The $30,000 Bequest, Mark Twain [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

it resembles the GALAXY portraits. Those were my first love,

my earliest admiration, the original source and incentive of my

art-ambition. Whatever I am in Art today, I owe to these portraits.

I ask no credit for myself—I deserve none. And I never take any,

either. Many a stranger has come to my exhibition (for I have had my

portrait of King William on exhibition at one dollar a ticket), and

would have gone away blessing ME, if I had let him, but I never did.

I always stated where I got the idea.

 

King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have

thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added.

But it was not possible. There was not room for side-whiskers and

epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets,

for the sake of style. That thing on his hat is an eagle.

The Prussian eagle—it is a national emblem. When I say hat I

mean helmet; but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet

that a body can have confidence in.

 

I wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract

a little attention to the GALAXY portraits. I feel persuaded it can

be accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment.

I write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men,

and if I can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all I ask;

the reading-matter will take care of itself.

 

COMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAIT

 

There is nothing like it in the Vatican. Pius IX.

 

It has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it,

which many of the first critics of Arkansas have objected to in the

Murillo school of Art. Ruskin.

 

The expression is very interesting. J.W. Titian.

 

(Keeps a macaroni store in Venice, at the old family stand.)

 

It is the neatest thing in still life I have seen for years.

 

Rosa Bonheur.

 

The smile may be almost called unique. Bismarck.

 

I never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before.

De Mellville.

 

There is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this

work which warms the heart toward it as much, full as much,

as it fascinates the eye. Landseer.

 

One cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist.

 

Frederick William.

 

Send me the entire edition—together with the plate and the

original portrait—and name your own price. And—would you

like to come over and stay awhile with Napoleon at Wilhelmsh:ohe?

It shall not cost you a cent. William III.

***

DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?

 

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and

petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity

a geologic period.

 

The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend,

and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged

to the brim with joy—joy that was evidently a pleasant salve

to an old sore place:

 

“Many a time I’ve had to listen without retort to an old saying

that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance

for a return jibe: ‘An Englishman does dearly love a lord’;

but after this I shall talk back, and say, ‘How about the Americans?’”

 

It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get.

The man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery.

The man he says it to, thinks the same. It departs on its travels,

is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as

a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively

true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place

in the world’s list of recognized and established wisdoms,

and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is

really entitled to its high honors or not. I call to mind instances

of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not

surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for a lord:

one of them records the American’s Adoration of the Almighty Dollar,

the other the American millionaire-girl’s ambition to trade cash for

a title, with a husband thrown in.

 

It isn’t merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar,

it is the human race. The human race has always adored the hatful

of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings,

or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives,

or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses,

or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the

railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or—

anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence,

and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things,

another man’s envy. It was a dull person that invented the idea

that the American’s devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than

another’s.

 

Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea;

it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America

was discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever;

and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy

the husband without it. They must put up the “dot,” or there is

no trade. The commercialization of brides is substantially universal,

except in America. It exists with us, to some little extent,

but in no degree approaching a custom.

 

“The Englishman dearly loves a lord.”

 

What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could

be more correctly worded:

 

“The human race dearly envies a lord.”

 

That is to say, it envies the lord’s place. Why? On two accounts,

I think: its Power and its Conspicuousness.

 

Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light

of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure

and comprehend, I think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as

passionate as is that of any other nation. No one can care less

for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact

with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but I will not

allow that any Englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has

the average American who has lived long years in a European capital

and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies.

 

Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience,

to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred

will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up

with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about.

They envy him; but it is Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the

Power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they

have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that;

though their environment and associations they have been accustomed

to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently,

they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them.

 

But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence,

for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousness

which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity

and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion—envy—

whether he suspects it or not. At any time, on any day, in any part

of America, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger

by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying:

 

“Do you see that gentleman going along there? It is Mr. Rockefeller.”

 

Watch his eye. It is a combination of power and conspicuousness

which the man understands.

 

When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it.

When a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him. Also, if he

will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it. Also, we

will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend,

or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger.

 

Well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? At once we

think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities

in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there.

But that is a mistake. Rank holds its court and receives its homage

on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher;

and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder,

and commands its due of deference and envy.

 

To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege

of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised

in democracies as well as in monarchies—and even, to some extent,

among those creatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals.

For even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in

this matter they are paupers as compared to us.

 

A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions

of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him.

A Christian Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large

part of the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is

a matter of indifference to all China. A king, class A, has an

extensive worship; a king, class B, has a less extensive worship;

class C, class D, class E get a steadily diminishing share of worship;

class L (Sultan of Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W

(half-king of Samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little

patch of sovereignty.

 

Take the distinguished people along down. Each has his group

of homage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start

with the Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster—

and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of

these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles,

or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired

and envied by his group. The same with the army; the same

with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft;

the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S. Steel; the class A hotel—

and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class A prize-fighter—

and the rest of the alphabet in his line—clear down to the lowest

and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy

that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa,

bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent

admiration and envy.

 

There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this

human race’s fondness for contact with power and distinction,

and for the reflected glory it gets out of it. The king, class A,

is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the

emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen

and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room,

and tells them all about it, and says:

 

“His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most

friendly way—just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can’t imagine it!—

and everybody SEEING him do it; charming, perfectly charming!”

 

The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police

parade provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home

and tells the family all about it, and says:

 

“And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a