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A Twainian Author in Queen Lilian's Court
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On a recent hunt across the web for new Cat Who... links, I ran across a quite interesting story, related here, concerning how an author gave our own Lilian Jackson Braun a dash of unexpected inspiration -
"A few years ago I wrote to Braun and pitched a story idea using a Mark Twain book to her. One thing led to another, and she decided to do something with Mark Twain. In The Cat Who Sang for the Birds she had Polly give Jim Qwilleran a copy of my own book Mark Twain A to Z for his birthday."
Sure enough, the very real Mark Twain A to Z is indeed mentioned multiple times in our favorite fiction series, the first being the aforementioned birthday-present scene in Chapter 3 of Sang for the Birds. Thanking Polly, Qwilleran professes to enjoying the book "very much", and the gift eventually sparks our sleuth's idea for a local Mark Twain festival, extensively discussed between Qwilleran and Hixie Rice in Chapter 13 of Saw Stars. Interest piqued as to how exactly this clandestine pseudo-collaboration got started, I e-mailed the Twainian author, Kent Rasmussen, for elaboration on the anecdote posted on his website. He most graciously responded with the following:
"You asked about my communications with Lilian Jackson Braun. I should first
make it clear that I've never spoke with her; all our contacts have been by
letter. They began five years ago when I wrote to her to suggest a theme for
a CAT WHO story. I don't suppose it would be violating a confidence if I
were to repeat most of that message here:
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Are you familiar with Mark Twain's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S
COURT? In that novel a nineteenth-century American, Hank Morgan, takes a
hard knock to the head and awakens in sixth-century England. There Morgan
is soon running the kingdom and developing a modern economy. A strong theme
throughout the novel is Morgan's passionate desire to transform England from
a monarchy into a republic. Late in the novel (chapter 40) Morgan describes
a conversation with his right-hand man, Clarence, about how to bring about a
revolution (underlining is mine):
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Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution,
but in a modified way. His idea was a republic,
without privileged orders, but with a hereditary
royal family at the head of it instead of an
elective chief magistrate. He believed that no
nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a
royal family could ever be robbed of it and not
fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that
kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He
was sure that a royal family of cats would answer
every purpose. They would be as useful as any
other royal family, they would know as much, they
would have the same virtues and the same
treacheries, the same disposition to get up
shindies with other royal cats, they would be
laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they
would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would
have as sound a divine right as any other royal
house, and "Tom VII., or Tom XI., or Tom XIV. by
the grace of God King," would sound as well as it
would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat
with tights on. "And as a rule," said he, in his
neat modern English, "the character of these cats
would be considerably above the character of the
average king, and this would be an immense moral
advantage to the nation, for the reason that a
nation always models its morals after its
monarch's. The worship of royalty being founded in
unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would
easily become as sacred as any other royalties,
and indeed more so, because it would presently be
noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody,
imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or
injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a
deeper love and reverence than the customary human
king, and would certainly get it. The eyes of the
whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this
humane and gentle system, and royal butchers would
presently begin to disappear; their subjects would
fill the vacancies with catlings from our own
royal house; we should become a factory; we should
supply the thrones of the world; within forty
years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we
should furnish the cats. The reign of universal
peace would begin then, to end no more
forever...... ME-E-E-YOW-OW-OW-OW --- FZT! WOW!"
Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and
was beginning to be persuaded by him, until he
exploded that cat-howl and startled me almost out
of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest.
He didn't know what it was. He had pictured a
distinct and perfectly rational and feasible
improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he
was too feather-headed to know it, or care
anything about it, either. I was going to give him
a scolding, but Sandy came flying in . . .
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I suspect that you're already guessing what I'm thinking: a "Cat Who" story
using this passage as its launching pad. When I was rereading the above
passage the other night (at a time when I happened to be in the midst of
listening to THE CAT WHO LIVED HIGH), the thought of "King Koko I"
immediately came to my mind.
I don't wish to presume to go much further than this in suggesting what kind
of story you might develop out of it. What I'm thinking of is something in
which Qwilleran happens to be reading CONNECTICUT YANKEE and he comes across
this passage and has the same thought that I did about King Koko. You could
carry this a step further by having a scene in which Qwilleran is knocked
out (as was Hank Morgan) and dreams that he is in a realm ruled by Koko and
Yum Yum. I don't know that you would want to build an entire novel around
such a dream sequenceşbut it could be huge amount of fun if you did. Perhaps
you could have Qwilleran visiting Warwick, England, with the cats (I believe
that Britain is fairly tolerant of travelers' bringing cats into the
country). Warwick Castle is where CONNECTICUT YANKEE begins and ends.
Now, here's what I hope will be the clincher to my suggestion--a title for
this book:
THE CAT WHO WOULD BE KING
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Lilian replied very graciously, saying that she couldn't use that idea but
that she was interested in doing something with Mark Twain. I supplied her
with more information on Mark Twain, and she acquired a copy of my book MARK
TWAIN A TO Z. As you know, she has used MTAZ as a prop (Polly's birthday
gift to Qwill) in two of her novels. She told me that she wanted to do more
with Mark Twain. One of her recent books talked about a Mark Twain festival
in Pickax, but she seems to have lost interest. She did, however, work that CONNECTICUT YANKEE passage about cats into one of her books."
Sure enough, both the passage quoted by Rasmussen and his idea of The Cat Who Would Be King have been worked into the Cat Who...s, Chapter 3 of Saw Stars -
"Qwilleran had a dream that night. He always dreamed after eating pork. Moose County had seceded from the state and was an independent principality ruled by a royal family, prime minister, cabinet, and national council - but they were all cats! There was nothing original about the scenario; he had been reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in which a character suggested feline rule as an improvement over the existing system. In Qwilleran's dream, the royal cat family was shown to be intelligent, entertaining, and inexpensive to maintain. He was sorry to wake up."
Kent would like to stress, however, that sending Lilian story ideas is not advisable, and not primarily out of concern for shielding others from potential disappointment - for the very real and stressful problems it creates for authors:
"Writers don't like using other people's ideas,
and one of any writer's worst fears is having someone charge plagiarism. I'm
a writer myself, so I'm sensitive to this problem. When I pitched my idea to
Lilian, I told her that I would provide a notarized promise to disavow all
interest in the story to set her mind at ease. (I asked only for an
inscribed copy of whatever book she wrote, and she generously complied with
that request anyway.)"
Rasmussen adds - "Incidentally, I should also mention that reading a novel in which a
familiar character (viz., Qwilleran) is reading a book of mine is a
wonderful, almost surreal experience." Indeed, for fans, it is also most intriguing to read about these little pieces of real life which influence and find their way into our beloved novels.
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