The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (425 page)

In the preface to the Jumping Frog, published as far back as 1867, Mark Twain was dubbed, not only "the wild humorist of the Pacific slope," but also "the moralist of the Main." The first book which brought him great popularity, 'The Innocents Abroad', exhibited qualities of serious ethical import which, while escaping the attention of the readers of that day, emerge for the moderns from the welter of hilarious humour. How unforgettable is his righteous indignation over that "benefit" performance he witnessed in Italy!

The ingrained quality in Mark Twain, which perhaps more than any other won the enthusiastic admiration of his fellow Americans, was this: he always had the courage of his convictions. He writes of things, classic and hallowed by centuries, with a freshness of viewpoint, a total indifference to crystallized opinion, that inspire tremendous respect for his courage, even when one's own convictions are not engaged. The "beautiful love story of Abelard and Heloise" will never, I venture to say, recover its pristine glory—now that Mark Twain has poured over Abelard the vials of his wrath.

Those who know only the Mark Twain of the latter years, with his deep, underlying seriousness, his grim irony, and his passion for justice and truth, find difficulty in realizing that, in his earlier days, the joker and the buffoon were almost solely in evidence. In answer to a query of mine as to the reason for the serious spirit that crept into and gave carrying power to his humour, Mr. Clemens frankly replied: "I never wrote a serious word until after I married Mrs. Clemens. She is solely responsible—to her should go the credit—for any deeply serious or moral influence my subsequent work may exert. After my marriage, she edited everything I wrote. And what is more—she not only edited my works, she edited ME! After I had written some side-splitting story, something beginning seriously and ending in preposterous anti-climax, she would say to me: 'You have a true lesson, a serious meaning to impart here. Don't give way to your invincible temptation to destroy the good effect of your story by some extravagantly comic absurdity. Be yourself! Speak out your real thoughts as humorously as you please, but—without farcical commentary. Don't destroy your purpose with an ill-timed joke.' I learned from her that the only right thing was to get in my serious meaning always, to treat my audience fairly, to let them really feel the underlying moral that gave body and essence to my jest."

The quality with which Mark Twain invests his disquisitions upon morals, upon conscience, upon human foibles and failings, is the charm of the humorist always—never the grimness of the moralist or the coldness of the philosopher. He observes all human traits, whether of moral sophistry or ethical casuistry, with the genial sympathy of a lover of his kind irradiated with the riant comprehension of the humorist. And yet at times there creeps into his tone a note of sincere and manly pathos, unmistakable, irresistible. One has only to read the beautiful, tender tale of the blue jay in 'A Tramp Abroad' to know the beauty and the depth of his feeling for nature and her creatures, his sense of kinship with his brothers of the animal kingdom.

In our first joyous and headlong interest in the narrative of 'Huckleberry Finn', its rapid succession of continuously arresting incidents, its omnipresent yet never intrusive humour, the deeper significance of many a passage in that contemporary classic is likely to escape notice. Sir Walter Besant, who revelled in it as one of the most completely satisfying and delightful of books, speaks of it deliberately as a book without a moral. Perhaps he was deceived by the foreword: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." There never was a more easy-going, care-free, unpuritanical lot than Huck and Jim, the two farcical "hoboes," Tom Sawyer, and the rest. And yet in the light of Mark Twain's later writings one cannot but see in that picaresque romance, with its pleasingly loose moral atmosphere, an underlying seriousness and conviction. Jim is a simple, harmless negro, childlike and primitive; yet, so marvellous, so restrained is the art of the narrator, that imperceptibly, unconsciously, one comes to feel not only a deep interest in, but a genuine respect for, this innocent fugitive from slavery. Mr. Booker Washington, a distinguished representative of his race, said he could not help feeling that, in the character of Jim, Mark Twain had, perhaps unconsciously, exhibited his sympathy for and interest in the masses of the negro people.

Indeed, to the reflective mind—and it is to be presumed that by that standard Mark Twain's works will ultimately be judged—there is no more significant passage in Huckleberry Finn than that in which Huck struggles with his conscience over the knotty problem of his moral responsibility for compassing Jim's emancipation. Nothing else is needed to show at once Mark Twain's preoccupation with the workings of human conscience in the unsophisticated mind and his conviction that, with the "lights that he had," Huck was justified in his courageous decision.

Huck felt deeply repentant for allowing Jim to escape from the innocent, inoffending Miss Watson. He became consumed with horror and remorse to hear Jim making plans for stealing his wife and children, if their masters wouldn't sell them. His conscience kept stirring him up hotter than ever when he heard Jim talking to himself about the joys of freedom. After awhile, Huck decided to write a letter to Miss Watson, informing her of the whereabouts of her "runaway nigger." After writing that letter, he felt washed clean of sin, uplifted, exalted. But he could not forget all the goodness and tenderness of poor Jim, who had shown himself so profoundly grateful. Though he faced the torments of Puritanical damnation as a consequence, he resolved to let Jim go free. Humanity triumphed over conscience—and with an "All right, then, I'll go to hell," he tore up the letter.

