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A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court Mark Twain

Morgan Le Fay


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IF knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were NOT persons to be believed -- that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent.; the rest was fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remained that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing the doorbell -- I mean hailing the warders -- it was the sensible thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle.

As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also -- a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer and read this sign on his tabard:

"Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It."

That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had started a number of these people out -- the bravest knights I could get -- each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device or another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerous enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the steel-clad ass that HADN'T any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the fashion.

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Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education -- next, freedom -- and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day -- in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time -- there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it -- timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with.

My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their tabards -- the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got the king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric splendor -- they were to spell out these signs and then explain to the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary's next move was to get the family together and try it on himself; he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate. that could convince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt remained, he must catch a hermit -- the woods were full of them; saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody stood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone.

 
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A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain

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