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 allother people I have ever known or heard of--I am hoping to remainso while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of. "--[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, in the collection of theF. J. Meine] Mark Twain was just as irreverent as he dared be, and 1601 revealshis richest expression of sovereign contempt for overstuffed language, genteel literature, and conventional idiocies. Later, when a magazineeditor apostrophized, "O that we had a Rabelais!" Mark impishlyand anonymously--submitted 1601; and that same editor, a praiser ofRabelais, scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as inmany others, Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealedhis huge delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-upthat prompted him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holyindignation 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 ofthe 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 late90's, asserted that it was originally written by an English actor (namenot divulged) who gave it to him. Ball's original, it was said, lookedlike a newspaper strip in the way it was printed, and may indeed havebeen a proof pulled in some newspaper office. In St. Louis, WilliamMarion Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, had seen this famous tourde force circulated in the early 80's in galley-proof form; he firstlearned from Eugene Field that it was from the pen of Mark Twain. "Many people, " said Reedy, "thought the thing was done by Field andattributed, as a joke, to Mark Twain. Field had a perfect genius forthat sort of thing, as many extant specimens attest, and for that sortof practical joke; but to my thinking the humor of the piece is toomellow--not hard and bright and bitter--to be Eugene Field's. " Reedy'sopinion hits off the fundamental difference between these two greathumorists; one half suspects that Reedy was thinking of Field's FrenchCrisis. 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 supposititiousconversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth's closet in that year, between the Queen, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchessof Bilgewater, and one or two others, and is not, as John Hay mistakenlysupposes, a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophyto the sober and chaste Elizabeth's time; if there is a decent wordfindable in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure youthat it is not printed in my published writings. " TWITTING THE REV. JOSEPH TWICHELL The circumstances of how 1601 came to be written have since beenofficially revealed by Albert Bigelow Paine in 'Mark Twain, ABibliography' (1912), and in the publication of Mark Twain's Notebook(1935). 1601 was written during the summer of 1876 when the Clemens family hadretreated to Quarry Farm in Elmira County, New York. Here Mrs. Clemensenjoyed relief from social obligations, the children romped over thecountryside, and Mark retired to his octagonal study, which, perchedhigh on the hill, looked out upon the valley below. It was in the famoussummer of 1876, too, that Mark was putting the finishing touches to TomSawyer. Before the close of the same year he had already begun workon 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', published in 1885. It isinteresting to note the use of the title, the "Duke of Bilgewater, "in Huck Finn when the "Duchess of Bilgewater" had already made herappearance in 1601. Sandwiched between his two great masterpieces, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the writing of 1601 was indeed a strangeinterlude. During this prolific period Mark wrote many minor items, most of themrejected 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 ofconversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase ofthe period. The result was 'Fireside Conversation in the Time ofQueen Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation'recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all theoutspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when firesidesociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, andphysical 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 fortyyears, 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 asocial, and their meeting ripened into a glorious, life long friendship. Twichell was a man of about Mark's own age, a profound scholar, a devoutChristian, "yet a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profoundunderstanding of the frailties of mankind. " The Rev. Mr. Twichellperformed the marriage ceremony for Mark Twain and solemnized the birthsof his children; "Joe, " his friend, counseled him on literary as wellas personal matters for the remainder of Mark's life. It is importantto catch this brief glimpse of the man for whom this masterpiece waswritten, for without it one can not fully understand the spirit in which1601 was written, or the keen enjoyment which Mark and "Joe" derivedfrom 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 beenwritten, 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 sketcha masterpiece, and wrote immediately to his old Cleveland friend, Alexander Gunn, prince of connoisseurs in art and literature. Thefollowing correspondence reveals the fine diplomacy which made the nameof 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 returnmail, I have a masterpiece to submit to your consideration which is onlyin 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 hisdeep concern for its safety. June 24, 1880 My dear Gunn: Here it is. It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bringback our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethanstandard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anythingso classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The Globehas 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 ofappreciative critics, who know a good thing when they see it. Read it with reverence and gratitude and send it back to me; for Mark isimpatient to see once more his wandering offspring. Yours, Hay. In his third letter one can almost hear Hay's chuckle in the certaintythat 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 fewproofs of the masterpiece is highly attractive, and of course highlyimmoral. I cannot properly consent to it, and I am afraid the great manywould think I was taking an unfair advantage of his confidence. Pleasesend back the document as soon as you can, and if, in spite of myprohibition, 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 issuedin pamphlet form, without wrappers or covers; there were 8 pages oftext and the pamphlet measured 7 by 8 1/2 inches. Only four copies arebelieved to have been printed, one for Hay, one for Gunn, and two forTwain. "In the matter of humor, " wrote Clemens, referring to Hay's