Mark Twain's real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. There is a story
to the effect that one of his ancestors, by name Gregory Clement, an
adherent of Cromwell, added his voice to the condemnation of Charles
I. and was beheaded for it by Charles II. However, it is neither as
Clement nor as Clemens that the most celebrated of contemporaneous
American authors is, or has been, popularly known, but by the
pen-name of Mark Twain, which he adopted when he was piloting on the
Mississippi, more than forty years ago.
In fun or in earnest--it is hard to fathom his moods--Mr. Clemens
said lately that he was working on an autobiography which must not
be opened until he has been in his grave for a century. So far as
the main facts are concerned, however, the humorist's autobiography
is already an open book. It has been chronicled piece by piece in
a hundred magazines and in a thousand newspapers since 1868, when
"Innocents Abroad" appeared, up to the present day. Probably no other
living author has been so beset by the requests of editors and the
importunities of reporters; and assuredly no other living author has
been more amiable or more liberal in his responses. No, a good portion
of the autobiography of Mr. Clemens, or Mark Twain,--we shall use each
name impartially,--will be submitted to the public within a hundred
hours after his death--and may that inevitable conclusion be far, far
off!
As a man and as a writer Mr. Clemens has invariably carried the colors
of the typical American. A stern sense of duty and of honor, a
seldom absent sense of humor, inexhaustible energy, dauntless pluck,
unfeigned simplicity and abiding sympathy and fidelity, are the salient
characteristics of the typical American--of Mr. Clemens. At the same
time, above and beyond the writer's unexcelled powers of observation
and richness of imagination is his fine sense of artistry. "Mark
Twain's humor will live forever," Mr. Howells is reported to have said
some years ago, "because of its artistic qualities. Mark Twain portrays
and interprets real types, not only with exquisite appreciation and
sympathy, but with a force and truth of drawing that makes them
permanent." So fastidious a critic as Prof. Barrett Wendell has lately
dwelt on the constant and irresistible charm of Huckleberry Finn.
Mr. Clemens was born in a little Missouri village named Florida on
Nov. 30, 1835. His father, John Marshall Clemens, of a good Virginia
family, was one of the pioneers who, early in the century, crossed the
Alleghanies and sought new fortunes in the unsettled West. His mother,
whose maiden name was Elizabeth Lampton, also, like her husband, came
of good English stock. Her forefathers had plunged into the wilds with
Daniel Boone; and she herself has been described as "one of those
beautiful, graceful, and vivacious Kentucky girls who have contributed
so much to the reputation of that fortunate State." A cousin of Mr.
Clemens, by the way, who was one of the humorist's playmates sixty
years ago, is the Rev. Eugene Joshua Lampton, who, by some of the
people in Missouri, is called "the Bishop of the diocese." Elder
Lampton is the possessor of the original subscription list which Mr.
Clemens carried when he was a newspaper boy in Hannibal. But this is
reaching ahead a little.
They say that Mr. Clemens's mother was not only remarkably winsome but
remarkably intelligent. When the author was a youngster one of his
relatives said of him: "He's a perfect little human kaleidoscope."
"Yes," added another, "and he gets that from his mother." Samuel's
mother could "write well," which was no small accomplishment in the
south-west in the thirties.
When Samuel was about nine years old his father decided to move to
Hannibal, in the same State. The prime cause of this immigration was
the failure of the elder Clemens to make Salt River navigable; hence,
as one writer has suggested, the probable origin of the old synonym for
disaster, "gone up Salt River."
Young Clemens was sent to school in Hannibal. Some of his schoolmates
are living in the old town to-day. He seems to have enjoyed the rule
of two teachers, Miss Newcomb and Miss Lucy Davis. Physically, he was
not a strong boy, but intellectually he seems always to have been more
than a match for any boy of his age. He had two brothers, Orion, who
was considerably older, and Henry, who was the youngest of them all.
Samuel attended school until his father died in 1847. The death of the
father, who had just been elected county judge, was a hard blow to the
family. After the death of his father, the subject of our sketch went
to work for the local newspaper as a carrier. Afterward he served as
"devil" and type-setter, and then, having completed his apprenticeship
and thinking to better himself elsewhere, he set off on foot for the
East. Doing odd jobs at the case and the press, he finally reached
Philadelphia. Thence he went to New York. But the East did not please
him, and at seventeen he was back in Hannibal.
