SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS.
Routledge, in his Men of the Time, says that Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by thenom de plumeof Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Monroe county, Missouri, November 30, 1835. During the last ten years newspaper reports have made Mark Twain the native of a dozen different localities. According to these reports Mark has been born in Adair county, Kentucky; in Fentress county, Tennessee; in Hannibal, Missouri; and in various other places. However, it is proper for me to state that Mark was born in but one place, and all at one time. Routledge is evidently correct as to both time and place.
The parents of Mark Twain were married in Kentucky and lived for some years in that State. His mother states that he was always an incorrigible boy, filled with roving imaginations from his very earliest age, and could never be persuaded or forced to attend to his books and study, as other boys did. He lost his father at the age of twelve, and soon after left school for good.When about fifteen years of age, Mark came into the house one day and asked his mother for five dollars. On being questioned as to what he wanted with it, he said he wanted it to start out traveling with. He failed to obtain the five dollars, but he assured his mother that he would go all the same, and he really went, nor did the old lady ever set eyes on him again until he had become a man. Starting out on his travels he learned the printing business, and supported himself by working at the case.
Clemens was but seventeen when he resolved to become a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river. He learned the river in due time from St. Louis to New Orleans, a distance of 1,375 miles, and followed the occupation of pilot until he was twenty-four years old. In 1861 an elder brother was appointed Lieutenant-governor of Nevada Territory. He offered Mark the position of private secretary, and the young man deserted the river and went West. After a few months he abandoned the life of a private secretary, and started out to seek a fortune in the mines. In this he was unsuccessful, although at one time, for the space of a few minutes, Mark owned the famous Comstock lode, and was worth millions. He found all this out after he sold the claim.
After this, Clemens became a reporter and correspondent,writing to the Territorial Enterprise and other papers, and occasionally doing work at the case. He wrote at times over thenom de plumeof Mark Twain, a title he adopted from his experiences as a pilot. It was during these years, between 1862 and 1866, that Mark perpetrated many broad and practical jokes, using his journalistic position as a channel. These publications gave him considerable notoriety in the West, and especially on the Pacific coast. For several years he was local editor of the Virginia City Enterprise, but in 1864 he removed to San Francisco, where he was offered a good position on a paper there. In 1865 he went to the Sandwich Islands, to write up the sugar plantations. His letters were very readable and were published mostly in the Sacramento Union. All this time Mark was struggling with legitimate literary work, and published occasional sketches in literary weeklies, which were widely copied. On his return from Hawaii he lectured for a short time in California and Nevada. Some of his sketches having attracted attention in the East, Mark sailed for New York in the early part of 1867, and published a small volume of sketches, entitled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras, and Other Sketches. The book sold well in the United States, and was afterwards republished in England. Nearly allthe sketches that appeared in the book had previously been published in the San Francisco papers.
In 1868, Mr. Clemens formed one of a party who sailed in the steamship Quaker City, for an extended excursion to Palestine and the Holy Land. He went in the capacity of a newspaper correspondent as well as for pleasure, and wrote interesting letters while abroad to the California papers. Returning to America he gathered his letters together and re-wrote them in book form, which he called Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim’s Progress. The work was very funny, yet notwithstanding the rollicking satire, and laugh-provoking character of the book, the author met with the greatest difficulty in getting it published. He sent his manuscript to the leading publishers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and they all refused it. Mark’s literary vanity was sorely wounded, and he was about determined to throw his book into the fire when a literary friend, Albert D. Richardson, now deceased, to whom he handed the manuscript, pronounced it very clever and offered to take it with him to Hartford, Connecticut, where was located the American Publishing Company, a firm that had issued several books for Richardson. After much talk and discussion among the directors of thepublishing company, the book was finally issued. Its success was extraordinary, and since its publication over 200,000 copies of the book have been sold. The publishing company cleared $75,000 by the venture.
In 1869 Twain tried journalism for a time in Buffalo, where he held an editorial position on a daily paper. While there he fell in love with a young lady, a sister of “Dan”—made famous in Innocents Abroad—but her father, a gentleman of wealth and position, looked unfavorably upon his daughter’s alliance with a Bohemian literary character.
“I like you,” he said to Mark, “but what do I know of your antecedents? Who is there to answer for you, anyhow?”
