The Birds and Beasts of Mark Twain

by Robert M. Rodney (Editor), Minnie M. Brashear (Editor)

Overview

Long before moving pictures were invented, youngsters from eight to eighty were being charmed by a special kind of animated cartoon—the word sketches of Mark Twain. His descriptions and episodes involving animals have all the life of a Walt Disney production with the added advantage of the great wit and artistry of Twain’s prose—something which could never be captured in pictures alone.

A Mark Twain sketch may begin as an ordinary cartoon: a camel eating the author’s coat. You can see the scene, and it’s very funny: the camel “opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before in his life.” But then comes the Twain touch. The camel finds some newspaper correspondence, starts to eat it, and “dies a death of indescribable agony, choking on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public.”

Over and over again, Twain goes beyond mere humor to turn his portraits into truthful, though sometimes unflattering, insights into the world and human nature. For most of Twain’s animals are “as human as you be.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806187587
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	09/06/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	138
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Minnie M. Brashear was a professor of English at the University of Missouri and coeditor with Robert M. Rodney of The Birds and Beasts of Mark Twain (1966), also published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Rodney was professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

Minnie M. Brashear was a professor of English at the University of Missouri and coeditor with Robert M. Rodney of The Birds and Beasts of Mark Twain (1966), also published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Rodney was professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

Robert Roché is known for his animal paintings and his portraits of famous Americans such as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Read an Excerpt

The Birds and Beasts of Mark Twain

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By Robert M. Rodney, Minnie M. Brashear

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 1996 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-8758-7

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CHAPTER 1

DOMESTICS

VIGNETTES

As early as 1857, long before he wrote his "Celebrated Jumping Frog" story and books embodying animal portraits, Mark Twain revealed a flair for writing fables. Corresponding with a girl friend while he was working in his brother Orion's job-printing office in Keokuk, Iowa, young Samuel Clemens entertained her with a short description of a congregation of insects attracted to his lamp, in the midst of whom he visualized himself as a sort of Gulliver:

Bugs! Yes, B-U-G-S! What of the bugs? Why, perdition take the bugs! That is all. Night before last I stood at the little press until nearly 2 o'clock, and the flaring gas light over my head attracted all the varieties of bugs which are to be found in natural history, and they all had the same praise-worthy recklessness about flying into the fire. They at first came in little social crowds of a dozen or so, but soon increased in numbers, until a religious meeting of several millions was assembled on the board before me, presided over by a venerable beetle, who occupied the most prominent lock of my hair as his chair of state, while innumerable lesser dignitaries of the same tribe were clustered around him, keeping order, and at the same time endeavoring to attract the attention of the vast assemblage to their own importance by industriously grating their teeth. It must have been an interesting occasion—perhaps a great bug jubilee commemorating the triumph of the locusts over Pharaoh's crops in Egypt many centuries ago....

The big "president" beetle (who, when he frowned, closely resembled Isbell when the pupils are out of time) rose and ducked his head and, crossing his arms over his shoulders, stroked them down to the tip of his nose several times, and after thus disposing of the perspiration, stuck his hands under his wings, propped his back against a lock of hair, and then, bobbing his head at the congregation, remarked, "B-u-z-z!" To which the congregation devoutly responded, "B-u-z-z!" Satisfied with this promptness on the part of his flock, he took a more imposing perpendicular against another lock of hair and, lifting his hands to command silence, gave another melodious "b-u-z-z!" on a louder key (which I suppose to have been the key-note) and after a moment's silence the whole congregation burst into a grand anthem, three dignified daddy longlegs, perched near the gas burner, beating quadruple time during the performance. Soon two of the parts in the great chorus maintained silence, while a treble and alto duet, sung by forty-seven thousand mosquitoes and twenty-three thousand house flies, came in, and then, after another chorus, a tenor and bass duet by thirty-two thousand locusts and ninety-seven thousand pinch bugs was sung—then another grand chorus, "Let Every Bug Rejoice and Sing" (we used to sing "heart" instead of "bug") terminated the performance, during which eleven treble singers split their throats from head to heels, and the patriotic "daddies" who beat time hadn't a stump of a leg left. (Letter to Annie Taylor, first published in the Kansas City Star Magazine, Sunday, March 21, 1926.)