One of Mark Twain's favourite themes for the display of his humour was the subject of prevarication. He seemed never to tire of ringing the changes upon the theme of the lie, its utility, its convenience, and its consequences. Doubtless he chose to dabble in falsehood because it is generally winked at as the most venial of all moral obliquities—a fault which is the most thoroughly universal of all that flesh is heir to. The incident of George Washington and the cherry tree furnished the basis for countless of his anecdotes; he wrung from it variations innumerable, from the epigram to the anecdote. His distinction between George Washington and himself, redounding immeasurably to his own glory, and demonstrating his complete superiority to Washington as a moral character, is classic: "George Washington couldn't tell a lie. I can; but I won't." Perhaps his most humorous anecdote, based upon the same story, is in connection with the exceedingly old "darky" he once met in the South, who claimed to have crossed the Delaware with Washington. "Were you with Washington," asked Mark Twain mischievously, "when he took that hack at the cherry tree?" This was a poser for the old darkey; his pride was appealed to, his very character was at stake. After an awkward hesitation, the old darkey spoke up, a gleam of simulated recollection (and real gratification for his convenient memory) overspreading his countenance: "Lord, boss, I was dar. In cose I was. I was with Marse George at dat very time. In fac—I done druv dat hack myself"!

Mark Twain's most delightful trick as a popular humorist was to strike out some comic epigram, that passed currency with the masses whose fancy it tickled, and also had upon it the minted stamp of the classic aphorism. These epigrams were frequently pseudo-moral in their nature; and their humour usually lay in the assumption that everybody is habitually addicted to prevarication—which is just precisely true enough and reprehensible enough to validate the epigram. His method was humorous inversion; and he told a story whose morals are so ludicrously twisted that the right moral, by contrast, spontaneously springs to light. "Never tell a lie—except for practice," is less successful than the more popularly known "When in doubt, tell the truth." Out of the latter maxim he succeeded in extracting a further essence of humour. He admitted inventing the maxim, but never expected it to be applied to himself. His advice, he said, was intended for other people; when he was in doubt himself, he used more sagacity! Mark Twain has made no more delightful epigram than that one in which he recognizes that a lie, morally reprehensible as it may be, is undoubtedly an ever present help in time of need: "Never waste a lie. You never know when you may need it."

Sometimes in a humorous, sometimes in a grimly serious way, Mark Twain was fond of drawing the distinction between theoretical and practical morals. Theoretical morals, he would point out, are the sort you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and from the pulpit. You get them into your head, not into your heart. Only by the commission of crime can anyone acquire real morals. Commit all the crimes in the decalogue, take them in rotation, persevere in this stern determination—and after awhile you will thereby attain to moral perfection! It is not enough to commit just one crime or two—though every little bit helps. Only by committing them all can you achieve real morality! It is interesting to note this distinction between Mark Twain, the humorous moralist, and Bernard Shaw, the ethical thinker. Each teaches precisely the same thing—the one not even half seriously, the other with all the sharp sincerity of conviction. Shaw unhesitatingly declares that trying to be wicked is precisely the same experiment as trying to be good, viz., the discovery of character.

The range of Mark Twain's humour, from the ludicrous anecdote with comically mixed morals to the profound parable with grimly ironic conclusion, takes the measure of the ethical nature of the man. It can best be illustrated, I think, by a comparison of his anecdote of the theft of the green water-melon and the classic fable of 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg'. Mark stole a water-melon out of a farmer's wagon, while he wasn't looking. Of course stole was too harsh a term—he withdrew, he retired that water-melon. After getting safely away to a secluded spot, he broke the water-melon open—only to find that it was green, the greenest water-melon of the year.

The moment he saw that the water-melon was green, he felt sorry. He began to reflect—for reflection is the beginning of reform. It is only by reflecting on some crime you have committed, that you are "vaccinated" against committing it again.

So Mark began to reflect. And his reflections were of this nature: What ought a boy to do who has stolen a green water-melon? What would George Washington, who never told a lie, have done? He decided that the only real, right thing for any boy to do, who has stolen a water-melon of that class, is to make restitution. It is his duty to restore it to its rightful owner. So rising up, spiritually strengthened and refreshed by his noble resolution, Mark restored the water—melon—what there was left of it—to the farmer and—made the farmer give him a ripe one in its place! Thus he clinched the "moral" of this story, so quaint and so ingenious; and concluded that only in some such way as this could one be fortified against further commission of crime. Only thus could one become morally perfect!

Here, as in countless other places, