Gen. Washington’s Negro Body Servant
is a largely overlooked but highly perceptive article Twain wrote for the Galaxy in the early 1870s after his journalistic sojourn in Washington City.

It’s a chapter in my book on Twain in DC as relates to the unique fact & folklore I advance Twain picked up on the corners and markets of DC from the local Black community. And Yarrow stays in the news as a cemetery was just found near his him in Georgetown. Yarrow was painted by Charles Wilson Peale who wrote he was 150 or some exaggerated age. Yarrow was “body servant” for an early founder of Georgetown - who reportedly visited Mt Vernon. And Twain gave a lecture in Grown Pres Washington’s birthday 1868.

I’d consider submitting a revised book chapter but I’m just a street historian on the back of the 70 bus who has been on CSPAN and/or the Library of Congress a time or two but gets no invites to the back-patting conferences and symposiums.

What Twain wrote about back then is still chattered about today in DC re: folks with the surname Washington.

Not sure this is pertinent but I share because I care about how the history lives on today on the same corners Twain walked and knew.


Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 6, 2020, at 11:49 AM, Robert H. HIRST <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Posting this for a friend. Seems like a good opportunity for the deeply
> informed experts on this Forum to publish their wisdom
> 
> *Seeking Contributors on Twain and the Tall Tale*
> 
> The scholarly journal *Quarterly*, published by the Book Club of
> California, is seeking several brief (1,000- to 2500-word) essays on any
> aspect of the American tall tale, as developed by Twain or others. Possible
> topics: Twain and the oral narrative tradition in America;
> how pioneering Western newspapers contributed to the genre of the tall
> tale; how the theme and structure of the tall tale work within a Twain
> short story or novel; etc. Due date: October 1, 2020. Publication: Spring
> 2021. Please contact Book Club of California Vice President and *Quarterly*
> guest editor Gail Jones at [log in to unmask]