After reflecting a few moments, Mark thought some of his old California friends would speak a good word for him. The prospective father-in-law wrote letters of inquiry to several residents of San Francisco, to whom Clemens referred him, and with one exception, the letters denounced him bitterly, especially deriding his capacity for becoming a good husband. Mark sat besides his fiancee when the letters were read aloud by the old gentleman. There was a dreadful silence for a moment, and then Mark stammered: “Well, that’s pretty rough on a fellow, anyhow?”
His betrothed came to the rescue however, and overturned the mass of testimony against him by saying, “I’ll risk you, anyhow.”
The terrible father-in-law lived in Elmira, New York, and there Mark was married. He had told his friends in the newspaper office at Buffalo, to select him a suite of rooms in a first-class boarding house in the city, and to have a carriage at the depot to meet the bride and groom. Mark knew they would do it, and gave himself no more anxiety about it. When he reached Buffalo, he found a handsome carriage, a beautiful span of horses and a driver in livery. They drove him up to a handsome house on an aristocratic street, and as the door was opened, there were the parents of the bride to welcome them home. The old folks had arrived on the quiet by a special train. After Mark had gone through the house and examined its elegant finishings, he was notified officially that he had been driven by his own coachman, in his own carriage, to his own house. They say tears came to his wonderfully dark and piercing eyes, and that all he could say was “Well, this is a first-class swindle.”
Not long after his marriage, Mark settled down in Hartford, and invested capital in insurance companies there. His second book, Roughing It, appeared in 1871, and had almost as large a saleas its predecessor. He visited England a few months later, and arranged for the publication of his works there in four volumes. On his return he issued his third book, in partnership with Charles Dudley Warner, which was styled The Gilded Age. This was followed by the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a book for boys, in 1876. These books all commanded an immense sale, and several editions have been exhausted. The American Publishing Company of Hartford represented these works in this country, Chatto & Windus published them in England, and Mark’s continental publisher was Tauchnitz of Leipzig.
April 11, 1878, Mark Twain sailed for Europe on the steamship Holsatia. He was accompanied by his family, and after drifting about for some months on foreign shores, settled down to spend the summer in Germany. In 1879 he returned to his home in Hartford, and after several months of work produced another book, A Tramp Abroad. This work had a ready and a very large sale, and has become quite popular. In 1881 he issued another book through a Boston house, The Prince and Pauper. This also has had a large sale in this and other countries.
Among his other accomplishments Clemens is a politician, and has done good service on the stump for the Republican party. For all this heis the proud possessor of the title of Honorable.
Many of the most ludicrous scenes in the works of Mark Twain are taken from life. The steamboat scene in the adventures of Colonel Sellers, was witnessed by him when a young man. His adventure with a dead man was in his father’s office in Missouri. His description of the horror creeping over him, as he saw a ghastly hand lying in the moonlight; how he tried to shut his eyes and tried to count, and opened them in time to see the dead man lying on the floor stiff and stark, with a ghastly wound in his side, and lastly how he beat a terrified retreat through the window, carrying the sash with him, is vividly remembered by every reader of The Gilded Age. The whole thing transpired just as Mark recorded it—the man was killed in a street fight almost in front of Mr. Clemens’ door, was taken in there while apost mortemexamination was held, and there left until the next morning. During the night Mark came in, and the scene he described was really enacted.
The Clemens mansion in Hartford is a model of architectural beauty, and is elegantly finished in the interior. In the library, over the large fire-place, is a brass plate with the inscription in old English text: “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.” Mark does not use the library for his study, but does nearly all his writing in thebilliard room at the top of the house. It is a long room, with sloping sides, is light and airy, and very quiet. In this room Mark writes at a plain table, with his reference books lying scattered about him. He makes it an invariable rule to do a certain amount of literary work every day, and his working hours are made continuous by his not taking a mid-day meal. He destroys much manuscript, and it is said he rewrote five hundred pages of one of his popular books. Mark is an industrious worker, and continues his labors the year round. In summer he retreats to his villa on the Hudson, or to a little cottage in the mountains near Elmira, New York. There he finds the most quiet solitude, and there he works undisturbed. Mark is fond of his home life, and of his three beautiful children. He has achieved a notable success as a lecturer, both in this country and in England.
