“Art transmitting the simplest feelings of common life,
but such, always, as are accessible to all men in the
whole world the art of common life--the art of a people
--universal art.”
TOLSTOY: What is Art?
Some years ago a group of Mark Twain's friends, in a spirit of fun,
addressed a letter to:
MARK TWAIN
GOD KNOWS WHERE.
Though taking a somewhat circuitous route, the letter went unerringly to
its goal; and it was not long before the senders of that letter received
the laconic, but triumphant reply: “He did.” They now turned the tables
on the jubilant author, who equally as quickly received a letter
addressed:
MARK TWAIN
THE DEVIL KNOWS WHERE.
It seemed that “he” did, too!
In his lifetime Mark Twain won a fame that was literally world-wide
--a fame, indeed, which seemed to extend to realms peopled by noted
theological characters. From very humble beginnings--he used
facetiously to speak of coming up from the “very dregs of society”!
--Mark Twain achieved international eminence and repute. This
accomplishment was due to the power of brain and personality alone. In
this sense, his career is unprecedented and unparalleled in the history
of American literature.
It is a mark of the democratic independence of America that she has
betrayed a singular indifference to the appraisal of her literature at
the hands of foreign criticism. Upon her writers who have exhibited
derivative genius--Irving, Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow--American
criticism has lavished the most extravagant eulogiums. The three
geniuses who have made permanent contributions to world-literature, who
have either embodied in the completest degree the spirit of American
democracy, or who have had the widest following of imitators and
admirers in foreign countries, still await their final and just deserts
at the hands of critical opinion in their own land. The genius of Edgar
Allan Poe gave rise to schools of literature on the continent of Europe;
yet in America his name must remain for years debarred from inclusion in
a so-called Hall of Fame! Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, the two great
interpreters and embodiments of America, represent the supreme
contribution of democracy to universal literature. In so far as it is
legitimate for anyone to be denominated a “self-made man” in literature,
these men are justly entitled to such characterization. They owe
nothing to European literature--their genius is supremely original,
native, democratic. The case of Mark Twain, which is our present
concern, is a literary phenomenon which imposes upon criticism,
peculiarly upon American criticism, the distinct obligation of tracing
the steps in his unhalting climb to an eminence that was international
in its character, and of defining those signal qualities, traits,
characteristics--individual, literary, social, racial, national--which
compassed his world-wide fame. For if it be true that the judgment of
foreign nations is virtually the judgment of posterity, then is Mark
Twain already a classic.
Upon the continent of Europe, Mark Twain first received notable
recognition in France at the hands of that brilliant woman, Mme. Blanc
(Th. Bentzon), who devoted so much of her energies to the popularization
of American literature in Europe. That one of her series of essays upon
the American humorists which dealt with Mark Twain appeared in the
'Revue des Deux Mondes' in 1872; in it appeared her admirable
translation of 'The Jumping Frog'. There is no cause for surprise that
a scholarly Frenchwoman, reared on classic models and confined by rigid
canons of art, should stand aghast at this boisterous, barbaric,
irreverent jester from the wilds of America. When it is remembered that
Mark Twain began his career as one of the sage-brush writers and gave
free play to his passion for horseplay, his desire to “lay a mine” for
the other fellow, and his defiance of the traditional and the classic,
it is not to be wondered at that Mme. Blanc, while honouring him with
recognition in the most authoritative literary journal in the world,
could not conceal an expression of amazement over his enthusiastic
acceptance in English-speaking countries.
“Mark Twain's 'Jumping Frog' should be mentioned in the first place
as one of his most popular little stories--almost a type of the
rest. It is, nevertheless, rather difficult for us to understand,
while reading this story, the 'roars of laughter' that it excited
in Australia and in India, in New York and in London; the numerous
editions of it which appeared; the epithet of 'inimitable' that the
critics of the English press have unanimously awarded to it.
“We may remark that a Persian of Montesquieu, a Huron of Voltaire,
even a simple Peruvian woman of Madame de Graffigny, reasons much
more wisely about European civilization than an American of San
Francisco. The fact is, that it is not sufficient to have wit, or
even natural taste, in order to appreciate works of art.
“It is the right of humorists to be extravagant; but still common
sense, although carefully hidden, ought sometimes to make itself
apparent. . . . In Mark Twain the Protestant is enraged against
the pagan worship of broken marble statues--the democrat denies
that there was any poetic feeling in the middle ages. The sublime
ruins of the Coliseum only impressed him with the superiority of
America, which punishes its criminals by forcing them to work for
the benefit of the State, over ancient Rome, which could only draw
from the punishments which it inflicted the passing pleasure of a
spectacle.
“In the course of this voyage in company with Mark Twain, we at
length discover, under his good-fellowship and apparent
ingenuousness, faults which we should never have expected. He has
in the highest degree that fault of appearing astonished at
nothing--common, we may say, to all savages. He confesses himself
that one of his great pleasures is to horrify the guides by his
indifference and stupidity. He is, too, decidedly envious. . . .
We could willingly pardon him his patriotic self-love, often
wounded by the ignorance of Europeans, above all in what concerns
the New World, if only that national pride were without mixture of
personal vanity; but how comes it that Mark Twain, so severe upon
those poor Turks, finds scarcely anything to criticize in Russia,
where absolutism has nevertheless not ceased to flourish? We need
not seek far for the cause of this indulgence: the Czar received
our ferocious republicans; the Empress, and the Grand Duchess Mary,
spoke to them in English.
“Taking the Pleasure Trip on the Continent altogether, does it
merit the success it enjoys? In spite of the indulgence that we
cannot but show to the judgments of a foreigner; while recollecting
that those amongst us who have visited America have fallen,
doubtless, under the influence of prejudices almost as dangerous as
ignorance, into errors quite as bad--in spite of the wit with which
certain pages sparkle--we must say that this voyage is very far
below the less celebrated excursions of the same author in his own
country.”
