King Arthur’s castle, leading up to a royally funny account of the competitive lying of the gallant knights about their feats at arms. The transposed Smith looked upon the knights as a sort of “white Indians,” admired their bigness and their simplicity, and eventually concluded:
There didn’t seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery to bait a fishhook, but you didn’t mind that after a little while, for you saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and would have marred its symmetry and spoiled it.
Everybody goes to sleep when Merlin reels off that same old story about Excalibur. Guinevere makes eyes at Launcelot in a way that would have got him shot in Arkansas. King Arthur orders the Yankee to go to some unknown place not down in any map, capture a castle, kill the colossal saucer-eyed ogre who owned it, and release sixty royal princesses. Of course he went, but he reflected:
Well, of all the d——d contracts, this is boss! I offered to sublet it to Sir Launcelot, to let him have it at ninety days, with no margin, but “No,” he had got a better thing. He was going for a menagerie of one-eyed giants and a college of princesses.
It occurs to him finally, after wondering if a compromise with the ogre wouldn’t work, simply to go back and tell the King, with artistic circumstantiality of detail, that he has killed the ogre. He does so, and, of course, the King and his knights, who are used to swallowing each other’s huge lies, readily take in his, and a brilliant career opens before him as the boss liar of the court.
He took a contract from King Arthur to kill off, at one of the great tournaments, fifteen kings and many acres of hostile armored knights. When, lance in rest they charged by squadrons upon him, he behind the protection of a barbed wire fence charged with electricity mowed [begin page 502] them down with Gatling guns that he had made for the occasion. He found that the “education of the nineteenth century is plenty good enough capital to go into business in the sixth century with,” and the next year he was running the kingdom all by himself on a moderate royalty of forty per cent.
He spoiled the ogre business; cleared out the fuss and flummery of romance and put King Arthur’s kingdom on a strictly business basis. Inside of three and a half years the improvement was complete. Cast-iron clothes had gone out of fashion. Sir Launcelot was running a kind of Louisiana lottery. The search for the Holy Grail had been given up for a hunt for the Northwest Passage. King Arthur’s 140 illustrious Knights had turned themselves into a stock Board, and a seat at the Round Table was worth $30,000.
[begin page 503]MARK TWAIN’S YANKEE KNIGHT
Sir Bob Smith’s Adventures Electrify the Military Service Institution.
A MOST SUCCESSFUL LIAR.
Introducing Connecticut Notions Into the Court of King Arthur.
All Governor’s Island laughed last night.
A bristle-haired Connecticut Yankee lectured in King Arthur’s Court and sketched the Knights of the Round Table with a master hand.
Mark Twain was the speaker.
His theme was technically worded “The War Experience of a Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court.” It was given before the Military Service Institution. There was a brilliant audience of military men, their wives and friends. General Sherman sat grim and stately under the tattered flags of Gettysburg and Spottsylvania. His brother, the silent, thinking Senator, sat near him as if posing for a sculptor, but Mark Twain soon softened the hard military lines in the face of the hero and made the cold financier beside him double up like a jackknife.
Laughter and applause rolled over the convulsed audience. Ex-president Fry forgot the terrors of his office. General Schofield and General Stone gave themselves up to the magic of the hour, ladies hid their beauty behind their handkerchiefs, while the officers from Fort Hamilton joined their friends from the city in the general merriment over the dilemma of a nineteenth century Yankee at King Arthur’s Court looking forward 1,200 years to the time when his parents should be born. By other trophies of great battles sat Generals [begin page 504] Rodenburgh and Burns, Colonel Johnson, Mr. W. D. Whipple, General Wilson, Surgeon Janeway, Major Randolph, Colonel Jewell, Major Sawyer, Colonel Woodhull, J. J. Milhau, Captain Charles Morris, J. A. Fessenden, son of the late Secretary Fessenden; Colonel Hamilton D. McClure, O. L. Sheperd, B. Harvard, Major H. C. King, “Banker” Dowd, Jr., and six ladies, and Lieutenant Woodford, who earlier in the evening had received a medal for his essay entitled, “Our Enlisted Men.”
