he was a prankster a gambler a rebel and a
dreamer he was the lincoln of american literature and his days were filled with adventure mark twain lived it all 75 years of bold schemes
passionate beliefs and daring escapades at age 25 he volunteered to fight for the confederacy
then deserted at the first sign of union guns he traveled far he rode fast and he drank
hard out west he found adventure at every turn barely avoiding a duel in virginia city
communing with native lovelies in hawaii he loved as a man of humble origins he
despised wealth even as he schemed to acquire it he sold himself and his name at every
opportunity and still tumbled into bankruptcy center stage at the great events of his day he
saved ulysses s grant from dishonor and disgrace defender of the underdog he risked his very
life attacking the powerful assailing police brutality against chinese immigrants
and exposing the inhumanity of slavery fiercely independent and eager to speak his
mind he pierced men's most sacred beliefs if christ were here now there is one
thing he would not be a christian he became the most conspicuous man on earth
and the first modern celebrity someone famous for being famous his trademark white suit
was an affectation and a plea for attention he embodied the best and the worst of
america and his like will not be seen again born samuel langhorne clemons the boy who would
become mark twain grew up in the frontier village of hannibal missouri hard on the banks of
the mississippi river although his family was dirt poor clemens would later idealize his
boyhood days in the adventures of tom sawyer like his creator tom is a
romantic an embellisher a dreamer forever mooning over his latest true love
becky thatcher and like the young sam clemons tom is a master troublemaker he lies he steals he
picks fights with other boys for no good reason he's a bad boy and he's also the hero of our
story my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves
and how they felt and thought and talked and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in
breakfast to the adventures of tom sawyer 1876 sam clemen's imagined ideal ended at age 12 with
the death of his father needing to support his family and restless with wanderlust he left
school to become a printer's apprentice for the next decade he roamed widely setting type for
newspapers and cities from cincinnati to new york traveling south in 1857 he visited
the booming port of new orleans entranced as always by the excitement
of life along the mighty mississippi at age 22 he grabbed the chance to
enact his greatest boyhood dream when i was a boy there was but one permanent
ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the mississippi river to be a
steam boatman old times on the mississippi 1875. in his later writings clemons presented himself as
a bumbling apprentice constantly making mistakes and irritating his master the invention of
that clumsy naive character is part of the creation of the fictionalized mark twain in
fact clemens was an extremely skilled pilot mastering every curve of the river
for 300 miles and never losing a ship the riverboat pilot was the only unfettered and
entirely independent human being that lived on the earth i love the profession far better than any i
have followed since and took a measureless pride his experiences on the river brought him into
contact with a gallery of colorful personalities who would later populate his writings when i find a well-drawn character in fiction
or biography i generally take a warm personal interest in him for the reason that i
have known him before met him on the river events would soon propel twain towards the wider
world and into a host of improbable adventures he would leave the river but the landscape
of his youth stayed with him always eternal home to his heart and his imagination with the outbreak of the civil war commercial
traffic on the mississippi was halted sam clemons was out of a job he returned
to hannibal and joined his chums in a confederate volunteer brigade that operated
like an older version of tom sawyer's gang young man who roamed the countryside stealing
farmers pigs and skinny dipping when word arrived that union troops under ulysses s grant were fast
approaching the volunteers immediately disbanded that was but one honorable
course for me to pursue and i pursued it i withdrew to private
life and gave the union cause a chance with no interest in dying for either side clemons
followed the lure of gold into the untamed west when the territory of nevada was formed in
1861 sam clemens older brother got a job as a territorial secretary as a payoff for
his work in the election of abe lincoln well off to virginia city goes the older
brother tagging along with him is sam clemons virginia city itself is a rather bizarre
town it's set on a very steep hillside one night he got drunk with artemis ward
and they just walked from rooftop to rooftop across town that way it was a wild carefree
carousing town and he participated in that there were brass perfect gertie houses wide
open gambling palaces whiskey mill every 15 steps a dozen breweries half a dozen jails and
some talk of building a church rotten in 1872. sam clemons with a couple partners took up mining
sam clemons was a lazy sort and he actually let his mining partners do most of the work while
he himself sat around in saloons and spun yarns dead broke sam put his storytelling gifts to use hiring on as a reporter for the
virginia city territorial enterprise this is a great time to be a
newspaper reporter a lot of excitement lots of wild stories were there to be heard
and maybe even a few wild stories to be told he came up fast though to the notion that you
don't get to say everything that you want in a newspaper and i think that that helped
urge him to become a writer of fiction but sometimes you can tell the truth more clearly
if you can do more than just tell the truth clemens filled the pages of the
territorial enterprise with letters stories editorials every form of fact and
fiction that sprang from his lively mind on april 3rd 1863 the pen name mark
twain made its first appearance in print prior to that he had used other pen names
he used the name grumbler rambler josh john snooks sergeant fathom thomas jefferson
snodgrass w epimonandus adrastus perkins and w epaminondus adrastus blab and then mark
twain we're all glad he made the right choice finally having struck upon a literary alter ego it gave clemens the freedom to speak truths
too dangerous to utter in his own voice he later claimed that his pen
name derived from the mississippi where leedsmen tested the water depth and signaled
two fathoms or 12 feet by calling out mark twain and it may have been that mark twain made
up that story to hide its true origin which is probably his custom of going into bars in
nevada and when he wanted to order two drinks and have him charged to him he simply said mark twain
marked down two drinks for me later in life he was probably uncomfortable having this great name
of mark twain associated with western saloons in 1865 twain's comic short story jim smiley and
his jumping frog was reprinted across the country gaining him his first national fame
unwilling to separate fact from fancy he created elaborate newspaper hoaxes virginia
city awoke one morning to learn with horror of the empire city massacre a grisly account of a man who slaughters his family and then rides
into town with his throat cut from ear to ear it was the talk of the town the talk of the
territories most of the citizens dropped the gently intuitive breakfast and then never
finished their meal there was something about those minutely faithful details that
was a sufficient substitute for food from the very beginning what mark twain was
saying is that people really want stories in which they get fooled and that
this was the kind of gruesome little fable that the audience was all too
ready to read this would hold their attention this would sell newspapers and
that they were very happy to be deceived many but not all were charmed by twain's brand
of journalism one of his mostly true articles so outraged a reader that he challenged twain
to a duel twain accepted at first then learning that his opponent was a cracked shot he lit off
the same midnight on the stage for san francisco with the west's finest newspapers and magazines san francisco offered twain a
broad audience for his talents and the cruelties of a racially divided city
inspired his lifelong defense of the underdog mark wayne had a sense a true democratic sense
of the worth of the common man and the worth of an individual when he went to san francisco he
writes passionately about the treatment of the chinese in san francisco and he was outraged
at the treatment in the 1860s of the chinese the majesty of the state itself joined in hating
abusing and persecuting these humble strangers one of the principal recreations of the
police is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of brannon street
set their dogs on unoffended chinamen and make them flee for their lives
san francisco morning call 1864. with his stinging attacks on officialdom
twain was imperiling his very life warned of possible police reprisals he fled
to angel's camp in the sierra nevadas there he planned his next great escapade a journey to
the distant sandwich islands now known as hawaii on a certain bright morning the islands
hove in sight lying low on the lonely sea after 2 000 miles of watery solitude the vision
was a welcome one upon disembarking i observed a bevy of new native young ladies bathing in the
sea and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen acting as a roving correspondent
twain explored three of the islands on horseback sampled surfing met king kamehameha and witnessed
the eruption of kilauea volcano these adventures provided the material for a bold new vocation
platform lecturer and performer extraordinaire san franciscans were the first to delight in
his soon-to-be famous sandwich island lecture people were all very willing to come out and
see mark twain perform and it was a brilliant success right from the beginning he sold out
1500 seats in san francisco for this first lecture and it was very very well received i
mean it was a natural he knew how to sort of get people's attention and to hold it and to make
them laugh he loved to perform he was masterful he performed in dozens of cities across
the west to riotous acclaim twain himself designed the sensationalized posters
that heralded his impending arrival he had these posters that promised that there
would be fireworks they offered wild animals i think all kinds of outlandish things nobody was
taken in by those at all they were part of the fun and they were part of letting the public
know that what they were going to get was a particular kind of inflated exaggerated
humor that he would provide one of the famous signs was you know the doors
open at 7 the trouble begins at 8. at age 31 sam clemons had
perfected his comic alter ego mark twain beloved writer and rack on tour with his professional fame spreading his thoughts
turned to family and finding a life partner i want a good wife i want a couple
of them if they're particularly good but where's the wherewithal eager to explore all
that life could offer in 1867 twain looked east in search of new worlds to
conquer and a home to call his own in the spring of 1867 twain impulsively booked
passage on the very first transatlantic pleasure cruise aboard the steamship quaker city he
met charles langdon from elmira new york when langdon showed him a picture of
his sister olivia twain was smitten i saw her first in the form of an ivory
miniature when she was in her 22nd year she was slender and beautiful and
girlish she was both girl and woman twain's first date with olivia langdon was
unforgettable a reading by charles dickens from david copperfield from the beginning
twain was determined to make olivia his wife the langdon family eastern blue bloods
and the pinnacle of elmira high society opposed the match twain pursued relentlessly
wooing her over two years with almost 200 letters finally her parents demanded that
he provide character references so twain gave them references and
he also explained to her father that his behavior perhaps wasn't blameworthy on
the west coast but it probably wasn't up to the high standards of eastern civilization the
references wrote back one said that he would find a drunkard's grave and another
said that he was born to be hanged his prospective father-in-law said don't don't
you have any friends who will speak well of you finally jervis langdon said i'll stand up
for you if nobody else will i believe in you livy saw something in mark twain that the
respected family probably did too here is this crude wild humorist of the pacific
slope untutored outrageous well she's going to tame him in many ways yet there
was a life to him that she appreciated she called him youth and there was something
that was always young to her in mark twain at age 34 twain took olivia as his bride
he gave her irreverence and a zest for life she gave him unconditional love she poured out her prodigal affections in
kisses and caresses and in a vocabulary of endearments whose profusion
was an astonishment to me while courting olivia twain had collected his
dispatches from the quaker city voyage into a mocking portrait of the old world the result was
his first best-selling book the innocence abroad it makes me dizzy to think of the vatican of its
wilderness of statues paintings and curiosities the old masters fairly swarm there
yes the old masters i rather wish they died a little younger the innocence abroad 1869.
this is the europe as it would look to the eye of an american who went there without prejudice
and with just good common sense to guide him and the way it looked to him of course was
ridiculous much of the time what mark twain found in europe was laughable he keeps finding nails
from the cross in which christ was crucified he finds hundreds and hundreds of nails scattered
all over europe he says there was a whole barrel full of nails my goodness they
must have used a lot of nails to do this he and his cronies on board ship love to tweak
tour guides there'd be these sober tour guides showing them a tomb or a statue of someone
and they would say well is he is he dead and the tour guide said well of course
he's dead he died he died 10 centuries ago they'd move along and they'd be shown a mummy and
they would say is he is he dead this became the running gag of the innocents abroad mark twain
was very proud of it americans delighted in seeing european pretensions brought down to earth
fueled by this national pride the innocence abroad sold over a hundred thousand copies the sales
came via a revolutionary marketing technique known as subscription publishing book agents
peddling their wares door to door in rural areas and as a result mark twain tapped a market that he
himself said probably had never read a book before and the middle class became mark twain's
audience he created popular culture in american literature the mass audience and they
bought his books in fantastic numbers in the 1870s twain spoke for the
masses in decrying the spirit of unbridled greed that swept america the
country was fast becoming less democratic with fantastic amounts of wealth concentrated
in the hands of a very few twain's book the gilded age named and depicted an era rampant
with money lust and government corruption there is no distinctly native american criminal
class except congress i can say and say with pride that we have legislators that bring higher
prices than any in the world july 4th address 1873 but he really did speak for ordinary people
in his refusal to surrender to can't his unwillingness to be bowled over by hypocrites his
contempt for mere money getting for materialism but he was up to his ears in the very world
that as an ordinary person he attacked in 1874 twain and olivia built a baroque showplace
of a home in hartford connecticut a gaudy landmark to an american success story there the common
man from missouri lived in robber baron luxury one of the things that americans loved about
america in the 19th century was the opportunity to rise make money become wealthy
the american dream mark twain was a living american dream yet i think
that mark twain is not unlike many americans that are a little bit suspicious and
a little bit guilty of what this means make money and the whole world will conspire
to call you a gentleman twain's populism did not keep him from wanting at all he spent an
enormous amount of time on get rich schemes and his zeal for wealth mingled with an
insatiable curiosity for the wonders of technology he was fascinated by invention but
that very much made him part of the high victorian and gilded age a sense that
through strong work and good ideas you could change the way you live and the way that
others was a period of invention and he loved it he took great pride in having the first
private telephone in america and yet even though he was asked to invest in the telephone
he chose not to he thought where's the market twain himself was constantly
devising new inventions including the hugely successful
mark twain self-pasting scrapbook but he soon discovered that his most valuable
commodity was himself mark twain was aware almost from the beginning that his name and his image was
something that he could market that it was worth money he did various endorsements of all