Three years later, Mme. Blanc returns to the discussion of Mark Twain,
in an essay in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes', entitled 'L'age Dore en
Amerique'--an elaborate review and analysis of The Gilded Age. The
savage charm and real simplicity of Mark Twain are not lacking in
appeal, even to her sophisticated intelligence; and she is inclined to
infer that jovial irony and animal spirits are qualities sufficient to
amuse a young nation of people like the Americans who do not, like the
French, pique themselves upon being blase. According to her judgment,
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner are lacking in the requisite mental
grasp for the “stupendous task of interpreting the great tableau of the
American scene.” Nor does she regard their effort at collaboration as a
success from the standpoint of art. The charm of Colonel Sellers wholly
escapes her; she cannot understand the almost loving appreciation with
which this cheaply gross forerunner of the later American industrial
brigand was greeted by the American public. The book repels her by
“that mixture of good sense with mad folly--disorder”; but she praises
Mark Twain's accuracy as a reporter. The things which offend her
sensibilities are the wilful exaggeration of the characters, and the
jests which are so elaborately constructed that “the very theme itself
disappears under the mass of embroidery which overlays it.” “The
audacities of a Bret Harte, the grosser temerities of a Mark Twain,
still astonish us,” she concludes; “but soon we shall become accustomed
to an American language whose savoury freshness is not to be disdained,
awaiting still more delicate and refined qualities that time will
doubtless bring.”
In translating 'The Jumping Frog' into faultless French (giving Mark
Twain the opportunity for that delightful retranslation into English
which furnished delight for thousands), in reviewing with elaboration
and long citations 'The Innocents Abroad' and 'The Gilded Age', Mme.
Blanc introduced Mark Twain to the literary public of France; and Emile
Blemont, in his 'Esquisses Americaines de Mark Twain' (1881), still
further enhanced the fame of Mark Twain in France by translating a
number of his slighter sketches. In 1886, Eugene Forgues published in
the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' an exhaustive review (with long citations)
of 'Life on the Mississippi', under the title 'Les Caravans d'un
humoriste'; and his prefatory remarks in regard to Mark Twain's fame in
France at that time may be accepted as authoritative. He pointed out
the praiseworthy efforts that had been made to popularize these
“transatlantic gaieties,” to import into France a new mode of comic
entertainment. Yet he felt that the peculiar twist of national
character, the type of wit peculiar to a people and a country, the
specialized conception of the _vis comica_ revealed in Mark Twain's
works, confined them to a restricted milieu. The result of all the
efforts to popularize Mark Twain in France, he makes plain, was an
almost complete check; for to the French taste Mark Twain's pleasantry
appeared macabre, his wit brutal, his temperament dry to excess. By
some, indeed, his exaggerations were regarded as symptoms of mental
alienation; and the originality of his verve did not succeed in giving a
passport to the incoherence of his conceptions. “It has been said,”
remarked M. Forgues, with keen perception, “that an academician slumbers
in the depths of every Frenchman; and it was this which prevented the
success of Mark Twain in France. Humour, in France, has its laws and
its restrictions. So the French public saw in Mark Twain a gross
jester, incessantly beating upon a tom-tom to attract the attention of
the crowd. They were tenacious in resisting all such blandishments
. . . . As a humorist, Mark Twain was never appreciated in France.
The appreciation he ultimately secured--an appreciation by no means
inconsiderable, though in no sense comparable to that won in Anglo-Saxon
and Germanic countries--was due to his sagacity and penetration as an
observer, and to his marvellous faculty for calling up scenes and
situations by the clever use of the novel and the _imprevu_. There was,
even to the Frenchman, a certain lively appeal in an intelligence
absolutely free of convention, sophistication, or reverence for
traditionary views _qua_ traditionary.” Though at first the salt of
Mark Twain's humour seemed to the French to be lacking in the Attic
flavour, this new mode of comic entertainment, the leisurely exposition
of the genially naive American, in time won its way with the _blase_
Parisians. Travellers who could find no copy of the Bible in the street
bookstalls of Paris, were confronted everywhere with copies of 'Roughing
It'. When the authoritative edition of Mark Twain's works appeared in
English, that authoritative French journal, the 'Mercure de France',
paid him this distinguished tribute: “His public is as varied as
possible, because of the versatility and suppleness of his talent which
addresses itself successively to all classes of readers. He has been
called the greatest humorist in the world, and that is probably the
truth; but he is also a charming and attractive story-teller, an alert
romancer, a clever and penetrating observer, a philosopher without
pretensions, and therefore all the more profound, and finally, a
brilliant essayist.”
Nevertheless, the observation of M. Forgues is just and authentic--the
Attic flavour of _l'esprit Gaulois_ is alien to the loosely articulated
structure of American humour. The noteworthy criticism which Mark Twain
directed at Paul Bourget's 'Outre Mer', and the subsequent controversy
incident thereto, forced into light the racial and temperamental
dissimilarities between the Gallic and the American _Ausschauung_. Mr.
Clemens once remarked to me that, of all continental peoples, the French
were most alien to the spirit of his humour. In 'Le Figaro', at the
time of Mark Twain's death, this fundamental difference in taste once
more comes to light: “It is as difficult for a Frenchman to understand
Mark Twain as for a North American to admire La Fontaine. At first
sight, there is nothing in common between that highly specialized
faculty which the Anglo-Saxons of the old and the new world designate
under the name of humour, and that quality with us which we call wit
(esprit). And yet, at bottom, these two manifestations of the human
genius, so different in appearance, have a common origin and reach the
same result: they are, both of them, the glorification of good sense
presented in pleasing and unexpected form. Only, this form must
necessarily vary with peoples who do not speak the same language and
whose skulls are not fashioned in the same way.”
In Italy, as in France, the peculiar _timbre_ of Mark Twain's humour
found an audience not wholly sympathetic, not thoroughly _au courant_
with his spirit. “Translation, however accurate and conscientious,” as
the Italian critic, Raffaele Simboli, has pointed out, “fails to render
the special flavour of his work. And then in Italy, where humorous
writing generally either rests on a political basis or depends on risky
phrases, Mark Twain's sketches are not appreciated because the spirit
which breathes in them is not always understood. The story of 'The
Jumping Frog', for instance, famous as it is in America and England, has
made little impression in France or Italy.”
It was rather among the Germanic peoples and those most closely allied
to them, the Scandinavians, that Mark Twain found most complete and
ready response. At first blush, it seems almost incredible that the
writings of Mark Twain, with their occasional slang, their
colloquialisms and their local peculiarities of dialect, should have
borne translation so well into other languages, especially into German.
It must, however, be borne in mind that, despite these peculiar features
of his writings, they are couched in a style of most marked directness,
simplicity and native English purity. The ease with which his works
were translated into foreign, especially the Germanic and allied
tongues, and the eager delight with which they were read and
comprehended by all classes, high and low, constitute perhaps the most
signal conceivable tribute, not only to the humanity of his spirit, but
to the genuine art of his marvellously forthright and natural style.