Rows of rifles gleamed along the flag-hung walls, under banners and antlers from Custer’s Western camp, and on the platform, in front of the illustrious generals, shone burnished antique armor, crowned with visor and glittering helmet.
The officers were in full uniform, with swords and shoulder straps, Beauty smiled on the scene, and a hundred bright eyes sparkled as the lecturer began to paint the glories of Sir Launcelot and his brave knights of old.
introducing the lecturer.
The lecture was a succession of pictures interspersed with epigrams, jokes and witticisms, alternately drawled and fired as if from a gatling gun. General Fry introduced the lecturer by saying that there were different forms of military literature, but the most powerful form was truth. General Fry said he did not know who King Arthur was, he had never met him, but he was sure the lecturer of the evening would make him well known to every one in the audience before the close of the entertainment.
Mark Twain (whose nom de plume is Samuel L. Clemens) was dressed in the height of fashion, which made him tremble as he arose and bowed before the expectant faces. A mournful, Calvary Cemetery look shadowed his Platte River countenance. It was evident that sorrow had but recently haunted his literary fireside. There was a skeleton in every joke, and his lecture soon resolved itself into a gorgeous charnel house, bursting with humor. His marvellous faculty of mingling six sentences of a funeral oration with a side-splitting epigram warmed up the old generals as if they had won all the pots at a California card party. In plaintive, pathetic, mournful voice which embraced everything from the sixth century to Hackettstown, [begin page 505] N.J., Mark Twain explained that his lecture was a story which he had begun to write some time ago, but had only finished the first chapter. “But,” said he (his distress growing deeper and more genuine), “I will read that first chapter and give you the rest in bulk. As the dying cowboy said to his spiritual adviser, ‘Never mind the details, just heave in the bottom facts.’ ” Here an illustrious general, a distinguished financier, a score of officers and several hundred ladies surrendered for the night, and the funereal gloom on the orator’s face resumed its natural pallor.
some humorous portraits.
The descriptions of the feasting of King Arthur and his knights, and the great oaken round table as big as a circus ring, and of the King, Sir Launcelot, Sir Galahad, Queen Guinevere and the rest was an effective one and full of humorous hits. He told how Sir Launcelot flirted with the Queen, and how she flung furtive glances at him “that would have got him shot in Arkansas,” of the awful lies the knights told as to their prowess when recounting their adventures to the king, and how Sir Kay embroidered the story of his capture of Smith. There was a very amusing description of Mealia Merlin, the magician, who gets up and puts the company to sleep telling an old story for the thousandth time, but which everybody must submit to because of his magical powers.
wanted to sublet a contract.
The lecturer gave an extract from Smith’s journal, describing how he was sent by King Arthur to capture a castle, kill the ogre and set at liberty sixty princesses in regular knightly style. Sir Bob comments upon this:—
“Well, of all the damn contracts this is the boss. Why, I offered to sublet it to Sir Launcelot at ninety days and no margin. But no, he’d got a better thing to do—a whole menagerie of giants and a Vassar College full of jugged princesses. Lots of princesses this year, and all of ’em in trouble. Go and lick the ogre and set loose his summer boarders, hey? Not if I can compromise with him. Never saw such a bullheaded lot as these Round Table Knights. They never think of doing anything by strategy. All they know is to fight. They haven’t [begin page 506] any brains. I asked Sir Galahad to lend me a map, so as I could locate the ogre’s castle. He thought it was something to eat. These Round Table duffers are nothing but grown up children.”
