[begin page 1]

In the years since its publication The Prince and the Pauper has been read primarily as a children's story. Yet the book was not intended by its author solely for the nursery bookshelves. Indeed, Mark Twain was never strictly respectful of the distinction between juvenile and adult literature. In later life he remarked, “I have never written a book for boys; I write for grown-ups who have been boys.”1 The Prince and the Pauper was no exception. It was, as the author styled it, “a tale for young people of all ages.” It was also a conscious excursion away from Mark Twain's established literary territory. He had already proved overwhelmingly successful with the public as a humorist, but he chafed at the widely accepted notion that serious novels were above his “proper level.”2 With The Prince and the Pauper he attempted to win a new audience, the cultivated but conventional readers epitomized by his own Nook Farm neighbors. His determination to broaden his literary reputation was fed by the comments of his family and friends even as he worked on the manuscript of The Prince and the Pauper. They urged him to “do some first-class serious” work and produce a book of “a sober character and a solid worth & a permanent value.” His motherly advisor Mary Mason Fairbanks wrote, “The time has come for your best book. I do not mean your most taking book, with the most money in it, I mean your best contribution to American literature.”3

[begin page 2]

The idea for The Prince and the Pauper, Clemens later recalled, was “suggested by that pleasant and picturesque little history-book, Charlotte M. Yonge's ‘Little Duke,’ ” which he found in his sister-in-law's library at Quarry Farm.4 The Little Duke, set in tenth-century France, follows the youthful adventures of imperious and quick-tempered Richard, duke of Normandy, who succeeds to the title when his father is treacherously murdered. After several months as a hostage at the corrupt court of King Louis IV, young Richard escapes and returns to Normandy, where he develops into a wise and gentle ruler, having learned, as a result of his experiences, Christian forgiveness, humility, and patience.

Charlotte Yonge was a fervent disciple of the Oxford Movement and intended her books to illustrate the history of Anglo-Catholic tenets while fostering Christian ideals and virtues. Clemens had no interest in the religious aspects of The Little Duke, but he was undoubtedly influenced by its genre, the historical romance, and by its theme, the moral education of a young boy. Most important, it showed him an orthodox literary mode, acceptable to a genteel audience, which he could employ.

There are obvious points of similarity between The Little Duke and The Prince and the Pauper. Both Richard of Normandy and Prince Edward are denied their noble birthright and, in the course of their adventures, develop a sense of justice and compassion before they regain their rightful positions. Richard, like Tom Canty, is at times delighted with the pageantry and adulation connected with his new position, but its awful isolation causes him, too, to become bored and lonely. And Prince Edward's faithful ally Miles Hendon recalls Osmond de Centeville, who is Richard's companion and protector [begin page 3] during his French captivity and who later rescues him from it.5 Ultimately, however, the similarities between the two books are superficial. Yonge stayed well within a verifiable historical framework; her intention was didactic, and the simplicity and propriety of her story clearly marked it for a young audience.

The writing of The Prince and the Pauper, like that of many of Mark Twain's works, was accomplished over several years, interrupted by business and family affairs and other literary projects. Therefore it is not surprising that more than once he modified his concept of the book. In the earliest surviving draft of the manuscript he attempted to place the story in the nineteenth century with Victoria's heir Albert Edward, later Edward VII, as its prince. After rejecting the idea of using changelings as the central device, he wrote at least twenty pages in which Albert Edward exchanged identities with Jim Hubbard, a product of London's industrial slums. The Victorian setting proved unusable; according to Albert Bigelow Paine, the author felt that he could not plausibly depict Albert Edward's “proud estate denied and jeered at by a modern mob.” So he put aside his manuscript and “followed back through history, looking along for the proper time and prince,” until he found Edward Tudor. By the summer of 1876 he was “diligently” researching an English Renaissance setting, but he apparently did not then make a fresh start on the manuscript.6 The sole fruit of that summer's historical reading seems to have been his brief scatological sketch 1601 or Conversation, As It Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors.

