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In 1884 and 1885, Mark Twain went on a series of lectures throughout the Northeast and even in Canada with the Presbyterian writer George Washington Cable, whom Twain described as “the South’s finest literary genius.” Cable had begun his career as a journalist, and had already established himself as a novelist also at that point. He was also controversial in the South for his support for racial equality. This popular series of lectures was billed as the “Twins of Genius Tour” and it had a profound effect on both men, as well as their audiences.
Their friendship began in 1881. Twain once wrote a high commendation of Cable to the editor of the Hartford, Connecticut Daily Courant (March 30, 1883).
On the evening of the fourth of April the gifted southerner whose name appears above, will deliver at Unity Hall, in Hartford, a lecture upon "Creole Women," sauced with illustrative readings from "The Grandissimes" and other of his books. Since he compliments us by choosing Hartford as the scene of his first experiment upon the northern platform, I trust we shall return him the compliment of a full house, and a hearty greeting. Mr. Cable is a reader and speaker whose matter is of the finest quality and whose arts of delivery are of distinguished excellence. It seems well to state this, in order that the public may know that Mr. Cable has something more to offer his audience, as an attraction, than his celebrated person alone. I heard him read in New Orleans last spring and in the proof-sheets of my forthcoming book I find this reference to that experience: "Mr. Cable is the only master in the writing of French dialects that the country has produced; and he reads them in perfection. It was a great treat to hear him read about Jean-ah Poquelin, and about Innerarity and his famous 'pigshoo' representing 'Louisihanna Rif-fusing to Hanter the Union,' along with passages of nicely-shaded German dialect from a novel which was still in manuscript."
"He also read conversations occurring between those charming Creole women of 'The Grandissimes' and in his mouth and through his art the music of their quaint and crippled English acquired a new and richer melody."
From such high authority as the voice of President Gilman of John's Hopkins university come praises of Mr. Cable's recent reading in Baltimore, which render this added testimony of mine next to unnecessary.
That this forthcoming lecture is not without interest outside of Hartford is evidenced by the fact that considerable deputations of well-known Bostonians and New Yorkers are coming here to attend it, and have already ordered their tickets. Also, I may state that Mr. Cable has been invited to repeat this entertainment in the Madison Square theatare, New York, at an early day, MARK TWAIN.
Yet, despite their friendship, Mark Twain remains famous for his loathing of his friend’s religion — Presbyterianism — and one prominent example of this appears in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in December 1884, while on tour with Cable. In Chapter XVIII, Huck visits a Presbyterian church.
Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching -- all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.
Indeed, Cable’s commitment to keeping the Lord’s Day holy was a thorn in Twain’s side during the whole tour. Cable insisted that the pair not travel by railroad and not engage in lectures on the Sabbath day. James Stacy, the Southern Presbyterian minister, highlighted such transgressions of the Lord’s Day in his 1885 treatise on the Sabbath, Day of Rest: Its Obligations and Advantages.
Cable caused MT much irritation during their several months tour that involved shared platforms and hotel rooms in many states. At the outset, MT was unaware that Cable had fully retained the Sabbatarianism of their similar religious upbringing. Cable accepted without reservation from the Presbyterian standards that the Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy…To the great annoyance of his tour partner, Cable refused to use a train on Sunday even in an emergency situation. MT wondered if the legalist would even be willing to travel to heaven on Sunday should he die on the first day of the week! One Saturday while on tour, Cable abruptly left a reception in order to scurry back to his hotel room before his self-imposed midnight curfew. An elder, choir member, and Sunday school superintendent in a New Orleans Presbyterian church, he attended Sunday School and two church services each Sunday without fail. At the beginning of the tour, eh read the Bible aloud to MT each evening. This activity, among others led MT to call him a “pious ass” and a “Christ-besprinkled psalm-singing Presbyterian.” (William E. Phipps, Mark Twain’s Religion, pp. 138-139).
After the tour was over, Twain wrote to William Dean Howells (Feb. 27, 1885), the following memorable reflection of Cable, which perhaps says more about himself than his friend:
It has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable’s gifts of mind are greater and higher than I suspected. But . . . you will never, never know, never divine, guess, imagine, how loathsome a thing the Christian religion can be made until you come to know and study Cable daily and hourly. Mind you I like him . . . but in him and his person I have learned to hate all religions. He has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.
The tour covered many cities in many states, and their divergent views of the Sabbath day did have some positive impact as well as negative (for Twain).
On Saturday, December 6, 1884, about a month into their “Twins of Genius” reading tour, Mark Twain and George Washington Cable were walking in Rochester, New York, when a sudden rain drove them to take shelter in a bookstore. Cable was a Sabbatarian who refused to travel on Sundays, so while on tour Twain usually spent that day in his hotel room resting up, and he needed something to read in Rochester. On Cable’s recommendation he left the bookstore with a copy of Le Morte D’Arthur, Thomas Mallory’s tales about the Round Table. The rest, as they say, is Mark Twain’s version of medieval history — A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Cable proudly proclaimed the “godfathership of that book,” but that title only begins to indicate his role in the novel Twain wrote, and the influence that the reading tour had on its genesis and development. The novel, in turn, can help us appreciate the relationship between these “Twins” (Stephen Railton in Peter Messent and Louis J. Budd, eds., A Companion to Mark Twain, p. 172).
At the end of the tour, Cable wrote to his wife, “I got him out to church at last!” But Cable was saddened by some articles attacking his character which appeared in the Boston Herald in May 1885 and which appeared to be sourced by Twain; yet their friendship endured, and prior to Twain’s death, Cable referred to their joint tour as “one of the most notable experiences of my life.”
The intersection of these two writers’ lives is a moment in history worthy of study and reflection, and the crucial role of the Christian Sabbath in that convergence especially should not be forgotten.