kinds of incongruous products cigars he's most famous for the mark twain cigar but he
would endorse sewing machines various kinds of medicines and elixirs almost anything with his
name on it was likely to sell and he knew that one of twain's most profitable ventures was
the new york publishing house he founded famed for its association with ulysses s grant
after two disastrous terms as president grant faced financial ruin and personal disgrace
unable to support his family he was persuaded by twain to write his memoirs dying of throat
cancer grant struggled to finish in time with twain's help he completed the
book just four days before dying the memoirs were a huge success netting the grant
family nearly a half million dollars a former confederate deserter had restored the dignity
and fortune of the union's greatest general even as he aided grant twain was
busy re-establishing his claim as the bad boy of american literature speaking
through the voice of an illiterate child he would indict all that americans held deer
and reopened the nation's most painful wounds the quality of independence was almost
wholly left out of the human race the scattering exceptions to the rule only
emphasize it light it up make it glare the publication of the adventures of huckleberry
finn in 1884 showed twain's rebellious spirit burning brighter than ever when huckleberry finn
says you don't know about me without you read the adventures of tom sawyer it was the most radical
sentence in all american literature because mark twain dared to let a vulgar illiterate we would
now call him a juvenile delinquent tell his own story no one would ever thought of doing such a
thing in a novel uh before mark twain attempted it huck finn tells the story of two outcasts
twelve-year-old huck orphan and ruffian and jim a runaway slave together they find freedom
and adventure rafting down the mississippi river huck's heart tells him that he should help jim run
away his conscience a product of his environment tells him that he should do
something to return jim to his owner and so huck begins to write a letter
that will betray jim and in this famous passage a beautiful passage he tears up the
letter and says all right i'll go to hell huck finn had to overcome the government had to overcome his church had to overcome
his family had to overcome his peers having overcome the values of society to make a
decision but his heart says this is right huck's rebellion against slavery
mirrors the transformation undergone years earlier by sam clemens in my school days i had no aversion to slavery
i was not aware that there was anything wrong with it no one arraigned it in my hearing
the local paper said nothing against it the local pulpit taught us that god
approved it that it was a holy thing both huck and twain paid dearly
for holding true to themselves huck finn says how wonderful the river is how
you feel safe and warm and comfortable and free on the great river but he always
also says and you feel lonely you are free at the price of being
isolated that's the trade-off twain's brash independence antagonized
many often leaving him a drift and apart only his family and his beloved olivia remained
ever loyal they were an odd pair in a sense because clemens was so full of energy and so
irreverent he is intrinsically sort of aggravating he was the bad boy constantly in
the marriage she would throw up her hands and say oh youth but she
was devoted utterly devoted to him twain and olivia raised three daughters from
the first twain felt a special kinship with his youngest susie a gifted child with an intuitive
understanding of her father and his strange ways she was 13 years old she wrote a biography of her
father beginning with the first sentence we are a very happy family and and uh it does sound like a
happy family the way she describes it and clemens was very proud of that biography he often quoted
from it uh said it was a king's message to him twain's fierce individualism and
his boyish craving for attention made him a difficult man to live with he would
act the buffoon to the embarrassment sometimes of his wife and daughters but what he was
doing was his western shtick he loved it he would sing his his minstrel songs or his
jubilee which he thought was a tremendously high art form and after you know an evening
of drinking he would hold forth if you went to dinner at the twains you had better be ready
for a 20-minute monologue perhaps with seeing twain's work and family life came together at one
special place quarry farm in olivia's hometown of elmira new york there away from the social bustle
of hartford he worked in a study secluded in the woods above their house the study's shape and
dimensions mimicked the riverboat pilot house and from the window twain looked out on the
chimon river a constant visual reminder of the mississippi this was the birthplace of many of his
greatest works including tom sawyer and huck finn not even elmira could insulate twain from
the financial upheavals of the late 1880s or from his own disastrous investments for fully
a decade he poured his faith and his fortune into an invention he was convinced would
revolutionize publishing the page typesetter mark wayne began putting money in at one point
to the tune of three thousand dollars a month finally investing two hundred
thousand dollars this is in the eighteen ninety so two hundred thousand
dollars is a small piece of change it never worked well enough it was the fastest
machine of its kind but it broke down constantly and was always in repair there were times
in fact when the machine would break down 30 minutes before a group of investors would
come to see it nothing but bad luck for twain finally the unthinkable twain forced to
declare bankruptcy olivia and oil baron h.h rogers came to the rescue devising a plan