It need be no cause for surprise that as early as 1872 he had secured
Tauchnitz, of Leipzig, for his Continental agent. German translations
soon appeared of 'The Jumping Frog and Other Stories' (1874), 'The
Gilded Age' (1874), 'The Innocents Abroad and The New Pilgrim's
Progress' (1875), 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' (1876). A few years
later his sketches, many of them, were translated into virtually all
printed languages, notably into Russian and modern Greek; and his more
extended works gradually came to be translated into German, French,
Italian, and the languages of Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula.
The elements of the colossally grotesque, the wildly primitive, in Mark
Twain's works, the underlying note of melancholy not less than the
lawless Bohemianism, found sympathetic appreciation among the Germanic
races. George Meredith has likened the functionings of Germanic humour
to the heavy-footed antics of a dancing bear. Mark Twain's stories of
the Argonauts, the miners and desperadoes, with their primitive,
orgiastic existence; his narratives of the wild freedom of the life on
the Mississippi, the lawless feuds and barbaric encounters--all appealed
to the passion for the fantastic and the grotesque innate in the
Germanic consciousness. To the Europeans, this wild genius of the
Pacific Slope seemed to function in a sort of unexplored fourth
dimension of humour--vast and novel--of which they had never dreamed.
It is noteworthy that Schleich, in his 'Psychopathik des Humors',
reserved for American humour, with Mark Twain as its leading exponent,
a distinct and unique category which he denominated _phantastischen,
grossdimensionalen_.
To the biographer belongs the task of describing, in detail, the lavish
entertainment and open-hearted homage which were bestowed upon Mark
Twain in German Europe. In writing of Mark Twain and his popularity in
Germanic countries, Carl von Thaler unhesitatingly asserts that Mark
Twain was feted, wined and dined in Vienna, the Austrian metropolis, in
an unprecedented manner, and awarded unique honours hitherto paid to no
German writer. In Berlin, the young Kaiser bestowed upon him the most
distinguished marks of his esteem; and praised his works, in especial
'Life on the Mississippi', with the intensest enthusiasm. When Mark
Twain received a command from the Kaiser to dine with him, his young
daughter exclaimed that if it kept on like this, there soon wouldn't be
anybody left for him to become acquainted with but God! Mark said that
it seemed uncomplimentary to regard him as unacquainted in that quarter;
but of course his daughter was young, and the young always jump to
conclusions without reflection. After hearing the Kaiser's eulogy on
'Life on the Mississippi', he was astounded and touched to receive a
similar tribute, the same evening, from the portier of his
lodging-house. He loved to dwell upon this, in later years--declaring it
the most extraordinary coincidence of his life that a crowned head and a
portier, the very top of an empire and the very bottom of it, should have
expressed the very same criticism, and delivered the very same verdict,
upon one of his books, almost in the same hour and the same breath.
The German edition of his works, in six volumes, published by Lutz of
Stuttgart, in 1898, I believe, contained an introduction in which he was
hailed as the greatest humorist in the world. Among German critics he
was regarded as second only to Dickens in drastic comic situation and
depth of feeling. Robinson Crusoe was held to exhibit a limited power
of imagination in comparison with the ingenuity and inventiveness of Tom
Sawyer. At times the German critics confessed their inability to
discover the dividing line between astounding actuality and fantastic
exaggeration. The descriptions of the barbaric state of Western America
possessed an indescribable fascination for the sedate Europeans. At
times Mark Twain's bloody jests froze the laughter on their lips; and
his “revolver-humour” made their hair stand on end. Though realizing
that the scenes and events described in 'Tom Sawyer', 'Huckleberry
Finn', 'Roughing It', and 'Life on the Mississippi' could not have been
duplicated in Europe, the German critics revelled in them none the less
that “such adventures were possible only in America--perhaps only in the
fancy of an American!” “Mark Twain's greatest strength,” says Von
Thaler, “lies in the little sketches, the literary snap-shots. The
shorter his work, the more striking it is. He draws directly from life.
No other writer has learned to know so many different varieties of men
and of circumstances, so many strange examples of the Genus Homo, as he;
no other has taken so strange a course of development.” The deeper
elements of Mark Twain's humour did not escape the attention of the
Germans, nor fail of appreciation at their hands. In his aphorisms,
embodying at once genuine wit and experience of life, they discovered
not merely the American author, but the universal human being; these
aphorisms they found worthy of profound and lasting admiration.
Sintenis found in Mark Twain a “living symptom of the youthful joy in
existence”--a genius capable at will, despite his “boyish extravagance,”
of the virile formulation of fertile and suggestive ideas. His latest
critic in Germany wrote at the time of his death, with a genuine insight
into the significance of his work: “Although Mark Twain's humour moves
us to irresistible laughter, this is not the main point in his books;
like all true humorists, _ist der Witz mit dem Weltschmerz verbunden_,
he is a witness to higher thoughts and higher emotions, and his purpose
is to expose bad morals and evil circumstances, in order to improve and
ennoble mankind.” The critic of the 'Berliner Zeitung' asserted that
Mark Twain is loved in Germany more than all other humorists, English or
French, because his humour “turns fundamentally upon serious and earnest
conceptions of life.” It is a tremendously significant fact that the
works of American literature most widely read in Germany are the works
of--striking conjunction!--Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain.
The 'Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' fired the laugh heard round the
world. Like Byron, Mark Twain woke one morning to find himself famous.
