SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 39 (of 78)
First Sight of Livy (1867)
Chapter 39
First Sight of Livy (1867)
As far as turning-points go, the trip across the pond provided one very dramatic one: a young passenger by the name of Charles Langdon—known to all on board as “Charley”—invited me into his stateroom.
There I saw a photograph of a beautiful young woman. I inquired, wondering if it was a love interest of Charley’s. It was his sister, Olivia.
If there is no such thing as love at first sight, there is at least preliminary attraction at first sight, and from that moment forward I contrived to form a friendship with Charley that would lead to my being introduced to his sister one day.
As you doubtless already know, that did occur. We courted—I fast, and she slow—and were eventually married. But more on that, and our children, and what became of them, later.
Now as to the sights I saw and the things I experienced during the five-month pleasure excursion, they are recorded in the book I wrote about the journey, The Innocents Abroad: Or, the New Pilgrims’ Progress, which is still my best-selling book.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Twain became known as “The People’s Author” because his target audience was the man in the street or on the farm, and the children in the schoolrooms and at the fishing holes. The Innocents Abroad became immensely popular for its departure from standard works by Americans about European travel, which seemed to worship the culture and art of the old world. One of Twain’s aims with his book was to portray what he observed and experienced from his own perspective without having preconceived ideas based on what previous writers had recorded and their opinions.
A primary example of this is his critiques of the art he found throughout Europe. The following excerpt demonstrates the type of things Twain wrote about the revered painters of Europe (and the religious martyrs they seemed to over-emphasize in their work):
Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative way of the old masters and their martyrs, because good friends of mine in the ship—friends who do thoroughly and conscientiously appreciate them and are in every way competent to discriminate between good pictures and inferior ones—have urged me for my own sake not to make public the fact that I lack this appreciation and this critical discrimination myself. I believe that what I have written and may still write about pictures will give them pain, and I am honestly sorry for it. I even promised that I would hide my uncouth sentiments in my own breast. But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity. I certainly meant to keep that promise, but I find I can not do it. It is impossible to travel through Italy without speaking of pictures, and can I see them through others’ eyes?
If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread before me every day of my life by that monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I should come to believe, sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of the beautiful, whatsoever.
You can listen to this chapter here.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.