by Mark Twain
A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY
Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I wouldwrite an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, I yieldat last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender my history.
Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of thefamily by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, whenour people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it isthat our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except whenone of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avertfoolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has everfelt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and weleave it alone. All the old families do that way.
Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the highwayin William Rufus's time. At about the age of thirty he went to one ofthose fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see aboutsomething, and never returned again. While there he died suddenly.
Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his oldsaber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was aborn humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first timehe was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed oneend of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where itcould contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked anysituation so much or stuck to it so long.
Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a successionof soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battlesinging, right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, rightahead of it.
This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism thatour family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuckout at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.
Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody'shand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head offto see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and by he tooka contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the workspoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in thestone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-twoyears. In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years he gavesuch satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a weektill the government gave him another. He was a perfect pet. And he wasalways a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous memberof their benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang. He alwayswore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and diedlamented by the government. He was a sore loss to his country. For hewas so regular.
Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came overto this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger. He appears to havebeen of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of the foodall the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless therewas a change. He wanted fresh shad. Hardly a day passed over his headthat he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air,sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbusknew where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorablecry of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazedawhile through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on thedistant water, and then said: "Land be hanged--it's a raft!"
When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he broughtnothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked"B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C.," one woolen one marked "D.F.," and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during the voyage heworried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it,than all the rest of the passengers put together. If the ship was "downby the head," and would not steer, he would go and move his "trunk"further aft, and then watch the effect. If the ship was "by the stern,"he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men to "shift that baggage."In storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his "trunk"made it impossible for the men to hear the orders. The man does notappear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing,but it is noted in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" thatalbeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he tookit ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagnebaskets. But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggeringway, that some of this things were missing, and was going to searchthe other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw himoverboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but noteven a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. But while every one wasmost absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarilyincreasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel wasadrift and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow. Then in theship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note:
"In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone downeand got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam sauvages fromye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne of a ghun!"
Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pridethat we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person whoever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing ourIndians. He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and tohis dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a morerestraining and elevating influence on the Indians than any otherreformer that ever labored among them. At this point the chroniclebecomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that theold voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man everhanged in America, and while there received injuries which terminated inhis death.
The great-grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred andsomething, and was known in our annals as "the old Admiral," though inhistory he had other titles. He was long in command of fleets of swiftvessels, well armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying upmerchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, alwaysmade good fair time across the ocean. But if a ship still loiteredin spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he couldcontain himself no longer--and then he would take that ship home wherehe lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come forit, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and slothout of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigoratingexercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupilsliked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after tryingit. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral alwaysburned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. At lastthis fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years and honors.And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that ifhe had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have beenresuscitated.
Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenthcentury, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. He convertedsixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-toothnecklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come todivine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly; andwhen his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of therestaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, thathe was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more ofhim.
Pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain)adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General Braddockwith all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was thisancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree.So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books iscorrect; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenthround the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was beingrese
rved by the Great Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared notlift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriouslyimpairs the integrity of history. What he did say was:
"It ain't no (hic) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' still longenough for a man to hit him. I (hic) I can't 'ford to fool away any moream'nition on him."
That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good,plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itselfto us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is aboutit.
I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgivingthat every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier a coupleof times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missedhim, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was reserving thatsoldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared that the onlyreason why Washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is,that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others itdidn't. There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of theprophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one maycarry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that havebeen fulfilled.
I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are sothoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have not feltit to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in theorder of their birth. Among these may be mentioned Richard BrinsleyTwain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain, alias Sixteen-StringJack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard; Ananias Twain, aliasBaron Munchausen; John George Twain, alias Captain Kydd; and then thereare George Francis Twain, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam'sAss--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhatdistinctly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateralbranch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, inorder to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for,they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.
It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestrydown too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely ofyour great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which Inow do.
I was born without teeth--and there Richard III. had the advantage ofme; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had theadvantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuouslyhonest.
But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tamecontrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leaveit unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have readhad stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would havebeen a felicitous thing for the reading public. How does it strike you?