A classic fable, which had once evoked inextinguishable laughter in
Athens, was unconsciously re-told in the language of Angel's Camp,
Calaveras County, where history repeated itself with a precision of
detail startling in its miraculous coincidence. Despite the
international fame thus suddenly won by this little fable, Mark Twain
had yet to overcome the ingrained opposition of insular prejudice before
his position in England and the colonies was established upon a sure and
enduring footing. In a review of 'The Innocents Abroad' in 'The
Saturday Review' (1870), the comparison is made between the Americans
who “do Europe in six weeks” and the most nearly analogous class of
British travellers, with the following interesting conclusions: “The
American is generally the noisier and more actively disagreeable, but,
on the other hand, he often partially redeems his absurdity by a certain
naivete and half-conscious humour. He is often laughing in his sleeve
at his own preposterous brags, and does not take himself quite so
seriously as his British rival. He is vulgar, and even ostentatiously
and atrociously vulgar; but the vulgarity is mixed with a real
shrewdness which rescues it from simple insipidity. We laugh at him,
and we would rather not have too much of his company; but we do not feel
altogether safe in despising him.” The lordly condescension and gross
self-satisfaction here betrayed are but preliminaries to the ludicrous
density of the subsequent reflections upon Mark Twain himself: “He
parades his utter ignorance of Continental languages and manners, and
expresses his very original judgments on various wonders of art and
nature with a praiseworthy frankness. We are sometimes left in doubt
whether he is speaking in all sincerity or whether he is having a sly
laugh at himself and his readers”! It is quite evident that the large
mass of English readers, represented by The Saturday Review, had not
caught Mark Twain's tone; but even the reviewer is more than half won
over by the infectiousness of this new American humour. “Perhaps we
have persuaded our readers by this time that Mr. Twain (sic) is a very
offensive specimen of the vulgarest kind of Yankee. And yet, to say the
truth, we have a kind of liking for him. There is a frankness and
originality about his remarks which is (sic) pleasanter than the mere
repetition of stale raptures; and his fun, if not very refined, is often
tolerable in its way. In short, his pages may be turned over with
amusement, as exhibiting more or less consciously a very lively portrait
of the uncultivated American tourist, who may be more obtrusive and
misjudging, but is not quite so stupidly unobservant as our native
product. We should not choose either of them for our companions on a
visit to a church or a picture--gallery, but we should expect most
amusement from the Yankee as long as we could stand him.” It was this
review which gave Mark Twain the opening for his celebrated parody--a
parody which, I have always thought, went far to opening the eyes of the
British public to the true spirit of his humour. Such irresistible fun
could not fail of appreciation at the hands of a nation which regarded
Dickens as their representative national author.
Two years later, Mark Twain received in England an appreciative
reception of well-nigh national character. Whilst the literary and
academic circles of America withheld their unstinted recognition of an
author so primitive and unlettered, Great Britain received him with open
arms. He was a welcome guest at the houses of the exclusive; the
highest dignitaries of public life, the authoritative journals, the
leaders of fashion, of thought, and of opinion openly rejoiced in the
breezy unconventionality, the fascinating daring, and the genial
personality of this new variety of American genius. His English
publisher, John Camden Hotten, wrote in 1873: “How he dined with the
Sheriff of London and Middlesex; how he spent glorious evenings with the
wits and literati who gather around the festive boards of the
Whitefriars and the Savage Clubs; how he moved in the gay throng at the
Guildhall conversazione; how he feasted with the Lord Mayor of London;
and was the guest of that ancient and most honourable body--the City of
London Artillery--all these matters we should like to dwell upon.” His
public lectures, though not so popular as those of Artemus Ward, won him
recognition as a master in all the arts of the platform. Mr. H. R.
Haweis, who heard him once at the old Hanover Square Rooms, thus
describes the occasion: “The audience was not large nor very
enthusiastic. I believe he would have been an increasing success had he
stayed longer. We had not time to get accustomed to his peculiar way,
and there was nothing to take us by storm, as in Artemus Ward. . . . .
He came on and stood quite alone. A little table, with the traditional
water-bottle and tumbler, was by his side. His appearance was not
impressive, not very unlike the representation of him in the various
pictures in his 'Tramp Abroad'. He spoke more slowly than any other man
I ever heard, and did not look at his audience quite enough. I do not
think that he felt altogether at home with us, nor we with him. We
never laughed loud or long; no one went into those irrepressible
convulsions which used to make Artemus pause and look so hurt and
surprised. We sat throughout expectant and on the _qui vive_, very well
interested, and gently simmering with amusement. With the exception of
one exquisite description of the old Magdalen ivy--covered collegiate
buildings at Oxford University, I do not think there was one thing worth
setting down in print. I got no information out of the lecture, and
hardly a joke that would wear, or a story that would bear repeating.
There was a deal about the dismal, lone silver--land, the story of the
Mexican plug that bucked, and a duel which never came off, and another
duel in which no one was injured; and we sat patiently enough through
it, fancying that by and by the introduction would be over, and the
lecture would begin, when Twain suddenly made his bow and went off! It
was over. I looked at my watch; I was never more taken aback. I had
been sitting there exactly an hour and twenty minutes. It seemed ten
minutes at the outside. If you have ever tried to address a public
meeting, you will know what this means. It means that Mark Twain is a
consummate public speaker. If ever he chose to say anything, he would
say it marvellously well; but in the art of saying nothing in an hour,
he surpasses our most accomplished parliamentary speakers.”
The nation which had been reared upon the wit of Sidney Smith, the irony
of Swift, the _gros sel_ of Fielding, the extravagance of Dickens, was
ripe for the colossal incongruities and daring contrasts of Mark Twain.
They recognized in him not only “the most successful and original wag of
his day,” but also a rare genius who shared with Walt Whitman “the
honour of being the most strictly American writer of what is called
American literature.” We read in a review of 'A Tramp Abroad',
published in The Athenaeum in 1880: “Mark Twain is American pure and
simple. To the eastern motherland he owes but the rudiments, the
groundwork, already archaic and obsolete to him, of the speech he has to
write; in his turn of art, his literary method and aims, his
intellectual habit and temper, he is as distinctly national as the
Fourth of July.” Mark Twain was admired because he was “a literary
artist of exceptional skill”; and it was ungrudgingly acknowledged that
“he has a keen sense of character and uncommon skill in presenting it
dramatically; and he is also an admirable story-teller, with the
anecdotic instinct and habit in perfection, and with a power of episodic
narrative that is scarcely equalled, if at all, by Mr. Charles Reade
himself.” Indeed, from the early days of 'The Innocents Abroad', the
“first transatlantic democratic utterance which found its way into the
hearing of the mass of English people”; during the period of 'Tom
Sawyer', “the completest boy in fiction,” the immortal 'Huckleberry
Finn', “the standard picaresque novel of America--the least trammelled
piece of literature in the language,” and 'Life on the Mississippi',
vastly appreciated in England as in Germany for its _cultur-historisch_
value; down to the day when Oxford University bestowed the coveted
honour of its degree upon Mark Twain, and all England took him to their
hearts with fervour and abandon--during this long period of almost four
decades, Mark Twain progressively strengthened his hold upon the
imagination of the English people and, like Charles Dickens before him,
may be said to have become the representative author of the Anglo-Saxon
race. “The vast majority of readers here regard him,” said Mr. Sydney
Brooks in 1907, “to a degree in which they regard no other living
writer, as their personal friend, and love him for his tenderness, his
masculinity, his unfailing wholesomeness even more than for his humour.”
