Mark Twain : Biography
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| Mark Twain |
Mark
Twain : Biography
Born on November 30,
1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel L. Clemens wrote under the pen name Mark
Twain and went on to pen several novels, including two major classics of
American literature, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. He was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer,
entrepreneur and inventor. Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Redding,
Connecticut.
Writing grand tales
about Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and the mighty Mississippi River, Mark Twain
explored the American soul with wit, buoyancy, and a sharp eye for truth. He
became nothing less than a national treasure.
Samuel Langhorne
Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, was born on November 30,
1835, in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri, the sixth child of John and
Jane Clemens. When he was 4 years old, the Clemens clan moved to nearby Hannibal, a
bustling town of 1,000 people. John Clemens worked as a storekeeper, lawyer,
judge and land speculator, dreaming of wealth but never achieving it, sometimes
finding it hard to feed his family. He was an unsmiling fellow; according to
one legend, young Sam never saw him laugh. His mother by contrast, was a
fun-loving, tenderhearted homemaker who whiled away many a winter's night for
her family by telling stories. She became head of the household in 1847 when
John died unexpectedly. The Clemens family "now became almost
destitute," writes biographer Everett Emerson, and was forced into years
of economic struggle—a fact that would shape the career of Mark Twain.
Sam Clemens lived in
Hannibal from age 4 to age 17. The town, situated on the Mississippi River, was
in many ways a splendid place to grow up. Steamboats arrived there three times
a day, tooting their whistles; circuses, minstrel shows, and revivalists paid
visits; a decent library was available; and tradesmen such as blacksmiths and
tanners practiced their entertaining crafts for all to see. However, violence
was commonplace, young Sam witnessed much death. When he was 9 years old he saw
a local man murder a cattle rancher, and at 10 he watched a slave die after a
white overseer struck him with a piece of iron.
Life in Hannibal
Hannibal inspired
several of Mark Twain's fictional locales, including "St. Petersburg"
in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. These imaginary river towns
are complex places: sunlit and exuberant on the one hand, but also vipers'
nests of cruelty, poverty, drunkenness, loneliness, and life-crushing boredom.
All of that had been a part of Sam Clemens' boyhood experience.
Sam kept up his
schooling until he was about 12 years old, when—with his father dead and
needing to earn his keep—he found employment as an apprentice printer at the Hannibal
Courier, which paid him with a meager ration of food. In 1851, at 15, he
got a job as a printer and occasional writer and editor at the Hannibal
Western Union, a little newspaper owned by his brother, Orion.
Then, in 1857,
21-year-old Clemens fulfilled a dream: He began learning the art of piloting a
steamboat on the Mississippi.
A licensed pilot by
1859, he soon found regular employment plying the shoals and channels of the
great river. He loved his career—it was exciting, well-paying, and high-status,
roughly akin to flying a jetliner today. However, his service was cut short in
1861 by the outbreak of the Civil War, which halted most civilian traffic on
the river.
As the war began, the
people of Missouri angrily split between support for the Union and the
Confederacy. Clemens opted for the latter, joining the Confederate Army in June
1861, but serving for only a couple of weeks until his volunteer unit
disbanded.
Where, he wondered
then, would he find his future? What venue would bring him both excitement and
cash? His answer: the great American West.
Heading Out West
In July 1861, Twain
climbed onboard a stagecoach and headed for Nevada and California, where he
would live for the next five years. At first, he prospected for silver and
gold, convinced that he would become the savior of his struggling family and
the sharpest-dressed man in Virginia City and San Francisco. But nothing panned
out. By the middle of 1862, he was flat broke and in need of a regular job.
He knew his way
around a newspaper office, so that September, he went to work as a reporter for
the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. He churned out news stories,
editorials and sketches, and along the way, adopted the pen name "Mark
Twain"—steamboat slang for 12 feet of water.
Twain became one of
the best known storytellers in the West. He honed a distinctive narrative
style—friendly, funny, irreverent, often satirical and always eager to deflate
the pretentious. He got a big break in 1865, when one of his tales about life
in a mining camp, "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," was printed in
newspapers and magazines around the country (the story later appeared under
various titles). His next step up the ladder of success came in 1867, when he
took a five-month sea cruise in the Mediterranean, writing humorously about the
sights for American newspapers with an eye toward getting a book out of the
trip. And so it came to pass that in 1869 The Innocents Abroad was
published, and became a best-seller.
At 34, this
westerner—handsome, red-haired, affable, canny, egocentric and ambitious—had
become one of the most popular and famous writers in America.
Marriage to Olivia Langdon
However, Mark Twain
worried about being a westerner. In those years, the country's cultural life
was dictated by an Eastern establishment centered in New York and Boston—a straight-laced,
Victorian, moneyed group that cowed Twain. "An indisputable and almost
overwhelming sense of inferiority bounced around his psyche," wrote
scholar Hamlin Hill, competing with his aggressiveness and vanity. Twain's
fervent wish was to get rich, support his mother, rise socially, and receive
what he called "the respectful regard of a high Eastern
civilization."