deliciousnotes, "what an unsurpassable touch John Hay had!" HUMOR AT WEST POINT The first printing of 1601 in actual book form was "Donne at ye AcademiePress, " 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. Woodat West Point, where they learned that Wood, as Adjutant, had under hiscontrol a small printing establishment. On Mark's return to Hartford, Wood received a letter asking if he would do Mark a great favor byprinting something he had written, which he did not care to entrust tothe ordinary printer. Wood replied that he would be glad to oblige. OnApril 3, 1882, Mark sent the manuscript: "I enclose the original of 1603 [sic] as you suggest. I am afraid thereare errors in it, also, heedlessness in antiquated spelling--e's stuckon 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, andit is not important anyway. I wish you would do me the kindness to makeany and all corrections that suggest themselves to you. "Sincerely yours, "S. L. Clemens. " Charles Erskine Scott Wood recalled in a foreword, which he wrote forthe limited edition of 1601 issued by the Grabhorn Press, how he feltwhen he first saw the original manuscript. "When I read it, " writesWood, "I felt that the character of it would be carried a little betterby a printing which pretended to the eye that it was contemporaneouswith the pretended 'conversation. ' "I wrote Mark that for literary effect I thought there should be aspecies of forgery, though of course there was no effort to actuallydeceive a scholar. Mark answered that I might do as I liked;--that hisonly object was to secure a number of copies, as the demand for it wasbecoming burdensome, but he would be very grateful for any interest Ibrought to the doing. "Well, Tucker [foreman of the printing shop] and I soaked some handmadelinen paper in weak coffee, put it as a wet bundle into a warm room tomildew, dried it to a dampness approved by Tucker and he printed the'copy' on a hand press. I had special punches cut for such Elizabethanabbreviations 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 Englishwords introduced. The spelling, if I remember correctly, is mine, butthe text is exactly as written by Mark. I wrote asking his view ofmaking the spelling of the period and he was enthusiastic--telling me todo 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 curiousmasterpiece of American humor, at one of America's most dignifiedinstitutions, the United States Military Academy at West Point. "1601 was so be-praised by the archaeological scholars of a quarter ofa century ago, " wrote Clemens in his letter to Charles Orr, "that Iwas rather inordinately vain of it. At that time it had been privatelyprinted in several countries, among them Japan. A sumptuous edition onlarge 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 andsuch people. In England copies of that issue were worth twenty guineaswhen I was there six years ago, and none to be had. " FROM THE DEPTHS Mark Twain's irreverence should not be misinterpreted: it was anirreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into thewell-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That CorruptedHadleyburg, ' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger, ' he tore the masks offhuman beings and left them cringing before the public view. With thedeftness of a master surgeon Clemens dealt with human emotions anddelighted in exposing human nature in the raw. The spirit and the language of the Fireside Conversation were rooteddeep in Mark Twain's nature and in his life, as C. E. S. Wood, whoprinted 1601 at West Point, has pertinently observed, "If I made a guess as to the intellectual ferment out of which 1601 roseI would say that Mark's intellectual structure and subconscious grainingwas from Anglo-Saxons as primitive as the common man of the Tudorperiod. He came from the banks of the Mississippi--from the flatboatmen, pilots, roustabouts, farmers and village folk of a rude, primitivepeople--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 peoplewas in his blood and brain. "Words vulgar and offensive to other ears were a common language tohim. Anyone who ever knew Mark heard him use them freely, forcibly, picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language isforcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make forweakness--or let us say a cutting edge--but the old vulgar monosyllabicwords bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax--and Mark was like that. ThenI think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred ofpuritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is asense 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 moreobscene than a manure pile, out of which come roses and cherries. Everyword used in 1601 was used by our own rude pioneers as a part of theirvocabulary--and no word was ever invented by man with obscene intent, but only as language to express his meaning. No act of nature is obscenein itself--but when such words and acts are dragged in for an ulteriorpurpose they become offensive, as everything out of place is offensive. I think he delighted, too, in shocking--giving resounding slaps on whatChaucer would quite simply call 'the bare erse. '" Quite aside from this Chaucerian "erse" slapping, Clemens had also asemi-serious purpose, that of reproducing a past time as he saw it inShakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, and other writers of the Elizabethan era. Fireside Conversation was an exercise in scholarship illumined by a keensense of character. It was made especially effective by the artisticarrangement of widely-gathered material into a compressed picture ofa phase of the manners and even the minds of the men and women "in thespacious 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 formere delight in the frank naturalism of the functions with which itdeals. That Mark Twain had made considerable study of this frankness isapparent from chapter four of 'A Yankee At King Arthur's Court, ' wherehe refers to the conversation at the famous Round Table thus: "Many of the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this greatassemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen of the land would havemade 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 ofthat kind and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen inEngland had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in themorals and conduct which such talk implies, clear up to one hundredyears ago; in fact clear into our own nineteenth century--in whichcentury, broadly speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and thereal gentleman discoverable in English history, --or in European history, for that matter--may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose SirWalter [Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the mouths ofhis characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? Weshould