Narrated by a fictionalized version of Joan’s servant and scribe, Sieur Louis de Conte, the book spans the majority of Joan’s life, beginning with her childhood in eastern France and ending with her questionable trial and execution. Published in 1896, when its author was 61, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc has long been viewed as something of an aberration, a curio-the type of genre-bending work that a bored, established writer often undertakes in order to buck audience expectations. The same might also be said of his book about the French heroine. Even for those entrenched within the competitive world of Twain scholarship, stories like the one above are usually treated as interesting, but ultimately trifling, anecdotes, illustrative of the eccentricities of a predictably unconventional man. Mark Twain’s obsession with Joan of Arc has to rank among the most baffling and least talked about enigmas in American literature. She was only 18 years old, but put into a breast like hers a heart like hers and I think, gentlemen, you would have a girl - like that.”

But they always missed the face - the divine soul, the pure character, the supreme woman, the wonderful girl. I studied that girl, Joan of Arc, for twelve years, and it never seemed to me that the artists and the writers gave us a true picture of her. “Now there’s an illustration, gentlemen - a real illustration. When the writer finally spoke, he did so slowly, carefully.

As the seconds ticked away, Twain’s audience anxiously awaited his response. He remained silent until the model exited the room. His eyes fairly started out of his head, his hand gripped the edge of the table.” She presented the author with the wreath, and he accepted it wordlessly. By the time the girl reached his table, “Twain had every appearance of a man who had seen a ghost. With eyes fixed on the author, she glided up the aisle between the tables carrying a laurel wreath atop a satin pillow.Ī reporter from The New York Times in attendance that night later wrote that the “company smile” Twain had exhibited for most of the ceremony faded.

Underneath a ceremonial white robe, she wore the armor of a 15th-century French soldier. Her hair was cropped just below her ears her face was angular but radiant. As he began to speak, a girl emerged from the back of the room. The writer had just risen to address the group. With one calculated stroke they left Mark Twain, author and noted quipster, speechless. On a December night in 1905, the New York City chapter of the Society of Illustrators managed to do something many thought impossible.

Recollections of joan of arc