By Mark Twain
It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously
illustrious English military names of this generation. For reasons which will
presently appear, I will withhold his real name and titles, and call him
Lieutenant General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C., K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a
fascination there is in a renowned name! There sat the man, in actual flesh,
whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years
before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield,
to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look,
and look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the
reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that
expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness
unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him,
unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts
of those people and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at
my left was an old acquaintance of mine clergyman now, but had spent the first
half of his life in the camp and field, and as an instructor in the military
school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have been talking about, a veiled and
singular light glimmered in his eyes, and he leaned down and muttered
confidentially to me indicating the hero of the banquet with a gesture:
"Privately
he's an absolute fool."
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This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been
Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater.
Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverend was a man of strict veracity,
and that his judgement of men was good. Therefore I knew, beyond doubt or
question, that the world was mistaken about this hero: he was a fool. So I
meant to find out, at a convenient moment, how the Reverend, all solitary and
alone, had discovered the secret.
Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told me - About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can. I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Csar's history; and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Csar which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went through on that purely superficial "cram," and got compliments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident not likely to happen twice in a century he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told me - About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can. I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Csar's history; and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Csar which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went through on that purely superficial "cram," and got compliments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident not likely to happen twice in a century he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I stood by him,
with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled child; and
he always saved himself just by miracle, apparently.
Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at
last was mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I
drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the line
of questions which the examiners would be most likely to use, and then
launching him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result: to my
consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect ovation in
the way of compliments.
Sleep? There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience
tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity,
and only to ease the poor youth's fall never had dreamed of any such
preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and
miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a woodenhead whom I had put
in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but
one thing could happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin
together at the first opportunity.
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The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a
war, I said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to
die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made
me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching
regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a
sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and
put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I
could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain
think of it! I thought my hair would turn white.
Consider what I did who so loved repose and inaction. I said to
myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along with him
and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little
capital that I had saved up through years of work and grinding economy, and
went with a sigh and bought a cornet in his regiment, and away we went to
the field.
And there oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? Why, he never did
anything but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret everybody
had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every
time consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius;
they did, honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a man in his right
mind cry; and they did make me cry and rage and rave too, privately. And the
thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehension was the fact that every
fresh blunder he made increased the luster of his reputation! I kept saying to
myself, he'll get so high, that when discovery does finally come, it will be
like the sun falling out of the sky.
He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead
bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of
------- down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby
was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way
all over the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder
now must be destruction. At this crucial moment, what does this immortal fool
do but detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over a neighboring
hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an enemy! "There you go!" I
said to myself; "this is the end at last."
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill
before the insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we
find? An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened? We
were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred. But no, those Russians argued that no single regiment
would come browsing around there at such a time. It must be the entire English
army, and that the sly Russian game was detected and blocked; so they turned
tail, and away they went, pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in
wild confusion, and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russian
center in the field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most
tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a
sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with
astonishment, admiration,and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and
hugged him, and decorated him on the field, in presence of all the armies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking
his right hand for his left that was all. An order had come to him to fall back
and support our right; and instead, he fell forward and went over the hill to
the left. But the name he won that day as a marvelous military genius filled
the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade while history books
last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a
man can be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. Now that is
absolutely true. He is the supremest ass in the universe; and until half
an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me. He has been pursued, day by day
and year by year, by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness. He has been a
shining soldier in all our wars for a generation; he has littered his whole
military life with blunders, and yet has never committed one that didn't make
him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he
is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of
them is the record of some shouting stupidity or other; and taken together,
they are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man
is to be born lucky. I say again, as I said at the banquet, Scoresby's an
absolute fool.
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