Clemens continued his study of Tudor history in the summer of 1877 at Quarry Farm, reminding himself in his notebook to “get Froude & notes” and “Hume's Henry VIII & Henry VII” from his Hartford home. He first mentioned the narrative by name, as a possible playscript, on the same notebook page: “Write Prince & Pauper [begin page 4] in 4 acts & 8 changes.”7 But he probably did not begin the actual writing of the Tom Canty/Edward Tudor story until sometime after his return to Hartford in September. A notebook entry of 23 November 1877 sketched the working plan for his new project:

In the course of the next three months, Mark Twain made a start on the manuscript of his novel; he revised and incorporated a few pages of his earlier draft9 and then concentrated on describing Tom Canty's life at the palace, introducing several of the more elaborate scenes of court ceremony. For the moment, the prince's adventures “in rags & hardships” were neglected.

In February 1878, answering a query from Mrs. Fairbanks, Clemens was enthusiastic about the book: “What am I writing? A historical tale, of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it—for it will appear without my name—such grave & stately work being considered by the world to be above my proper level. I have been studying for it, off & on, for a year & a half.”10 That same month, after finishing little more than eleven chapters, the author laid the manuscript aside. Later he said he had stopped because “the tank was dry.” At the time he [begin page 5] told William Dean Howells that he did so to prepare for a trip to Europe.11

The Clemens family sailed for Europe in April 1878 and spent almost a year and a half there while Clemens gathered material for A Tramp Abroad. He did not add to the manuscript of The Prince and the Pauper, although he may have done some research for the story while in London in July and August 1879.12 After returning to the United States in September he devoted himself chiefly to completing his travel book and almost certainly did not resume work on The Prince and the Pauper until after he finished A Tramp Abroad in January 1880.

Mark Twain probably intended at first to establish a pattern of alternating adventures of the pauper and the prince. Early in 1880, looking over the eleven chapters that he had laid aside almost two years before, he was evidently struck by his neglect of Edward's role in the plot: his first decision upon resuming work was to “put 212-13-14 his last completed manuscript pages further along”13 and insert into the manuscript two new chapters (chapters 12 and 13), which dealt with the prince's adventures as an outcast in the streets of London.

By early March 1880 Mark Twain was writing chapter 15 of The Prince and the Pauper14 and he had begun to modify his scheme for the book. The device of alternately presenting the adventures of Tom Canty and Edward, while it responded to the problem of narrative structure, was too restrictive. Tom's perceptions and expe-
[begin page 6] riences, necessarily confined to the English court at Westminster, lacked interest and variety. The first eleven chapters, which dealt almost exclusively with Tom, were overburdened with long quotes from several rather tedious historical accounts. The author began to broaden the scope of his story by concentrating on Edward's adventures. In a letter of March 11 to Howells, he sketched the plot of his novel and hinted at this shift in emphasis away from Tom to Edward:

Mark Twain probably wrote two more chapters before abandoning the manuscript for several weeks.16 By mid-June he was installed at Quarry Farm for the summer and he resumed work, evidently strongly under the influence of his new idea of having Edward experience, firsthand, the laws of his kingdom. From then on, the novel would focus almost exclusively on Edward's adventures.17

Mark Twain alternated composing his novel with writing Huckleberry Finn, and by August 31 he had written the “first half of the [begin page 7] climax chapter” (chapter 32) and anticipated only another week's work. By 14 September 1880 he had finished it.18

For the next four months Mark Twain revised and expanded the manuscript and sought criticisms and reactions from friends. In December he asked Howells, Edwin Pond Parker, and Joseph Hopkins Twichell to read and comment on the manuscript,19 and some of their suggestions occasioned manuscript changes. Parker, in a 1912 letter to the Hartford Courant, recalled that both he and Twichell suggested striking out a certain “blot” in the manuscript, but that Mark Twain refused.20 The author reacted more positively to comments made by Howells in a letter of 13 December 1880:

