"The American Claimant" - Mark Twain

[p.falk]

The only Twain I had ever read was Tom Sawyer... and I stopped after 50 some pages. I just could not get into the story.

But The American Claimant is hilarious. It's PG Wodehouse level of hilarity. I did not know that he could write humor this well.

In the story Colonel Mulberry Sellers, an American who is in the line of rightful claimants to the title of the Earl of Rossmore, is explaining to a friend (Mr. Washington Harris) how hard it is to get a position with the government in America:

“Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a man comes to Washington, I don’t care if it’s from heaven, let alone Cherokee-Strip, it’s because he wants something. And I know that as a rule he’s not going to get it; that he’ll stay and try—for another thing and won’t get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks—and they take up a collection and bury him.

The Colonel, after explaining his failure upon failure to secure a position in Washington for himself, then informs of the position he did get:

I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body representing the multifarious sovereignties and civilizations of the globe near the republican court of the United States of America. And they brought me home with a torchlight procession.

“It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful.”

“It’s the loftiest official position in the whole earth.”

“I should think so—and the most commanding.”

“You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I smile, and contending nations lay down their arms.”

“It is awful. The responsibility, I mean.”

“It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have always been used to it.”

“And the work—the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?”

“Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the governors of the provinces? He sits at home, and indicates his pleasure.”

And it's all nonsense.

The Colonel leaves the room and his wife, Polly, enters to entertain Mr. Washington Harris. She goes on to inform Harris that her husband the Colonel is still the same old man:

Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful, no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just as well as if he was the shiningest success.

[Doom]

I don't know, someone who says he couldn't finish Tom Sawyer, does he know what good literature is? Seems unlikely. Please tell me you at least finished Huckleberry Finn (his best work of fiction), or at least if you couldn't finish it let it at least be a result of feeling uncomfortable with the fact that it uses a certain ugly racial slur thousands of times, sometimes several times in a single sentence (surely the biggest obstacle to wider acceptance of this novel in 2024 America) than because you didn't realize it's a masterpiece.

[p.falk]

I found it boring, not offensive.

[p.falk]

So the English "usurper" Lord Rossmore (dubbed that by Colonel Mulberry Sellers (now calling himself Lord Rossmore)) received a letter that the rightful claimant to the lordship (an American named Simon Lathers) unexpectedly died (along with his brother):

both being crushed by a log at a smoke-house-raising, owing to carelessness on the part of all present, referable to over-confidence and gaiety induced by overplus of sour-mash

....
Only for the claimant rights to be passed to the American, Colonel Mulberry Sellers (the rightful "Lord Rossmore"). Simon had regularly written letters to the English Lord Rossmore in attempts to explain how Simon and his family are the true heirs. Simon wasn't the most forthright in his letter. Lord Rossmore describes him as:

always so humble in his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood—and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the lewd American scum around him—ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable tramp!

.

With the death of Simon (and his brother) the more brash Colonel Mulberry Sellers enters the picture. He learns of his rightful claim to the Lordship of Rossmore and writes Lord Rossmore a much more direct letter. Also, he states that he is going to send the bodies of Simon and his brother to be lain in state at Lord Rossmore's residence, Cholmondeley Castle.

Lord Rossmore thought all of this was just more (albeit unique) blather from a new American claimant... until he receives the bodies of Simon and his brother. The paragraph explaining his reaction is just funny:

In the course of time the twins arrived and were delivered to their great kinsman. To try to describe the rage of that old man would profit nothing, the attempt would fall so far short of the purpose. However when he had worn himself out and got quiet again, he looked the matter over and decided that the twins had some moral rights, although they had no legal ones; they were of his blood, and it could not be decorous to treat them as common clay. So he laid them with their majestic kin in the Cholmondeley church, with imposing state and ceremony, and added the supreme touch by officiating as chief mourner himself. But he drew the line at hatchments.

[Riverboat]

I found it boring, not offensive.

You lost me there, chum.

[p.falk]

Just an opinion... I found Tom Sawyer boring.
Not Huckleberry Finn.

[Kage_ar]

Tom Sawyer followed by Huck Finn were the first chapter books I remember mom reading to us at night - a chapter before bed (and they were the novels, not some "children's version") I am certain about the time because of what house we were living in, so, I had to be 3 years old when we started Tom Sawyer.

Those two, followed by "Little Women" and then "Little Men" were my intro to American literature.

[Tired]

FYI - I enjoyed both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

[Doom]

I found it boring, not offensive.

I'm not sure which you're referring to, but that's a reflection of the reader not the book.

[p.falk]

Doom,
go limp it off.

You like Tom Sawyer, I don't.