To all who love and admire Mark Twain, these words in which he was
welcomed to England in 1907 should stand as a symbol of that racial
bond, that _entente cordiale_ of blood and heart, which he did so much
to strengthen and secure. “A compliment paid to Mark Twain is something
more than a compliment to a great man, a great writer, and a great
citizen. It is a compliment to the American people, and one that will
come home to them with peculiar gratification. . . . The feeling for
Mark Twain among his own people is like that of the Scotch for Sir
Walter eighty odd years ago, or like that of our fathers for Charles
Dickens. There is admiration in it, gratitude, pride, and, above all,
an immense and intimate tenderness of affection. To writers alone it is
given to win a sentiment of this quality--to writers and occasionally,
by the oddness of the human mind, to generals. Perhaps one would best
take the measure of the American devotion to Mark Twain by describing it
as a compound of what Dickens enjoyed in England forty years ago, and of
what Lord Roberts enjoys to-day, and by adding something thereto for the
intensity of all transatlantic emotions. The 'popularity' of statesmen,
even of such a statesman as President Roosevelt, is a poor and
flickering light by the side of this full flame of personal affection.
It has gone out to Mark Twain not only for what he has written, for the
clean, irresistible extravagance of his humour and his unfailing command
of the primal feelings, for his tenderness, his jollity and his power to
read the heart of boy and man and woman; not only for the tragedies and
afflictions of his life so unconquerably borne; not only for his brave
and fiery dashes against tyranny, humbug, and corruption at home and
abroad; but also because his countrymen feel him to be, beyond all other
men, the incarnation of the American spirit.”
Mark Twain achieved a position of supreme eminence as a representative
national author which is without a parallel in the history of American
literature. This position he achieved directly by his appeal to the
great mass of the people, despite the _dicta_ of the _literati_. At a
time when England and Europe were throwing wide the doors to Mark Twain,
the culture of his own land was regarding him with slighting
condescension, or with mildly quizzical unconcern. Boston regarded him
with fastidious and frigid disapproval, Longfellow and Lowell found
little in him to admire or approve. There were notable exceptions, as
Mr. Howells has recently pointed out--Charles Eliot Norton, Professor
Francis J. Child, and most notable of all, Mr. Howells himself; but in
general it is true that “in proportion as people thought themselves
refined they questioned that quality which all recognize in him now, but
which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude.”
The professors of literature regarded Mark Twain as an author whose
works were essentially ephemeral; and stood in the breach for Culture
against the barbaric invasion of primitive Western Barbarism. Professor
W. P. Trent was, I believe, the first to cite Professor Richardson's
American Literature (published in 1886) as a typical instance of the
position of literary culture in regard to Mark Twain. “But there is a
class of writers,” we read in that work, “authors ranking below Irving
or Lowell, and lacking the higher artistic or moral purpose of the
greater humorists, who amuse a generation and then pass from sight.
Every period demands a new manner of jest, after the current fashion
. . . . The reigning favourites of the day are Frank R. Stockton,
Joel Chandler Harris, the various newspaper jokers, and 'Mark Twain.'
[Note the damning position!] But the creators of `Pomona' and 'Rudder
Grange,' of `Uncle Remus and his Folk-lore Stories,' and `Innocents
Abroad,' clever as they are, must make hay while the sun shines. Twenty
years hence, unless they chance to enshrine their wit in some higher
literary achievement, their unknown successors will be the privileged
comedians of the republic. Humour alone never gives its masters a place
in literature; it must coexist with literary qualities, and must usually
be joined with such pathos as one finds in Lamb, Hood, Irving, or
Holmes.” This passage stands in the 1892 edition of that work, though
'Tom Sawyer' had appeared in 1876, 'The Prince and the Pauper' in 1882,
'Life on the Mississippi' in 1883, 'Huckleberry Finn' in 1884, and 'A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' in 1889. Opinions analogous
to those expressed in the passage just cited have found frequent
expression among leaders of critical opinion in America; and only
yesterday 'The Jumping Frog' and 'The Innocents Abroad' were seriously
put forward, by a clever and popular American critic, as Mark Twain's
most enduring claims upon posterity! A bare half-dozen men in the ranks
of American literary criticism have recognized and eloquently spoken
forth in vindication of Mark Twain's title as a classic author, not
simply of American literature, but of the literature of the world.
It is, even now, perhaps not too early to attempt some sort of inquiry
into the causes contributory to Mark Twain's recognition as the prime
representative of contemporary American literature. One of the cheap
catchwords of Mark Twain criticism is the statement that he is “American
to the core,” and that his popular appreciation in his own country was
due to the fact that he most completely embodied the national genius.
How many of those who confidently advance this vastly significant
statement, one curiously wonders, have seriously endeavoured to make
plain to others--or even to themselves--the reasons therefor? Perhaps
in seeking the causes for Mark Twain's renown in his own country one may
discover the causes for his world-wide fame.
A map of the United States, upon which were marked the localities and
regions made famous by the writings of Mark Twain, would show that,
geographically, he has known and studied this vast country in all the
grand divisions of its composition. Bred from old Southern stock, born
in the Southwest, he passed his youth upon the bosom of that great
natural division between East and West, the Mississippi River, which
cleaves in twain the very body of the nation. In the twenties he lost
the feeling of local attachment in the vast democracy of the West, and
looked life--a strangely barbaric and primitive life--straight in the
face. This is the first great transformation in his life--behold the
Westerner! After enriching his mind through contact with civilizations
so diverse as Europe and the Sandwich Islands, he settled down in
Connecticut, boldly foreswore the creeds and principles of his native
section, and underwent a new transformation--behold the Yankee! Once
again, travel in foreign lands, association with the most intellectual
and cultured circles of the world, broadened his vision; yet this
cosmopolitan experience, far from diminishing his racial consciousness,
tended still further to accentuate the national characteristics. In
this new transformation, we behold the typical American! The later
years, of cosmopolitan renown, of world-wide fame, throw into high
relief the last transformation--behold the universally human spirit!
Under this crude catalogue, the main lines of Mark Twain's development
stand out in sharp definition. The catalogue, however, is only too
crude--it is impossible to say with precision just when such and such
a transformation actually took place. It is only intended to be
suggestive; for we must bear in mind that Mark Twain never changed
character. His spirit underwent an evolutionary process--broadening,
deepening, enlarging its vision with the passage of the years.
