AN AUSTRALIAN SURPRISE
At the time when Mark was living quietly at Ledworth Square, London, writing “Around the World,” we met a party of Australians at the Metropole one afternoon. It was after poor Susie’s death, and the heartbroken father hadn’t made anyone laugh for months. But those “Aussies kind of woke me up,” he admitted. “Jolly guys, out there at the Antipodes,” he said after the first round; “too bad I didn’t know that when I struck Sydney. As I prepared to step upon the platform there, I wondered, with some fear and trepidation, whether your people would take kindly to my brand of humor. If they refused to be tickled by my first lecture—God have mercy upon my creditors! Of course I had my story pat. Still, as I climbed those steps, I debated in my mind whether or not I had better substitute such or such a yarn for the opening lines planned. I had half decided to risk a change, when I faced the audience and—the pleasantest, the most overwhelming surprise of my life! I met a sea, a whole Atlantic, of guffawing heads, of swaying bodies and shoulders. There wasn’t a titter or a snicker; there wasn’t any smirking or grinning; all eyes were in flood with genuine laughter; men, women, and children were crowing and chuckling aloud, were shouting and hurraying, everybody was convulsed—really I must have looked the white kangaroo for which I was named. The Sydney audience laughing at me before I opened my mouth clinched my success at the Antipodes.”
MARK IN FRANCE AND ITALY
From Paris Mark Twain usually returned disgruntled. His stories did not go in France, and there was that “Dreyfus affair” that made him sick of the “frog-eaters forever and a day.” Nor was Mark appreciated in Italy.
“The Dagoes,” he used to say, “like their humor colored with politics, of which I know nothing, or flavored with risqué stories, which my wife won’t let me write—there you are. As to France—one critical Madame gave me to understand that I am ‘lacking in the stupendous task of interpreting the great tableaux of real American life.’ See? When a wet blanket of that kind is clapped on to you, what is the use of further efforts? I am a dead one, according to Madame, and Mark Twain is too humane to whip a dead horse. I will tell you what is really the matter with France,” concluded Twain. “Every Frenchman who can read and write has in his closet a frock coat embroidered with the lilies (or whatever flower it may be) of the Académie Française—hoping against hope that he may be elected to the Institute like Molière or Zola. Hence Monsieur is very critical and pronounces everything he doesn’t understand ‘bosh!’ A joke in Chicago, you know, is a riddle in Paris, and, as one Frenchman put it, ‘I get guffaws out of people by thumping them on the ribs.’ I would never dare thump a Frenchman, of course—I might bust him.”
WHY MARK WOULDN’T LIKE TO DIE ABROAD
Mark Twain cracked so many jokes, I thought I would entertain him a bit myself, and told him about an aunt of mine who, while dying, heard that she was going to lie in state in the green room.
“Not in the green room,” said auntie. “I always hated that wall paper. Besides, it’s unhealthy.”
Twain admitted that was good fun, and regretted not having thought of the green paper himself.
“She must have been a fine old girl,” he said, “to stand up for her rights even ‘in extremis,’ as the doctors call it.”