Here the speaker is bored by all the monotonous “white nightgowns” in his neighborhood—nightgowns presumably worn by his fellow Hartford businessmen who all dress alike, without imagination. He longs for something fresh and unusual, to add interest to this routine life. Why do you think he uses the French word, “ceinture”? What is unusual about the combination of “baboons and periwinkles”? (Think of the sounds of those words.) How do you feel about the old, drunk sailor? Continue reading Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
Tag Archives: satire
Speech in Honor of Cornelius Walford
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
Speech on the City of Hartford, 1882
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
from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Shifting from Clemens’s comical letters, speeches and short pieces to his classic, we get a sense of the depth he brought to his work. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was composed largely at Quarry Farm, Olivia Clemens’s sister Susan Crane’s farm in Elmira, New York. The family spent most of their summers there during the time they lived in Hartford, and Crane had built a study for her brother-in-law high on a hill overlooking the farm and the city. Continue reading from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
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