Mark Twain promptly removed the “whipping-boy's story,”22 but did nothing about the court ceremonials. Howells' praise of the book's picaresque elements may have moved Mark Twain to expand that sec-
[begin page 8] tion of the book,23 and by 21 January 1881 he had added over one hundred thirty new pages of manuscript to the prince's adventures in the rural districts, which pagination shows constitute the greater part of chapters 18 through 22.24 He then added some historical notes—“to give it style”—and finished the book on 1 February 1881.25

There are numerous revisions throughout the manuscript, most of which were made for the purpose of refining language and plot and making the characters more believable.26 In chapter 1, for example, Mark Twain deleted a specific reference to the birthdate of his young heroes. “I knew I was making them too wise & knowing for their real age,” he later admitted, “so I studiously avoided mentioning any dates which would remind the reader that they were under 10 years old. Perhaps I mention the date of Henry VIIIs death, but I don't mention the date of Prince Edward's birth.”27 The author also carefully modified his initial portrait of Edward in chapter 3. Realizing that a studious and sickly Edward would hardly be able to survive the rigorous adventures the plot demanded, Mark Twain sacrificed historical accuracy in the interest of literary necessity, substituting “comely” for “pale” in his description and adding that the prince was “tanned and brown with sturdy out-door sports and exercises.” And he was also concerned that Tom Canty's transmutation from Offal Court to the court at Westminster should not seem incredible, so he added a long passage in chapter 2 describing Tom's daydreams of court life and their effect. In chapter 3 Mark Twain inserted, for the alert reader, the brief scene in which Edward puts away the “article of national importance,” and in chapter 10 he introduced the curious [begin page 9] test by which Mrs. Canty is always able to identify Tom. The author also reduced the number of archaic constructions and spellings, and tempered some of the language.

Plans for publication of the book concerned Clemens for several months before he actually finished it. In November 1880 he offered the opening chapters of The Prince and the Pauper to Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of the prestigious young people's magazine St. Nicholas. Mrs. Dodge replied that the magazine already had enough contributions for 1881, but she agreed to read the proffered chapters, saying that if “the story should prove to be one that St. Nicholas must have (crowded or not) I do not doubt that the publishers and yourself would agree, as to terms.” After consultation with his publisher, Clemens decided against submitting the chapters for fear that serial publication might reduce sales of the printed volume.28

Apparently Clemens had already chosen his publisher by this time. For financial reasons he had long been dissatisfied with the American Publishing Company, the subscription-book firm he had dealt with since 1868, and he was, by 1880, confident that he could publish on a more lucrative basis. The death of Elisha Bliss, president of the American Publishing Company, in September 1880, provided him an excuse for ending his connection with that house and he entered into negotiations with James R. Osgood, a well-known Boston trade publisher. Osgood, who had published Mark Twain's A True Story, and the Recent Carnival of Crime in 1877 as a trade book, had no experience in subscription publishing and no network of door-to-door canvassers to reach the subscription public, but he was understandably eager to add Mark Twain to his list of authors. Clemens, on the other hand, realized the advantages of publishing his first “grave & stately work” under the aegis of a genteel and respected Boston publisher. Nevertheless he had no intention of sacrificing the vast subscription market—and its accompanying huge profits—for the relatively small and elite trade publication readership.29 Therefore in [begin page 10] November 1880 he made a preliminary informal agreement with Osgood for the publication, by subscription, of The Prince and the Pauper. He signed the final contract on 9 February 1881.30

According to the provisions of the contract for The Prince and the Pauper, Osgood, subject to Clemens' approval, would provide the illustrations, pay all advertising costs, and manufacture the book, which was to be issued by 15 November 1881. Clemens agreed to deliver the manuscript by April 1 of that year, to pay all bills incurred in producing the volume, and to determine its retail price and the discounts to agents and canvassers. He would own “all illustrations, plates and stock belonging to said work.” Perhaps the two most important stipulations were that Clemens would retain copyright, which had not been the case when he was dealing with the American Publishing Company, and that he would receive all funds collected except for a 7½ percent commission, which was to go to the Osgood company.31

