Following the Equator, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Following the Equator, Complete


"Do you remember that?"

"Oh, yes, indeed!"

The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a twisted and
interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red, in
the ornate English fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat
gothic capitals was this--printed in blue:

THE MARK TWAIN CLUB
CORRIGAN CASTLE
............187..

"My!" said I, "how did you come by this?"

"I was President of it."

"No!--you don't mean it."

"It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected annually as
long as its meetings were held in my castle--Corrigan--which was five
years."

Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photographs of me in it.
Five of them were of old dates, the others of various later crops; the
list closed with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before.

"You sent us the first five; the rest were bought."

This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked--subject, the
Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland.

My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I
should say. It came to me in the form of a courteous letter, written on
the note-paper which I have described, and signed "By order of the
President; C. PEMBROKE, Secretary." It conveyed the fact that the Club
had been created in my honor, and added the hope that this token of
appreciation of my work would meet with my approval.

I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification
from over-exposure.

It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by
order of the President, furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two
in number. With it came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws, in
pamphlet form, and artistically printed. The initiation fee and dues
were in their proper place; also, schedule of meetings--monthly--for
essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions; quarterly for
business and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches
also, there was a list of the officers: President, Vice-President,
Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The letter was brief, but it was pleasant
reading, for it told me about the strong interest which the membership
took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also asked me for a photograph
--a special one. I went down and sat for it and sent it--with a letter,
of course.

Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and pretty it was;
and very artistic. It was a frog peeping out from a graceful tangle of
grass-sprays and rushes, and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and had
a gold pin back of it. After I had petted it, and played with it, and
caressed it, and enjoyed it a couple of hours, the light happened to fall
upon it at a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with the
light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and
rush-stems wove themselves into a monogram--mine! You can see that that
jewel was a work of art. And when you come to consider the intrinsic
value of it, you must concede that it is not every literary club that
could afford a badge like that. It was easily worth $75, in the opinion
of Messrs. Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not
duplicate it for that and make a profit. By this time the Club was well
under way; and from that time forth its secretary kept my off-hours well
supplied with business. He reported the Club's discussions of my books
with laborious fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability.
As a, rule, he synopsized; but when a speech was especially brilliant, he
short-handed it and gave me the best passages from it, written out.
There were five speakers whom he particularly favored in that way:
Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris, and Calder. Palmer and Forbes could
never get through a speech without attacking each other, and each in his
own way was formidably effective--Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse,
Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could always tell
which of them was talking without looking for his name. Naylor had a
polished style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor; Norris's style
was wholly without ornament, but enviably compact, lucid, and strong.
But after all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke
continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the drunkest
speeches that a man ever uttered. They were full of good things, but so
incredibly mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim to follow
him. They were not intended to be funny, but they were,--funny for the
very gravity which the speaker put into his flowing miracles of
incongruity. In the course of five years I came to know the styles of
the five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own
club at home.

These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words
to the page, and usually about twenty-five pages in a report--a good
15,000 words, I should say,--a solid week's work. The reports were
absorbingly entertaining, long as they were; but, unfortunately for me,
they did not come alone. They were always accompanied by a lot of
questions about passages and purposes in my books, which the Club wanted
answered; and additionally accompanied every quarter by the Treasurer's
report, and the Auditor's report, and the Committee's report, and the
President's review, and my opinion of these was always desired; also
suggestions for the good of the Club, if any occurred to me.

By and by I came to dread those things; and this dread grew and grew and
grew; grew until I got to anticipating them with a cold horror. For I
was an indolent man, and not fond of letter-writing, and whenever these
things came I had to put everything by and sit down--for my own peace of
mind--and dig and dig until I got something out of my head which would
answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the first year; but for the
succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my
curse, my nightmare, the grief and misery of my life. And I got so, so
sick of sitting for photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying
to satisfy that insatiable organization. Then at last I rose in revolt.
I could endure my oppressions no longer. I pulled my fortitude together
and tore off my chains, and was a free man again, and happy. From that
day I burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived, and
by and by they ceased to come.

Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this
all out in full confession. Then Mr. Blank came out in the same frank
way, and with a preliminary word of gentle apology said that he was the
Mark Twain Club, and the only member it had ever had!

Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He said he never
had to work for a living, and that by the time he was thirty life had
become a bore and a weariness to him. He had no interests left; they had
paled and perished, one by one, and left him desolate. He had begun to
think of suicide. Then all of a sudden he thought of that happy idea of
starting an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with
enthusiasm and love. He was charmed with it; it gave him something to
do. It elaborated itself on his hands;--it became twenty times more
complex and formidable than was his first rude draft of it. Every new
addition to his original plan which cropped up in his mind gave him a
fresh interest and a new pleasure. He designed the Club badge himself,
and worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days and
nights; then sent to London and had it made. It was the only one that
was made. It was made for me; the "rest of the Club" went without.

He invented the thirty-two members and their names. He invented the five
favorite speakers and their five separate styles. He invented their
speeches, and reported them himself. He would have kept that Club going
until now, if I hadn't deserted, he said. He said he worked like a slave
over those reports; each of them cost him from a week to a fortnight's
work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be
alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died.

Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invented that, too.

It was wonderful--the whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and
laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard
of. And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a
hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally he
said--

"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago,
telling about your lecture tour in Australia, and your death and burial
in Melbourne?--a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper
Holywell Hants."

"Yes."

"I wrote it."

"M-y-word!"

"Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion, and carried
it out without stopping to think. It was wrong. It could have done
harm. I was always sorry about it afterward. You must forgive me. I
was Mr. Bascom's guest on his yacht, on his voyage around the world. He
often spoke of you, and of the pleasant times you had had together in his
home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his
hand, and wrote the letter."

So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years.




CHAPTER XXVI.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep
from telling their happinesses to the unhappy.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently
took passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing
off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he
thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how
to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique without exposing
himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he knows none
of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who
possess this knowledge, and these make their living out of it. They
travel from place to place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical
societies, and seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these
people do not know these things. Since all people think they know them,
they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather they were an easy
prey until the law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court
decided that this kind of gambling is illegal, "because it traverses
Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States, which
forbids betting on a sure thing." This decision was rendered by the full
Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung upon the court
by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine Judges
was able to answer any of the four questions.

All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or
somewhere, and that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so. It
is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water. It is
nearest to Australia, but still not near. The gap between is very wide.
It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the
distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen
hundred miles, and that there is no bridge. I learned this from
Professor X., of Yale University, whom I met in the steamer on the great
lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the Pacific. I
asked him about New Zealand, in order to make conversation. I supposed
he would generalize a little without compromising himself, and then turn
the subject to something he was acquainted with, and my object would then
be attained; the ice would be broken, and we could go smoothly on, and
get acquainted, and have a pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he was
not only not embarrassed by my question, but seemed to welcome it, and to
take a distinct interest in it. He began to talk--fluently, confidently,
comfortably; and as he talked, my admiration grew and grew; for as the
subject developed under his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New
Zealand was, but that he was minutely familiar with every detail of its
history, politics, religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora, geology,
products, and climatic peculiarities. When he was done, I was lost in
wonder and admiration, and said to myself, he knows everything; in the
domain of human knowledge he is king.

I wanted to see him do more miracles; and so, just for the pleasure of
hearing him answer, I asked him about Hertzegovina, and pariah, and
unique. But he began to generalize then, and show distress. I saw that
with New Zealand gone, he was a Samson shorn of his locks; he was as
other men. This was a curious and interesting mystery, and I was frank
with him, and asked him to explain it.

He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all,
the matter was not worth concealment, so he would let me into the secret.
In substance, this is his story:

"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came up--the
card of a stranger. Under the name was printed a line which showed that
this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in Wellington
University, New Zealand. I was troubled--troubled, I mean, by the
shortness of the notice. College etiquette required that he be at once
invited to dinner by some member of the Faculty--invited to dine on that
day--not, put off till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to
do. College etiquette requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the
dinner-talk shall begin with complimentary references to his country, its
great men, its services to civilization, its seats of learning, and
things like that; and of course the host is responsible, and must either
begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else. I was
in great difficulty; and the more I searched my memory, the more my
trouble grew. I found that I knew nothing about New Zealand. I thought
I knew where it was, and that was all. I had an impression that it was
close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and that one went over to it
on a bridge. This might turn out to be incorrect; and even if correct,
it would not furnish matter enough for the purpose at the dinner, and I
should expose my College to shame before my guest; he would see that I, a
member of the Faculty of the first University in America, was wholly
ignorant of his country, and he would go away and tell this, and laugh at
it. The thought of it made my face burn.

"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her
help, and she thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself, if
I had not been excited and worried. She said she would go and tell the
visitor that I was out but would be in in a few minutes; and she would
talk, and keep him busy while I got out the back way and hurried over and
make Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything, and
could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the
University. I ran to Lawson, but was disappointed. He did not know
anything about New Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection
went it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you go over to
it on a bridge; but that was all he knew. It was too bad. Lawson was a
perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning; but now in this hour of our
need, it turned out that he did not know any useful thing.

"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the University was in very
real peril, and he walked the floor in anxiety, talking, and trying to
think out some way to meet the difficulty. Presently he decided that we
must try the rest of the Faculty--some of them might know about New
Zealand. So we went to the telephone and called up the professor of
astronomy and asked him, and he said that all he knew was, that it was
close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to it on----

"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said that
all he knew was that it was close to Aus----.

"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and disheartened, to see if we
could think up some other scheme. We shortly hit upon one which promised
well, and this one we adopted, and set its machinery going at once. It
was this. Lawson must give the dinner. The Faculty must be notified by
telephone to prepare. We must all get to work diligently, and at the end
of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner acquainted with New
Zealand; at least well enough informed to appear without discredit before
this native. To seem properly intelligent we should have to know about
New Zealand's population, and politics, and form of government, and
commerce, and taxes, and products, and ancient history, and modern
history, and varieties of religion, and nature of the laws, and their
codification, and amount of revenue, and whence drawn, and methods of
collection, and percentage of loss, and character of climate, and--well,
a lot of things like that; we must suck the maps and cyclopedias dry.
And while we posted up in this way, the Faculty's wives must flock over,
one after the other, in a studiedly casual way, and help my wife keep the
New Zealander quiet, and not let him get out and come interfering with
our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but it stopped business,
stopped it entirely.