have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowenawhich would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciouslyindelicate all things are delicate. " Mark Twain's interest in history and in the depiction of historicalperiods and characters is revealed through his fondness for historicalreading in preference to fiction, and through his other historicalwritings. Even in the hilarious, youthful days in San Francisco, Painereports that "Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and losehimself in English or French history until his sleep conquered. " Painetells us, too, that Lecky's 'European Morals' was an old favorite. The notes to 'The Prince and the Pauper' show again how carefullyClemens examined his historical background, and his interest in thesematerials. Some of the more important sources are noted: Hume's 'Historyof England', Timbs' 'Curiosities of London', J. Hammond Trumbull's 'BlueLaws, True and False'. Apparently Mark Twain relished it, for as BernardDeVoto points out, "The book is always Mark Twain. Its parodies of Tudorspeech lapse sometimes into a callow satisfaction in that idiom--Markhugely enjoys his nathlesses and beshrews and marrys. " The writing of1601 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 publishedworks, it was representative of Mark Twain the man. He was no emaciatedliterary tea-tosser. Bronzed and weatherbeaten son of the West, Markwas a man's man, and that significant fact is emphasized by the severalphases of Mark's rich life as steamboat pilot, printer, miner, andfrontier 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 noexpletives too long or too expressive to be hurled in rapid successionto emphasize the utter want of character of the man assailed. .. . Therewere typesetters there who could hurl anathemas at bad copy which wouldhave frightened a Bengal tiger. The news editor could damn a mutilateddispatch in twenty-four languages. " In San Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of MarkTwain and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "TheDoleful Ballad of the Neglected Lover, " an old piece of uncollectederotica. One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to findhis 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 beadon him. ' "'Sam, ' said Steve, 'don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easilykill him at any range with your profanity. ' "Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain let go such a scorching, singeingblast that the brute's owner sold him the next day for a Mexicanhairless dog. " Nor did Mark's "geysers of profanity" cease spouting after these gay andyouthful days in San Francisco. With Clemens it may truly be said thatprofanity 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'dswear something terrible if I didn't. If he found a shirt in his drawerwithout a button on, he'd take every single shirt out of that drawer andthrow them right out of the window, rain or shine--out of thebathroom window they'd go. I used to look out every morning to seethe snowflakes--anything white. Out they'd fly. .. . Oh! he'd swear atanything when he was on a rampage. He'd swear at his razor if it didn'tcut right, and Mrs. Clemens used to send me around to the bathroom doorsometimes to knock and ask him what was the matter. Well, I'd go andknock; I'd say, 'Mrs. Clemens wants to know what's the matter. ' And thenhe'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 wasafraid of getting scolded for swearing like that, because Mrs. Clemenshated 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 ofamusing it was--and gay--not like real swearing, 'cause he swore like anangel. " In his later years at Stormfield Mark loved to play his favoritebilliards. "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, andthen the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in hismore youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently, slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as thoughthey had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came thisstream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives. " Mark's vocabulary ran the whole gamut of life itself. In Paris, in hisappearance in 1879 before the Stomach Club, a jolly lot of gay wags, Mark's address, reports Paine, "obtained a wide celebrity among theclubs of the world, though no line of it, not even its title, has everfound its way into published literature. " It is rumored to have beencalled "Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism. " In Berlin, Mark asked Henry W. Fisher to accompany him on an explorationof the Berlin Royal Library, where the librarian, having learnedthat Clemens had been the Kaiser's guest at dinner, opened the secrettreasure chests for the famous visitor. One of these guarded treasureswas a volume of grossly indecent verses by Voltaire, addressed toFrederick the Great. "Too much is enough, " Mark is reported to havesaid, when Fisher translated some of the verses, "I would blush toremember any of these stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about themwhen I get to Vienna. " When Fisher had finished copying a verse for himMark put it into his pocket, saying, "Livy [Mark's wife, Olivia] is sobusy mispronouncing German these days she can't even attempt to get atthis. " In his letters, too, Howells observed, "He had the Southwestern, theLincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose oneought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish; and I wasoften hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters in which hehad loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion; I could not bearto burn them, and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear tolook at them. I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying thatin 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 hisElizabethan breadth of parlance?' Mr. Howells confesses that hesometimes 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 couldnot bear to reread. Perhaps if he had not so insisted, in former years, while going over Mark Twain's proofs, upon 'having that swearing outin 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 verbalRabelaisianism was obviously the expression of that vital sap which, not having been permitted to inform his work, had been driven inwardand left thereto ferment. No wonder he was always indulging in orgiesof forbidden words. Consider the famous book, 1601, that firesideconversation in the time of Queen Elizabeth: is there any obsoleteverbal indecency in the English language that Mark Twain has notpainstakingly resurrected and assembled there? He, whose blood was inconstant ferment and who could not contain within the narrow bonds thathad been set for him the riotous exuberance of his nature, had to havean