Sir Bob Smith dons his armor—his “boiler iron strait jacket”—and sallies forth. The sun warmed it up like any other stove, and presently he felt that if he couldn’t get out he’d drown in his own sweat, and as he jolted along on his horse it sounded like a heavy tray of dishes falling down cellar. “It may not be delicate to say it,” said Sir Bob, “but the Lord has so made us that when we perspire we want to scratch, and the more we can’t scratch the more we want to.” He suffers untold torture because he wants to scratch his back, his head, his leg, his arm, his foot, and he can’t move in his iron suit. He’d give a million—or his note for it—if he could only scratch. A thunder storm comes up and he is scared because he thinks that he is nothing but a perambulating lightning rod. The rain comes in through the joints of his boiler iron, and he wants to trade his lance for an umbrella.
blows best of all.
He finally comes to the conclusion that a hardware suit is N. G. and that without it he can dodge around and tucker out any duffer in armor, lasso him and yank him in. So he arms himself with a lasso. He doesn’t tackle the ogre, but goes back and tells a majestic lie about it like the rest of the Knights, and the King thinks it’s all right and that he has sent to their homes the released princesses, C. O. D. He easily discounts the simple Knights of the Round Table in lying about his achievements, showing what an educated nineteenth century man can do in the lofty realms of that art, and becomes a favorite of the King and finally the boss of the kingdom.
[begin page 507]MARK TWAIN’S NEW LECTURE.
A YANKEE’S ADVENTURES AT THE COURT
OF KING ARTHUR.
How He Felt When He Wished to Scratch and
Could Not Because of His Armor—He Could
Not Kill Giants but He
Could Lie Better than
Anybody Else, So He Became a Great Knight
Till He Woke Up.
The regular monthly meeting of the Military Service Institution was held last evening in the museum building on Governor’s Island, at which Mr. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) read a learned essay on “The War Experiences of a Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court.” The acting Vice-President, Gen. James B. Fry, presided, and there was a very large attendance. Among those present were Gen. W. T. Sherman and his brother, Gen. J. M. Schofield, Gen. T. F. Rodenbough, Gen. W. W. Burns, Gen. Wm. D. Whipple, Gen. James Grant Wilson, Gen. J. J. Neilhan, Gen. D. McClure, Gen. H. C. King, Gen. O. L. Shepherd, Col. John Hamilton, Col. John H. Janewary, Col. A. A. Woodhull, Capt. Charles Morris, Capt. J. A. Fessenden, Major W. F. Randolph, Capt. V. Hasard, Lieut. H. C. Carbaugh, Lieut. J. Reilly, Lieut. John Pitcher, Lieut. A. W. Vodges, Lieut. Frank Thorp and many ladies and gentlemen from this city.
When Mr. Clemens came forward to the reading-desk there was scant standing room in any part of the hall. He was received with much applause and at once announced the purpose of his lecture or talk as follows:
“Ladies and Gentlemen: This fragment which by your courtesy I am to read here to-night is a story—a satire if you please—which I began to write some time ago and which is not finished; so what I propose to do under the circumstances is to read the first chapter just as it is and then in brief synopsis or outline tell the rest of it in [begin page 508] bulk, do as the dying cowboy advised his spiritual adviser to do, ‘Just leave out the details and heave in the bottom facts.’ It would be impossible to tell much of the story in so short a time as we have and I will begin it just as it is written.”
Mr. Clemens then went on to say, reading from the first chapter of his forthcoming book, that in exploring Warwick Castle in England he met a stranger who interested him greatly. They became very good friends and one day the stranger said, “You know about the transmigration of souls; do you know about the transposition of epochs and bodies?” Mr. Clemens had not heard of it, and subsequently this stranger sent him a manuscript. Beginning the reading of the supposed manuscript, the lecturer read:
“ ‘I am an American.’ Well, he did not look it. ‘I was born in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut. I am a Yankee of the Yankees. My father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse trader and I was both.’ This Yankee was struck in the head one day, and when he awoke he was sitting under an oak tree.” The narration goes on to say that there was a man clad in ancient armor from head to foot, and that this apparition said to him, “Will you joust?” “ ‘I said,’ ” the narrative goes on, “ ‘what are you giving me! Git along back to your circus or I’ll report you,’ but he went back a piece and then he came tilting at me and I saw he meant business and when he arrived where I was I was up in the tree.” (Great laughter.) Mr. Clemens continued the reading, which described how an arrangement was made by which the Yankee was induced to accompany the Knight, believing him first to be from some circus and later on an escaped lunatic.
