The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories

by Mark Twain

  DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?

  Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified bycustom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

  The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend, andhe rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged to thebrim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve to an old soreplace:

  "Many a time I've had to listen without retort to an old saying that isirritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a returnjibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this I shalltalk back, and say, 'How about the Americans?'"

  It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get. Theman that first says it thinks he has made a discovery. The man hesays it to, thinks the same. It departs on its travels, is receivedeverywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as a piece of rare andacute observation, but as being exhaustively true and profoundly wise;and so it presently takes its place in the world's list of recognizedand established wisdoms, and after that no one thinks of examining it tosee whether it is really entitled to its high honors or not. I call tomind instances of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullnessis not surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for alord: one of them records the American's Adoration of the AlmightyDollar, the other the American millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cashfor a title, with a husband thrown in.

  It isn't merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar, it is thehuman race. The human race has always adored the hatful of shells, orthe bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, or the handful ofsteel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, or the zareba full ofcattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm,or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, orthe hoarded cash, or--anything that stands for wealth and considerationand independence, and can secure to the possessor that most precious ofall things, another man's envy. It was a dull person that invented theidea that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous thananother's.

  Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea;it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before Americawas discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever;and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy thehusband without it. They must put up the "dot," or there is no trade.The commercialization of brides is substantially universal, except inAmerica. It exists with us, to some little extent, but in no degreeapproaching a custom.

  "The Englishman dearly loves a lord."

  What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could bemore correctly worded:

  "The human race dearly envies a lord."

  That is to say, it envies the lord's place. Why? On two accounts, Ithink: its Power and its Conspicuousness.

  Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light of ourown observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, Ithink our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as isthat of any other nation. No one can care less for a lord than thebackwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldomheard them spoken of; but I will not allow that any Englishman has aprofounder envy of a lord than has the average American who has livedlong years in a European capital and fully learned how immense is theposition the lord occupies.

  Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience,to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred will bethere out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up with desire tosee a personage who is so much talked about. They envy him; but it isConspicuousness they envy mainly, not the Power that is lodged in hisroyal quality and position, for they have but a vague and spectralknowledge and appreciation of that; through their environment andassociations they have been accustomed to regard such things lightly,and as not being very real; consequently, they are not able to valuethem enough to consumingly envy them.

  But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence,for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousnesswhich he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity andpleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy--whether hesuspects it or not. At any time, on any day, in any part of America,you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger by calling hisattention to any other passing stranger and saying:

  "Do you see that gentleman going along there? It is Mr. Rockefeller."

  Watch his eye. It is a combination of power and conspicuousness whichthe man understands.

  When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it. When a manis conspicuous, we always want to see him. Also, if he will pay us anattention we will manage to remember it. Also, we will mention it nowand then, casually; sometimes to a friend, or if a friend is not handy,we will make out with a stranger.

  Well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? At once wethink of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities insoldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there. But that is amistake. Rank holds its court and receives its homage on every round ofthe ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; and distinction,also, exists on every round of the ladder, and commands its due ofdeference and envy.

  To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege of allthe human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised in democraciesas well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent, among thosecreatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals. For even theyhave some poor little vanities and foibles, though in this matter theyare paupers as compared to us.

  A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions ofsubjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him. A ChristianEmperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large part ofthe Christian world outside of his domains; but he is a matter ofindifference to all China. A king, class A, has an extensive worship; aking, class B, has a less extensive worship; class C, class D, classE get a steadily diminishing share of worship; class L (Sultan ofZanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W (half-king of Samoa),get no worship at all outside their own little patch of sovereignty.

  Take the distinguished people along down. Each has his group ofhomage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start with theSecretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster--and below;for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of these groupswill have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, or his strength,or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired and envied by his group.The same with the army; the same with the literary and journalisticcraft; the publishing craft; the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S.Steel; the class A hotel--and the rest of the alphabet in that line; theclass A prize-fighter--and the rest of the alphabet in his line--cleardown to the lowest and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, withits one boy that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa,bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent admirationand envy.

  There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this humanrace's fondness for contact with power and distinction, and for thereflected glory it gets out of it. The king, class A, is happy in thestate banquet and the military show which the emperor provides for him,and he goes home and gathers the queen and the princelings around him inthe privacy of the spare room, and tells them all about it, and says:

  "His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most friendlyway--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!--andeverybody _seeing _him do it; charming, perfectly charming!"

  The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police paradeprovided for him by the king, class B, and goes home and tells thefamily all about it, and says:

  "And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke and achat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away and laughingand chatting, just the same as if we had been born in the same bunk; andall the
servants in the anteroom could see us doing it! Oh, it was toolovely for anything!"

  The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him bythe king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it,and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors in thegaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot.

  Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at thebottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside,and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which. Weare unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments paidus, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown. There isnot one of us, from the emperor down, but is made like that. Do Imean attentions shown us by the guest? No, I mean simply flatteringattentions, let them come whence they may. We despise no source that canpay us a pleasing attention--there is no source that is humble enoughfor that. You have heard a dear little girl say to a frowzy anddisreputable dog: "He came right to me and let me pat him on the head,and he wouldn't let the others touch him!" and you have seen her eyesdance with pride in that high distinction. You have often seen that. Ifthe child were a princess, would that random dog be able to confer thelike glory upon her with his pretty compliment? Yes; and even in hermature life and seated upon a throne, she would still remember it, stillrecall it, still speak of it with frank satisfaction. That charmingand lovable German princess and poet, Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania,remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her"when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book; and thatthe squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued compliment ofnot being afraid of them; and "once one of them, holding a nut betweenits sharp little teeth, ran right up against my father"--it has the verynote of "He came right to me and let me pat him on the head"--"and whenit saw itself reflected in his boot it was very much surprised,and stopped for a long time to contemplate itself in the polishedleather"--then it went its way. And the birds! she still remembers withpride that "they came boldly into my room," when she had neglected her"duty" and put no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all thewild birds, and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember withpride that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personalfriends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship to herinjury: "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee." And here is thatproud note again that sings in that little child's elation in beingsingled out, among all the company of children, for the random dog'shonor-conferring attentions. "Even in the very worst summer for wasps,when, in lunching out of doors, our table was covered with them andevery one else was stung, they never hurt me."

  When a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are able toadd distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne, rememberswith grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and distinctionsconferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of the forest, we arehelped to realize that complimentary attentions, homage,distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast--that they are anobility-conferring power apart.

  We all like these things. When the gate-guard at the railway-stationpasses me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets, Ifeel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial handon his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child feltwhen the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized theothers; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her and stungthe rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna (and remember ityet), when the helmeted police shut me off, with fifty others, from astreet which the Emperor was to pass through, and the captain of thesquad turned and saw the situation and said indignantly to that guard:

  "Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain? Let him through!"

  It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget thewind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my buttons when Imarked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my fellow-rabble, andnoted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful expression which said,as plainly as speech could have worded it: "And who in the nation is theHerr Mark Twain _um gotteswillen?_"

  How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark:

  "I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my handand touched him."

  We have all heard it many and many a time. It was a proud distinctionto be able to say those words. It brought envy to the speaker, a kind ofglory; and he basked in it and was happy through all his veins. Andwho was it he stood so close to? The answer would cover all the grades.Sometimes it was a king; sometimes it was a renowned highwayman;sometimes it was an unknown man killed in an extraordinary way and madesuddenly famous by it; always it was a person who was for the moment thesubject of public interest of a village.

  "I was there, and I saw it myself." That is a common and envy-compellingremark. It can refer to a battle; to a hanging; to a coronation; to thekilling of Jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of Jenny Lind atthe Battery; to the meeting of the President and Prince Henry; to thechase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to theexplosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a villagechurch struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, byeverybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to.The man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. Itis his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem,even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better.As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, andconcentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle thedistinction of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil theirpleasure in it if he can. My life has been embittered by that kind ofperson. If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallento your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try to makebelieve that the thing you took for a special distinction was nothingof the kind and was meant in quite another way. Once I was received inprivate audience by an emperor. Last week I was telling a jealous personabout it, and I could see him wince under it, see him bite, seehim suffer. I revealed the whole episode to him with considerableelaboration and nice attention to detail. When I was through, he askedme what had impressed me most. I said:

  "His Majesty's delicacy. They told me to be sure and back out from thepresence, and find the door-knob as best I could; it was not allowableto face around. Now the Emperor knew it would be a difficult ordeal forme, because of lack of practice; and so, when it was time to part, heturned, with exceeding delicacy, and pretended to fumble with things onhis desk, so I could get out in my own way, without his seeing me."

  It went home! It was vitriol! I saw the envy and disgruntlement risein the man's face; he couldn't keep it down. I saw him try to fix upsomething in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction. I enjoyedthat, for I judged that he had his work cut out for him. He struggledalong inwardly for quite a while; then he said, with a manner of aperson who has to say something and hasn't anything relevant to say:

  "You said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?"

  "Yes; _I_ never saw anything to match them."

  I had him again. He had to fumble around in his mind as much as anotherminute before he could play; then he said in as mean a way as I everheard a person say anything:

  "He could have been counting the cigars, you know."

  I cannot endure a man like that. It is nothing to him how unkind he is,so long as he takes the bloom off. It is all he cares for.

  "An Englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord," (orother conspicuous person.) It includes us all. We love to be noticed bythe conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such, or witha conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion, even in theforty-seventh, if we cannot do better. This accounts for some of ourcurious tastes in mementos. It accounts for the large private trade inthe Prince of Wales's hair, which chambermaids were able to drive inthat article of commerce when the Prince made the tour of the wo
rld inthe long ago--hair which probably did not always come from his brush,since enough of it was marketed to refurnish a bald comet; it accountsfor the fact that the rope which lynches a negro in the presence often thousand Christian spectators is salable five minutes later attwo dollars and inch; it accounts for the mournful fact that a royalpersonage does not venture to wear buttons on his coat in public.