escape-valve, and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaninglessobscenity--the waste of a priceless psychic material!" Thus, Brookslumps 1601 with Mark Twain's "bawdry, " and interprets it simply asanother indication of frustration. FIGS FOR FIG LEAVES! Of course, the writing of such a piece as 1601 raised the question offreedom of expression for the creative artist. Although little discussed at that time, it was a question whichintensely interested Mark, and for a fuller appreciation of Mark'sposition one must keep in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had been nothing like it before in American literature; there hadappeared no Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian Englandwas gushing Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cultof the Brahmins of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm ofthe Atlantic. Louisa May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, andLittle 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 inhis Tramp Abroad, "I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art isallowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times--but theprivileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailedwithin the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet couldportray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we haveplenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowedto 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 everypore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generationhas been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood ininnocent nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one ofthem. Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can helpnoticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comicalthing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallidmarble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham andostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which doreally need it have in no case been furnished with it. "At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statuesof a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulatedgrime--they hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatureshave been thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidiousgeneration. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallerythat exists in the world. .. . And there, against the wall, withoutobstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, thevilest, 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 theattitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe theattitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, foranybody 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 younggirls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long andabsorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with apathetic interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see whata holy indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear theunreflecting average man deliver himself about my grossness andcoarseness, and all that. "In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerablesuffering--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out indreadful detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas everyday and publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for theyare innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of art. But supposea literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaboratedescription of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin himalive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and thewherefores and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time. " PROFESSOR SCENTS PORNOGRAPHY Unfortunately, 1601 has recently been tagged by Professor EdwardWagenknecht as "the most famous piece of pornography in Americanliterature. " Like many another uninformed, Prof. W. Is like the littleboy who is shocked to see "naughty" words chalked on the back fence, and thinks they are pornography. The initiated, after years of wadingthrough the mire, will recognize instantly the significant differencebetween filthy filth and funny "filth. " Dirt for dirt's sake issomething else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist haspointed 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 banon Ulysses by James Joyce, "are old Saxon words known to almost all menand, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturallyand 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 Ulyssesobscene within the legal definition of that word. "The meaning of the word 'obscene, '" the Justice indicated, "as legallydefined by the courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead tosexually impure and lustful thoughts. "Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses andthoughts must be tested by the court's opinion as to its effect on aperson with average sex instincts--what the French would call 'l'hommemoyen sensuel'--who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the samerole of hypothetical reagent as does the 'reasonable man' in the lawof torts and 'the learned man in the art' on questions of invention inpatent 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 wholeworks what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than theprivately 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 fromShakespeare'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 goodspirits. .. I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic, save forone touch toward the end. Indeed, it seems more of Rabelais than ofBoccaccio or Masuccio or Aretino--is brutally British rather thanlasciviously latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous as regards thelanguage. " Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary of State, had proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain'sbiographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 isa genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than thegross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, thetaste that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literaryrefugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of MarkTwain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter ofenvironment and point of view. " "It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not, " wroteClemens in his notebook in 1879. "I built a conversation which couldhave happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601. Isent it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and thesender!" But that man was a praiser of Rabelais and had been saying, 'O that wehad 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 aceof killing himself with laughter (for between you and me the thing wasdreadfully