Mark Twain

In the late 1860's and '70's Mark Twain was resident in his mansion on a hill overlooking a valley in Elmira County, New York. He evidently was thinking about writing and censorship in a humorous way and must have spent many hours of brainpower on the subject. Whether he was thinking relative to his writing of Tom Sawyer which was already published or looking forward to writing Huckleberry Finn, I can only surmise. It was in 1876 that he wrote a short thing titled, 1601,  Conversation as it was at the Social Fireside in the time of the Tudors, and he had a heckuva time getting it published. It was finally printed up at the West Point Army Academy by the adjutant at the time. And it was passed from hand to hand among "the kings and queens" in Britain and Europe and the upper crust society of literary intellectuals in America because of the many cuss words or obscenities it contained, although the words were commonly used by the people of that time (1600) and are well known among our own generation. Mark Twain swore up a blue streak at times. I don't know if he used the epithets he picked up in the West or whether he swore from a young age. My guess is that he probably added to his swear word vocabulary as he travelled the West.  

At about the same time in American History (1880's), Tom Horn was talking to Geronimo on a hill in Mexico trying to get him back on the reservation and away from the plundering and pillaging and the vile acts he and his Chiricahua Apache cohorts had committed. Tom Horn and Al Sieber had been called there by Geronimo, who had put out the word that he wanted to return to the reservation, and he thought that he should be given about every kind of accommodation for all the U. S. Army had done to him and his family.
Tom Horn had said in his autobiography that "Geronimo must have talked for an hour or two," asking for the moon. Horn spoke Apache fluently and he was the interpreter for Sieber. Although the book by Carol Sletten and Eric Kramer, Story of the American West, that describes this meeting didn't indicate that any vile language was used, I am willing to bet that Geronimo used more than one curse word in his harangue that perhaps would have made the words in 1601 seem more ancient than they are. I'm sure there was just as much swearing going on on the part of Geronimo, Horn and Sieber and the rest of the Army as there was in the time of the Tudors. And, if all those swear words were printed in the newspapers of the time, the paper would never have been able to publish them.

At least we can enjoy 1601 now with Mark Twain's use of supposedly obscene language, and I have it on my Nook Color from Project Gutenberg ready to read. So, if you'll excuse me.......   

Here is a sketch of a young Mark Twain by me from a pic on Wikipedia? This was drawn a few months ago and I can't remember from exactly where.