to restore his finances and his reputation rogers and livy agreed the best thing mark twain
could do would be to offer himself publicly as a man who insisted on paying all of his debts he
would not exploit bankruptcy laws and get out from under his debts but in fact would honorably
repay all the people to whom he owed money that was not mark twain's first impulse once he agreed
to the plan twain worked hard to carry it out in 1894 he embarked on an arduous round the world
lecture tour to raise money and erase his debts before leaving he was forced to hire
lawyers to fend off creditors intent on repossessing his luggage he had one
more humiliation for the twain family remember he is 60 years old now rheumatism
living in not good health mark twain embarks on a true world tour goes to australia
goes to new zealand goes to india goes to south africa an enormously successful
world tour it is clear by 60 years old that mark twain was a citizen of the world that mark twain
was probably america's best ambassador abroad after a year on the road twain eagerly
looked forward to returning home arriving in london he received word that susie
back home in elmira had fallen ill with meningitis the next day brought the worst news of his life he was standing thinking about nothing
in particular when the cablegram was handed to him susie was peacefully released
today and the family never recovered from that when they left for the
around the world tour in 1895 their last view of susie was at the elmira train
station waving goodbye to them 13 months later livy returned in the very same train
the very same coach to elmira to bury a man's house burns down as the days and
weeks go by he misses first this and that and the other thing always it isn't essential it
was just one of its kind it cannot be replaced it was in that house it is irrevocably lost
it will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete and not till then can
he truly know the magnitude of the disaster when i was younger i could remember anything whether it had happened or not
but my faculties are decaying now and soon i shall be so i cannot remember any but
the things that never happened autobiography 1907. in his final years twain battled despair
by turning his thoughts to happier times susie's death was but the first tragedy to darken
his days in 1904 he lost his beloved olivia she had the heart free life of a girl and when it
broke up on the air it was as inspiring as music she remained both girl and woman to the last day
of her life wheresoever she was there was eaten twain's greatest personal sufferings
came amid his grandest public acclaim by the dawn of the 20th century he had become the
most popular and influential voice in america more than teddy roosevelt more than anyone he was
a gregarious man he was recognizable here he is his white mane his white suit he loved the
attention he loved to talk to people by 1900 mark twain's views on everything in the
world were important to somebody if he walked down fifth avenue in new york if he rode
the buggy down he would hold forth on every topic the man from hannibal had become an american
institution he was showered with honors and tributes none more meaningful to him than an
honorary degree from oxford university in 1907. even the king and queen of england joined in
paying tribute to the giant of american literature he was given his oxford gowns
he's meant a great deal to a man whose formal education ended when he was 11. and so he would take to wearing these oxford
gowns at some of the more important occasions he would go to including the wedding of his daughter
clara much to her embarrassment but to his pride beginning in 1906 he hit upon yet
another means of attracting attention dressing exclusively in his trademark white suits it was very theatrical it was a very
conspicuous plea for attention and it was seen as such as something that you would
do in order to get people to look at you despite all the acclaim and notoriety twain was at heart a lonely old man who
would outlive those closest to him the last five years or so of clemen's life were
were quite grim he was lonely he drank quite a bit he played billiards late into the night his
secretary describes him trying to enter a room and making a stab at the doorknob and missing
it and he turns to her and he says practicing his loneliness was relieved substantially by
friendships he formed with nearly a dozen young girls his angelfish as he called them the
girls who he usually met on boats or tours were all between age 10 and 16. as twain frankly
said these are the grandchildren i've never had mark twain was in pain despite being
at this point the most conspicuous person on the face of the earth and he seems
to have reverted back to a kind of an innocence and a kind of a pleasant childhood that he
had known both with susie and in earlier times when the end came for twain in 1910 americans
mourned the man and their own lost innocence the spirit of boundless optimism embodied
by twain in the 19th century was no more even in his most pessimistic there's something
vital there there's something that is engaging and maybe that's another reason why we love him he
didn't quit he lived it all he experienced it all and he took the blows that came his way uh and he
felt them with with all of his being and he kept on ongoing on living on looking for whatever
vitality there was gotta love that about it the life i led in hannibal was full of
charm and so is the memory of it yet i can call back the solemn twilight mystery of the
deep woods the made odors of the wildflowers fresh dewy and fragrant and the great mississippi the
majestic mississippi rolling its mile wide tide along shining in the sun i can call it all back
and make it as real as it ever was and as blessed you