funny. I don't often write anything that I laugh at myself, but I can hardly think of that thing without laughing). That old Divinesaid it was a piece of the finest kind of literary art--and David Grayof the Buffalo Courier said it ought to be printed privately and leftbehind me when I died, and then my fame as a literary artist wouldlast. " FRANKLIN J. MEINE THE FIRST PRINTING Verbatim Reprint [Date, 1601. ] CONVERSATION, AS IT WAS BY THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE, IN THE TIME OF THETUDORS. [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 sometimeshath, and had to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, andsuch 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 ourEnglishe tong, with grete discretion and much applaus. Also came withthese ye famous Shaxpur. A righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blodewith mean, ye more in especial since ye queenes grace was present, aslikewise these following, to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-twoyeres of age; ye Countesse of Granby, twenty-six; her doter, ye LadyHelen, fifteen; as also these two maides of honor, to-wit, ye LadyMargery 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 beholderank 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 anexceding 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 thefellow 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 andflat against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately andso waste a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splittersbear, stand comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess yeoffspring. Will my Lady Alice testify? Lady Alice. --Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thundergustwithin mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge yesame and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humblewhereby to shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forththis rich o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke yefurther. Ye Queene. --Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor? Lady Margery. --So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighteand drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tenderunto them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained thiswonder, forsoothe wolde I have gi'en 'ye whole evening of my sinkinglife to ye dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, notlaunched it sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life withviolence, rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, yourmaisty. Ye Queene. --O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yta fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young MasterBeaumont--but no; 'twould have wafted him to heaven like down of goose'sboddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen--nay, ne'er blush, my child;thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak beforethou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned andingenious Jonson? Jonson. --So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stenchso all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, goodyour maisty, but one of veteran experience--else hadde he failed ofconfidence. In sooth it was not I. Ye Queene. --My lord Bacon? Lord Bacon. -Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burstforth, so please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as greteperformance; and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity thismiracle hath issued. [Tho' ye subjct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learningpondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervadeall places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not toleave 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 mineinnocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming ofthis most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspiredman, its quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his ownachievement in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; buthad said the pit itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven'sartillery hath shook the globe in admiration of it. [Then was there a silence, and each did turn him toward the worshipfulSr Walter Ralegh, that browned, embattled, bloody swashbuckler, whorising up did smile, and simpering say, ] Sr W. --Most gracious maisty, 'twas I that did it, but indeed it was sopoor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt insooth 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 mynether throat; but had I come prepared, then had I delivered somethingworthy. Bear with me, please your grace, till I can make amends. [Then delivered he himself of such a godless and rock-shivering blastthat all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come sodense and foul a stink that that which went before did seem a poor andtrifling thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed andwas confused, I perceive that I am weak to-day, and cannot justice dounto my powers; and sat him down as who should say, There, it is notmuch yet he that hath an arse to spare, let him fellow that, an' hethink he can. By God, an' I were ye queene, I would e'en tip thisswaggering braggart out o' the court, and let him air his grandeursand break his intolerable wind before ye deaf and such as suffocationpleaseth. ] Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, andMaster Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear upponye headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man'smember wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widowsin England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wiltedneither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpurdid likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of acertain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddesin ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain twoand twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied;whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor'ssuperior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes 'twixt sun and sun; andafter, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hathenrich'd whole acres with his seed. Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermostparts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres ofage, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in sevenyeres. Ye Queene. --How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send theethither and preserve thy belly? Lady Helen. --Please your highnesses grace, mine old nurse hath told methere 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 gracehath 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 thancover it with my hand now. Ye Queene. --Hear Ye that, my little Beaumonte? Have ye not a littlebirde about ye that stirs at hearing tell of so sweete a neste? Beaumonte. --'Tis not insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls andbats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic asis found in ye downy nests of birdes of Paradise. Ye Queene. --By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neat-turned compliment. Withsuch a tongue as thine, lad, thou'lt spread the ivory thighs of manya willing maide in thy good time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thyspeeche. Then spake ye queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned offifteen, and he did tell her of a man his father knew that had a doublepair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning themost just way to spell the word, ye contention running high betwixtye learned Bacon and ye ingenious Jonson, until at last ye old LadyMargery, wearying of it all, saith, 'Gentles, what mattereth it how yeshall spell the word? I warrant Ye when ye use your bollocks ye shallnot think of it; and my Lady Granby, be ye content; let the spellingbe, ye shall enjoy the beating of them on your buttocks just the same, Itrow. Before I had gained my fourteenth year I had learnt that them thatwould 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 butdalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maidinto his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to berightly thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but yeabbot, spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair withfair 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 Lutherdid doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpurdid rede a part of his King Henry IV. , ye which, it seemeth unto me, isnot 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 theirprodigious admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, diddeme it but paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blodybucanier had got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting withsuch villain zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damnthis windy ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him. They talked about ye wonderful defense which old Sr. NicholasThrogmorton 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'smaidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed. ' And ye quene did give ye damn'dSr. Walter a look yt made hym wince--for she hath not forgot he was herown lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twasnot a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offensein a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cuntsnot loathe to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company wassinless; behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gonewith child when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace ofBilgewater roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? Was not yelittle Lady Helen born on her mother's wedding-day? And, beholde, werenot ye Lady Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whoresfrom 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-wroughtphrases 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 Jonsonand Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet daredthey not in the presence, the queene's grace being ye very flower of yeEuphuists herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, andadmiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quenewaxed uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouthof Lady Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, didquite exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speechewas 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 oldefoolish bitche. Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingeniousMargrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to sufferrape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save hermaidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thyholy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, andwould not rise again. FOOTNOTES To Frivolity The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that Twain must have giventhe subject considerable thought. The author was careful to speak onlyof men who conceivably might have been in the Virgin Queen's closet andengaged in discourse with her. THE CHARACTERS At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old. She speaks ofhaving talked to "old Rabelais" in her youth. This might have beenpossible 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, andhis first translations, those from Ovid, were first published in 1602. Therefore, if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither by agenor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible to attend such a gatheringof august personages in the year 1601; but the point is unimportant. THE ELIZABETHAN WRITERS In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne's Essays. These werefirst published in 1580 and successive editions were issued in theyears following, the third volume being published in 1588. "In EnglandMontaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph ofShakespeare in a copy of Florio's translation showed his study ofthe Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, andespecially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand thepoet 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. Itis said to have influenced literary style for more than a quarter of acentury, and traces of its influence are found in Shakespeare. (ColumbiaEncyclopedia). The introduction of Ben Jonson into the party was wholly appropriate, if one may call to witness some of Jonson's writings. The subject underdiscussion 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 subtlyof the fart, whom I shall entertain still for that subject and again inBartholomew 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 intheir freedom toward breaking wind in public can be noticed in somecomparatively recent literature. Frank Harris in My Life, Vol. 2, Ch. XIII, tells of Lady Marriott, wife of a judge Advocate General, beingcompelled to leave her own table, at which she was entertaining SirRobert Fowler, then the Lord Mayor of London, because of the suffocatingand 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 fromthe Baronet. As soon as Fowler sat down Finch-Hatton sprang up holdinghis 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 bythe courteous custom of the House, 'I know why the Right HonourableMember from the City did not conclude his speech with a proposal. The only way to conclude such a speech appropriately would be with amotion!'" AEOLIAN CREPITATIONS But society had apparently degenerated sadly in modern times, and evenin 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 EmperorClaudius, hearing that one