In February 1870, he
improved his social status by marrying 24-year-old Olivia (Livy) Langdon, the
daughter of a rich New York coal merchant.
Writing to a friend
shortly after his wedding, Twain could not believe his good luck: "I have
... the only sweetheart I have ever loved ... she is the best girl, and the
sweetest, and gentlest, and the daintiest, and she is the most perfect gem of womankind."
Livy, like many people during that time, took pride in her pious, high-minded,
genteel approach to life. Twain hoped that she would "reform" him, a
mere humorist, from his rustic ways. The couple settled in Buffalo, and later
had four children.
Thankfully, Mark
Twain's glorious "low-minded" western voice broke through on
occasion. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, and soon
thereafter he began writing a sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
(Oddly, the word "The" was not included in the title of book's
original edition.) Writing this work, comments biographer Everett Emerson,
freed Twain temporarily from the "inhibitions of the culture he had chosen
to embrace."
Huck Finn
"All modern
American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry
Finn," Ernest
Hemingway wrote in 1935, giving short shrift to Herman Melville
and others, but making an interesting point. Hemingway's comment refers
specifically to the colloquial language of Twain's masterpiece. For perhaps the
first time in America, the vivid, raw, not-so-respectable voice of the common
folk was used to create great literature.
Huck Finn required
years to conceptualize and write, and Twain often put it aside. In the
meantime, he pursued respectability with 1881 publication of The Prince and
the Pauper, a charming novel endorsed with enthusiasm by his genteel family
and friends. In 1883 he put out Life on the Mississippi, and interesting
but safe travel book. When Huck Finn finally was published in 1884, Livy
Clemens gave it a chilly reception.
After that business
and writing were of equal value to Mark Twain as he set about his cardinal task
of earning a lot of money. In 1885, he triumphed as a book publisher by issuing
the bestselling memoirs of former President Ulysses S. Grant,
who had just died. He lavished many hours on this and other business ventures,
and was certain that his efforts would be rewarded with enormous wealth, but he
never achieved the success he expected. His publishing house eventually went
bankrupt.
Later Work
Twain's financial
failings, reminiscent in some ways to his father's, had serious consequences
for his state of mind. They contributed powerfully to a growing pessimism in
him, a deep-down feeling that human existence is a cosmic joke perpetrated by a
chuckling God. Another cause of his angst, perhaps, was his unconscious anger
at himself for not giving undivided attention to his deepest creative
instincts, which centered on his Missouri boyhood.
In 1889, Twain
published A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, a science-fiction/historical
novel about ancient England. His next major work, in 1894, was The Tragedy
of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a somber novel that some observers described as
"bitter." He also wrote short stories and essays, and several other
books, including a study of Joan of Arc.
Some of these later
works have enduring merit. His unfinished take The Chronicle of Young Satan
has fervent admirers today.
Mark Twain's last
fifteen years were filled with public honors, including degrees from Oxford and
Yale. Probably the most famous American of the late 19th century, he was much
photographed and applauded wherever he went. Indeed, he was one of the most
prominent celebrities in the world, traveling widely overseas, including a
successful round-the-world lecture tour in 1895-'96, undertaken to pay off his
debts.
Personal Struggles
But while those years
were gilded with awards, they also brought him much anguish. Early in their
marriage he and Livy had lost their toddler son, Langdon to diphtheria; now in
1896 his favorite daughter, Susy, died at the age of 24 of spinal meningitis.
The loss broke his heart, and adding to his grief, he was out of the country
when it happened. His youngest daughter, Jean, was diagnosed with sever
epilepsy in the mid-1890s; some years later, during epileptic attacks, she
twice tried to murder her housekeeper. In 1909, when she was 29 years old, she
died of a heart attack. For many years, Twain's relationship with middle
daughter Clara was distant and full of quarrels.
In June 1904, Livy
died after a long illness. Her husband traveled often while she was sick.
"The full nature of his feelings toward her is puzzling," writes
scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. "If he treasured Livy's comradeship as much as
he often said, why did he spend so much time away from her?" But absent or
not, throughout 34 years of marriage, Twain had indeed loved his wife. "Wheresoever
she was, there was Eden," he wrote in tribute to her.
Twain became somewhat
bitter in his later years, even while projecting an amiable persona to his
public. In private he demonstrated a stunning insensitivity to friends and
loved ones. "Much of the last decade of his life, he lived in hell,"
wrote Hamlin Hill. He wrote a fair amount was unable to finish most of his
projects. His memory faltered. He had volcanic rages and nasty bouts of
paranoia, and he experienced many periods of depressed indolence, which he
tried to assuage by smoking cigars, reading in bed, and playing endless hours
of billiards and cards.
Samuel Clemens died
on April 21, 1910, at the age of 74, at his country home in Redding,
Connecticut. He was buried in Elmira, New York.
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