Production began on schedule: by 16 March 1881 “high-priced artists & engravers”32 were at work on the book and on April 22 Clemens reported that it was “in press.”33 Over the next few months, Clemens was consulted about a variety of production and promotional matters, including manufacturing costs.34 He was able to draw upon his long association with the American Publishing Company to offset Osgood's inexperience in the field of subscription publishing. In fact, [begin page 11] Osgood used the American Publishing Company's subscription network to some extent to market the new book.35

Mark Twain approved, but did not suggest, particular illustrations, allowing his publishers to select captions for them36 and stipulating only that “the artist always picture the Prince & Tom Canty as lads of 13 or 14 years old.”37 More than half of the illustrations were the work of Frank T. Merrill, with the remainder contributed by John J. Harley (who would later work on Life on the Mississippi); the half-titles were designed by L. S. Ipsen.38 The author repeatedly expressed delight with the illustrations, singling out Merrill's delicate figures rather than Harley's more robust delineations. “Merrill probably thinks he originated his exquisite boys himself,” Clemens wrote to his publisher, “but I was ahead of him there!—in these pictures they look and dress exactly as I used to see them in my mind two years ago. It is a vast pleasure to see them cast in the flesh, so to speak—they were of but perishable dream-stuff, before.” Clemens' experience of subscription publishing had convinced him of the importance of illustrations to the volume: he urged his publisher to “glorify” them in the advertising circulars and to “call attention to the historical accuracy of the costumes.”39 The publisher's announcement in the canvassing prospectus would conclude with the statement: “No pains have been spared to make the representation of the characters, costumes, buildings, and scenery historically accurate, as well as artistically correct and attractive.”

Mark Twain began receiving proof sheets of the book in August 1881; by September 18 he had read two-thirds of them and was expect-
[begin page 12] ing to publish the book on December 1.40 The November publication date originally projected for the book could not be met because of the necessity of coordinating printing schedules with the English and Canadian editions. In addition, the November schedule was compromised by last-minute revisions in the text and by difficulties with the impractical Kaolatype process being used to produce the volume's cover.41

Copyright for the first American edition was granted on 13 October 1881. Clemens was more concerned, however, with the problem of securing clear and exclusive Canadian copyright in order to forestall pirated editions. He journeyed to Montreal on November 26 and remained there until December 9 in an attempt to ensure copyright by establishing residence while a small Canadian edition was printed. But Clemens learned even before he left Montreal that Canadian copyright had not been granted. His maneuver was not entirely worthless: his temporary residence in Canada satisfied the requirements of the Imperial Copyright Law of 1842 and effectively protected him from Canadian reprints, but having failed to satisfy more recent Canadian statutes, Clemens was powerless to prevent the importation into Canada of foreign reprints. Two determined Canadian publishers, the Rose-Belford Publishing Company and John Ross Robertson, found a way to circumvent these copyright restrictions—they protected their pirated editions of The Prince and the Pauper by the simple expedient of printing the books in the United States and importing them into Canada.

[begin page 13]

Chatto and Windus' English edition appeared as planned on 1 December 1881, and the authorized Canadian edition, consisting of 275 copies issued by Dawson Brothers of Montreal merely as a concession to copyright law, probably appeared immediately thereafter. Baron Tauchnitz's Continental edition was also scheduled to appear on December 1.42 Osgood's American edition was available on December 3 in Boston, and by the end of December, four impressions, totaling over 25,000 copies, had been prepared.43

The response to The Prince and the Pauper—especially among Clemens' friends—was enthusiastic. As Edwin Pond Parker put it in a Hartford Courant editorial: “Mark Twain has finally fulfilled the earnest hope of many of his best friends, in writing a book which has other and higher merits than can possibly belong to the most artistic expression of mere humor.”44 Mrs. Fairbanks was equally pleased: “It is just a lovely book, and I am as happy as if I had written it myself. . . . The book is your masterpiece in fineness—‘The Innocents’ was your bulletin—‘The Prince & the Pauper’ your specimen.” Thomas Bailey Aldrich expressed his delight with the theme of the book—“a charming conception and charmingly worked out.”45 The one dissenting voice was Joseph T. Goodman, Clemens' old Nevada friend and editor. He had commented even before he saw the book—“I have been anxious that you should try your hand at another novel. But what could have sent you groping among the driftwood of the Deluge for a topic when you would have been so much more at home in the wash of today?” His disappointment became even more acute after he read the novel:

[begin page 14]

In the American press, the keynote of critical reaction to the book was set by Howells, writing anonymously in the New York Daily Tribune in October 1881. He predicted that the book would “surprise those who have found nothing but drollery in Mark Twain's books, and have not perceived the artistic sense and the strain of deep earnestness underlying his humor.” In Howells' judgment The Prince and the Pauper showed “interesting evidence of growth in a man who ought still to have his best work before him.”47 The reviewer in the Critic suggested that the “finer element in Mark Twain's nature, which has been more or less distinctly traceable in all his books, has been growing more predominant in his more recent writings.”48

While the critics were unanimous in applauding the refinement of literary taste and the strong and pure morality evident in The Prince and the Pauper, they did not all agree that Mark Twain's previous publications had prepared his readers for such a work. Joel Chandler Harris, writing for the Atlanta Constitution, thought the new book a “wide departure from his old methods—so much so that the contrast presents a phase of literary development unique in its proportions and suggestions,” and he welcomed the emergence of Mark Twain as a “true literary artist.”49

H. H. Boyesen's long unsigned review in the Atlantic Monthly praised The Prince and the Pauper in terms characteristic of Victorian standards of literary art—“a tale ingenious in conception, pure and humane in purpose, artistic in method, and, with barely a flaw, refined in execution”—and he viewed the volume as a radically “new departure” for Mark Twain,

[begin page 15]

Harper's magazine found nothing to criticize: the author was a “veracious chronicler, the recital being interspersed with sparkles of dry humor and covert satire yet observing a careful regard to the historical accessories,” and the book was “rich in historical facts and teachings” and “charged with a generous and ennobling moral.”51

The Century reserved its comments until March 1882 and was more judicious in its criticism. The reviewer found The Prince and the Pauper in some ways a “remarkable” book—pointing out the “quiet satire, the ingenuity of the plot, and the clever development of the thoughts and motives” of Tom and Edward. But he also expressed serious reservations about the book's “curious”—and sometimes infelicitous—“mixture of fact and fancy.”

Clemens, with the almost unanimous commendations of the critics before him, was undisturbed by the Century's quibbles. “It amused me a good deal,” he wrote to Edward H. House on 23 February 1882, “to observe the struggle going on in the writer's mind, to find something to find fault with, and I thought that if I could have been at his elbow, I could have saved him the humiliation of discovering such infinitesimal defects, by pointing out colossal ones.”53

[begin page 16]

Clemens was surprised to find the English reviews on the whole “profoundly complimentary.”54 The London Times praised the “remarkably ingenious and sensible story” and, while suggesting that it was perhaps too long for a young audience, concluded that it was “capitally told, in an easy and picturesque style, and imparts in a natural manner a good deal of historic information.”55 There was some adverse criticism in the English press: the book was accused of dullness, and the author's historical accuracy was questioned. The Saturday Review praised the illustrations, but beyond pointing out a minor inaccuracy made no attempt at a literary evaluation of the book.56 E. Purcell's brief review in the Academy dismissed the new book as a “libel on the English Court,” monotonous and “singularly deficient in literary merit.”57 The Athenaeum's remarks about “Mr. Clements's” new effort were equally ruthless and considerably longer:

Clemens read the Saturday Review and Athenaeum notices and was philosophical. “It gave me no dis-comfort,” he wrote Andrew Chatto, “because here we consider that neither of those papers, [begin page 17] would compliment the holy scriptures, if an American had written them.”59