who had suppressed the urge while payinghim court had suffered greatly thereby, "intended to issue an edict, allowing to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to anydistension occasioned by flatulence:" Martial, too (Book XII, Epigram LXXVII), tells of the embarrassment ofone 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 withconstricted buttocks. " Martial also (Book IV, Epigram LXXX), ridicules awoman who was subject to the habit, saying, "Your Bassa, Fabullus, has always a child at her side, calling it herdarling and her plaything; and yet--more wonder--she does not care forchildren. What is the reason then. Bassa is apt to fart. (For which shecould blame the unsuspecting infant. )" The tale is told, too, of a certain woman who performed an aeoliancrepitation at a dinner attended by the witty Monsignieur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, and that when, to cover up her lapse, she began toscrape her feet upon the floor, and to make similar noises, the Bishopsaid, "Do not trouble to find a rhyme, Madam!" Nay, worthier names than those of any yet mentioned have discussed thematter. Herodotus tells of one such which was the precursor to the fallof an empire and a change of dynasty--that which Amasis discharges whileon horseback, and bids the envoy of Apries, King of Egypt, catch anddeliver to his royal master. Even the exact manner and posture ofAmasis, author of this insult, is described. St. Augustine (The City of God, XIV:24) cites the instance of a manwho could command his rear trumpet to sound at will, which his learnedcommentator fortifies with the example of one who could do so in tune! Benjamin Franklin, in his "Letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels" hascanvassed suggested remedies for alleviating the stench attendant uponthese discharges: "My Prize Question therefore should be: To discover some Drug, wholesomeand--not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, thatshall render the natural discharges of Wind from our Bodies not onlyinoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes. "That this is not a Chimerical Project & altogether impossible, mayappear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledgeof means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale Flesh, especially with much Addition of Onions, shall be able to afford a stinkthat no Company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time onVegetables only, shall have that Breath so pure as to be insensible ofthe 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 aremany to whom an entire Vegetable Diet would be inconvenient, & as alittle quick Lime thrown into a Jakes will correct the amazing Quantityof fetid Air arising from the vast Mass of putrid Matter contained insuch Places, and render it pleasing to the Smell, who knows but that alittle Powder of Lime (or some other equivalent) taken in our Food, orperhaps a Glass of Lime Water drank at Dinner, may have the same Effecton the Air produced in and issuing from our Bowels?" One curious commentary on the text is that Elizabeth should be so fondof investigating into the authorship of the exhalation in question, whenshe was inordinately fond of strong and sweet perfumes; in fact, she wasresponsible for the tremendous increase in importations of scents intoEngland during her reign. "YE BOKE OF YE SIEUR MICHAEL DE MONTAINE" There is a curious admixture of error and misunderstanding in this partof the sketch. In the first place, the story is borrowed from Montaigne, where it is told inaccurately, and then further corrupted in thetelling. It was not the good widows of Perigord who wore the phallus upon theircoifs; it was the young married women, of the district near Montaigne'shome, who paraded it to view upon their foreheads, as a symbol, says ouressayist, "of the joy they derived therefrom. " If they became widows, they reversed its position, and covered it up with the rest of theirhead-dress. The "emperor" mentioned was not an emperor; he was Procolus, a native ofAlbengue, on the Genoese coast, who, with Bonosus, led the unsuccessfulrebellion in Gaul against Emperor Probus. Even so keen a commentator asCotton 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 andfoster-father to Nero. Furthermore, in her case the charge is that shecopulated with twenty-five in a single night, and not twenty-two, asappears in the text. Montaigne is right in his statistics, if originalsources are correct, whereas the author erred in transcribing theincident. 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 thatof Venus (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). The feat ofProculus 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 happeningssubsequent thereto. Concerning Messalina, there appears to be no question but that she was anymphomaniac, and that, while Empress of Rome, she participated in somefearful debaucheries. The question is what to believe, for much that wehave 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 becomesated with veneral pleasures; man hardly knows any satiety. Messalina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of anempress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of themost 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 retailerof stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writerwho heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in theAnnals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlierdays of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as he may be, is littlemore than an anecdotist. Juvenal, another of her detractors, is aprejudiced witness, for he started out to satirize female vice, andnaturally 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, " andbased upon the superimposed testimony of the writers of the period, there appears little doubt but that Messalina was a nymphomaniac, thatshe prostituted herself in the public stews, naked, and with gildednipples, and that she did actually marry her chief adulterer, Silius, while Claudius was absent at Ostia, and that the wedding was consummatedin the presence of a concourse of witnesses. This was "the straw thatbroke the camel's back. " Claudius hastened back to Rome, Silius wasdispatched, and Messalina, lacking the will-power to destroy herself, was killed when an officer ran a sword through her abdomen, just as itappeared that Claudius was about to relent. "THEN SPAKE YE DAMNED WINDMILL, SIR WALTER" Raleigh is thoroughly in character here; this observation is quitein keeping with the general veracity of his account of his travels inGuiana, one of the most mendacious accounts of adventure ever told. Naturally, the scholarly researches of Westermarck have failed todiscover this people; perhaps Lady Helen might best be protected amongthe Jibaros of Ecuador, where the men marry when approaching forty. Ben Jonson