I SUSPECT I had one of the most unusual fathers any body ever had. I was his firstborn. He knew considerably less than nothing about children and he had to learn how to be a father. He learned on me. Continue reading A Genius in the Family
The following speech was delivered at an October 15, 1874, dinner at Hartford’s premier hotel, the Allyn House, given by members of the city’s insurance industry in honor of Britisher Cornelius Walford. A resident of the city for four years, Clemens had its number. He refers to the Hartford Accident Insurance Co., a short-lived company of which he served as a director. Walford (1827-1885) was active in the British insurance industry and the author of an insurance encyclopedia. Continue reading Speech in Honor of Cornelius Walford
The “City of Hartford” speech was delivered at a reception for the Worcester Continentals, a quasi-military group formed in Worcester, Massachusetts, to commemorate the Centennial of the American Revolution, on October 19, 1882. This Hartford Courant reporter’s transcript of an extempore speech notes the audience reaction. The wooden covered bridge from Hartford to East Hartford he refers to, built in 1818, was nearly a thousand feet long. The First Company Governor’s Foot Guard, a ceremonial Connecticut unit that guards the governor, was formed in 1771. Continue reading Speech on the City of Hartford, 1882
Clemens’s fascination with English history developed with his visits to the country and his research for The Prince and the Pauper (1881), a tale of a royal and a commoner changing places so each could find out what he had been envying. He was fascinated by the Elizabethan period and its wholesome frankness about sex and bodily functions, which he celebrated in a short obscene work called 1601: Conversation as it Was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors. The book was concealed to all but select male friends, but is now freely readable on the Internet. Continue reading from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court