Among the cultured men of England Mark Twain had no greater admirer, or warmer friend, than Andrew Lang.  They were at one on most literary subjects, and especially so in their admiration of the life and character of Joan of Arc.  Both had written of her, and both held her to be something almost more than mortal.  When, therefore, Anatole France published his exhaustive biography of the maid of Domremy, a book in which he followed, with exaggerated minuteness and innumerable footnotes, every step of Joan’s physical career at the expense of her spiritual life, which he was inclined to cheapen, Lang wrote feelingly, and with some contempt, of the performance, inviting the author of the Personal Recollections to come to the rescue of their heroine.  “Compare every one of his statements with the passages he cites from authorities, and make him the laughter of the world” he wrote.  “If you are lazy about comparing I can make you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that they say.  When I tell you that he thinks the Epiphany (January 6, Twelfth Night) is December 25th—­Christmas Day-you begin to see what an egregious ass he is.  Treat him like Dowden, and oblige”—­a reference to Mark Twain’s defense of Harriet Shelley, in which he had heaped ridicule on Dowden’s Life of the Poet—­a masterly performance; one of the best that ever came from Mark Twain’s pen.

     Lang’s suggestion would seem to have been a welcome one.

To Andrew Lang, in London: 

New York, April 25, 1908.  Dear Mr. Lang,—­I haven’t seen the book nor any review of it, but only not very-understandable references to it—­of a sort which discomforted me, but of course set my interest on fire.  I don’t want to have to read it in French—­I should lose the nice shades, and should do a lot of gross misinterpreting, too.  But there’ll be a translation soon, nicht wahr?  I will wait for it.  I note with joy that you say:  “If you are lazy about comparing, (which I most certainly am), I can make you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that they say.”

Ah, do it for me!  Then I will attempt the article, and (if I succeed in doing it to my satisfaction,) will publish it.  It is long since I touched a pen (3 1/2 years), and I was intending to continue this happy holiday to the gallows, but—­there are things that could beguile me to break this blessed Sabbath. 
                    Yours very sincerely,
                                   S. L. Clemens.

     Certainly it is an interesting fact that an Englishman—­one of the
     race that burned Joan—­should feel moved to defend her memory
     against the top-heavy perversions of a distinguished French author.