Clemens professed to be pleased with the book's reception and the early English and American sales.60 “I find myself a fine success, as a publisher,” he told H. H. Boyesen in January 1882, “and literarily the new departure is a great deal better received than I had any right to hope for.”61 Apparently the author, knowing that his “new departure” might puzzle his established audience, did not hope to equal the astonishing success of such previous books as The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, or even The Gilded Age. During the writing of The Prince and the Pauper he had insisted, “If I knew it would never sell a copy my jubilant delight in writing it would not suffer any diminution.”62 Olivia Clemens too was delighted with the story, and according to Clemens was particularly anxious that the volume “be elegantly gotten up, even if the elegance of it eats up the publisher's profits and mine too.”63 Nonetheless, Clemens kept a careful eye on sales. Subscription orders dropped off sharply in the first quarter after publication. “Too brief a pre-canvass” and the poor performance of the “gang of general agents” whom Osgood had borrowed from the American Publishing Company were the problems, in Clemens' opinion.64 He was soon disappointed enough to consider “dumping” the book into the trade market. He was only persuaded to delay this maneuver by Osgood's assurance that “the responses we receive from the agents seem to indicate a good sale for ‘P & P’ for the rest of the year.”65 But as the months passed sales still did not meet Clemens' expectations. In December 1883 he would describe The Prince and the Pauper and Life on the Mississippi, rather inaccurately, as “the only books of mine which have ever [begin page 18] failed,” admitting, however, that the failure of his historical tale was “not unbearable.”66 Years later he recalled: “Osgood made a beautiful book of it but all the profit I got out of it was seventeen thousand dollars.”67

Clemens' family was especially fond of The Prince and the Pauper. “It is unquestionably the best book he has ever written,” Susy Clemens commented in her biography of her father. “The book is full of lovely charming ideas, and oh the language! It is perfect.”68 Olivia Clemens, with the help of her daughters and the neighborhood children, presented her dramatization of the book, the first of several family productions, as a surprise for the author early in 1885.69 Clemens himself would enliven later performances with his impersonation of Miles Hendon.

Seemingly, The Prince and the Pauper constitutes a digression in Mark Twain's literary evolution. He momentarily abandoned his most successful vein, autobiographical and purely American, and chose instead to work in an impersonal mode within the convention of the historical romance. Yet The Prince and the Pauper is related not only chronologically but also thematically to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. It began to take literary shape in 1877, just two years after the completion of Tom Sawyer, and it was in part written concurrently with Huckleberry Finn. All three books feature child-heroes at the turning point—at first self-absorbed and somewhat alienated from a world that is at times confining and cruel, they learn in the course of many experiences to judge soundly and compassionately. Specific situations and even characters in the Mississippi River [begin page 19] books find their counterparts in The Prince and the Pauper.70 Moreover, Mark Twain discovered in the historical perspective an effective solution to the problem of narrative structure and a medium for his social and political ideas; he returned to this device in such later works as A Connecticut Yankee, Joan of Arc, and The Mysterious Stranger. Thus The Prince and the Pauper helped to shape and clarify certain aspects of Mark Twain's artistic vision. At the same time its publication marked a new direction in critical appraisal of Mark Twain's work and heralded the author's growing commitment to the business of publishing his own books.

Mark Twain's desire to be taken seriously, coupled with his theory of fiction—that literature based on fact is superior to imaginative writing—explains his extensive research for The Prince and the Pauper.71 He displayed much of this research in the printed volume by quoting from his sources directly or referring to them in footnotes appended to the text in the manner of Sir Walter Scott and Charlotte Yonge. Mark Twain, however, did not hesitate to revise quoted sources for literary convenience, to obscure some facts and overemphasize others; and his disregard for exact dates necessitated more than one awkward explanatory note. The result—regardless of what the author intended—was to impart to the romance a slight and “stylish” historical gloss and to open the book to the attack of more scrupulous historians.

Between 1876 and 1881 Clemens compiled over fifty-five pages of study notes based on his reading in English history and literature. His notes include long lists of words and phrases, the result of reading, as he later said, undertaken “with the purpose of saturating myself with archaic English to a degree which would enable me to do plausible [begin page 20] imitations of it in a fairly easy and unlabored way.”72 These vocabulary lists are, in the main, drawn from Shakespeare's King Henry IV, Part 1 and from Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth, Quentin Durward, Ivanhoe, and The Fortunes of Nigel. His reliance on Scott's romances, which are set in France and England from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, for an approximation of Tudor speech is a curious instance of the author's slapdash historical scholarship. From Scott he also gleaned one or two details of period costume.

