M A R K T W A I N
American Author and Humorist
1835 - 1910
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see”
“Tom did play hokey, and he had a very good time. He got back home barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work. Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and had no adventurous, trouble-some ways.” Ch. 1
Early life :
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (pen name Mark Twain) was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. Twain is considered the greatest humorist of 19th Century American literature. His novels and stories about the Mississippi River: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1894) are still popular with modern readers.
When Twain’s father died in 1847 the family was left in financial straits, so eleven year old Samuel left school (he was in grade 5) and obtained his first of many jobs working with various newspapers and magazines including the Hannibal Courier as journeyman printer. “So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it, but I couldn't find honest employment.” He also started writing, among his first stories “A Gallant Fireman” (1851) and “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter” (1852). After traveling to and working in New York and Philadelphia for a few years he moved back to St. Louis in 1857. It was here that the lure of the elegant steamboats and festive crowds drew his attention and he became an apprentice ‘cub’ river pilot under Horace Bixby, earning his license in 1858. As a successful pilot plying his trade between St. Louis and New Orleans, Twain also grew to love the second longest river in the world which he describes affectionately in his memoir Life on the Mississippi (1883).
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
Travels :
At the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861) Clemens chose not to get involved and moved to Carson City, Nevada. After an unsuccessful attempt at gold and silver mining he joined the staff of a newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada. He first wrote under the pen name, "Mark Twain" (meaning "two fathoms" in riverboat-talk) in 1863. "Twain" wrote his first popular story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County in 1865.
He traveled to various cities in America, met Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dickens in New York, and visited various countries in Europe, Hawaii, and the Holy Land which he based Innocents Abroad (1869) on. Short stories from this period include “Advice For Little Girls” (1867) and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County” (1867). He continued to travel as a correspondent for various newspapers, and in 1869 his travel letters from Europe were collected into the popular book, "The Innocents Abroad."
Marriage and children :
In 1870 Twain married Olivia ‘Livy’ Langdon (1845-1904) with whom he would have four children. Three died before they reached their twenties but Clara (1870-1962) lived to the age of eighty-eight. The Twain’s home base was now Hartford, Connecticut, where in 1874 Twain built a home, though they traveled often. Apart from numerous short stories he wrote during this time and Tom Sawyer, Twain also collaborated on The Gilded Age (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. Connecticut to his most productive years as a writer. Between 1873 and 1889 he wrote seven novels including his Mississippi River books as well as The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
Financial troubles :
For some years Twain had lost money in various money making schemes like mining, printing machines, the Charles L. Webster Publishing Co., and The Mark Twain Self-Pasting Scrap Book though he never lost his sense of humor. In 1892, friend and fellow humorist and author Robert Barr, writing as ‘Luke Sharp’ interviewed Twain for The Idler magazine that he owned with Jerome K. Jerome. Twain’s novel The American Claimant (1892) was followed by The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson (1894), first serialized in Century Magazine. Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) was followed by Tom Sawyer, Detective in 1896. His favorite fiction novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896) was first serialized in Harper’s Magazine. By 1895, unable to control his debts, he set off on a world lecture tour to Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, New Zealand, and South Africa to pay them off. Following the Equator (1897) is his travelogue based on his tour, during which he met Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, and Booker T. Washington.
Speaking engagements :
With another successful lecture tour under his belt and now much admired and celebrated for his literary efforts, Mark, Livy and their daughter Jane settled in New York City. Yale University bestowed upon him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1901 and in 1907 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Oxford University. The same year A Horse's Tale and Christian Science (1907) were published. While traveling in Italy in 1904, Livy died in Florence. For Twain’s 70th birthday on 30 November 1905 he was fêted at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York, where he delivered his famous birthday speech, wearing his trademark all-year round white suit. That year he was also a guest of American President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt at the White House and addressed the congressional committee on copyright issues. He was also working on his biography with Albert Bigelow Paine. His daughter Jane became very sick and was committed to an institution, but died in 1909 of an epileptic seizure. In 1908 Twain had moved to his home ‘Storm field’ in Redding, Connecticut, though he still actively traveled, especially to Bermuda.
Some modern readers are offended by some of the language and content of Twain's books. One particularly sensitive example of this is the free use of the word "nigger" in "Huckleberry Finn." Twain used contemporary language in his books to bring his characters to life. This realistic prose style influenced numerous American writers. Ironically, for his time Twain was liberal on racial and many social issues. The underlying themes of "Huckleberry Finn" support a fundamental equality for people of all races.
About literary figures of his time, however, Twain has relatively little to say. He dislikes Bret Harte, whom he dismisses as “always bright but never brilliant”; offers a sad portrait of an aged and infirm
Harriet Beecher Stowe; and lavishly praises his friend William Dean Howells. He reserved criticism of novelists whose work he disliked (
Henry James, George Eliot) for his letters.
Critics, though, are another story. “I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value,” Twain writes. “However, let it go,” he adds. “It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.”
Later life and death :
As Twain's life and career progressed he became increasingly pessimistic, losing much of the humorous, cocky tone of his earlier years. More and more of his work expressed the gloomy view that all human motives are ultimately selfish. Even so Twain is best remembered as a humorist who used his sharp wit and comic exaggeration to attack the false pride and self-importance he saw in humanity.
Mark Twain died on 21 April 1910 in Redding, Connecticut and now rests in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Livy’s hometown of Elmira, New York State, buried beside her and the children. A memorial statue and cenotaph in the Eternal Valley Memorial Park of Los Angeles, California states: “Beloved Author, Humorist, and Western Pioneer, This Original Marble Statue Is The Creation Of The Renowned Italian Sculptor Spartaco Palla Of Pietrasanta.” Twain suffered many losses in his life including the deaths of three of his children, and accumulated large debts which plagued him for many years, but at the time of his death he had grown to mythic proportions as the voice of a spirited and diverse nation, keen observer and dutiful reporter, born and died when Halley’s Comet was visible in the skies.
“Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all-the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.”
Twain’s last written statement
