1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the
lily in the Gilded Age.

In 1880 Mark took a few pot shots at license in Art and Literature in his
Tramp Abroad, "I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is
allowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times--but the
privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed
within the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet could
portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have
plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed
to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech.
But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject;
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every
pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has
been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent
nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing
it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing
about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid
marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and
ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.

"At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of
a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they
hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatures have been
thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious
generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery
that exists in the world.... and there, against the wall, without
obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the