Mark Twain’s 176th birthday – so much more than just a humourist

It’s Mark Twain’s 176th birthday today (30 November) and Google has marked the occasion with one of their ‘doodles’ on their home page.  It shows Twain’s most famous character - Tom Sawyer - tempting a friend into whitewashing over the Google logo on a picket fence.  It’s a reference to a scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where he is ordered to paint the fence by his aunt Polly as a punishment.

I’m a big Twain fan, and Tom Sawyer is a great and comic novel.  But there was a fascinating and dark side to this, the greatest American author and personality – his Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur for example, is a bleak look at how modern technology has mechanised warfare and killing.  His little-read ‘The Damned Human Race’ suggests that evolution is actually running in reverse, such is man’s inhumanity.  We may yet reach the end of the road, he suggests, with the Frenchman! (By the way, Darwin was a fan of his books.)

But, let’s remember him, as Google has done, as one of the greatest humorists that lived. Enjoy this speech, given in London, where he claims to have discovered Dr Livingstone, before Stanley took the credit.

ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE.

Mr. Clemens was entertained at dinner by the White-friars' Club, London, at the Mitre Tavern, on the evening of August 6, 1872. In reply to the toast in his honor he said:

GENTLEMEN,-I thank you very heartily indeed for this expression of kindness toward me. What I have done for England and civilization in the arduous affairs which I have engaged in (that is good: that is so smooth that I will say it again and again)-what I have done for England and civilization in the arduous part I have performed I have done with a single-hearted devotion and with no hope of reward.

I am proud, I am very proud, that it was reserved for me to find Doctor Livingstone and for Mr. Stanley to get all the credit. I hunted for that man in Africa all over seventy-five or one hundred parishes, thousands and thousands of miles in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes riding negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. I didn't mind the rail or anything else, so that I didn't come in for the tar and feathers.

I found that man at Ujiji-a place you may remember if you have ever been there-and it was a very great satisfaction that I found him just in the nick of time. I found that poor old man deserted by his n***ers and by his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the gorillas-dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishing-but he was eloquent. Just as I found him he had eaten his last elephant, and he said to me: "God knows where I shall get another." He had nothing to wear except his venerable and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat but his diary.

But I said to him: "It is all right; I have discovered you, and Stanley will be here by the four-o'clock train and will discover you officially, and then we will turn to and have a reg'lar good time." I said: "Cheer up, for Stanley has got corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books, whiskey, and everything which the human heart can desire; he has got all kinds of valuables, including telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of money. By this time communication has been made with the land of Bibles and civilization, and property will advance." And then we surveyed all that country, from Ujiji, through Unanogo and other places, to Unyanyembe. I mention these names simply for your edification, nothing more-do not expect it-particularly as intelligence to the Royal Geographical Society. And then, having filled up the old man, we were all too full for utterance and departed. We have since then feasted on honors.

Stanley has received a snuff-box and I have received considerable snuff; he has got to write a book and gather in the rest of the credit, and I am going to levy on the copyright and to collect the money. Nothing comes amiss to me-cash or credit; but, seriously, I do feel that Stanley is the chief man and an illustrious one, and I do applaud him with all my heart. Whether he is an American or a Welshman by birth, or one, or both, matter's not to me.

So far as I am personally concerned, I am simply here to stay a few months, and to see English people and to learn English manners and customs, and to enjoy myself; so the simplest thing I can do is to thank you for the toast you have honored me with and for the remarks you have made, and to wish health and prosperity to the White-friar's' Club, and to sink down to my accustomed level.