Obviously, it is ridiculous to say that the “leer
of the sensualist” lurks in the pages of Mark
Twain’s 1601.
“In a way,” observed William Marion Reedy,
“1601 is to Twain’s whole works what the
‘Droll Stories’ are to Balzac’s.
It is better than the privately 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 from Shakespeare’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 good spirits...
I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic,
save for one touch toward the end. Indeed, it
seems more of Rabelais than of Boccaccio or Masuccio
or Aretino—is brutally British rather than
lasciviously latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous
as regards the language.”
Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary
of State, had proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece.
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain’s biographer,
likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said,
“1601 is a genuine classic, as classics of that
sort go. It is better than the gross obscenities
of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste
that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give
this literary refugee shelter and setting among the
more conventional writing of Mark Twain. Human
taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter
of environment and point of view.”
“It depends on who writes a thing whether it
is coarse or not,” wrote Clemens in his notebook
in 1879. “I built a conversation which
could have happened—I used words such as
were used at that time—1601. I sent
it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused
it and the sender!”
But that man was a praiser of Rabelais and had been
saying, ’O that we had 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 ace of
killing himself with laughter (for between you and
me the thing was dreadfully funny. I don’t
often write anything that I laugh at myself, but I
can hardly think of that thing without laughing).
That old Divine said it was a piece of the finest
kind of literary art—and David Gray of
the Buffalo Courier said it ought to be printed privately
and left behind me when I died, and then my fame as
a literary artist would last.”
THE FIRST PRINTING
Verbatim Reprint
[Date, 1601.]
Conversation, as it was by
the social fireside, in the
time of the
Tudors.