Mark Twain's interest in domestic fauna, however, is better illustrated by his observations on cats. During most of his life he surrounded himself with whole housefuls of cats, not to keep rodents away, but rather to indulge his fondness for kittens and to delight in the older cats' graceful movements and their lazy enjoyment of domestic comfort. As a boy he had always owned a cat, and it generally had a seat beside him at the table. There were cats at his Aunt Patsie Quarles's Quarry Farm, where he spent his summers; and they were an inevitable décor of his own later homes in Hartford and Redding, Connecticut. Mark Twain's little daughter Susy revealed in her "biography" of her father written when she was thirteen years old:

Papa is very fond of animals, particularly of cats. We had a dear little gray kitten once that he named "Lazy" (papa always wears gray to match his hair and eyes) and he would carry him around on his shoulder, it was a mighty pretty sight! the gray cat sound asleep against papa's gray coat and hair. The names that he has given our different cats, are really remarkably funny, they are namely Stray Kit, Abner, Motley, Fraeulein, Lazy, Buffalo Bill, Soapy Sall, Cleveland, Sour Mash, and Pestilence and Famine.

Mark Twain himself recalls in his Autobiography how the names of the cats confused his children:

At one time when the children were small we had a very black mother-cat named Satan, and Satan had a small off-spring named Sin. Pronouns were a difficulty for the children. Little Clara came in one day, her black eyes snapping with indignation, and said: "Papa, Satan ought to be punished. She is out there at the greenhouse and there she stays and stays, and his kitten is downstairs, crying."

In his later and lonelier years at Redding, Mark Twain kept a gray mother cat named Tammany and her kittens, whose capers were his chief delight. In a letter to his Chicago friend Mrs. Patterson, just two years before his death, he wrote:

If I can find a photograph of "Tammany" and her kittens, I will enclose it in this. One of them likes to be crammed into a corner-pocket of the billiard table—which he fits as snugly as does a finger in a glove and then he watches the game (and obstructs it) by the hour, and spoils many a shot by putting out his paw and changing the direction of a passing ball. Whenever a ball is in his arms, or so close to him that it cannot be played without risk of hurting him, the player is privileged to remove it to anyone of the three spots that chances to be vacant.

THE CAT AND THE PAIN-KILLER

The cats that we meet in Mark Twain's stories, however, do not enjoy the affection and comfort of Mark Twain's own household. The kindly satisfaction that the author took in their companionship becomes mirth at the plight of his fictional cats when they are surprised, rather cruelly, out of their calm. In THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (1875), for example, we meet a cat that cures Tom's Aunt Polly of the habit of trying to cure Tom of imaginary illness. When Aunt Polly fails to cure Tom of his love-sickness for Becky Thatcher by giving him hot and cold baths and vigorous scrubbings, she decides to give the boy internal treatment with patent medicines:

She calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.

Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest if she had built a fire under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in this blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of Painkiller. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.

One day he was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said:

"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."

But Peter signified that he did want it.

"You better make sure."

Peter was sure.

"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self."

Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double somersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.

Enough of this episode.

If the reader wants to find out what happens between Tom and Aunt Polly at this point, all that he needs to do is go to chapter twelve of Tom Sawyer. (The picture of the cat is complete.)

JIM WOLF AND THE CATS

In his Autobiography (1924) Mark Twain retells a cat story which was probably the first story he ever published and one which was often stolen from him. Although the story is more about the cruel plight of his trusting boyhood friend, whom he lured into disgrace, it is two "sentimental cats" on a moonlight night that help the "villain" to carry out his dastardly deed:

It was back in those far-distant days—1848 or '49—that Jim Wolf came to us. He was from a hamlet thirty or forty miles back in the country, and he brought all his native sweetnesses and gentlenesses and simplicities with him. He was approaching seventeen, a grave and slender lad, trustful, honest, honorable, a creature to love and cling to. And he was incredibly bashful. He was with us a good while, but he could never conquer that peculiarity; he could not be at ease in the presence of any woman, not even in my good and gentle mother's; and as to speaking to any girl, it was wholly impossible. He sat perfectly still, one day—there were ladies chatting in the room—while a wasp up his leg stabbed him cruelly a dozen times; and all the sign he gave was a slight wince for each stab and the tear of torture in his eye. He was too bashful to move.

It is to this kind that untoward things happen. My sister gave a "candy-pull" on a winter's night. I was too young to be of the company, and Jim was too diffident. I was sent up to bed early, and Jim followed of his own motion. His room was in the new part of the house and his window looked out on the roof of the L annex. That roof was six inches deep in snow, and the snow had an ice crust upon it which was as slick as glass. Out of the comb of the roof projected a short chimney, a common resort for sentimental cats on light nights—and this was a moonlight night. Down at the eaves, below the chimney, a canopy of dead vines spread away to some posts, making a cozy shelter, and after an hour or two the rollicking crowd of young ladies and gentlemen grouped themselves in its shade, with their saucers of liquid and piping-hot candy disposed about them on the frozen ground to cool. There was joyous chaffing and joking and laughter—peal upon peal of it.