He was now on his uppers, as the phrase is, and, in addition to
its adventurous side, the financial side of steamboat life on the
Mississippi magnetized him. There, for instance, was the pilot, the
guide of the great smoking craft, a man who knew everything thought
worth knowing, a man looked up to by every merchant, every traveler
and every desperado. Samuel determined to become a pilot, and the
picturesque Capt. Horace E. Bixby took him under his wing. In his "Life
on the Mississippi" Mark Twain describes with all his eloquence the
interesting and exciting life of a pilot on the treacherous river.
And was not the pilot's a great and attractive post for a young man?
"If you will take," says Mark, "the longest street in New York, and
travel up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know
every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and little sign
by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name the
one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street
in the middle of an inky-black night, you will then have a tolerable
notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge who
carries the Mississippi River in his head. And then if you will go on
until you know every street-crossing, the character, size and position
of the crossing-stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of those
numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must
know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if
you will take half of the signs on that long street and _change their
places_ once a month, and still manage to know their new positions
accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes
without making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a
pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi."
The life on the river, with its ever-changing dramatic and entertaining
incidents, awoke the young man's sleeping imagination--gave him a
strong desire to put to use the modest literary methods which he had
acquired as an itinerant printer. Mr. Howells, too, it will be noticed,
first had the passion for authorship aroused in him by the types and
the presses.
The first sketches which Mr. Clemens sent to the local papers were
signed "Iosh," a meaningless signature, which quickly made the young
author desire something better. The improvement came to him when one
day he heard a "big black negro" who was taking soundings call out
"Mark twain!" which meant that there were two fathoms of water. The
call struck the pilot's fancy, and he kept it in mind for future use.
Mr. Clemens served in the pilot-house--one of the best school-houses
in the world, it may be said--until the war broke out. Then he ran
blockades for a while, and for two weeks he carried a gun in the
Confederate army, under General Harris. The two weeks' service cooled
his ardor, and he went farther west with his brother Orion, who,
as a sympathizer with the Union side, had received an appointment
as Secretary of the Territory of Nevada. Samuel was to act as his
brother's secretary, but as in this office he did nothing and earned
nothing, he, after an attempt at prospecting, joined the staff of the
_Virginia City Enterprise_. It was as the _Enterprise's_ correspondent
at the capital of the Territory, Carson City, that Mr. Clemens first
used the striking pseudonym "Mark Twain." But he had no taste for
routine work; or, rather, his manner of garnishing, often with his
stinging satire, his routine work, did not suit the taste of the editor
of the _Enterprise_, and at the end of six months Mark Twain stamped
the dust of Nevada from his shoes and struck out for California, where
he readily secured employment on the _Union_. In the spring of 1865 he
took an interest with Bret Harte in a short-lived weekly called _The
Californian_, and some of the humorous articles which he wrote for that
publication were widely copied in the East. Later the _Union_ sent him
to the Hawaiian Islands to describe the sugar industry. His work as a
correspondent was very successful, and so was the lecture tour which he
made in California when he returned.
Major Pond, by the way, relates that Mark Twain committed his lecture
to memory and was entirely confident of success; still, desiring
to forestall even the possibility of failure, he arranged with some
friend of his--Major Pond has forgotten her name--to sit in a box
and start the applause if he should look in her direction and stroke
his mustache. "Instead of failing, however," the Major reports, "the
lecture started propitiously, and that caused Mark to forget his
instructions to the lady. By and by, unconsciously, when the audience
was filled to the neck with pleasure and sore with laughter, he
unwittingly turned to the box where his friend sat and pulled his
mustache. At the time he was saying nothing particularly good or funny,
but the anxious lady took his action for the signal, and almost broke
her fan on the edge of the box in a fury of applause." It took all the
nerve which Mark had accumulated among the gamblers and crevasses of
the Mississippi to pass through the embarrassment.
In 1867 Mr. Clemens published his first book, "The Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches," of which about four
thousand copies were sold. That same year he went to Europe with the
excursionists aboard the Quaker City.