More important for details of pageantry and costume were the English chroniclers Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall,73 whose works Mark Twain quoted with rather cavalier disregard for their chronology and little or no acknowledgment. His most extensive (and unacknowledged) appropriation was Holinshed's description of the passage of Elizabeth toward Westminster before her coronation (see the explanatory note at 301.37).

For information on the streets, landmarks, and customs of London, he consulted John Timbs's Curiosities of London, Leigh Hunt's The Town, and J. Heneage Jesse's London: Its Celebrated Characters and Remarkable Places.74 He may have referred to John Stow's sixteenth-century Survey of London and his old favorite, Pepys's Diary. He even studied a pocket map of the city.75

Another unacknowledged source for the book was George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane's multivolume Pictorial History of England, first published from 1837 to 1844. The Great Seal of Henry VIII and the king's autograph, pictured facing the title page of The Prince and the Pauper, were reproduced from engravings in the Pictorial History. The History's numerous illustrations may also have been the source for the costumes and settings sketched by Merrill and Harley. Several references in his working notes show Mark Twain carefully read [begin page 21] the chapters in the Pictorial History dealing with the “history of manners and customs,” the “history of the condition of the people,” and the “history of the constitution, government, and laws.” There is also evidence that the coronation scene in The Prince and the Pauper was strongly influenced by Harriet Martineau's description of Victoria's coronation in the final volume of the Pictorial History.76

The facsimile and transcript of the Latimer letter of 19 October 1537 which appear at the front of The Prince and the Pauper were reproduced from a volume that Clemens owned—the second part of the Facsimiles of National Manuscripts from William the Conqueror to Queen Anne, “photozincographed . . . by Colonel Sir Henry James.”77

Mark Twain got most of his historical information—names, dates, places, events, personality sketches, and social and parliamentary history—from David Hume's and James Anthony Froude's histories of England.78 The short reign of Edward VI, in contrast to the flamboyant absolutism of Henry VIII, had a certain appeal for liberal historians such as Hume. For Hume, Edward possessed “mildness of disposition, application to study and business, a capacity to learn and judge, and an attachment to equity and justice”79—the very qualities that Mark Twain's young king finally develops. His portrait of Edward VI, however, was necessarily colored by the demands of plot and theme; it lacked the historical balance and perspective of Hume's sketch. Hume was careful to emphasize Edward's youth and to admit that his early death rendered any assessment of his character and [begin page 22] ability to some extent presumptive. According to Hume, the young monarch evidenced “too much of a narrow prepossession in matters of religion, which made him incline somewhat to bigotry and persecution.”80 Mark Twain, on the other hand, suggests a degree of religious tolerance in Edward which history belies.

Froude, who as a disciple of Carlyle found much to admire in the dominant personality of Henry VIII, was less interested in Edward's character. His analysis of the early years of Edward's reign concentrated instead on the powerful figure of the earl of Hertford, later the duke of Somerset and lord protector of England. The portrait of Hertford suggested guidelines to Mark Twain for developing young Edward's sense of justice and humanity. Hertford, wrote Froude, “saw England . . . ripe for mighty changes. . . . He saw in imagination the yet imperfect revolution carried out to completion. . . . He had lived in a reign in which the laws had been severe beyond precedent, and when even speech was criminal. He was himself a believer in liberty; he imagined that the strong hand could now be dispensed with, that an age of enlightenment was at hand when severity could be superseded with gentleness and force by persuasion.”81 But Mark Twain made little use of Hertford himself. In fact, in chapters 5 and 6 of the manuscript of The Prince and the Pauper he several times wrote “Herbert” (that is, Sir William Herbert, one of the chief gentlemen of the privy chamber) and then altered the reading to “Hertford,” a revision due either to confusion over the two names or to indecision about what degree of prominence to accord Hertford in the book. A reference in the working notes (Appendix A, F-4) and a deleted passage at the end of chapter 6 indicate that Mark Twain considered—and rejected—the idea of having Hertford secretly employ spies to discover the truth of the prince's identity. Ultimately Hertford's “virtual sovereignty”82 during the early years of [begin page 23] Edward's minority was minimized: the author hardly differentiated Hertford from the mass of royal advisers and courtiers.