The part which the South played in the formation of the character and
genius of Mark Twain has been little noted heretofore. It was in the
South and Southwest that the creator of the humour of local eccentrics
first appeared in full flower; and “Ned Brace,” “Major Jones,” and “Sut
Lovengood” have in them the germs of that later Western humour that was
to come to full fruition in the works of Bret Harte and Mark Twain. The
stage coach and the river steamboat furnished the means for
disseminating far and wide the gross, the ghastly, the extravagant
stories, the oddities of speech, the fantastic jests which emerged from
the clash of diverse and oddly-assorted types. The jarring contrasts,
the incongruities and surprises daily furnished by the picturesque river
life unquestionably stimulated and fertilized the latent germs of humour
in the young cub-pilot, Sam Clemens. Through Mark Twain's greatest
works flows the stately Mississippi, magically imparting to them some
indefinable share of its beauty, its variety, its majesty, its
immensity; and there is no exaggeration in the conclusion that it is the
greatest natural influence which his works betray. Reared in a
slave-holding community of narrow-visioned, arrogantly provincial people
of the lower middle class; seeing his own father so degrade himself as to
cuff his negro house-boy; consorting with ragamuffins, the rag-tag and
bob-tail of the town, in his passion for bohemianism and truantry--young
Clemens never learned to know the beauty and the dignity, the purity and
the humanity, of that aristocratic patriarchal South which produced such
beautiful figures as Lee and Lanier. Not even his most enthusiastic
biographers have attempted to palliate, save with half-hearted
facetiousness, his inglorious desertion of the cause which he had
espoused. Mark Twain is the most speedily “reconstructed rebel” on
record. Is it broad-minded--or even accurate!--for Mr. Howells to say of
Mark Twain: “No one has ever poured such scorn upon the second-hand,
Walter-Scotticised, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal?” Mark Twain
never, I firmly believe, held up to ridicule the Southern “ideal.” But
in a well-known and excellent passage in Life on the Mississippi, he
properly pokes fun at the “wordy, windy, flowery 'eloquence,'
romanticism, sentimentality--all imitated from Sir Walter Scott,” of the
Southern literary journal of the thirties and forties. In later years
Mark Twain, in his 'Joan of Arc', voiced a spirit of noble chivalry which
bespoke the “Southern ideal” of his Virginia forbears; and that delicacy
of instinct in matters of right and wrong which is so conspicuous a trait
of Mark Twain's is a symptom of that “moral elegance” which Mr. Owen
Wister has pronounced to be one of the defining characteristics of the
Southern American. “No American of Northern birth or breeding,” Mr.
Howells pertinently observes, “could have imagined the spiritual struggle
of Huck Finn in deciding to help the negro Jim to his freedom, even
though he should be for ever despised as a negro thief in his native
town, and perhaps eternally lost through the blackness of his sin. No
Northerner could have come so close to the heart of a Kentucky feud, and
revealed it so perfectly, with the whimsicality playing through its
carnage, or could have so brought us into the presence of the sardonic
comi-tragedy of the squalid little river town where the store-keeping
magnate shoots down his drunken tormentor in the arms of the drunkard's
daughter, and then cows with bitter mockery the mob that comes to lynch
him.”
The influence of the West upon the character and genius of Mark Twain is
momentous and unmistakable. Mark Twain found room for development and
expansion in the primitive freedom of the West. It was here, I think,
that there were bred in him that breezy democracy of sentiment and that
hatred of sham and pretence which fill his writings from beginning to
end. In the West, virgin yet recalcitrant, every man stood--or fell--by
force of his own exertions; every man, without fear or favour, struggled
for fortune, for competence--or for existence. It was a case of the
survival of the fittest. In face of bleak Nature--the burning alkali
desert, the obdurate soil, the rock-ribbed mountains,--all men were free
and equal, in a camaraderie of personal effort. In this primitive
democracy, every man demanded for himself what he saw others getting.
The pretender, the hypocrite, the sham, the humbug soon went to the
wall, exposed in the nakedness of his own impotency. Humour is a
salutary aid in the struggle of the individual with the contrasts of
life; indeed it may be said to be born of the perception of those
contrasts. In a degree no whit inferior to the variegated river life,
the life of the West furnished contrasts and incongruities innumerable
--vaster perhaps, and more significant. There was the incessant contrast
of civilization with barbarism, of the East with the West; and there was
infinite play for the comic _expose_ of the credulous “tenderfoot” at
the hands of the pitiless cowboy. Roars of Gargantuan laughter shook
the skies as each new initiate unwittingly succumbed to the demoniac
wiles of his tormentors. The West was one vast theatre for the practice
of the “practical joke.” Behind everything, menacing, foreboding,
tragic, lay the stupendous contrast between Man and Nature; and though
the miner, the granger, the cowboy laughed defiantly at civilization and
at Nature, there crept into the consciousness of each the conviction
that, in the long run, civilization must triumph, and that, in order to
win success, Nature must be conquered and subdued. In such an
environment, with its spirit of primitive democracy, its atmosphere of
wild and ribald jest, its contempt for the impostor, its perpetually
recurring incongruities, and behind all the solemn, perhaps tragic,
presence of inexorable Nature--in such an environment were sharpened and
whetted in Mark Twain the sense of humour, the spirit of real democracy
bred of competitive effort, and the hatred for pretence, sham, and
imposture.
It was not, I think, until Mark Twain went to live in Connecticut and,
as he expressed it, became a scribbler of books, and an immovable
fixture among the other rocks of New England, that he developed complete
confidence in himself and his powers. That passion for successful
self-expression, which Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler has defined as the main
ambition of the American, became the dominant motive of Mark Twain's
life. Of his experience as a steamboat pilot, Mark Twain has said that
in that brief, sharp schooling he got personally and familiarly
acquainted with about all the different types of human nature that are
to be found in fiction, biography or history. In the West he had still
further enriched his mind with an inexhaustible store of first-hand
knowledge of human nature. In rotation he had been tramping jour
printer, river pilot, private secretary, miner, reporter, lecturer.
He now turns to literature in real earnest, and begins to display that
vast store of knowledge derived from actual contact with the infinitely
diversified realities of American life. Mark Twain takes on more and
more of the characteristics of the Yankee--those characteristics which
constitute the basis of his success: inventiveness and ingenuity, the
practical efficiency, the shrewdness and the hard common--sense. It is
the last phase in the formation of the national type.
