Odd this day
One of the famously American Mark Twain’s most famous bits of Americana, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was published in America on this day. But why, pray tell, had it already come out in Britain and Canada (on 10 December)?
Well, because in the US version, someone had added a cock to one of the illustrations. On the second-to-last page of chapter 32, Huck’s uncle, Silas Phelps, appears to be sporting an erection, and pointing it at the teenage boy’s head.
Something is awry about this illustration, though, and it’s not the obvious. There is what appears to be a penis, yes, but the trousers seem to be fastened, so what the hell is it doing there?
Apparently, it was the work of a disgruntled engraver (or, according to one newspaper report, ‘electrotyper’), but to untangle the story completely, we must go back to an earlier point in 1884, when Twain set up Charles L. Webster and Company (named after his agent), which organised the selling of Huckleberry Finn door to door.
Twain hadn’t been happy with the way his previous publishers didn’t bring his books out on time, didn’t promote them enough, and didn’t pay him promptly. (Obviously, the business of publishing has moved on by leaps and bounds since then…) For this work, he was going to have salespeople travel the country, selling not to bookshops, but direct to readers. To do this, they were furnished with
a sales prospectus and an advance copy of the book containing sample pages
They were out in the field, plying their wares, when one of them noticed something amiss. The University of Virginia Library’s Barrett Collection
contains two slightly different versions of the sales prospectus for Huck Finn… After Webster & Co. had printed 3,000 copies of the volume and shipped at least 250 into the field, an agent in Chicago discovered that someone — it was never discovered whom — had altered an illustration…
Word got out, and the New York World ran a story about it on 28 November 1884. This has been helpfully reproduced on the University of Viginia Library’s website. (Librarians really are marvellous people.)
When the plate was sent to the electrotyper a wicked spirit must have possessed him. The title was suggestive. A mere stroke of the awl would suffice to give to the cut an indecent character never intended by the author or engraver.
The paper even suggests how the thing was done:
It would make no difference in the surface of the plate that would be visible to the naked eye, but when printed would add to the engraving a characteristic which would be repudiated not only by the author, but by all the respectable people of the country into whose hands the volume should fall. The work of the engraver was successful. It passed the eye of the inspector and was approved.
Some accounts of the story seem to suggest it’s the first editions of the book which are affected, but the University says it was only sample copies of the book. Either way,
Agents were told to tear out the offending page and send it in or be fired; unshipped prospectuses were rebound without it.
Nonetheless, the New York World says “several opposition publishers” acquired copies and gleefully “adorn[ed] their respective offices” with it.
Several public libraries banned the book, but not for this. According to 1992’s Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, someone on the committee of Concord Public Library in Massachusetts (yes I did spell that wrong at the first attempt) said it
contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash … rough, coarse, and inelegant … not elevating … more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.
(Which, all in all, makes it sound most unlike the sort of “book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read”.)
