A Burlesque Autobiography

By

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

www.freeclassicebooks.com

Contents

URLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.. 4

OUR FAMILY TREE.. 6

AWFUL, TERRIBLE MEDIEVAL ROMANCE.. 12

CHAPTER I. THE SECRET REVEALED.. 12

CHAPTER II. FESTIVITY AND TEARS.. 17

CHAPTER III. THE PLOT THICKENS.. 18

CHAPTER IV. THE AWFUL REVELATION.. 21

CHAPTER V. THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE.. 22

URLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would

write an autobiography they would read it, when they got leisure, I

yield at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my

history:

Ours is a noble old house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.

The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the

family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when

our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is

that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when

one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert

foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever

felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we

leave it alone. All the old families do that way.

Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the highway

in William Rufus' time. At about the age of thirty he went to one of

those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see about

something, and never returned again. While there he died suddenly.

Augustus Twain, seems to have made something of a stir about the year

1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old

sabre 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 a

born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first time

he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one

end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it

could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any

situation so much or stuck to it so long.

Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession

of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle

singing; right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right

ahead of it.

This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that

our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck

out at right angles, and bore fruit winter, and summer.

||=======|====

||       |

||       |

||       O

||     / || \

||       ||

||       ||

||

||

||

OUR FAMILY TREE

Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."

He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's

hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off

to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and by he took

a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work

spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the

stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two

years. In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years he gave

such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week

till government gave him another. He was a perfect pet. And he was

always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member

of their benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang. He always

wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died

lamented by the government. He was a sore loss to his country. For he

was so regular.

Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came over

to this country with Columbus in 1492, as a passenger. He appears to

have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of the

food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless

there was a change. He wanted fresh shad. Hardly a day passed over his

head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air,

sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus

knew where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorable

cry of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed a

while through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the

distant water, and then said: "Land be hanged,--it's a raft!"

When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought

nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked

"B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C." one woollen one marked "D.

F." and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during the voyage he

worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it,

than all the rest of the passengers put together.

If the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would go and

move his "trunk" farther 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 not appear to have been openly charged with

any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a

"curious circumstance" that albeit he brought his baggage on board the

ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a queensware

crate, and a couple of champagne baskets. But when he came back

insinuating in an insolent, swaggering way, that some of his things were

missing, and was going to search the other passengers' baggage, it

was too much, and they threw him overboard. They watched long and

wonderingly for him to come up, but not even a bubble rose on the

quietly ebbing tide. But while every one was most absorbed in gazing

over the side, and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was

observed with consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor

cable hanging limp from the bow. Then in the ship's dimmed and ancient

log we find this quaint note:

"In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde

gonne downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to

ye dam sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it,

ye sonne of a ghun!"

Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride

that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who

ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our

Indians. He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to

his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more

restraining and elevating influence on the Indians than any other

reformer that ever labored among them. At this point the chronicle

becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the

old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever

hanged in America, and while there received injuries which terminated in

his death.

The great grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred and

something, and was known in our annals as, "the old Admiral," though in

history he had other titles. He was long in command of fleets of swift

vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying up

merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always

made good fair time across the ocean. But if a ship still loitered

in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could

contain himself no longer--and then he would take that ship home where

he lived and, keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for

it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth

out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating

exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils

liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying

it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always

burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. At last

this fine old tar was cut down in the fulness of his years and honors.

And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if

he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been

resuscitated.

Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth

century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. He converted

sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth

necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to

divine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and

when his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the

restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that

he was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of

him.

PAH-GO-TO-WAH-WAH-PUKKETEKEEWIS (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye) TWAIN

adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided Gen. Braddock

with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was this

ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree.

So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is

correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth

round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being

reserved by the Great Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not

lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously

impairs 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 long

enough for a man to hit him. I (hic!) I can't 'ford to fool away any

more am'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 itself to

us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.

I always enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring

misgiving that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier

a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and

missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was reserving

that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared that the

only reason why Washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten

is, that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others it

didn't. There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the

prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may

carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have

been fulfilled.

I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so

thoroughly well known in history by their aliases, that I have not felt

it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the

order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned RICHARD BRINSLEY

TWAIN, alias Guy Fawkes; JOHN WENTWORTH TWAIN, alias Sixteen-String

Jack; WILLIAM HOGARTH TWAIN, alias Jack Sheppard; ANANIAS TWAIN, alias

Baron Munchausen; JOHN GEORGE TWAIN, alias Capt. Kydd; and then there

are George Francis Train, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar and Baalam's

Ass--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat

distantly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral

branch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in

order 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 ancestry

down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of

your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I

now do.

I was born without teeth--and there Richard III had the advantage of

me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the

advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously

honest.

But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame

contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave

it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read

had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have

been a felicitous thing, for the reading public. How does it strike you?

AWFUL, TERRIBLE MEDIEVAL ROMANCE

CHAPTER I. THE SECRET REVEALED.

It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of

Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in

the tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret

council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in a

chair of state meditating. Presently he said, with a tender accent:

"My daughter!"

A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail,

answered:

"Speak, father!"

"My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that

hath puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in

the matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great

Duke of Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if

no son were born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house,

provided a son were born to me. And further, in case no son were born to

either, but only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich's

daughter, if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should

succeed, if she retained a blameless name. And so I, and my old wife

here, prayed fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was

vain. You were born to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize

slipping from my grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had

been so hopeful! Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his

wife had borne no heir of either sex.

"'But hold,' I said, 'all is not lost.' A saving scheme had shot athwart

my brain. You were born at midnight. Only the leech, the nurse, and six

waiting-women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour

had sped. Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over

the proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty

Brandenburgh! And well the secret has been kept. Your mother's own

sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared

nothing.

