THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN
At Villa Viviani, an old, old mansion outside of Florence, on the hill toward Settignano, Mark Twain finished Tom Sawyer Abroad, also Pudd'nhead Wilson, and wrote the first half of a book that really had its beginning on the day when, an apprentice-boy in Hannibal, he had found a stray leaf from the pathetic story of Joan of Arc. All his life she had been his idol, and he had meant some day to write of her. Now, in this weather-stained old palace, looking down on Florence, medieval and hazy, and across to the villa-dotted hills, he began one of the most beautiful stories ever written, The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. He wrote in the first person, assuming the character of Joan’s secretary, Sieur Louis de Conte, who in his old age is telling the great tale of the Maid of Orleans. It was Mark Twain’s purpose, this time, to publish anonymously. Walking the floor one day at Viviani, and smoking vigorously, he said to Mrs. Clemens and Susy:
"I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People always want to laugh over what I write, and are disappointed if they don’t find a joke in it. This is to be a serious book. It means more to me than anything else I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously."
So it was that the gentle Sieur de Conte took up the pen, and the tale of Joan was begun in the ancient garden of Viviani, a setting appropriate to its lovely form.
He wrote rapidly when once his plan was perfected and his material arranged. The reading of his
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