On the essays shelf:
The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain
Mark Twain was in Austria in 1898. He wrote an incredible piece about a rowdy and disturbing meeting of the Parliament, called “Stirring Times in Austria” (excerpt here). As a world-famous man, he traveled in some pretty lofty circles, and was invited to court events, and knew (very informally) the royal family. The Hapsburg empire had been rocked, 10 years before, by the suicide of the Crown Prince Rudolf (he shot himself and his teenage girlfriend). I am currently reading, on Machelle’s recommendation, Frederic Morton’s fascinating A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889
There was no room for him in all of that. His life was meaningless. So he bit the bullet. And killed his social-climbing mistress into the bargain. The news rocked the world, but most of all it rocked Austria. Empress Elisabeth was devastated and never really regained her footing. She withdrew from most of public life.
10 years later, while Mark Twain was in Austria, Empress Elisabeth traveled to Geneva. There had been rumblings about assassination attempts but she ignored the warnings. And there, she was stabbed by an anarchist in what was a pretty random act of violence. It wasn’t her he objected to, or Austria, not personally – it was royalty itself. His name was Luigi Lucheni. His statement following the assassination was:
“I am an anarchist by conviction…I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign, with object of giving an example to those who suffer and those who do nothing to improve their social position; it did not matter to me who the sovereign was whom I should kill…It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress; it was a crown that I had in view.
News of the assassination shook the world. It shook Mark Twain. He was no fan of royalty, but this was too much. What the hell had Empress Elisabeth ever done to anyone? She tried to use her power well. She was well-liked. She was beautiful and kind. Yes, she was a member of one of the more ridiculous royal families in Europe, a family devoted to tradition and routine to an almost suicidal degree. But the assassination outraged everyone. Mark Twain was outraged. He had known the Empress. She was blameless.
He wrote the following piece, and if I recall correctly, didn’t want it published because of his association with the royal family. He was afraid it would make him look biased. It was published posthumously.
The funeral was off-the-charts grand. Mark Twain, watching from a balcony, had never seen such crowds, such colors, such a procession. He describes the funeral in detail, which is extremely interesting: it’s just as good as an actual news-reel of the event. But the parts that interest me the most about this piece are his speculations/thoughts about the assassin himself.
Twain has no respect for the man. He is a loser. But there is something completely modern about Twain’s contemplations, something that would fit in perfectly with our 24 hour news cycle, and how we “deal” with it when some random person does a really bad thing. Everyone wants to know why. Everyone wants to get inside the person’s head, even as they judge him as evil or misguided. Mark Twain watches all of it go down, in the newspapers: the interviews with those who knew the assassin, people coming forward with personal stories, everyone wanting “in” on the action. It’s gross, but it’s how people behave. Everyone wants to be an insider, have inside information. Twain watches. Why would you BRAG about knowing a loser?
He is also interested in the assassin’s motives. He wonders about them. He writes out his questioning. He’s moving into Travis Bickle-land: the need of some undeveloped individuals for attention, to be noticed. The killing of a beloved figurehead like Empress Elisabeth was meaningless. It wouldn’t be until June 28, 1914, that an assassin would target someone more meaningful in Austria, and, of course, then ignite the whole world.
The other thing that’s interesting is that Mark Twain senses the world shifting into modernism. This is the first assassination in the history of the planet that was known by the entire planet within hours of the occurrence, because of telegraph wires. News now could spread fast, instantaneously. People in Papua New Guinea knew the news at almost the same time as those in Vienna. Mark Twain is in awe at that, in awe of how the world has changed, that the spread of information can move so quickly. He doesn’t quite say, “What will this mean for us?” But he does recognize that it is a watershed moment for the human race. Nothing will ever be the same again. We are all connected. The world is connected. You don’t have to wait for a 2-month mail-wagon ride to get your news. It comes to you immediately. Mark Twain has an intense awareness of that sea-change in our lives. It’s 1898. It’s almost the turn of the century. And what a century the 20th will be. Modernism will come in with a roar and wipe out all that has passed. Mark Twain seems to almost sense that in his essay.
In the essay, Twain wrote:
It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more.
Austria was rotten at its core. Twain had sensed those rumblings in that meeting in Parliament. It is not at all surprising that the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand would come only 16 years later.
Here’s an excerpt.
The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain
It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some curious contrasts. At noon last Saturday there was no one in the world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject of conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside their other interests to talk about him. And whenever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a great satisfaction, and mentioned it – for it was a distinction, now! It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not realizable – but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of the same clay, and it is a sufficiently poor quality.
Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it as well as if I were hearing them:
The Commander: “He was in my army.”
the General: “He was in my corps.”
The Colonel: “He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well.”
The Captain: “He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember him well.”
The Sergeant: “Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning I used to-” etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears.
The Landlady: “Many’s the time he boarded with me. I can show you his very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on the wall – he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own eyes. Didn’t you, Johnny?”
It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constable and the jailer treasure up the assassin’s daily remarks and doings as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful distinction. The interviewer, too; he tries to let on that he is not vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.
Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor mad. That has many crimes to answer for; but not this one, I think. One may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any kind. When he saw his photograph and said, “I shall be celebrated,” he laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as history – the burning of the temple of Ephesus.
Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must concede high rank to the many which have described it as a “peculiarly brutal crime” and then added it was “ordained from above.” I think this verdict will not be popular “above.” If the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into preferring charges which should be ventured upon except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