"When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich. We grieved,

but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other

natural enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she

throve--Heaven's malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe.

For, Ha-ha! have we not a son? And is not our son the future Duke?

Our well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?--for, woman of eight-and-twenty

years--as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen

to you!

"Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother,

and he waxes feeble. The cares of state do tax him sore. Therefore he

wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke--in act, though not

yet in name. Your servitors are ready--you journey forth to-night.

"Now listen well. Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as

Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal

chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people,

SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your

judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the

throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that

your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to

make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life."

"Oh; my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie! Was it that I

might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights? Spare me, father, spare

your child!"

"What, huzzy! Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has

wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of

thine but ill accords with my humor.

"Betake thee to the Duke, instantly! And beware how thou meddlest with

my purpose!"

Let this suffice, of the conversation. It is enough for us to know that

the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl

availed nothing. They nor anything could move the stout old lord of

Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the

castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the

darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed vassals and a brave

following of servants.

The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter's

departure, and then he turned to his sad wife and said:

"Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is full three months since I

sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my

brother's daughter Constance. If he fail, we are not wholly safe; but if

he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though

ill-fortune should decree she never should be Duke!"

"My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well."

"Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of

Brandenburgh and grandeur!"

CHAPTER II. FESTIVITY AND TEARS

Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the

brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with

military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes;

for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke's heart

was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing

had won his love at once. The great halls of the palace were thronged

with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did

all things seem, that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and

giving place to a comforting contentment.

But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature

was transpiring. By a window stood the Duke's only child, the Lady

Constance. Her eyes were red and swollen, and full of tears. She was

alone. Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud:

"The villain Detzin is gone--has fled the dukedom! I could not believe

it at first, but alas! it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to

love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him. I

loved him--but now I hate him! With all my soul I hate him! Oh, what is

to become of me! I am lost, lost, lost! I shall go mad!"

CHAPTER III. THE PLOT THICKENS.

A few months drifted by. All men published the praises of the young

Conrad's government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the

mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore

himself in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his

hands, and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his

heir delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier.

It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men as

Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy. But strange enough, he

was not. For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun to

love him! The love of the rest of the world was happy fortune for him,

but this was freighted with danger! And he saw, moreover, that the

delighted Duke had discovered his daughter's passion likewise, and was

already dreaming of a marriage. Every day somewhat of the deep sadness

that had been in the princess' face faded away; every day hope and

animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant

smiles visited the face that had been so troubled.

Conrad was appalled. He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to

the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own

sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace--when he was sorrowful

and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He

now began to avoid, his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for,

naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in

his way. He marvelled at this at first; and next it startled him. The

girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and

in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly

anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere.

This could not go on forever. All the world was talking about it. The

Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very

ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a

private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted

him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed:

"Oh, why, do you avoid me? What have I done--what have I said, to lose

your kind opinion of me--for, surely I had it once? Conrad, do not

despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot--cannot hold the words

unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise

me if you must, but they would be uttered!"

Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then,

misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she

flung her arms about his neck and said:

"You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you

will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!"

Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and

he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor

girl from him, and cried:

"You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!" And then

he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement.

A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was

crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both saw ruin

staring them in the face.

By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying:

"To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I

thought it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! He spurned me--did

this man--he spurned me from him like a dog!"

CHAPTER IV. THE AWFUL REVELATION.

Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance

of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more

now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad's

color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye,

and he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening

wisdom.

Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew

louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold of it. It

swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said:

"The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!"

When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice

around his head and shouted:

"Long live Duke Conrad!--for lo, his crown is sure, from this day

forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall

be rewarded!"

And he spread the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no

soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate,

to celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old

Klugenstein's expense.

CHAPTER V. THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE.

The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh

were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was

left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit.

Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier's chair, and on

either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly

commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor,

and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered.

Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared

the misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did

not avail.

The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast.

The gladdest was in his father's. For, unknown to his daughter "Conrad,"

the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles,

triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house.

After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries

had followed, the venerable Lord Chief justice said:

"Prisoner, stand forth!"

The unhappy princess rose and stood unveiled before the vast multitude.

The Lord Chief Justice continued:

"Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been

charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth

unto a child; and by our ancient law the penalty is death, excepting in

one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord

Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give

heed."

Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same

moment the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the

doomed prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to

speak, but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly:

"Not there, your Grace, not there! It is not lawful to pronounce

judgment upon any of the ducal line SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!"

A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron

frame of his old father likewise. CONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED--dared he

profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must

be done. Wondering eyes were already upon him. They would be suspicious

eyes if he hesitated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he

stretched forth the sceptre again, and said:

"Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of

Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon

me. Give heed to my words. By the ancient law of the land, except you

produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner,

you must surely die. Embrace this opportunity--save yourself while yet

you may. Name the father of your child!"

A solemn hush fell upon the great court--a silence so profound that men

could hear their own hearts beat. Then the princess slowly turned, with

eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad,

said:

"Thou art the man!"

An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill

to Conrad's heart like the chill of death itself. What power on earth

could save him! To disprove the charge, he must reveal that he was a

woman; and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death!

At one and the same moment, he and his grim old father swooned and fell

to, the ground.

[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in

this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.]

The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly

close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or

her) out of it again--and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole

business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers--or

else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten

out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.

[If Harper's Weekly or the New York Tribune desire to copy these initial

chapters into the reading columns of their valuable journals, just as

they do the opening chapters of Ledger and New York Weekly novels, they

are at liberty to do so at the usual rates, provided they "trust."]

MARK TWAIN