This excursion proved to be the turning point in his career. He had a
commission to write sketches of the journey for the _Alta Californian_.
The sketches were duly published, and were then collected and offered
to a publisher for marketing in book form. The material did not appeal
to the publisher; it was startlingly uncut and undried. But Mark
was insistent, and by and by the book appeared under the title of
"Innocents Abroad." That book established Mark Twain's reputation as a
humorist. During the thirty-three years which have intervened between
that day and the present, Mark Twain's reputation has been maintained
at a matchless height. No one has been deemed worthy by the reading
public--which, after all, is the Supreme Court in literary matters--to
be called his rival. And since the publication of "Innocents Abroad"
Mark Twain's career has been public property, with no signs, no fences,
not even a dog therein to bark at night.
Mark Twain's career stands unequalled in the literary history of
America. He has been honored as an author and as a lecturer in almost
every part of the world. He made a fortune and lost it; and now he is
making another.
The literary historian must record in his case the prodigious
achievement of an author remaining for at least thirty-three years--and
who knows how many more will follow?--in almost steady demand in print
and on the platform.
But in more than a literary sense was that excursion to Europe on the
Quaker City the turning-point in Mark Twain's career, for it was on
that memorable journey that he met Miss Olivia L. Langdon of Elmira,
N. Y., who afterward became his wife; who is the subject of the most
eloquent words which he ever penned, and who, if we are to believe
their long-termed friend, Major Pond, "makes his works so great."
"LEW" WALLACE
Gen. "Lew" Wallace is the author of the most popular story ever written
by an American. "Ben Hur" has been translated into every language which
can boast of a literature. In the summer of 1900 it was estimated that
nine hundred thousand copies of the book had been sold. It is safe to
say that by this time the million mark has been reached. This literary
phenomenon is enlarged by the fact that "Ben-Hur" has never appeared
in a cheap, that is, a paper-covered, edition. The General has been
urged repeatedly to authorize the publication of such an edition, but
his refusal has been firm from the first. A friend of his who once
heard the author repeat his refusal, exclaimed: "Good for you!" It is
a question whether this friendly enthusiasm served any high purpose.
If, as has often been reported, "Ben Hur" has converted many readers to
Christianity, then its circulation might well be furthered in every way
possible.
We mention this circumstance because of the half-sacred nature which,
not simply in the minds of emotional readers but also in the mind of
the stern-charactered author himself, the book has been gradually
assuming. A few years ago General Wallace, while on a lecture tour
among the big cities, related how "Ben Hur" was conceived and brought
forth. He frankly admitted that prior to its conception, his religious
views were unstable. But as the ideas took hold of him, as chapter
followed chapter, as the central figure emerged under his pen from
the mist of the early years in Bethlehem into the divine glow of the
later years around Jerusalem, his own life underwent changes, until at
length, when the work was done, he stepped forth a militant Christian
for the first time in his life. We have heard many authors describe the
manner in which their books were born, but Lew Wallace's description
of the birth of "Ben Hur," for impressiveness and for entertainment,
stands alone.
If the General had done nothing else but write the tale of Christ his
fame would be certain of outlasting generations. But, as a matter of
fact, the wonderful book represents only one of his many qualifications
to sit among the Immortals, as we shall see presently.
The author was born in Brookville, Ind., on April 10, 1827. His father
was David Wallace, who, after graduation from West Point and a two
years' service in the army, adopted the profession of law and went to
live in the little Indiana town. Six years after Lewis was born his
father was elected lieutenant governor by the Whigs, and three years
later he was elected governor. From 1841 to 1843 Governor Wallace
represented his district in Congress. His political career was brought
to a close simply, it is said, because he voted for an appropriation
to assist Professor Morse to establish telegraph communication between
Baltimore and Washington. Lewis's mother was Esther Test, a daughter
of a well-known Indiana judge, who is described as a woman of marked
beauty and culture, and to whom may be traced the son's artistic and
literary genius. She died in 1837, but her children were fortunate to
be reared and trained by a woman of extraordinarily strong character,
Zerelda Saunders, the daughter of an Indianapolis doctor, who, when she
had devotedly completed her performance of the none too attractive
duties of a stepmother, worked for the causes of temperance and equal
suffrage, according to a woman who knew her well, with "eloquence,
dignity, enthusiasm and conscientiousness."
