Better Dreams: Political Satire and Twain's Final "Exploding" Novel

HILTON OBENZINGER Better Dreams: Political Satire and Twain's Final "Exploding" Novel "He had a dream . . . and it shot him" Adventures of Huckleberry Finn In 1897, william Randolph Hearst launched a campaign to free Evangelina Cosio y Cisneros as part of his agitation for war with Spain. Cisneros was the daughter of a prominent Cuban family who had been arrested for aiding the Cuban revolutionaries. Hearst's Journal , in typical fashion, fabricated stories of lecherous Spanish officers, loudly bemoaned the conditions of her imprisonment, including the (inaccurate) fact that the virtuous girl was incarcerated with prostitutes , conjectured (incorrectly) that she would be sent to the Spanish penal colony in Ceuta, Morocco, and excoriated American men for their lack of manhood in not liberating her and the entire island. Kristin Hoganson explains, in Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, that "In relating the young maiden's tribulations, the Journal encouraged Americans to view Cisneros as a representative of all outraged Cuban women" (58). Hearst organized petitions from American women to Washington, and outrage mounted throughout the country against the perfidious Spaniards. "One reason her story proved so compelling," explains Hoganson, "was that the Journal wrote it as a romance" (59). In his introduction to Cisneros' autobiography, which appeared soon after she arrived in the United States, Julian Hawthorne writes: Arizona Quarterly Volume 61, Number i, Spring 2005 Copyright © 2005 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004- 1 6 10 1 68 Hilton Obenzinger In its setting and background, in its dramatis personae, in its dash, intrigue, and cumulative interest, it is almost ideally perfect . The desirable component elements are all present. A tropic island, embosomed in azure seas off the coast of the Spanish Main; a cruel war, waged by the minions of despotism against the spirit of patriotism and liberty; a beautiful maiden, risking all for her country, captured, insulted, persecuted, and cast into a loathsome dungeon. None could be more innocent, constant and adorable than she; none more wicked, detestable and craven than her enemies. All is right and lovable on the one side, all ugly and hateful on the other. As in the old Romances , there is no uncertainty as to which way our sympathies should turn. (18-19) And, as in the old romances, the obvious next step was for a knighterrant to organize her escape. Hearst assigned Karl Decker, one of his reporters, to the task. Supplied with abundant cash, Decker was ordered to fashion a dramatic escape that would fulfill the expectations of the old romances. Decker had to act fast, since Hearst feared that the Spanish might decide to release her voluntarily at any moment and ruin the story. Decker discovered that the house next to the prison in Havana had a flat roof that projected within eight feet of the second-floor parapet of the prison. Luckily, the house was also vacant, and he rented it. He easily bribed the prison guards to let her escape, but he nonetheless concocted an elaborate plot both to complete the requirements of romance and to provide a cover for the guards. On the night of October 6, 1897, Decker and his accomplices climbed to the roof, slid a ladder over to the prison, and "stole across in stocking feet" to liberate the damsel in distress (Swanberg 125). Anxieties that Cisneros might not be as beautiful as the role required were dispelled: "No fairy princess could be more lovely than this fairy-like little Cuban maiden," Decker reported (qtd. in Hoganson 60). "I was at the office during the progress of this comedy and in daily contact with Hearst," recounts Willis Abbot, one of his editors. "It was the one dominating, all-compelling issue ofthe moment for him and he brooked no indifference on the part of his employees, most of whom in his absence cursed the whole thing for a false bit of cheap sensational- Twain's Final "Exploding" Novel 169 ism. But Hearst felt himself in the role of Sir Galahad rescuing a helpless maiden" (216). Decker was but the instrument of the master's fantasy , an early example of what today we might call a...