Samuel Langhorne Clemens, hereafter Mark Twain, tells a captivating, historically accurate version of Joan of Arc’s life in his Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. As a storyteller first and historian second, he plays with fact and fiction in all sorts of ways to entertain the reader and guide him through an investigation into the Truth of Joan’s life, something my class calls construction of memoir.

He does this primarily through his narrator, Sieur Louis de Conte, and two other characters. Each represent distinct historical renderings who Joan was.

Sieur Louis de Conte – Sincere Historian

The fictitious character of Sieur Louis de Conte is Joan’s lifelong friend and confidante. His unique relationship with Joan allows him to narrate the story from the perspective of an eyewitness. For example, Twain places Sieur Louis off in the shadows during one of Joan’s heavenly visions. He appoints Sieur Louis to the position of page and secretary when Joan assumes military command of the French army. Finally, he even gives Sieur Louis a front row seat as a scribe during her trial and condemnation in an ecclesiastical court controlled by the English.

His presence at these key periods makes him the perfect person to describe the “real” Joan. Indeed, Sieur Louis’s narration continually reminds the reader that he was there to see things with his own eyes. He even goes so far as to swear under oath that he is truthfully testifying to Joan’s life just as it was.

Behind this feigned presence, however, Twain masterfully tells another story, a story about the construction of memoir in all its possibilities and limitations. He offers subtle clues throughout the text that he believes Joan was really called by God. Yet, he continually admonishes the reader to make their own determination and to be skeptical of even first-hand accounts such as Sieur Louis’s. In fact, Twain cleverly warns the reader there is more to Sieur Louis than what meets the eye. Not only is he Joan’s confidante, but he is also Twain’s alter-ego.

It is no coincidence that Twain’s real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, carries the same initials as Sieur Louis de Conte. Nor is it accidental that “conte” means “story” in French, thereby symbolizing Twain’s ultimate hand in the writing of Joan’s memoir. In this way, Twain readily acknowledges the inevitable insertion of the author into the construction of memoir, something most memoirs often ignore in an attempt to sound objective even when they could not possibly be so.

Twain’s voice through the character of Sieur Louis seems to whisper between the lines, “Believe in Joan’s spiritual calling because you have sincerely questioned it, not because you believe my sincerity in describing it.”

Edmond Aubrey, “The Paladin” – Misguided Historian

Edmond Aubrey, whom Twain ironically nicknames “The Paladin,” is also a fictitious character. He, too, knew Joan during her childhood and joined her military campaign, eventually becoming her standard bearer.

Aubrey delights in his nickname because it likens him to one of Charlemagne’s legendary knights. Thanks to his large ego, however, he is unable to see his sublime inferiority to them. Back in Domremy, he boasts to Joan and others of wanting to join the French war effort but must later be forcibly dragged off to do so. Once enlisted, he tells stories of his fearless magnificence in battle when, in reality, he continually seeks retreat. He even tells of being present at major events in Joan’s life, such as her first audience with King Charles, simply to give himself greater status.     

Like Sieur Louis, the Paladin weaves his story into that of Joan’s. Unlike Sieur Louis, though, the Paladin wants some of her glory and unabashedly lies to attain it. His distortions, however, are given playfully and without the intent of wounding Joan’s image. For him, lying is a type of innocent compulsion. He simply cares more for himself than her—at least at first.

The Paladin eventually undergoes a dramatic character transformation because of Joan. She tells him, “Of old you were a fantastic talker, but there is a man in you, and I will bring it out” (97). At last, he gains the courage he so long talked of and even dies in battle trying to protect Joan.

The Paladin is much like any of Joan’s historians who rejected her religious calling at first. Their conversion requires sincere, personal reflection alongside serious historical analysis. Like the Paladin, those historians were simply misguided at first and unable to place their faith in anyone or anything but themselves.

Pierre Cauchon – False Historian

Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, stands alone in Twain’s three representations of historians in that he is the only one who really existed. His corrupt leadership role in Joan’s trial of condemnation is well-documented as is his designation as a heretic in her posthumous trial of rehabilitation some twenty years later.

Cauchon’s singular goal was to find Joan guilty of heresy. He spent day after day of her five-month-long trial twisting her words, fabricating information, and altering court proceedings to suit his designs.

Twain clearly disrespected Cauchon and the false construction of Joan he proliferated. Through the voice of Sieur Louis, Twain calls him various insulting epithets such as “pig” and “bastard of Satan” (284, 224).  He even condemns Cauchon to Hell countless times.

There is little doubt Twain was disgusted by hypocritical men like Cauchon who feigned to represent Truth. Instead, Cauchon served his own self-interest and unremorsefully sentenced an innocent girl to death. Through Personal Recollections, Twain reminds the reader that even though men like Cauchon will always exist, men like Sieur Louis and the Paladin will nonetheless rise up to challenge them as well.

We’ll look at some of the types of historical constructions Twain was symbolically referencing in the next post.

Joan of Arc’s story has been told and retold a seemingly endless number of times. Since the dramatic highlights differ in each telling and even the facts of her life tend to vary, it is hard to single out one story above the rest, that is—until you read Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. In order to understand what makes his version so special, we have to start with background on his interest in Joan’s life.