General Wallace avoided school. Thus he missed the basis which
erudition demands, but he at least improved his passion for art and
for literature. What he enjoyed most was to stroll out of town to the
wild-grown fields and woods, and there he would read his favorite books
and study nature. Not one of our authors knows nature more intimately.
In fact, in those juvenile days he thought seriously of becoming an
artist; and though, if the thought had ever been realized, literature
would have lost much, still art might have gained in equal proportion.
For at the General's home in Crawfordsville are some excellent examples
of his skill with the brush. One of his notable pictures represents
the conspirators concerned in the assassination of President Lincoln.
Another equally remarkable work of art is his portrait of the Sultan
of Turkey. Many of the General's friends have valuable samples of his
artistic genius.
We mention these facts to show that there was once good ground for
the author's ambition to be an artist. Yet at the age of eighteen,
just when one would expect such a talent to exert itself irresistibly,
young Wallace enlisted to fight against Mexico. He was made a second
lieutenant and ordered to guard the stores at the mouth of the Rio
Grande. In Mexico he found the material for "The Fair God," his
first novel, on which he worked occasionally for twenty years. At
the end of the Mexican war he returned to Indiana to study law, in
which respect, it will be noticed, he followed in the footsteps of
his father. Three years after his admission to the bar he married
Susan Elston, of Crawfordsville, herself of no mean literary gifts,
as her three collections of charming sketches, "The Land of the
Pueblos," "The Storied Sea," and "The Repose in Egypt," attest. The
Wallaces lived in Crawfordsville until the outbreak of the War of the
Rebellion. Thereupon the young lawyer went straight to Indianapolis
and offered his services to the governor. For a while he served as
adjutant-general. Then he took the colonelcy of a regiment of zouaves,
and with such vigor and success that early in September, 1861, he was
brevetted brigadier-general. For gallantry at Fort Donelson he was
afterwards brevetted major-general. At the close of the war he was
one of the most distinguished soldiers in the land. As a recognition
of his great services--in July, 1864, according to Secretary Stanton
and General Grant, he had saved Washington from destruction--he was
appointed to the commission which tried the assassins of Lincoln. That
duty done, he returned to Crawfordsville.
This return home signalized the real beginning of his literary career.
He was now not far from forty years of age, and he was not content to
live on his military reputation. Law had little power over him. So he
turned to the manuscript which had been growing slowly for many years;
and 1873 saw the publication of "The Fair God," the souvenir of the
author's service in the Mexican war. Compared with the average romance,
"The Fair God" possesses exceptional power and originality. "Ben-Hur"
appeared in 1880; but it must not be supposed that General Wallace gave
this second book his exclusive attention for the seven years that had
passed. It was half written when, in 1878, President Hayes appointed
the distinguished Indianian Governor of New Mexico. The visitor at the
Wallace homestead in Crawfordsville will be shown the beech tree in
the shade of which the work was done. To the way in which he works we
shall turn later. The concluding half of the tale was written at spare
moments in the governor's palace in Santa Fé, which Mrs. Wallace has
described as "the last rallying-place of the Pueblo Indians."
At first the more captious of the critics accented their discovery
that "Ben-Hur" showed no rhetorical improvement over "The Fair God";
and, though they were right, they erred sadly in trying to measure
the book with narrow rules. It has defects, as the most sympathetic
critic must admit; but the impartial critic must also admit that in
boldness and grandeur of conception and in vigor and beauty of style,
the story stands unequalled in American literature, and, in parts,
unexcelled in the romantic literature of any nation. Here and there
are unbalanced sentences, graceless phrases, misplaced words, and
interpolations that detract from the unity of effect desirable in all
works of art; but here and there, too, especially in the chapters
descriptive of the Grove of Daphne and of the chariot race, is a vivid
power at once more charming and more thrilling than anything to be
found in any other English novel. "A great historical romance," as
one of our critics remarked many years ago, "is not to be made with
reference to the square and the compass. It must be a vivid historical
impression, and at the same time a wisely considered story of life."
