MARK TWAIN
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Miss Hudson will look at my article again, she will see that I did not deny Mark Twain natural talents. My objection is to the way in which they were used and to the attitude Twain chose to adopt tor the sake of popularity. The comparison with Lewis Carroll does not help him. Carroll never championed the bumptious colonial attitude, never made himself a trumpeter of rabble prejudices. He would not, for example, have described the delicate nude in the Uffizi as "Titian's beast," or have seen nothing in it but pornography. I am willing to believe that Twain knew better, but that only makes his crime the worse. Personally, I do not find the " absurdities " Miss Hudson quotes delicious," but ten times the number would not alter the
fact that the mind of Mark Twain as revealed in his published works was a detestable mind, a mob mind, a disparaging mind. If Miss Hudson admires that type of mind and the low conception of human life which Twain championed, then she and I differ profoundly.—I am, Sir, &c.,
RICHARD ALDINGTON.
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