It was, I venture to say, in some such way as this that Mark Twain came
to assume in the eyes of his countrymen an embodiment of the national
spirit. He was the self--made man in the self--made democracy. He was
at once his own creation and the creation of a democracy. There were
humorists in America before Mark Twain; there are humorists in America
still. But Mark Twain succeeded not merely in captivating the great
mass of the people; he achieved the far more difficult and unique
distinction of convincing his countrymen of his essential fellowship,
his temperamental affinity, with them. This miracle he wrought by the
frankest and most straightforward revelation of the actual experiences
in his own life and the lives of those he had known with perfect
intimacy. It is true that he wrote a few books dealing with other
times, other scenes, than our own in the present and in America. But I
daresay that his popularity with the mass of his countrymen would not
have been in any degree lessened had he never written these few books.
Indeed, it is hardly to be doubted that his books were successful in the
ratio of their autobiographic nature. For the character he revealed in
those books of his which are essentially autobiographic, is the
character dear to the American heart; and the experiences, vicissitudes,
and hardships, shot through and irradiated with a high boisterousness of
humour, found a joyous sympathy in the minds and hearts of men who had
all “been there” themselves. In Mark Twain the American people
recognized at last the sturdy democrat, independent of foreign
criticism; confident in the validity and value of his own ideas and
judgments; believing loyally in his country's institutions, and
upholding them fearlessly before the world; fundamentally serious and
self-reliant, yet with a practicality tempered by humane kindliness,
warmth of heart, and a strain of persistent idealism; rude, boisterous,
even uncouth, yet withal softened by sympathy for the under-dog, a
boundless love for the weak, the friendless, the oppressed; lacking in
profound intellectuality, yet supreme in the possession of the simple
and homely virtues--an upright and honourable character, a good citizen,
a man tenacious of the sanctity of the domestic virtues. America has
produced finer and more exalted types--giants in intellectuality,
princes in refinement and delicacy of spirit, savants in culture,
classics in authorship. An American type combining culture
with picturesqueness, refinement with patriotism, suavity with
self-reliance, desire it as we may, still awaits the imprimatur
of international recognition. America has sufficient cause for
gratification in the memory of that quaint and sturdy figure so
conspicuously bearing the national stamp and superscription. Perhaps no
American has equalled Mark Twain in the quality of subsuming and
embodying in his own character so many elements of the national spirit
and genius. In letters, in life, Mark Twain is the American _par
excellence_.
Underneath those qualities which combined to produce in Mark Twain a
composite American type, lay something deeper still--that indefinable
_je ne sais quoi_ which procured him international fame. Humour alone
is utterly inadequate for achieving so momentous a result--though humour
ostensibly constituted the burden of the appeal. As a matter of fact,
vehemently as the professors may deny it, Mark Twain was an artist of
remarkable force and power. From the days when he came under the
tutelage of Mr. Howells, and humbly learned to prune away his stylistic
superfluities of the grosser sort, Mark Twain indubitably began to
subject himself to the discipline of stern self-criticism. While it is
true that he never learned to realize in full measure, to use Pater's
phrase, “the responsibility of the artist to his materials,” he
assuredly disciplined himself to make the most, in his own way, of the
rude and volcanic power which he possessed. It is fortunate that Mark
Twain never subjected himself to the refinements of academic culture; a
Harvard might well have spoiled a great author. For Mark Twain had a
memorable tale to tell of rude, primitive men and barbaric, remote
scenes and circumstances; of truant and resourceful boyhood exercising
all its cunning in circumventing circumstance and mastering a calling.
And he had that tale to tell in the unlettered, yet vastly expressive,
phraseology of the actors in those wild events. The secret of his style
is directness of thought, a sort of shattering clarity of utterance, and
a mastery of vital, vigorous, audacious individual expression. He had a
remarkable feeling for words and their uses; and his language is the
unspoiled, expressive language of the people. At times he is primitive
and coarse; but it is a Falstaffian note, the mark of universality
rather than of limitation. His art was, in Tolstoy's phrase, “the art
of a people--universal art”; and his style was rich in the locutions of
the common people, rich and racy of the soil. A signal merit of his
style is its admirable adaptation to the theme. The personages of his
novels always speak “in character”--with perfect reproduction, not only
of their natural speech, but also of their natural thoughts. Though Mr.
Henry James may have said that one must be a very rudimentary person to
enjoy Mark Twain, there is unimpeachable virtue in a rudimentary style
in treatment of rudimentary or,--as I should prefer to phrase it,
--fundamental things. Mr. James, I feel sure, could never have put into
the mouth of a “rudimentary” person like Huck, so vivid and graphic a
description of a storm with its perfect reproduction of the impression
caught by the “rudimentary” mind. “Writers of fiction,” says Sir Walter
Besant in speaking of this book, “will understand the difficulty of
getting inside the brain of that boy, seeing things as he saw them,
writing as he would have written, and acting as he would have acted; and
presenting to the world true, faithful, and living effigies of that boy.
The feat has been accomplished; there is no character in fiction more
fully, more faithfully, presented than the character of Huckleberry
Finn. . . . It may be objected that the characters are extravagant.
Not so. They are all exactly and literally true; they are quite
possible in a country so remote and so primitive. Every figure in the
book is a type; Huckleberry Finn has exaggerated none. We see the life
--the dull and vacuous life--of a small township upon the Mississippi
River forty years ago. So far as I know, it is the only place where we
can find that phase of life portrayed.”
Mark Twain impressed one always as writing with utter individuality
--untrammelled by the limitations of any particular sect of art. In his
books of travel, he reveals not only the instinct of the trained
journalist for the novel and the effective, but also the feeling of the
artist for the beautiful, the impressive, and the sublime. His
descriptions, of striking natural objects, such as the volcano of Mount
Kilauea in the Sandwich Islands, of memorable architecture, such as the
cathedral at Milan, show that he possessed the “stereoscopic
imagination” in rare degree. The picture he evokes of Athens by
moonlight, in the language of simplicity and restraint, ineffaceably
fixes itself in the fancy.
Mark Twain was regarded in France as a remarkable “impressionist” and
praised by the critics for the realistic accuracy and minuteness of his
delineation. Kipling frankly acknowledged the great debt that he owed
him. Tennyson spoke in high praise of his finesse in the choice of
words, his feeling for the just word to catch and, as it were, visualize
the precise shade of meaning desired. In truth, Mark Twain was an
impressionist, rather than an imaginative artist. That passage in
'A Yankee in King Arthur's Court' in which he describes an early morning
ride through the forest, pictorially evocative as it is, stands
self-revealed--a confusedly imaginative effort to create an image he has
never experienced.