Mark Twain was also indebted to historians for the social setting of The Prince and the Pauper. Froude, and to a lesser extent Hume, in discussing the rise in prices, enclosure, and the conversion of arable land to pasturage with the consequent displacement and impoverishment of the provincial population, sketched the economic and social conditions that the homeless prince was to experience in the second half of the book.

While Hume and Froude provided a kind of overview, Mark Twain relied on more specialized works to authenticate his picture of sixteenth-century England. Such a book was the one edited by his Hartford friend and neighbor J. Hammond Trumbull, The True-Blue Laws of Connecticut and New Haven and the False Blue-Laws Invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters,83 a book which also influenced A Connecticut Yankee. In exposing and refuting Samuel Peters' spurious Connecticut history of 1781,84 Trumbull showed that the laws of colonial New England were considerably milder than English laws of the same period. In his working notes Mark Twain listed some more unusual “Crimes & Penalties” mentioned by Trumbull (Appendix A, H-1, H-2). And he was so impressed by Trumbull's book that he appended to The Prince and the Pauper a “General Note” (whose vehemence mystified more than one reviewer) in which he feelingly urged his readers to consider and compare the “humane and kindly Blue-Law code” with the instances of “judicial atrocity” perpetuated by English law. Moreover, in Trumbull's final chapter on the “Blue Laws of England, in the Reign of James the First,” Clemens found an account of punishments inflicted upon gamblers, beggars, and vagrants which suggested a number of possible adventures for his young hero in the clutches of a “gang of tramps who rove like gypsies (evicted to make sheep farms)” (Appendix A, I-1). The roving band's adventures became an ideal vehicle for the education of the prince: “With this gang he in time sees all the punishments inflicted. Sometimes he [begin page 24] exercises the pardoning power and is laughed at. Gets cuffs” (Appendix A, I-2). The notes even consider involving Hendon in the band's adventures (Appendix A, I-3).

Clemens found a less scholarly view of England's laws in a seventeenth-century work by Richard Head and Francis Kirkman, The English Rogue . . . Being a Compleat History of the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes.85 While purporting to inspire its readers with a “loathing” for “Villany” and “Vice,” the book furnished a lively account of the lawless and immoral escapades of one Meriton Latroon and, incidentally, served as a complete guide to seventeenth-century “cony-catching” practices. In his footnotes to The Prince and the Pauper Mark Twain acknowledged only a part of his debt to The English Rogue. In fact, the book not only provided details concerning confidence games and argot for the chapters dealing with Edward's captivity among the vagabonds, it inspired dialogue, descriptions, and several specific incidents.86

In addition to The English Rogue, Clemens apparently consulted Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue for cant terminology.87

Undoubtedly, one of the formative influences on the moral and political atmosphere of The Prince and the Pauper was William Lecky's History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, a book that Clemens discovered perhaps as early as the summer of 1874. Lecky explored the cultural basis of law and morality and theorized a direct relationship between education and compassion, showing that society's progress from barbarism to civilization was [begin page 25] accomplished in part by the strengthening, through education and experience, of the individual's “power of realisation.”88 Thus, after suffering abuse at the hands of the Christ's Hospital charity boys, young Prince Edward vows to provide them with a free education, “for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity” (chapter 4). Edward's journey, during which the plight of his subjects is made painfully real to him, can be seen as an illustration of Lecky's civilizing process, a moral education on the road. “Kings should go to school to their own laws, at times,” concludes Edward, “and so learn mercy” (chapter 27).

L.S.