This 1894 novel by Mark Twain was written during his dark period. His mom had recently died and his publishing company had just failed, leaving the great author bankrupt. Is the novel dark? Yes, but also humorous with many surprises and extra features. The novel transpires before the Civil War in the small town of Dawson’s Landing on the Mississippi River...of course. Now if you have read Twain before, you know he uses the vernacular of the times, so don’t be shocked by the vocabulary used by the negro slaves; such as, “Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po’ sinful me- I’s sole down de river!” Also don’t be upset with the use of the “n” word...it’s Twain’s modus operandi (I will not use it in my review). Twain states that as he was writing this novel,”I had a sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a farce to a tragedy...But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and annoyance.” Somehow, Twain (he says he used-a kind of literary Caesarean operation) makes the two stories work by rewriting the twins story after the first story ends. The twins had a lesser role in the first story, but they became the main focus in the second story. Not only that, but they morphed from two dashing Counts (Angelo and Luigi) from Italy into a two headed, four armed, two legged freak. What? I told you that this was Twain’s dark period. Actually, Twain’s first novel written with a deep pessimism was his novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) (see my review of 11/08/2012).
“On the 1st of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in Percy Driscoll’s house: one to him, the other to one of his slave girls, Roxana (Roxy) by name.” Now Roxana was a pretty twenty year old slave who was almost white (she was only one/sixteenth black). She took care of Tom Driscoll and her own baby, Chambers, after Mrs. Driscoll suddenly died within a week of the children’s birth. “In that same month of February Dawson’s Landing gained a new citizen. This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage...he was twenty-five years old, college-bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern law school a couple of years before.” He certainly would have launched a successful career in law, if he didn’t make a fatal remark on his first day in town. As David Wilson talked to a group of citizens, a dog began to yelp in the background. Wilson said, “I wish I owned half of that dog.” “Why?” someone said. “Because I would kill my half.” “They fell away from him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him.” One said, “pears to be a fool.” “pears?” said another. “Is, I reckon you better say.” “Said he wished he owned half of the dog, the idiot", said a third. Just that fast Mr. Wilson became Pudd’nhead Wilson with nobody in Dawson’s Landing willing to let him represent them in a court of law. Wow, what a tough town. He hung up his law shingle but only got minor tangled account-book jobs. So he started taking Fingerprints from the town’s populace as a hobby. Two of the prints he took was from the babies Roxy was in charge of at five months old. By the way, so far I’ve only covered the first nine pages...a lot happens in this crazy novel.Meanwhile one of Percy Driscoll’s slaves is stealing. Percy calls his slaves into his home. He tells them that if nobody admits the theft...somebody is going down the river (which means a much tougher life), but three admit the theft. Percy sells them, but not to the mean people down the river. Roxy now feels threatened. Can her baby be sent down the river? She decides to switch the babies. Chambers is now Tom Driscoll and Tom Driscoll is now Chambers. Percy suddenly dies (but not before he sets Roxy free) and the babies and Roxy are taken in by Percy’s brother, Judge Driscoll and his widowed sister, Mrs. Pratt. Roxy bumps into Pudd’nhead, and he takes fresh fingerprints from the babies. He doesn’t notice the switch (will he later?). Roxy now free, decides to become a chambermaid on a steamboat. She leaves the children in the care of Judge Driscoll and his sister. Tom (really Roxy’s black son) is now growing up to be a mean man with a big gambling habit, while the real Tom is an uneducated slave and lackey for Tom Driscoll. In the meantime down the street, the widow Cooper (Aunt Patsy) advertises that she has a room for rent. She gets an offer of double rent by twins from Italy. The whole town is anxious to meet the dashing counts. They arrive to the exuberant approval of the town. They become the toast of the town. Tom Driscoll insults the twins and gets a swift kick in the butt from Luigi, which starts a course of events that will explode throughout the rest of the novel. So much happens after the kick that the reader needs to take notes to remember the many zigzags that occur afterwards.
This is a somewhat unknown novel of Mark Twain’s (one of my favorite writers), but in my opinion his most brilliant work. In only 201 pages, he was able to spin a tale of hope, despair, and tragedy...yet be humorous at the same time. I highly recommend reading this old classic novel.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: In Mark Twain’s Final Remarks, he tells the reader how complicated this tale was to write:
“As you see, it was an extravagant sort of tale, and had no purpose but to exhibit that monstrous ‘freak’ in all sorts of grotesque lights. But when Roxy wandered into the tale she had to be furnished with something to do; so she changed the children in the cradle; this necessitated the invention of a reason for it; this, in turn, resulted in making the children prominent personages-nothing could prevent it, of course. Their career began to take a tragic aspect, and some one had to be brought in to help work the machinery; so Pudd’nhead Wilson was introduced and taken on trial. By this time the whole show was being run by the new people and in their interest, and the original show was become sidetracked and forgotten; the twin-monster, and the heroine, and the lads, and the old ladies had dwindled to inconsequentialities and were merely in the way. Their story was one story, the new people’s story was another story, and there was no connection between them, no interdependence, no kinship. It is not practicable or rational to try to tell two stories at the same time; so I dug out the farce and left the tragedy.”
“The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows now how the other kind do it.”
By the way, Twain gave us a free lesson on how to use a semicolon in the above final remarks.