If we set over beside this the remarkable descriptions of things seen,
as minutely evocative as instantaneous photographs--such, for example,
as the picture of a summer storm, or preferably, the picture of dawn on
the Mississippi, both from Huckleberry Finn--pictures Mark Twain had
seen and lived hundreds of times, we see at once the striking
superiority of the realistic impressionist over the imaginative artist.
I have always felt that the most lasting influence of his life--the
influence which has left the most pervasive impression upon his art and
thought--is portrayed in that classic and memorable passage in which he
portrays the marvellous spell laid upon him by that mistress of his
youth, the great river.
To the young pilot, the face of the water in time became a wonderful
book. For the uninitiated traveller it was a dead language, but to the
young pilot it gave up its most cherished secrets. He came to feel that
there had never been so wonderful a book written by man. To its
haunting beauty, its enfolding mystery, he yielded himself unreservedly
--drinking it in like one bewitched. But a day came when he began to
cease from noting its marvels. Another day came when he ceased
altogether to note them.
In time, he came to realize that, for him, the romance and the beauty
were gone forever from the river. If the early rapture was gone, in its
place was the deeper sense of knowledge and intimacy. He had learned
the ultimate secrets of the river--learned them with a knowledge, so
searching and so profound, that he was enabled to give them the enduring
investiture of art.
Mark Twain possessed the gift of innate eloquence. He was a master of
the art of moving, touching, swaying an audience. At times, his insight
into the mysterious springs of humour, of passion, and of pathos seemed
almost like divination. All these qualities appeared in full flower in
the written expression of his art. It would be doing a disservice to
his memory to deny that his style did not possess literary distinction
or elegance. At times his judgment was at fault; his constitutional
humour came near playing havoc with his artistic sense. Not seldom he
was long--winded and laborious in his striving after comic effect. To
offset these manifest lapses and defects there are the many fine
qualities--descriptive passages aglow with serene and cloud less beauty,
dramatic scenes depicted with virile and rugged eloquence, pathetic
incidents touched with gentle and caressing tenderness.
Style bears translation ill; in fact, translation is not infrequently
impossible. But Mr. Clemens once pointed out to me that humour has
nothing to do with style. Mark Twain's humour--for humour is his
prevalent mood--has international range since, constructed out of a
deep comprehension of human nature and a profound sympathy for human
relationship and human failing, it successfully surmounts the
difficulties of translation into alien tongues.
Mark Twain became a great international figure, not because he was an
American, paradoxical and unpatriotic as that may sound, but because he
was America's greatest cosmopolitan. He was a true cosmopolitan in the
Higginsonian sense, in that, unlike Mr. Henry James, he was “at home
even in his own country.” He was a true cosmopolitan in the Tolstoyan
sense; for his was “art transmitting the simplest feelings of common
life, but such, always, as are accessible to all men in the whole world
--the art of common life--the art of a people--universal art.” His
spirit grasped the true ideal of our time and reflected it.
Mr. Clemens attributed his international success not to qualities of
style, not to allegiance to any distinctive school, not to any
overtopping eminence of intellect. “Many so-called American humorists,”
he once remarked to me, “have been betrayed by their preoccupation with
the local. Their work never crossed frontiers because they failed to
impart to their humour that universal element which appeals to all races
of men. Realism is nothing more than close observation. But
observation will never give you the inside of the thing. The life,
the genius, the soul of a people are realized only through years of
absorption.” Mr. Clemens asseverated that the only way to be a great
American humorist was to be a great human humorist--to discover in
Americans those permanent and universal traits common to all
nationalities. In his commentary upon Bourget's 'Outre Mer', he
declared that there wasn't a single human characteristic that could
safely be labelled “American”--not a single human detail, inside or
outside. Through years of automatic observation, Mark Twain learned to
discover for America, to adapt his own phrase, those few human
peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there
in the world and named by the name of the nation where they are found.
Above all, I think, Mark Twain sympathized with and found something to
admire in the citizens of every nation, seeking beneath the surface
veneer the universal traits of that nation's humanity. He expressly
disclaimed in my presence any “attitude” toward the world, for the very
simple reason that his relation toward all peoples had been one of
effort at comprehension of their ideals, and identification with them in
feeling. He disavowed any colour prejudices, caste prejudices, or creed
prejudices--maintaining that he could stand any society. All that he
cared to know was that a man was a human being--that was bad enough for
him! It is a matter not of argument, but of fact, that Mark Twain has
made more damaging admissions concerning America than concerning any
other nation. Lafcadio Hearn best succeeded in interpreting poetry to
his Japanese students by freeing it from all artificial and local
restraints, and using as examples the simplest lyrics which go straight
to the heart and soul of man. His remarkable lecture on 'Naked Poetry'
is the most signal illustration of his profoundly suggestive mode of
interpretation. In the same way, Mark Twain as humorist has sought the
highest common factor of all nations. “My secret--if there is any
secret--,” Mr. Clemens once said to me, “is to create humour independent
of local conditions. In studying humanity as exhibited in the people
and localities I best knew and understood, I have sought to winnow out
the encumbrance of the local.” And he significantly added--musingly--
“Humour, like morality, has its eternal verities.”
To the literature of the world, I venture to say, Mark Twain has
contributed: his masterpiece, that provincial Odyssey of the
Mississippi, 'Huckleberry Finn', a picaresque romance worthy to rank
with the very best examples of picaresque fiction;
'Tom Sawyer', only little inferior to its pendent story, which might
well be regarded as the supreme American morality--play of youth,
'Everyboy'; 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg', an ironic fable of
such originality and dexterous creation that it has no satisfactory
parallel in literature; the first half of 'Life on the Mississippi' and
all of 'Roughing It', for their reflections of the sociological phases
of a civilization now vanished forever. It is gratifying to Americans
to recognize in Mark Twain the incarnation of democratic America. It is
gratifying to citizens of all nationalities to recall and recapture the
pleasure and delight his works have given them for decades. It is more
gratifying still to rest confident in the belief that, in Mark Twain,
America has contributed to the world a genius sealed of the tribe of
Moliere, a congener of Le Sage, of Fielding, of Defoe--a man who will be
remembered, as Mr. Howells has said, “with the great humorists of all
time, with Cervantes, with Swift, or with any others worthy his company;
none of them was his equal in humanity.”