in his Conversations observed "That Sr. W. Raughlye esteemedmore of fame than of conscience. " YE VIRGIN QUEENE Grave historians have debated for centuries the pretensions of Elizabethto the title, "The Virgin Queen, " and it is utterly impossible todispose of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appearsto be in the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attendingthe marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, andElizabeth finally announced that she would become wedded to the Englishnation, 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 hostof lesser courtiers, her ardent temperament, and her imperious temper, are indications that cannot be denied in determining any estimate uponthe point in question. Ben Jonson in his Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthorndensays, "Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass;they painted her, and sometymes would vermillion her nose. She hadallwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herselffortunate. That she had a membrana on her, which made her uncapableof man, though for her delight she tried many. At the coming over ofMonsieur, there was a French Chirurgion who took in hand to cut it, yettfear stayed her, and his death. " It was a subject which again intrigued Clemens when he was abroad withW. H. Fisher, whom Mark employed to "nose up" everything pertaining toQueen 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 incidentforms the subject matter of Dineo's novel (the fourth) of the First dayof the Decameron. OLD SR. NICHOLAS THROGMORTON The incident referred to appears to be Sir Nicholas Throgmorton's trialfor complicity in the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey Queen of England, a charge of which he was acquitted. This so angered Queen Mary thatshe imprisoned him in the Tower, and fined the jurors from one to twothousand pounds each. Her action terrified succeeding juries, so thatSir Nicholas's brother was condemned on no stronger evidence than thatwhich had failed to prevail before. While Sir Nicholas's defense mayhave been brilliant, it must be admitted that the evidence was weak. He was later released from the Tower, and under Elizabeth was one of agroup of commissioners sent by that princess into Scotland, to fomenttrouble with Mary, Queen of Scots. When the attempt became known, Elizabeth repudiated the acts of her agents, but Sir Nicholas, havinganticipated this possibility, had sufficient foresight to secureendorsement of his plan by the Council, and so outwitted Elizabeth, whowas playing a two-faced role, and Cecil, one of the greatest statesmenwho ever held the post of principal minister. Perhaps it was thisincident to which the company referred, which might in part explainElizabeth's rejoinder. However, he had been restored to confidence erethis, and had served as ambassador to France. "TO SAVE HIS DOTER'S MAIDENHEDDE" Elizabeth Throckmorton (or Throgmorton), daughter of Sir Nicholas, wasone of Elizabeth's maids of honor. When it was learned that she had beendebauched by Raleigh, Sir Walter was recalled from his command at sea bythe Queen, and compelled to marry the girl. This was not "in that oldedaie, " as the text has it, for it happened only eight years before thedate of this purported "conversation, " when Elizabeth was sixty yearsold. PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY The various printings of 1601 reveal how Mark Twain's 'FiresideConversation' has become a part of the American printer's lore. But moreimportant, its many printings indicate that it has become a popular bitof American folklore, particularly for men and women who have a feelingfor Mark Twain. Apparently it appeals to the typographer, who devotes toit his worthy art, as well as to the job printer, who may pull a crudelyprinted proof. The gay procession of curious printings of 1601 is uniquein 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 copieswere carried from print shop to print shop. For more than a quartercentury now it has been one of the chief sources of enjoyment forprinters' devils; and many a young rascal has learned about life fromthis Fireside Conversation. It has been printed all over the country, and if report is to be believed, in foreign countries as well. Becauseof the many surreptitious and anonymous printings it is exceedinglydifficult, if not impossible, to compile a complete bibliography. Manyprintings lack the name of the publisher, the printer, the place or dateof printing. In many instances some of the data, through the patientquestioning of fellow collectors, has been obtained and supplied. 1. [Date, 1601. ] Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in theTime of the Tudors. DESCRIPTION: Pamphlet, pp. [ 1 ]-8, without wrappers or cover, measuring7x8 inches. The title is Set in caps. And small caps. The excessively rare first printing, printed in Cleveland, 1880, at theinstance of Alexander Gunn, friend of John Hay. Only four copies arebelieved to have been printed, of which, it is said now, the only knowncopy is located in the Willard S. Morse collection. 2. Date 1601. Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in thetime of the Tudors. (Mem. --The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of thePepys of that day, the same being cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth. It issupposed that he is of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises theseliterary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the Queenstooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels his nobilitydefiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc. , and yet he has got to staythere till Her Majesty chooses to dismiss him. ) DESCRIPTION: Title as above, verso blank; pp. [i]-xi, text; verso p. Xiblank. About 8 x 10 inches, printed on handmade linen paper soaked inweak 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 LXXXII. The privately printed West Point edition, the first printing of the textauthorized by Mark Twain, of which but fifty copies were printed. Thestory of this printing is fully told in the Introduction. 3. Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of TheTudors from Ye Diary of Ye Cupbearer to her Maisty Queen Elizabeth. [design] Imprinted by Ye Puritan Press At Ye Sign of Ye Jolly Virgin1601. 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 3/4by 6 1/4 inches, printed in a modern version of the Caxton black lettertype, 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-greyboards, buckram back. Cover title reads, in pale red ink, Caxton type, Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of TheTudors. [The Byway Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1901, 120 copies. ] Probably the first published edition. Later, in 1916, a facsimile edition of this printing was published inChicago from plates.