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Mark Twain and Don Quixote

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Olin Harris Moore
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to trace the influence of Cervantes upon Mark Twain, with particular attention to the supposedly autobiographical tales Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

A short digression will be necessary at the outset in order to overcome, if possible, an almost universal prejudice. The popular notion is that Mark Twain's genius “just grew,” like Topsy; that he was peculiarly a “self-made” man, the term “self-made” being understood to mean “lacking in book learning.” We like to think that Mark Twain, above all other authors, dug into the virgin soil of his native country, and brought forth rich treasures which could be found nowhere else. We like to say: “What genuine American humor! What a true picture of American boyhood! Nothing of Europe in Mark Twain! Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are real Americans!”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 1922 , pp. 324 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1922

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References

1 Acknowledgment is made for valuable suggestions received from Miss Ida Langdon, of Elmira, New York, as well as from Professor Kenneth Colegrove, of Northwestern University.

2 Archibald Henderson, Mark Twain, New York, 1910, p. 74

3 Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain, a Biography (1912), II, p. 1034. The facts concerning Mark Twain's reading of Saint-Simon, Casanova, Lecky and Malory are all taken from Paine's biography, I, p. 511, and III, pp. 1536, 1540.

4 Mark Twain, What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us, in North American Review, January, 1895, p. 52.

5 Innocents Abroad, Authorized Edition, II, p. 304.

6 The close interrelation between Huckleberry Finn and the Life on the Mississippi is very obvious. In one of the early chapters of the Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain refers to Huckleberry Finn, making a long quotation from that romance. Paine has also noted that the Darnell-Watson feud, described in the Life on the Mississippi, furnished the model for the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud in Huckleberry Finn. (See Paine, op. cit., II, p. 796.)

7 Life on the Mississippi, p. 349. It should be noted that Mark Twain, admirer of “old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book,” did not give up his own love for the “mediaeval chivalry-silliness” without an inner struggle. At the time of his first visit to England, he went into raptures over “the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance.” (Paine, op. cit., I, pp. 485-486.) Paine tells us that this scoffer at romance was always possessed with the desire to follow out two fiction schemes: (1) A “long period of dream existence during a brief moment of sleep;” (2) “the story of a mysterious visitant from another realm.” (See Paine, op. cit., III, p. 1515, and elsewhere.) The second plot was carried out in the Mysterious Stranger, which appeared posthumously because the author's reputation as a humorist made it difficult for him to publish so serious a book during his lifetime. The extent to which his conscious imitation of Cervantes was responsible for the repression of his romantic instinct would make an interesting study.

8 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter xiii.

9 A. B. Paine, op. cit., I, pp. 53, 54. See A. Henderson, op. cit., p. 70.

10 A. B. Paine, op. cit., I, p. 80.

11 Ibid, p. 81.

12 A. B. Paine, op. cit., p. 69.

13 Ibid., p. 75.

14 Tom Sawyer, Chapter xiii.

15 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New Edition, Chapter xxxviii, p. 358.

16 Tom Sawyer Abroad, p. 18.

17 Ibid, p. 14.

18 Ibid, p. 55.

19 Ibid, p. 14.

20 Ibid, pp. 88, 89.

21 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter iv, p. 21.

22 Ibid, Chapter i, p. 2.

23 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xiv, p. 109.

24 Ibid, p. 110.

25 A. B. Paine, op. cit., I, p. 62.

26 La vita di Benvenuto Cellini, B. Bianchi edition, Florence (1903), I, cvi, pp. 229, 230.

27 The Life of Baron Frederic Trenck, translated from the German by Thomas Holcroft, Providence (1808), p. 18. Cf. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, Historia della mia fuga delle prigioni della republica di Venezia dette “le Piombi,” traduzione e prefazione di Salv. di Giacomo, Milan (1911), II, p. 127.

