Customer Reviews

The American Claimant (1896)

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No. Nothing by Mark Twain can qualify as his 'best'. The breadth of his writing career cuts too wide a swath for such a statement. However, The American Claimant, obscure though it is, is certainly among his best.

The American Claimant is about Americans, the way they view themselves, the way they are viewed by others through the eyes of a British nobleman. Even though a century has passed since the book was written, most of the acute observations are as true today as when it was written.

A family of Americans descended from an eldest son of a British Earl, Lord Rossmore, has been claiming the title for many generations. The actual young Earl, filled with idealism, decides to abdicate, to change places with the American claimant. He travels to the US with the intention of contacting Colonel Mulberry Sellers, the claimant, to exchange places. Sellers is an American dreamer, always down on his luck, an inventor, a philanthropist of sorts.

Through a series of Keystone Kops misfortunes the Earl loses his letters of credit, assumes the clothing of bank robber from the west, takes up life in a boarding house of workmen, determined to make a life on his own and abandon the wealth of his past.

This is the setting for The American Claimant. The Earl discovers the American dream isn't quite as it is cracked up to be, discovers his taste for the common man is far less palatable in close proximity. Every attempt to find employment is thwarted until he discovers himself to be a worthy hack as an artist.

Fate takes a hand in the lives of the young Earl and the heir of the claimant, leading to a zesty, if predictable wrap-up.

As with every book by Mark Twain, this one is fun. It is astute. It is thought provoking. It is well written, the characters sympathetic and mostly believable, the plot, circuitous in the best Mark Twain tradition. It also contains an element of subtle wisdom and tongue-in-cheek observation more finely honed than in many of the earlier writings.

The author declared in the beginning that this would be a story without weather. He held to his promise, but in the end provided weather for the story in an appendix, for those who must have it.

I don't know why this book has fallen by the wayside. It shouldn't have done so.

I recommend it for any reader, but especially for American ones.

What we have here is an American (Mulberry Sellers) infatuated with English peerage who believes he is the rightful heir to the Earl of Rossmore and the real Earl who decides to throw over his title, come to America, and try out good old American egalitarianism where titles don't mean a hoot. So Lord Berkeley comes to America, is mistakenly thought burned to ashes in a hotel fire, but has in the meanwhile donned the cowboy outfit of One Armed Pete, a western outlaw and bank robber with a $5,000 award on his head. Desperate to find work but unable to, Berkeley begins to doubt the wisdom of his experiment in America, but then gets a job as a painter's assistant (Twain makes fun of the limitations of artists here and it's hilarious). Sellers is an inventor and schemer and is always coming up with a new contraption (the "Cursing Phonograph") or crazy idea (shifting the tropics to the arctic); Berkeley meets his daughter Sally and they instantly fall in love. Mistaken identity and misunderstandings hamper their relationship, though it's always more funny than serious. Everything gets straightened out, of course, by the end. Twain's humor here is more farcical than satirical, and he knows how to pour it on thick and keep the laughter flowing. The best scene is where Sally dismisses Berkeley (who by that time is going by the name of Howard) because she thinks he's only after her father's earldom. Not only is the whole scene ridiculously wacky, but her despair at not being kissed by him after she tells him to leave is only the rich icing on the cake. The book is a lot of fun, though not among the very first rank of Twain's work.

I read Twain primarily for his humor. This book is one of his better efforts in that genre. His droll, tongue-in-cheek humor wasn't as prevalent as in his short story, "The Diary of Adam and Eve", but there was still plenty of it, as was some of his off the wall sarcastic wit.

The plot line is full of mistaken identities, misunderstood efforts, and general confusion; it was somewhat reminiscent of R.L. Stevenson's "The Wrong Box".

I found myself grinning on occasion, while reading this book, and even chuckled a time or two. It was an entertaining, fun read, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a light, pleasant evening.

Mark Twain's 1892 novel THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT is neither notably long nor notably short. It has the "middle-weight" (or at least middle length) feel of a Graham Greene novel. THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT's 25 chapters make it, however, too long to be called a novella. On the other hand, it also lacks the heft of an unhurried whopper by Fenimore Cooper or Sir Walter Scott. As for content: it resembles a zany anticipation of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster, both authors delighting in bird-brained but kind-hearted aristocrats of both England and America.

The Earl of Rossmore has an annual income of 200,000 pounds and only one heir, his flighty, nearly 30 year old son Viscount Berkeley, whose full name is Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjoribanks Sellers. The heir-apparent to the Sellers family name, title and wealth is, alas, influenced by leveling ideas among his smart set. He therefore resolves to renounce his inheritance and go to America, find work and rise to the heights by his own unaided efforts.

But wait: there is an "American claimant" to the English Earl's title. A century and a half ago, a Sellers viscount went off with the noble Fairfaxes (who later befriended the young George Washington) to "the wilds of Virginia, got married, and began to breed savages for the Claimant market" (Ch. 1). Back in England the then viscount was presumed to have died in America and his younger brother quietly assumed the title. But every generation of American Sellerses has since protested the cadet line's usurpation.

The newest American Claimant is the polymath, exuberantly fecund but financially unsuccessful inventor, Colonel Mulberry Sellers. He, his amused, admiring and loyal wife and their beautiful air-headed daughter Sally (recently restyled the Lady Gwendolyn) live in a ramshackle house in Washington, D.C. named Rossmore Towers. Sally/Gwendolyn attends fashionable Rowena-Ivanhoe College. The American Claimant sings that academy's praises to a visiting chum from the Cherokee Strip in Indian Territory:

"Rowena-Ivanhoe College 'is the selectest and most aristocratic seat of learning 'for young ladies in our country. Under no circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very 'rich and fashionable or can prove four generations of 'what may be called American nobility. Castellated 'college-buildings--towers and turrets and an imitation moat--and everything about the place named out of 'Sir Walter Scott's books and redolent of royalty and 'state and style ; and all the richest girls keep phaetons, 'and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses, with English 'grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and 'top-boots, and a whip-handle without any whip to it, 'to ride sixty-three feet behind them-- 'And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington 'Hawkins, not a single blessed thing but showy rubbish 'and un-American pretentiousness." (Ch. 4)

There are very few additional characters in THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT. Much of your fun in reading this romantic spoof will be to watch their sometimes harum-scarum interactions. What if the Viscount (disguised as commoner Howard Tracy, and taken by Colonel Sellers for an American cowboy bank robber) were to fall in love with Lady Gwendolyn? Their marriage might go a long way to settling the trans-Atlantic family feud. But what if Sally/Gwendolyn indignantly thinks Tracy/Sellers (he keeps his title secret) wants to marry her only for her title? What if the English Earl will not permit the wedding? Read on and enjoy an amusing little yarn.

In other novels Mark Twain also makes use of rich people in disguise (not necessarily freely chosen), mistakenly identified or wanting to pretend to be common: THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER and PUDD'NHEAD WILSON spring to mind. This motif has echoes leading back through Sir Walter Scott to William Shakespeare. -OOO-

He's said it all already, but I'll repeat: don't overlook this book! It's funny, it's clever, it's astute, and it's weatherless.