This quarter’s B’game Historical Society meeting featured Stanford professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin describing the brief, but close mutual admiration between Dear Ole Anson Burlingame and Mark Twain. Twain rightly considered Anson a “citizen of the world” as he had served in the U.S. House of Representatives, been an outspoken abolitionist, been our Ambassador to China and then was appointed by the Chinese government to be their liaison to the world and especially the U.S. government. That post resulted in the “Burlingame Treaty” which was ratified and promptly ignored according to Shelley. Anson in turn mentored Twain by urging him to evolve from a regional humorist and newspaper reporter to have a world view and become a recognized author. He pushed Twain to surround himself with people of “superior intellect”.

Anson and Twain only met in person a few times. The main meeting was in Hawaii after Twain had been horseback riding and had bad saddle sores so Anson went to his hotel. Later Anson arranged for Twain to be carried by stretcher to interview men who had just spent 43 days in an open boat at sea so he would have the scoop for the Sac Union. Twain eventually moved to Washington D.C. where he developed a lifelong dislike of politicians. He is famously quoted as saying “This is the place to get a poor opinion of everybody in.” Twain did, however, make one exception. “There isn’t one man in Washington, in civil office, who has the brains of Anson Burlingame.” Twain considered taking Anson up on an offer to travel to Europe with him (which he declined) where Anson died in St. Petersburg in 1870. (More on his death at the Feb. 28th Society meeting where we will learn if he really died from pneumonia or not).

Professor Fisher Fishkin then pivoted to her new book “Jim” which reexamines Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective. (It does more than that, but too much to accurately describe here). She described Twain’s satirical use of a “clueless narrator” that would cause readers to both laugh and wince at the irony-infused attack on racism. The book was available for purchase at the meeting and sold well. Her efforts to record the forthcoming audiobook version were of particular interest as she had to expend a lot of effort to find a black voice actor who would read the book as written. Several famous black actors declined due to the (original) content. Here’s Shelley at the Rec Center where we had at least 100 attendees.