28 Alexandre Dumas père, le Comte de Monte Cristo, Chapter v.

Mark Twain's interest in Dumas dates back to the pilgrimage of the “Innocents.” He writes: “We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle d'If… We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas's heroes passed their confinement—heroes of ‘Monte Cristo.’ It was here that the brave Abbé wrote a book with his own blood; with a pen made of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the thick wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery, and freed Dantès from his chains…” (Innocents Abroad, I, pp. 144, 146). He continues: “They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated ‘Iron Mask’—that ill-starred brother of a hard-hearted King of France—was confined for a season, before he went to hide the strange mystery of his life from the curious in the dungeons of St. Marguerite. The place had a far greater interest for us than it could have had if we had known beyond all question who the Iron Mask was, what his history had been, and why this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him… .” (Ibid, I, p. 147).

29 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxv, p. 333.

30 Huckleberry Finn, p. 331.

31 Ibid, p. 333.

32 Ibid, p. 337.

33 Life of Boron Trenck, p. 94.

34 Casanova, op. cit., I, p. 26.

35 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxviii, p. 362.

36 Monte Cristo, Chapter iv.

37 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxv, p. 335.

38 Life of Baron Trenck, p. 74.

39 Monte Cristo, Chapter iv. Cf. Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxv, p. 334.

The following tricks borrowed by Dumas from Casanova do hot appear in Huckleberry Finn. Casanova persuades his jailer to serve Lucca oil on his salad, and saves the oil for a lamp. Abbé Faria separates the grease from his meat, and makes an oil. Casanova feigns a toothache, and thus persuades the guard to bring him a pumice stone. Abbé Faria feigns a skin disease, and thus obtains sulphur, ostensibly for treatment, really for matches. Casanova uses a steel buckle to strike a light. Abbé Faria strikes a light on burnt linen, with two pebbles.—Casanova, op. cit., I, p. 64. Cf. Monte Cristo, Chapter v. Silvio Pellico also writes with blood, during his imprisonment, using a pin as a pen.—Le mie prigioni, ed. Egidio Bellorini, Milan, 1907, p. 10 (Chapter v).

40 Monte Cristo, Chapter iv.

41 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxv, p. 334.

42 Benvenuto Cellini, op. cit., I, cix, p. 237.

43 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxv, p. 332.

44 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter xxxix, p. 369.

45 Ibid, Chapter xxxv, p. 334.

46 Ibid, Chapter iii, p. 20.

47 Ibid, Chapter xxxv, p. 333.

48 Ibid, p. 331.

49 Ibid, p. 339.

50 The Complete Works of Miguel de Cervantes, edited by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, translated by John Ormsby, Glasgow (1901), Don Quixote, Vol. I, Chapter x, p. 73.

51 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, ed. D. Diego Clemencín (1910), I, Chapter x, p. 158. The translation is my own, no other being available to me. Elsewhere I have followed Ormsby.

52 Ormsby, op. cit., I, Chapter xviii, p. 121.

53 Ibid, I, Chapter viii, p. 62.

54 Ibid, I, Chapter viii, p. 59.

55 Ormsby, op. cit., I, Chapter viii, p. 60.

56 Huckleberry Finn, Chapter iii, pp. 18, 19.

57 Tom Sawyer, Chapter viii, p. 79.

58 Ibid, p. 78.

59 Ibid, Chapter xiii, p. 118.

60 Ibid, Chapter vi, p. 60.

61 Ibid, Chapter vii.

68 The Yankee's lively intelligence makes it seem unfair to compare him to Sancho Panza, but it was evidently the author's intention to represent him as an “ignoramus.” As he observed to Dan Beard: “ ‘You know … this Yankee of mine has neither the refinement nor the weakness of a college education; he is a perfect ignoramus; he is boss of a machine shop; he can build a locomotive or a Colt's revolver, he can put up and run a telegraph line, but he's an ignoramus nevertheless …‘” (Paine, op. cit., II, pp. 887, 888).

70 Connecticut Yankee, Chapter xv, pp. 114-115. Cf. Morte d'Arthur, IV, Chapter xvi, end. The entire quotation from the Morte d'Arthur is from IV, Chapter xvi (end) to Chapter xviii.