Describing a woman encountered on the way, the narrative said: “Around her head was a wreath of red poppies, but as regards the rest of her clothing—well, there was not enough of it to talk about. (Great laughter.) She walked along by the circus man and did not pay the slightest attention to him—did not even seem to see him; but when her eye fell on me she seemed to be turned into an image of stone, and there she stood gazing with a sort of stupefied attention till we turned a corner and were lost to view. That she should be startled at me instead of the other man was too many for me. That she should seem to consider me a spectacle, totally overlooking her own merits in that respect, I thought curious.” (Laughter.)
Continuing, the manuscript stated that every one seemed to notice [begin page 509] the narrator with great interest, while none paid the slightest attention to his conductor. The streets through which they passed were muddy and ill-kept, hogs rooted contentedly about and dogs were numerous. Finally a blare of music announced the approach of a gay cavalcade of Knights in armor, and this was followed by an ascent into a castle. With the asylum idea still uppermost the narrator asked an inmate if he belonged to the asylum, or if he was there only as a visitor. “And he said,” continued the narrator, “ ‘Marry, marry,’ and I said, ‘That’ll do, I guess you’re an inmate.’ One gorgeously attired youth came to me and said, ‘I am a page.’ ‘Oh, go along,’ said I; ‘you ain’t big enough for a paragraph.’ (Laughter.) Finally he mentioned in a casual way that he was born in the beginning of 513. Said I: ‘Won’t you say it again and say it slow? What did you say?’ ‘513.’ Said I: ‘You don’t look it.’ And said I: ‘Are you in your right mind?’ ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘And are all these people in their right minds?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, and said I, ‘Where am I?’ and said he, ‘You are in King Arthur’s Court,’ and said I, ‘What year is it now?’ and said he, ‘526, the 13th of June,’ and said I, ‘I shall never see my friends any more, for they won’t be born for more than a thousand years,’ and I seemed to believe the boy, although my reason didn’t.”
The above extract will show the nature of Mr. Clemens’s entertainment. Continuing, he said the page assured him, after the dinner of the Knights of the Round Table was over, he would be called in and exhibited by the one who had brought him there, who was the Seneschal of the Castle and the King’s foster-brother. Finally he was taken in, and then, in the most humorous style, he recounted the marvellous stories which each Knight at the table narrated and the deeds of valor which he had performed. Finally, the Yankee becomes one of the Knights and is clothed in armor and sent to destroy a castle and kill an ogre which guards it and to set at liberty some sixty beautiful princesses. The description of how a man of the present time would be supposed to feel in a suit of armor was one of the most humorous things in Mr. Clemens’s paper. One portion of it was as follows: “God has so made us that there comes a time when we must scratch, and the more we want to scratch the more we would give $10,000 if we could scratch, and if that deprivation goes on there comes a time when we would give a million. First I wanted to scratch my head, then my arms, then my legs,” &c. He went on to describe [begin page 510] how he had perspired inside the armor, and how on ascending the mountain he froze stiff inside of it, and was finally in a frozen state rubbed off the horse by the animal passing under a tree, and, the armor breaking, he was liberated. He then concluded that instead of seeking further for the castle and the one-eyed giant, he would go back and lie about it, and that this succeeded very well and he came to be recognized as a prime warrior among the Knights of the Round Table. Finally he returns to this country and finds that the Knights had turned themselves into a stock board, and seats at the Round Table are worth $30,000 apiece.
At the close of Mr. Clemens’s paper, of which this is but the faintest outline, on motion of Gen. Sherman a vote of thanks was given him.