  We do love a lord--and by that term I mean any person whose situationis higher than our own. The lord of the group, for instance: a group ofpeers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums, a group of sailors,a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians, a group of collegegirls. No royal person has ever been the object of a more deliriousloyalty and slavish adoration than is paid by the vast Tammany herd toits squalid idol of Wantage. There is not a bifurcated animal in thatmenagerie that would not be proud to appear in a newspaper picture inhis company. At the same time, there are some in that organization whowould scoff at the people who have been daily pictured in company withPrince Henry, and would say vigorously that _they _would not consentto be photographed with him--a statement which would not be true in anyinstance. There are hundreds of people in America who would frankly sayto you that they would not be proud to be photographed in a groupwith the Prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people wouldbelieve it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true. Wehave a large population, but we have not a large enough one, by severalmillions, to furnish that man. He has not yet been begotten, and in facthe is not begettable.

  You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in thedim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd often thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sonsof toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle--there isn't one whois trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainlymeditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with the intention ofhunting himself out in the picture and of framing and keeping it if heshall find so much of his person in it as his starboard ear.

  We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and wewill put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more. We maypretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend it to ourselvesprivately--and we don't. We do confess in public that we are thenoblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit, and teaching,and superstition; but deep down in the secret places of our souls werecognize that, if we _are _the noblest work, the less said about it thebetter.

  We of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles--afondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they aregenuine or pinchbeck. We forget that whatever a Southerner likes therest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of predilectionlodged in one people that is absent from another people. There is novariety in the human race. We are all children, all children of the oneAdam, and we love toys. We can soon acquire that Southern disease ifsome one will give it a start. It already has a start, in fact. I havebeen personally acquainted with over eighty-four thousand persons who,at one time or another in their lives, have served for a year or twoon the staffs of our multitudinous governors, and through thatfatality have been generals temporarily, and colonels temporarily, andjudge-advocates temporarily; but I have known only nine among them whocould be hired to let the title go when it ceased to be legitimate. Iknow thousands and thousands of governors who ceased to be governorsaway back in the last century; but I am acquainted with only three whowould answer your letter if you failed to call them "Governor" in it.I know acres and acres of men who have done time in a legislature inprehistoric days, but among them is not half an acre whose resentmentyou would not raise if you addressed them as "Mr." instead of "Hon."The first thing a legislature does is to convene in an impressivelegislative attitude, and get itself photographed. Each memberframes his copy and takes it to the woods and hangs it up in the mostaggressively conspicuous place in his house; and if you visit the houseand fail to inquire what that accumulation is, the conversation will bebrought around to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show youa figure in it which in the course of years he has almost obliteratedwith the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "It's me!"

  Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-roomin Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on toread them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?--keeping afurtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see if he is beingobserved and admired?--those same old letters which he fetches in everymorning? Have you seen it? Have you seen him show off? It is _the_sight of the national capital. Except one; a pathetic one. That is theex-Congressman: the poor fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-yeartaste of glory and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded,and ought to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tearhimself away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so helingers, and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimessnubbed, ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to lookotherwise; dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness andgaiety, hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed,the more-fortunates who are still in place and were once his mates. Haveyou seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that is leftof his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor"; and works ithard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest figure I knowof.

  Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily scoffat a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we only hadhis chance--ah! "Senator" is not a legitimate title. A Senator has nomore right to be addressed by it than have you or I; but, in the severalstate capitals and in Washington, there are five thousand Senators whotake very kindly to that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you callthem by it--which you may do quite unrebuked. Then those same Senatorssmile at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of theSouth!

  Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may. And we workthem for all they are worth. In prayer we call ourselves "worms of thedust," but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remarkshall not be taken at par._ We_--worms of the dust! Oh, no, we arenot that. Except in fact; and we do not deal much in fact when we arecontemplating ourselves.

  As a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be Croker, or a duke, ora prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the headof our group. Many years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls standingby the _Herald _office, with an expectant look in his face. Soon a largeman passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder. That was what theboy was waiting for--the large man's notice. The pat made him proud andhappy, and the exultation inside of him shone out through his eyes; andhis mates were there to see the pat and envy it and wish they could havethat glory. The boy belonged down cellar in the press-room, the largeman was king of the upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. Thelight in the boy's face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head ofhis group. The pat was an accolade. It was as precious to the boy as itwould have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade hadbeen delivered by his sovereign with a sword. The quintessence of thehonor was all there; there was no difference in values; in truth therewas no difference present except an artificial one--clothes.

  All the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon or benoticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness; and sometimesanimals, born to better things and higher ideals, descend to man's levelin this matter. In the Jardin des Plantes I have see a cat that was sovain of being the personal friend of an elephant that I was ashamed ofher.