In all at least a dozen pages in the Connecticut Yankee are word for word quotations from Malory. In the WORD OF EXPLANATION, the story of HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A CASTLE FREE is taken, with some omissions, from Morte d'Arthur, VI, Chapter xi. The old man's tale, Chapter iii, pp. 33-35, is from Morte d'Arthur, I, Chapter xxv. The “novice's report” of the tournament, Chapter ix, pp. 72-74, is taken with slight omissions from Morte d'Arthur, VII, Chapter xxviii. Chapter xix of the Connecticut Yankee, which Mark Twain acknowledges to be “borrowed, language and all,” from Malory (Connecticut Yankee, p. 156, note) is from Morte d'Arthur, IV, Chapter xxiv. The “newspaper” account of Arthur's death is quoted from Morte d'Arthur, XXI, Chapter iv.

71 … . But a laughable sight it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him. But to give him anything to drink was impossible, or would have been so had not the landlord bored a reed, and putting one end in his mouth poured the wine into him through the other; all which he bore with patience rather than sever the ribbons of his helmet. (Don Quixote, I, ii, p. 29.)

72 Connecticut Yankee, Chapter xii, p. 95. This episode, in which Mark Twain approaches Cervantes more closely than anywhere else in the novel, was the germ of the whole story. Paine tells us that the first entry in the author's notebook for the Connecticut Yankee was: “Dream of being a knight-errant in armor in the Middle Ages. Have the notions and habits, though, of the present day mixed with necessities of that. No pockets in the armor. No way to manage certain requirements of nature. Can't scratch. Cold in the head and can't blow. Can't get a handkerchief; can't use iron sleeve; iron gets red-hot in the sun; leaks in the rain; gets white with frost and freezes me solid in winter; makes disagreeable clatter when I enter church. Can't dress or undress myself. Always getting struck by lightning. Fall down and can't get up.” (Paine, op. cit., II, 791.)

73 Connecticut Yankee, Chapter xx, p. 163. Cf. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencín, I, Chapter xviii, p. 276.

74 Connecticut Yankee, Chapter xx, p. 162. Cf. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencín, I, Chapter ii, p. 29; Chapter xvii, p. 255; Chapter xviii, p. 260.

75 Numerous critics have noted such a general resemblance. W. D. Howells asserted, for instance, that the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was quite comparable to the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha. Brander Matthews placed Mark Twain on a level with Cervantes and Molière. Albert Bigelow Paine, when seeking a basis of comparison, ranked Huckleberry Finn higher than Don Quixote.

76 Connecticut Yankee, Chapter xv, p. 113. Cf. the account of Buck Fanshaw's funeral in Roughing It, where the parson fails to understand Scotty's ‘ante and pass the buck,’ ‘gone up the flume,’ ‘kicked the bucket,’ etc., while Scotty has equal difficulty in comprehending the parson's ‘mysterious country from whose bourne no traveler returns.’ A rather similar effect is obtained in Innocents Abroad when the pilgrims pretend not to understand what an Egyptian mummy is. (Innocents Abroad, I, Chapter xxvii, pp. 372-373).

Cervantes represents Don Quixote as being naively shocked because one criminal has been sent to the galleys for being “enamorado,” while another's crime is simply that he is “músico y cantor.” (Don Quixote, ed. Clemencín., I, Chapter xxii, pp. 351-353).

The foundation of this scene in Don Quixote is in Rinconete y Cortadillo a novela mentioned in Don Quixote (ed. Clemencín, I, Chapter xlvii, in Vol. II, p. 368). In this novela, the following explanation of thieves' slang is made to those aspiring young criminals, Rincón and Cortado: “… porque los días pasados dieron tres ansias a un cuatrero que había murciado dos roznos, y con estar flaco y cuartanario, así los sufrió sin cantar, como si fueran nada; y esto atribuímos los del arte a su buena devoción, porque sus fuerzas no eran bastantes para sufrir el primer desconcierto del verdugo; y porque sé que me han de preguntar algunos vocablos de los que he dicho, quiero curarme en salud y decírselo antes que me la pregunten: sepan vuestras mercedes que cuatrero es ladrón de bestias; ansia es el tormento; roznos los asnos, hablando con perdón; primer desconcierto es las primeras vueltas de cordel que da el verdugo.”

Cuatrero and cantar en el ansia are explained both in the novela and in Don Quixote.

77 Connecticut Yankee, Chapter xxiii, p. 199.