Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

From A Woman’s Part in a Revolution (1897)

[205] === From A Woman’s Part in a Revolution (1897) Natalie Hammond A few weeks after his arrival in South Africa in early May 1896, Twain visited the Jameson raiders in their prison in Pretoria. A group of about 600 British irregulars under the command of Leander Starr Jameson (1853–1917) had tried and failed to spark a rebellion against the Boer government in South Africa in late December 1895–early January 1896. The raid was supported by Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902), British financier and African colonialist . Twain was welcomed to Pretoria by the wife of one of the “reformers,” Natalie Harris Hammond: “I found she and I had much in common. She was born in Missouri; so was I. She had lived a long time in California; so had I; and we were therefore fellow Americans” (Scharnhorst 307). The raiders were subsequently released upon payment of an indemnity by the British government. mark twain came to the Rand. He visited the men at Pretoria. My husband did the honors of the prison, and introduced him to the Reformers. He talked a long while to them, sitting on a dry goods box. Expressed his satisfaction at finding only one journalist in the crowd, and no surprise that the lawyers were largely represented. He assured them that they were to be congratulated and envied, although they did not know it. There was no place one was so safe from interruption as in a jail. He recalled to their minds Cervantes1 and Columbus—it was an honor to share captivity with such men as these. Note 1. According to tradition, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) wrote the first part of Don Quixote (1605) while in prison at Argamasilla in La Mancha. See also “Mark Twain Home Again,” New York Times, 16 October 1900, 3; repr. in Scharnhorst 352–64: “At this time the Jameson raiders were in jail, and I visited them and made a little speech trying to console them. I told them of the advantages of being in jail. ‘This jail is as good as any other,’ I said, ‘and, besides, being in jail has its advantages. A lot of great men have twain in his own time [206] been in jail. If Bunyan had not been put in jail, he would never have written Pilgrim’s Progress . Then the jail is responsible for Don Quixote, so you see being in jail is not so bad, after all.’” Natalie Hammond, from A Woman’s Part in a Revolution (New York: Longmans, Green, 1897), 152. ...