The Twainian, Volume 22 Number 2 (1963)
MARK TWAIN IN CEYLON
by Coleman O. Parsons
Professor of English
The City College
New York, N. Y.
(Continuation and Conclusion)
When the Wardha finally docked at Colombo at noon on Good Friday, April 3, it was flying the yellow flag at the foremast. A Lascar crew member with chicken pox was removed to the Infectious Diseases Hospital. Then the vessel had to be granted pratique before the Clemenses and other passengers, including “all the artistes” as well as the tigers, leopards, monkeys “and other performing animals” of Harmstone’s Circus, could land.
Mark lunched at the Grand Oriental Hotel before driving to Peak View in the Cinnamon Gardens district, where he was the guest of Dr. Murray, a surgeon. (No. 4, Brownrigg Street. The Colombo Street Directory of Addresses for 1896 (Colombo 1896), p. 45.) The American humorist had the freedom of a “great compound and commodious bungalow,” where squirrels, monkeys, macaws, and other birds and animals made the trees and grounds brisk with color and commotion. A caged monkey, a parrot, and a Ceylon mina or chattering starling kept things from being dull in the house and on the verandah. Clara and her mother left by the three o'clock train for the more temperate altitude of Kandy, an ancient capital with temples and tombs, a royal residence and an enshrined tooth of Buddha. After a night at the Queen’s Hotel, they rose in time for the seven o'clock train back to Colombo. (For the four hour, 75-mile rail trip to Kandy, see Ceylon Government Railway Time Tables, No. 6 (Colombo 1888), pp. 104-6.)
Because of the delay at Calcutta, Twain’s first At Home in the Public Hall was 9:30 p. m. Friday rather than Thursday. Thus Mark ran into the long Easter weekend and the usual absence of “many Colombo residents... upcountry.” (The Times of Ceylon, April 2 and 4, had items on "The Exodus from Columbo" and "The Exodus to the Hills" (in full trainloads). Cp. “Colombo Deserted,” April 7: “This year it was absolutely deserted” because of “the inordinate heat of Colombo.”) “The small but most appreciative audience,” even further reduced by “most inclement weather,” was held until eleven o’clock by a speaker who began with “a hacking cough” but gained fuller control as he warmed up. Apologizing for showing up on a Good Friday, Mark explained how difficult it was for a seafarer to meet his engagements. Then he entertained with boyhood days, Adam and the serpent, the truant boy and the corpse, the “Punch, brothers, punch with care” story, a selection from Huckleberry Finn, and “a new pathetic story specially written for the lecture” to illustrate the difficulty of the German language: “The point of the yarn lay in the hope that when the heroine attained heaven she would be given a gender all to herself and might stick to it.” The reporter for The Ceylon Examiner was quite taken with Twain’s plaform version of the bucker from Roughing It:
He was delightfully funny in his description of how he bought a horse on the frontier. The auctioneer was about to knock him down for 25 dollars, “when a man beside me spoke in a sorrowful way of what a sin it was to let a good horse go so cheap. He said to me ‘your're a stranger here I guess, and you don’t look as if you knew much about a horse—or anything!’ and then he went on to describe what a magnificent horse it was. He was the auctioneer’s brother, but I didn’t know that. I bid 28, and the horse was knocked down to me. The auctioneer said ‘sold,’ and all the people round about said ‘sold’ also...I took that horse to the hotel, and started to mount him. As soon as I was on the saddle he put his feet together, and shot me into the air. I won’t tell you how high he shot me as you would accuse me of exaggeration. Anyhow there were plenty of birds around. I came down into the saddle again, and the operation was repeated several times. Then he tried other dodges, in fact he went right through a programme of all he knew. When this was finished he began the first part again. While I was up in the air somebody hit him with a leather strap, and when I came down he wasn’t there! I didn’t mind that much, but I went right away and sat down, and had a good think.”
(April 4th issue).
On the same day, The Times of Ceylon ventured the criticism that a free handling of printed stories somehow profaned originals which “will... bear neither ex tempore amplification or much repetition, (Cp. the estimate of The Ceylon Examiner on April 6th: “A serious meaning” lurks behind all of Mark Twain’s humor, making for righteousness.) and we should have preferred to hear a few personal anecdotes of men and things he had seen in Australia and India.” During his second At Home, which began on Saturday at 5:30 p. m., Mark Twain was obligingly anecdotal and topical for a while. He spoke of Sydney to an audience of about 200 that had paid five rupees for seats in the first three rows and three rupees for seats farther back: “The usual thing there for a griffin (a newcomer from the Occident) is to go into raptures about Sydney harbour and write poetry. But the thing has been done ad nauseam. So I thought I would strike out on a new theme...a poem on the Fauna of Australia.” But Mark was stumped by such “unpromising” names as the dugong, the kangaroo, and the ornithorhynchus, and “the afflatus” died out before he got to the end. From this bardic height the lecturer descended to prose in experiences as editor-in-chief, reluctant duelist, and victim of interviewers; the boy and the watermelon; the man cured of stammering; and the wife who dreaded lightning. These offerings stimulated “frequent and hearty” laughter and, at the end, “prolonged applause.”
Twain had told the “handsome Hercules,” Captain E. R, Robinson, that if his party were not on board ship in time, the Wardha had “better up-anchor and get off, and not wait.” But “the greatest humourist of the century” abandoned his usual drawl for a “swift,” unpunctuated delivery which left him a cozy margin of time. After the performance, it began to pour, with “vivid flashes of lightning and loud peals of thunder.” The passengers, who climbed the gangplank on this temperamental fourth of April included Twain’s tour manager, R. S. Carlyle Smythe, a clergyman and his wife, a major general, a mother with infant, a Mr. Ching Hit, and a few others. Most of them were bound for South Africa or Southampton. After twelve days, Mark Twain landed at Port Louis, Mauritius. He spent the same number of days ashore, chiefly in the health resort of Curepipe. There he lured back lost vitality before sailing on the Arundel Castle to Durban, Natal, and a resumption of his enervating lecture tour of the world.
My materials are chiefly drawn from the great newspaper collection of the British Museum: The Times of Ceylon, Colombo, January 16, 22, and April 1, 9, 1896; The Ceylon Observer, Colombo, January 16, April 1, 9, 1896; and The Ceylon Examiner, Colombo, April 2, 4, 6, 1896. The first two are available in overland editions, which assemble news from dailies of the same titles, and the third is a daily.