The humor of Mark Twain is never forced. It bubbles up of its own accord, and is always fresh. In his recent books he shows less of genuine wit than in his earlier works perhaps, but yet his writings are always readable. He sent me, not long since, a printed slip of his biography, taken from Men of the Time, and on the margins of this appeared the followingbon mot:
“My Dear Clemens:“I haven’t any humorous biography—the facts don’t admit of it. I had this sketch from Men of the Time printed on slips to enable me to study my history at my leisure.S. L. Clemens.”
“My Dear Clemens:
“I haven’t any humorous biography—the facts don’t admit of it. I had this sketch from Men of the Time printed on slips to enable me to study my history at my leisure.S. L. Clemens.”
There is a popular feeling abroad in the land to the effect that Mark Twain is a very funny man, and that he is seldom sober. This is a grave mistake. Mr. Clemens is by nature a very serious, thoughtful man. True he seldom writes that which is not humorous, but occasionally he pens a very careful, serious communication, like the following for instance, which he addressed to a young friend of mine:
“Hartford, January 16, 1881.“My Dear Boy:—How can I advise another man wisely, out of such a capital as a life filled with mistakes? Advise him how to avoid the like? No—for opportunities to make the same mistakes do not happen to any two men. Your own experiences may possibly teach you, but another man’s can’t. I do not know anything for a person to do but just peg along, doing the things that offer, and regretting them the next day. It is my way, and everybody’s.“Truly yours,S. L. Clemens.”
“Hartford, January 16, 1881.
“My Dear Boy:—How can I advise another man wisely, out of such a capital as a life filled with mistakes? Advise him how to avoid the like? No—for opportunities to make the same mistakes do not happen to any two men. Your own experiences may possibly teach you, but another man’s can’t. I do not know anything for a person to do but just peg along, doing the things that offer, and regretting them the next day. It is my way, and everybody’s.
“Truly yours,
S. L. Clemens.”
A writer in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, not many years since, as follows: “There have been moments in the lives of various kind hearted and respectable citizens of California and Nevada, when, if Mark Twain were up before them as members of a vigilance committee for any mild crime, such as mule stealing or arson, it is to be feared his shrift would have been short. What a dramatic picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! Mark, before those honest men, infuriated by his practical jokes, trying to show them what an innocent creature he was when it came to mules, or how the only policy of fire insurance he held had lapsed, and how void of guile he was in any direction, and all with that inimitable drawl, that perplexed countenance, and the peculiar scraping back of the left foot, like a boy speaking his first piece at school. It is but fair to say that the fun Mark mixed up for citizens in those days, was not altogether appreciated in the midst of it, for some one, touched too sharply,surge bat amari aliquid, and Mark had another denouncer joined to the wounded throng. . . . . . He is keenly sensitive to sympathy or criticism, and relates, as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life, a six hours’ ride across England, his fellow traveler an Englishman, who, shortly after they started, drew forth the first volume of the Englishedition of Innocents Abroad from his pocket, and calmly perused it from beginning to end without a smile. Then he drew forth the second volume and read it as solemnly as the first. Mark says he thought he should die, yet John Bull was probably enjoying it after his own undemonstrative style.”
In another instance the same writer says of Mark Twain: “This literary wag has performed some services which entitle him to the gratitude of his generation. He has run the traditional Sunday-school book boy through his literary mangle and turned him out washed and ironed into a proper state of flatness and collapse. That whining, canting, early-dying anæmic creature was the nauseating model held up to the full-blooded mischievous lads of by-gone years as worthy their imitation. He poured his religious hypocrisy over every honest pleasure a boy had. He whined his lachrymose warnings on every playground. He vexed their lives. So, when Mark grew old enough he went gunning for him, and lo, wherever his soul may be, the skin of the strumous young pietist is now neatly tacked up to view on the Sunday-school door of to-day as a warning, and the lads of to-day see no particular charm in a priggish, hydropathical existence.”
Samuel Langhorne Clemens is in the high tideof his success. He is yet a young man, as far as the literary life goes. Outside of his book making, he has given the fun-loving public some admirable things in the way of wit and humor through the pages of the leading magazines. The originality of his writings in the past is retained in his work of the present, and he gives promise of many original things in the future. He has a liking for the monotonous labor of literary work, his health is as yet unimpaired, he has been fortunate in love and in financial affairs, is consequently happy, and will yet give to the world of letters many quaint, bright, and original ideas. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are without a doubt the two leading humorists of the present century. While we have the Artemus that was, we possess the Mark that is. He leads the van of humorists who eke out an existence in the present. He is the prince of funny men. Long live the prince.