About this time a couple of old, disreputable tomcats got up on the chimney and started a heated argument about something; also about this time I gave up trying to get to sleep and went visiting to Jim's room. He was awake and fuming about the cats and their intolerable yowling. I asked him, mockingly, why he didn't climb out and drive them away. He was nettled, and said overboldly that for two cents he would.

It was a rash remark and was probably repented of before it was fairly out of his mouth. But it was too late—he was committed. I knew him; and I knew he would rather break his neck than back down, if I egged him on judiciously.

"Oh, of course you would! Who's doubting it?"

It galled him, and he burst out, with sharp irritation, "Maybe you doubt it!" "I? Oh no! I shouldn't think of such a thing. You are always doing wonderful things, with your mouth."

He was in a passion now. He snatched on his yarn socks and began to raise the window, saying in a voice quivering with anger:

"You think I dasn't—you do! Think what you blame please. I don't care what you think. I'll show you!"

The window made him rage; it wouldn't stay up.

I said, "Never mind, I'll hold it."

Indeed, I would have done anything to help. I was only a boy and was already in a radiant heaven of anticipation. He climbed carefully out, clung to the window sill until his feet were safely placed, then began to pick his perilous way on all-fours along the glassy comb, a foot and a hand on each side of it. I believe I enjoy it now as much as I did then; yet it is nearly fifty years ago. The frosty breeze flapped his short shirt about his lean legs; the crystal roof shone like polished marble in the intense glory of the moon; the unconscious cats sat erect upon the chimney, alertly watching each other, lashing their tails and pouring out their hollow grievances; and slowly and cautiously Jim crept on, flapping as he went, the gay and frolicsome young creatures under the vine canopy unaware, and outraging these solemnities with their misplaced laughter. Every time Jim slipped I had a hope; but always on he crept and disappointed it. At last he was within reaching distance. He paused, raised himself carefully up, measured his distance deliberately, then made a frantic grab at the nearest cat—and missed it. Of course he lost his balance. His heels flew up, he struck on his back, and like a rocket he darted down the roof feet first, crashed through the dead vines, and landed in a sitting position in fourteen saucers of red-hot candy, in the midst of all that party—and dressed as he was—this lad who could not look a girl in the face with his clothes on. There was a wild scramble and a storm of shrieks, and Jim fled up the stairs, dripping broken crockery all the way.

THE POODLE DOG AND THE PINCH BUG

Strictly speaking, a dog is a "carnivorous domesticated mammal," according to the dictionary. If his only interest in life were eating and obeying his master, he might live happily enough. But his great curiosity about everything in general often gets him into trouble, especially in Mark Twain's animal world. Two of the dogs he writes about in his earlier books would be well described by another dictionary definition of dog: "a mean worthless fellow; a wretch."

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain relates how a poodle dog disrupted a whole church service by his encounter with a pinch bug:

There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it ... In the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for it they did not dare—he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod....

Now [Tom] lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws—a "pinch bug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon, found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle-dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his fore paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Birds and Beasts of Mark Twain by Robert M. Rodney, Minnie M. Brashear. Copyright © 1996 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword,
About the Artist,
1 · DOMESTICS,
Vignettes,
The Cat and the Pain-Killer,
Jim Wolf and the Cats,
The Poodle Dog and the Pinch Bug,
The Dachshund,
2 · WESTERN PORTRAITS,
The Pony Express,
The Town-Dog and the Coyote,
Hank, the Buffalo-Hunter,
Tom Quartz, the Dynamite Cat,
Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn,
A Genuine Mexican Plug,
The Jackass Rabbit,
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,
3 · EXOTICS,
Sights at the Zoological Gardens,
The Insulting Raven,
A Naturalist Tavern,
The Aimless Ant,
"Jericho," the Most Spirited Horse on Earth,
The Syrian Camel,
The Syrian Camel's Appetite,
Australian Oddities,
The Dingo,
Elephants,
The Monkeys of Delhi,
The Rowdy Crows of India,
The Shifty-Eyed Chameleon,
4 · SOME ANIMAL TALES,
Cecil Rhodes and the Fortune Shark,
A Dog's Tale,
A Horse's Tale (abridged),