Mark and Joan — Unlikely “Friends”

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, more commonly known as Mark Twain, developed an interest in Joan of Arc by what he would have us think was a type of divine intervention. In 1849, during his early days working as a printer in Hannibal, Missouri, he claims to have grabbed a sheet of paper blowing in the wind while he was walking about the streets one day.

His curiosity piqued as he began reading about a French country maiden unjustly imprisoned in Rouen. The page, as it turned out, was from a history of Joan of Arc, someone whom Clemens alleges he previously had never heard of. Thus began his lifelong interest in learning as much about Joan’s history as possible. His biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, refers to this episode as a “turning point” in Clemens’s life after which he gained an ever increasing appetite to learn about History.

Clemens dedicated twelve years of research plus two years of writing to Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, though this did not ensue until much later in his career after he had already made a name for himself publishing such works as Huckleberry Finn. By that point, he was world-renowned for his unique “brand” of writing, and his general dislike of religious organizations—despite having been raised a Presbyterian—was well-known.

His decision to publish a historical biography on a Catholic saint would defy expectations and possibly hinder the success of his work. Recognizing this and fearful his work would not be reviewed on its own merits, he initially published the work as a year-long serial in Harper’s Magazine under the alias of “Sieur Louis de Conte.” This nom de plume, however, fooled very few, and Clemens’s concerns played out just as he had worried.

Reviews were harsh. The Boston Literary World criticized Twain for using modern, American idioms in a story set in fifteenth century France. Similarly, the Brooklyn Eagle said Joan’s characterization was that of “a nice little American girl of the mid-nineteenth century.” The New York Bachelor of Arts took its criticism a step further, saying Clemens turned “into a prosy, goody-goody writer of Sunday-school tales in his old age.” The criticisms got more personal from there, with one reviewer lamenting, “Mark Twain as a historical novelist is not at his best.”

Clemens was sorely disappointed. He had hoped readers would glean a better, more accurate understanding of the historical icon whom he had come to revere. Instead, he had become the focus.  

Nevertheless, Clemens felt Personal Recollections was the best of his works. It seems his feelings are shared by the masses who have purchased and read his work in the hundred-and-some-odd years since its initial publication. Such is often the case with classics. Time is the only real critic that matters in the end.

Conclusion

So why did Clemens dedicate so much time to learning about Joan of Arc and risk his career in the telling of her life? Of course the reasons are many, so we need only state the obvious. He not only liked her but also believed in her story at some level. What’s more, he felt it important to share Joan’s story with the world.

Although his critics saw Personal Recollections as a departure from his other works like Huckleberry Finn, I beg to differ. Joan, albeit a saint in her afterlife, was a firestorm in life much like Huck. Both defied social conventions and suffered great injustices for the sake of others. Moreover, just as Huck unwittingly fought against the tyranny of slavery, Joan unwittingly fought against the tyranny of a corrupted Church and State alliance.

In both works, Clemens tugs at the moral conscience of society. He challenges his readers to question the world they live in and make their own judgements about right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice, truth and falsehood. And that is precisely why Personal Recollections is such a powerful story for students and why it works for so well as the foundation for an investigation into Joan’s life.

We’ll take a closer look Clemens’s perspective, given through the eyes of his narrator Sieur Louis de Conte in the next post.  

My grandmother gave my brothers and sisters and I many saints books when we were little. I loved to flip through them. I would read the stories and gaze at the pictures, always wondering how much was true. Did Saint Francis really talk to animals? Did God really give Saint Lucy a new pair of eyes when hers were plucked out?

Now as a teacher, I find my students asking the same questions, and the truth is that I really don’t know any better today than I did when I was little girl. It is extremely hard to draw the line between fact and fiction, legend and history when it comes to the saints. To deny a single aspect of their story can feel tantamount to a loss of faith. Likewise, to accept it all can feel absurdly naïve.

So, how does one reconcile these extremes? The short answer is—we can’t. We have to accept our own limitations and make room for any apparent contradictions in reality. After all, that’s what faith is all about. 

The trouble is, that answer is terribly unsatisfactory, especially for a child. For that reason, I have tried to develop a framework for students to decide for themselves what they can and want to legitimately believe.

In this series, I am going to show how I use that framework for my class’s study of Saint Joan of Arc, a peasant-turned-soldier who played a critical role in the French victory over the English during the Hundred Years War and ultimately died a brutal martyr’s death at the fiery stake.

Like so many saints, questions abound as to who Joan really was: a devout Catholic, a crazed lunatic, or something else entirely. Perhaps the world will never know, but we can certainly try to find out by comparing and questioning the myriad of stories about her.

My class does this by drawing together the history of the Hundred Years War, Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, along with several other great literary works and spiritual reflections. Thus, this study cuts across Religion, History, and Literature.

As pointed out in the last post, saints like Joan of Arc make for illuminating case studies across disciplines. Joan, fascinating in her own right, reveals so much more than the life of a single individual. She is also a model of the time in which she lived as well as a leader for countless future generations. 

In subsequent posts, I will present a basic summary of the life of Joan of Arc, followed by a breakdown of Mark Twain’s depiction both as an author and a narrator. Then, I will summarize several other popular stories about Joan that have arisen over the years. Finally, I will share the methods I use to help students make sense of these various characterizations of her.

By the end, I hope you will feel like you really know Joan of Arc and the world she lived in, even if aspects of her life remain a mystery.

Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.