"Ben-Hur" adequately fulfills these two fundamental conditions.
Moreover it perfectly fulfills, delicately yet impressively, the
great moral purpose which the author imposed upon himself. As we
recall the author's narrative of the writing of the tale, this moral
purpose, beginning gently, gradually acquired a force that mastered
him completely. It was like a flood that first trickles through the
seam in the dam, and then, gathering in volume, sweeps all before
it. The characters themselves, from Christ to the faithful steward,
display the highest flight of imagination to be found in any American
novel. Indeed, many of the landscape features themselves are so
wonderfully vivid that the same praise awarded Tom Moore for his
imaginative descriptions of the East may judiciously be extended to
General Wallace. We have heard the General say that a scene which he
had regarded as purely fictitious or imaginative appeared in surprising
reality when, years after the book was published, he first visited
Palestine.
Of the tremendous sensation which "Ben-Hur" made when it appeared, and
of the phenomenal success which it has maintained even down to the
present time, it is, we presume, unnecessary to speak. The author, as
we noted before, has guarded its fame diligently, jealously; in fact,
although Lawrence Barrett urged him years ago to allow the book to be
dramatized, he did not yield to solicitation in this form until 1900.
This circumstance reminds us that the General once wrote a play called
"Commodus," but its multiplicity of leading characters has kept it in
his desk. It would bankrupt any manager in America, they told him. "The
Prince of India," the romance published in 1893, suffered, as it must
have suffered, by comparison with "Ben-Hur." Judged by itself, it is
delightful. It exemplifies the writer's remarkable creative force and
his ever-youthful enthusiasm. Probably the last notable work from the
General's pen will be the autobiography on which he has been at work
for the last few years.
General Wallace's diplomatic experience at Constantinople is worthy
of a chapter, but we must content ourselves with saying that it added
brilliancy to the honors which he had earned as a soldier and as an
author. Of late the General has been living a semi-pastoral life at his
estate in Indiana. He has himself described his daily habits:
"I begin to write at about 9 A.M. Keep at work till noon. Resume about
1.30 P.M., and leave my studio about 4. I then exercise for two hours.
I walk or ride horseback, according to the weather. When it rains I
put on a heavy pair of boots and trudge five to seven miles across the
country. I usually ride about a dozen miles. To this habit of taking
regular exercise I attribute my good health. I eat just what I want and
as much as I want. When night comes I lie down and sleep like a child,
never once waking until morning. I usually retire at 9.30 and rise at
7.30, aiming to secure nine hours' sleep. I smoke at pleasure, a pipe
or a cigar, but never a cigarette, which I consider the deadliest thing
a person can put in his mouth. The amount of work I produce in a day
varies greatly. Sometimes I write four hundred and sometimes twelve
hundred words. What I write to-day in the rough, to-morrow I revise,
perhaps reducing it to twenty words, perhaps striking out all the day's
work and beginning at the same point once more. That constitutes my
second copy. When proofs come from the publisher another revision takes
place. It consists chiefly of condensation and expurgation."
He was asked once what he considered the secret of his success. "Work,"
he answered, "and, as an author, the doing it myself with my own hand,
not by means of a typewriter, or amanuensis or stenographer. To work I
would add universal reading."
"Who is your favorite novelist?" the questioner went on.
"Sir Walter Scott."
"What is your favorite novel?"
"'Ivanhoe.'"
"And your favorite poem?"
"'Idylls of the King.'"
"What do you consider the sublimest poetry in the world?"
"You will find it in the Psalms and Job, in Homer, in Milton and in
Shakespeare."
"Who, in your judgment, are the three greatest warriors the world has
produced?"
"Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon."
"Who, in your opinion, were the greatest American statesmen?"
"George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Alexander
Hamilton is, in my judgment, the father of the American Constitution.
But that Constitution would never have been adopted save for the
support given it by the great name of George Washington."
We have said, after all, far too little of this distinguished man,
but all that we might say would hardly give the right emphasis to
the greatness of his manifold deeds and to the charm of his personal
character.
[Illustration: GEORGE W. CABLE.]