The best way to see the essence of a city is with an erudite local who knows the city’s history, culture and idiosyncrasies. That was especially true for Mark Twain when he visited New Orleans in 1882 while gathering stories for his book, “Life on the Mississippi.” For a grand tour of the French Quarter, Twain called upon his friend, the popular novelist and New Orleans native George Washington Cable, the author of “Old Creole Stories, The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life” and later “Dr. Sevier.” In “Life on the Mississippi”, Twain described Cable as the “South’s finest literary genius.”
Twain and Cable first met in 1881 during a speaking engagement in Hartford, Conn. Two years after their meeting in the Crescent City, Twain invited his New Orleans friend to join him on a joint book-promoting tour in cities east of the Mississippi and in Canada. Cable’s new book “Dr. Sevier” had just been published and Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” would be released the following year. Billing themselves the “Twins of Genius,” the tour began on Nov. 5 in Hartford, and ended in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 28, 1885. This 1884 autographed photograph of the two was sent out in advance to promote their upcoming lectures. During those three months, the “Twins of Genius” gave 103 performances in 80 cities, drawing large crowds almost everywhere. In Cable’s own account, up to 3,000 attended the Philadelphia performance.
One eyewitness described the scene on stage in Philadelphia the night of Feb. 26, 1885: “After Mr. Cable had opened the entertainment, Mark Twain appeared. He dragged himself to the front of the stage with that inimitable and characteristic laziness of his which always provokes a roar of laughter.”
Although the two got along well, Twain complained privately about Cable “padding expenses and costing more than his contribution was worth.” He also said his New Orleans friend was “long-winded” and hogged the podium, which seemed a bit amusing considering Twain’s reputation. Cable, however, thought everything was going swimmingly well. In letters to his wife, he praised his own performances. In one, he wrote: “It’s a great thing to be able to hold my own with so wonderful a platform figure.”
Twain also chaffed at Cable’s religious fervor. Twain refused to pray with Cable or attend Sunday Mass. That is, until their last performance in Washington, D.C., when much to his chagrin Twain relented and accompanied Cable to church. In a letter to a friend, Twain vented his frustrations.
“It has taught me that Cable’s gifts of mind are greater and higher than I had suspected,” Twain wrote. “But – That But is pointing toward his religion. You will never, never know, never divining, guess, imagine, how loathsome a thing the Christian religion can be made until you come to and study Cable daily and hourly. Mind you, I like him; he is pleasant company; I rage and swear at him sometimes, but we do not quarrel; we get along might happily together; but in him and his person I have learned to hate all religions.”
When the tour ended in February 1885, “The Twins of Genius” parted amicably and went their separate ways.
Then on May 7, 1885, an unsigned article appeared in The Boston Globe that gave a scathing account of Twain’s complaints about Cable’s “parsimony” and unreasonable expenses. Cable, outraged, demanded the paper retract the story, which it did. Believing the comments came from Twain himself, Cable also asked Twain to refute the article publicly. Twain dismissed the request, but in a letter to Cable suggested he pay no mind to “the slander of a professional newspaper liar” and that the article “did not distress” him one bit. Twain closed the letter, telling his “dear friend” to “flirt it out of your mind, straight off.”
Later that same year, Cable, under constant attack from fellow Southerners for his anti-Jim Crow writings, left New Orleans with his family and settled in Northampton, Mass. He died in 1925.
