Routledge, in his Men of the Time, says that Samuel Langhorne Clemens,
better known by the _nom de plume_ of 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 the _nom de plume_ of 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 all the 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
the publishing 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 sale as 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 he is
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 a _post mortem_ examination
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 the
billiard 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 following _bon 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.”
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,