There's a big big Mark Twain shaped hole in my reading experiences. For some reason, despite trying to get into 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Tom Sawyer' a couple of times, they never really gelled into unmissable experiences. Perhaps it was all a half-hearted attempt to begin with, or maybe the books smelled a bit pungent (my senses are generally heightened), or they weren't the books for me but it didn't work out. 'The Prince And The Pauper', many years later, worked out a little better despite several lengthy interruptions, and that puzzles me.
Mark Twain was not inventing something entirely new when he devised the plot of a pauper doppelganger accidentally swapping places with the young Edward VI of England. There had already been 'The Man In The Iron Mask' from Dumas about a duplicate pretender to the French throne, and later there would be 'The Prisoner Of Zenda' by Hope. (Don't ask me about them, I haven't read them yet.). There were probably many others too, just as 'Robinson Crusoe' acquired hordes of clones and ripoffs in the years following its release. 'The Prince And The Pauper' was, however, a first foray into historical tales for Twain, and not even the historical tales of his own country! Of course with the War Of Independence barely a hundred years into the past, and the Civil War in living memory, there wasn't that much recorded history to acceptably dig into and meddle with in the Americas. He certainly would have been lynched if he had suggested George Washington doubles being swapped in accidentally before he assumed the presidency, or taken away and mildly talked to by people with prototypical sunglasses.
Let's refer to the story as 'Prince' from now on, and examine it for the children's adventure and satire that it is. The two strands to the story are very interestingly handled, a clear preference being shown to the adventures of the Prince in pauper form being pursued and victimised across the country, as opposed to the pauper's experiences as a decreasingly reluctant new royal, already versed in courtly manners from his youthful readings. In retrospect this is the obvious storytelling decision to make, a ragged adventure in the world being more entertaining than a boy succumbing to the luxury of royalty. In fact, the succumbing or corruption of something is a deeply upsetting kind of story to me personally, I don't know why, and Tom the pauper's redemption at the end is quite the hurrah after his almost fading into the establishment. Anyway, I digress badly, and should get back on track.
As adventures go this is fairly mild, encounters with mad monks and roving gangs of criminals notwithstanding, the main goal being to explore the world as it was and to contrast the lot of the common men with that of the priviliged class. Even though the United States had it's affluence-linked class structure - and still does - the contemporary and historical British structure was an incredibly obvious target for satire merged with adventure. Parenthetically I've never had a clear idea of what satire actually is. Satirical cartoons seem to be complete garbage, satire on television seems to be sarcasm and pointing, and in this is commentary on a ridiculous situation. Are they all satire? Is 'The Prince And The Pauper' satire at all? Is it 'educational satire'? This will doubtless resurface as I march through 'A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court' and 'Personal Recollections Of Joan Of Arc', the other two historical romances in my handsome Library of America edition. <Plug plug, send me books!>
'Prince' is a fascinating and odd little made-up story, set in a fascinating and tiny period in British history. The youthful king discovers the truth about life with the commons and friendship, while the pauper almost loses himself to his new life before being shocked back by an unfortunate maternal encounter on the way to the coronation. However, I must admit that the side story of the prince's rescuer Miles Hendon is at times far more interesting! And with that, and a mild recommendation, it is time to close the book on this tangential and fragmented post on Twain until the Connecticut Yankee has done his work. That should feed into Poul Anderson's 'Three Hearts and Three Lions'. Intrigued?
O.
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