"It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and wondered at by
future generations--the account of the Great Blank Day--the memorable
Blank Day--the day wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a Sunday
silence prevailed all about, and the whole University stood still while
the Faculty read-up and qualified itself to sit at meat, without shame,
in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering from New
Zealand:

"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn--but we
were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a
pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just
beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of
unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and
trained and seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh, the grace and fluency
of it!

"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking
dazed, and wasn't saying anything. So they stirred him up, of course.
Then that man came out with a good, honest, eloquent compliment that made
the Faculty blush. He said he was not worthy to sit in the company of
men like these; that he had been silent from admiration; that he had been
silent from another cause also--silent from shame--silent from ignorance!
'For,' said he, 'I, who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand and have
served five in a professorship, and ought to know much about that
country, perceive, now, that I know almost nothing about it. I say it
with shame, that I have learned fifty times, yes, a hundred times more
about New Zealand in these two hours at this table than I ever knew
before in all the eighteen years put together. I was silent because I
could not help myself. What I knew about taxes, and policies, and laws,
and revenue, and products, and history, and all that multitude of things,
was but general, and ordinary, and vague-unscientific, in a word--and it
would have been insanity to expose it here to the searching glare of your
amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive knowledge of those matters,
gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silent--as becomes me. But do not
change the subject; I can at least follow you, in this one; whereas if
you change to one which shall call out the full strength of your mighty
erudition, I shall be as one lost. If you know all this about a remote
little inconsequent patch like New Zealand, ah, what wouldn't you know
about any other Subject!'"




CHAPTER XXVIL

Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what
there is of it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

November 1--noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold
in the shade--an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long
swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing
in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read
somewhere that an acute observer among the early explorers--Cook? or
Tasman?--accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial
evidence that no important land lay to the southward, and so did not
waste time on a useless quest in that direction, but changed his course
and went searching elsewhere.

Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and
neighboring islands--islands whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages
used to gaze at their lost homeland and cry; and die of broken hearts.
How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly
so. The work was mercifully swift and horrible in some portions of
Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the extermination was
complete: not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and decades of
years. The Whites and the Blacks hunted each other, ambushed each other,
butchered each other. The Blacks were not numerous. But they were wary,
alert, cunning, and they knew their country well. They lasted a long
time, few as they were, and inflicted much slaughter upon the Whites.

The Government wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination, if
possible. One of its schemes was to capture them and coop them up, on a
neighboring island, under guard. Bodies of Whites volunteered for the
hunt, for the pay was good--L5 for each Black captured and delivered, but
the success achieved was not very satisfactory. The Black was naked, and
his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip on him that would hold.
The Whites moved about in armed bodies, and surprised little families of
natives, and did make captures; but it was suspected that in these
surprises half a dozen natives were killed to one caught--and that was
not what the Government desired.

Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of the island and
fence them in by a cordon of men placed in line across the country; but
the natives managed to slip through, constantly, and continue their
murders and arsons.

The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that
they must stay in the desolate region officially appointed for them! The
proclamation was a dead letter; the savages could not read it. Afterward
a picture-proclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and
these were nailed to trees in the forest. Herewith is a photographic
reproduction of this fashion-plate. Substantially it means:

1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other;

2. He loves his black subjects;

3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged;

4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged.

Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the
labors and ingenuities of several thousand Whites for a long time with
failure as a result. Then, at last, a quarter of a century after the
beginning of the troubles between the two races, the right man was found.
No, he found himself. This was George Augustus Robinson, called in
history "The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not conspicuous in
any way. He was a working bricklayer, in Hobart Town. But he must have
been an amazing personality; a man worth traveling far to see. It may be
his counterpart appears in history, but I do not know where to look for
it.

He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the
jungle, and the mountain-retreats where the hunted and implacable savages
were hidden, and appear among them unarmed, speak the language of love
and of kindness to them, and persuade them to forsake their homes and the
wild free life that was so dear to them, and go with him and surrender to
the hated Whites and live under their watch and ward, and upon their
charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a
madman.

In the beginning, his moral-suasion project was sarcastically dubbed the
sugar plum speculation. If the scheme was striking, and new to the
world's experience, the situation was not less so. It was this. The
White population numbered 40,000 in 1831; the Black population numbered
three hundred. Not 300 warriors, but 300 men, women, and children. The
Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and spears. The
Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a century, and had tried
every thinkable way to capture, kill, or subdue them; and could not do
it. If white men of any race could have done it, these would have
accomplished it. But every scheme had failed, the splendid 300, the
matchless 300 were unconquered, and manifestly unconquerable. They would
not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would fight to the bitter
end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their heart, and sing the marvel of
their magnificent patriotism.