Mark Twain Speaking

22. Curtain Speech

MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 87 man of peace and don't know anything about artillery, anyway." By this time the boy had not yet waked up, but the rest of the company which had gathered around had, and so we stopped the fun. As there is no moral to the anecdote, I won't attempt to put any to it. But, as I said, in the absence of having a speech to make to you, I thought I would simply tell an anecdote in honor of Canon Kingsley . Text / "Mark Twain and Canon Kingsley," Boston Advertiser, n.d., reprinted in Courant, February 19, 1874. Ofseveralplays written by the would-be playwright, Mark Twain, The Gilded Age was the most successful. The New York opening was warmly received. President Grant went backstage to complimentJohn T. Raymond, playing the role ofColonel Sellers, and press noiices, even in the Atlantic Monthly, were full ofpraise. Curtain Speech Opening of The Gilded Age, Park Theater, New York, September 16,1874 I thank you for the compliment of this call, and I will take advantage of it to say that I have written this piece in such a way that the jury can bring in a verdict of guilty or not guilty, just as they happen to feel about it. I have done this for this reason. If a play carries its best lesson by teaching what ought to be done in such a case, but is not done in real life, then the righteous verdict of guilty should appear; but if the best lesson may be conveyed by holding up the mirror and showing what is done every day in such a case but ought not to be done, then the satirical verdict of not guilty should appear. I don't know which is best, 88 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING strict truth and satire, or a nice moral lesson void ofboth. So I leave my jury free to decide. I am killing only one man in this tragedy now, and that is bad, for nothing helps out a play like bloodshed. But in a few days I propose to introduce the smallpox into the last act. And if that don't work I shall close with a general massacre. I threw all my strength into the character ofColonel Sellers, hoping to make it a very strong tragedy part and pathetic. I think this gentleman tries hard to play it right and make it majestic and pathetic; but hisface is against him. And his clothes! I don't think anybody can make a tragedy effect in that kind ofclothes. But I suppose he thinks they are impressive. He is from one of the Indian reservations. Oh! I can see that he tries hard to make it solemn and awful and heroic, but really sometimes he almost makes me laugh. I meant that turnip dinner to be pathetic, for how more forcibly could you represent poverty and misery and suffering than by such a dinner, and of course if anything would bring tears to people's eyes that would; but this man eats those turnips as if they were the bread of life, and so of course the pathos is knocked clear out of the thing. But I think he will learn. He has an absorbing ambition to become a very great tragedian. I hope you will overlook the faults in this play, because I have never written a play before, and if I am treated right maybe I won't offend again. I wanted to have some fine situ.ations and spectacular effects in this piece, but I was interfered with. I wanted to have a volcano in a state of eruption, with fire and smoke and earthquakes, and a great tossing river of blood-red lava flowing down the mountain side, and have the hero of this piece come booming down that red-hot river in a cast iron canoe; but the manager wouldn't hear of it; he said there wasn't any volcano in Missouri-as if I am responsible for Missouri's poverty. And then he said that by the laws of nature the hero would burn up; his cast iron canoe wouldn't protect him. "Very well," I said, "put him in a patent fireproof safe and let him slide-all the more thrilling-and paint on it, 'This safe is from Herring's establishment,' same as you would on a piano, and you can pay the whole expense of the volcano just...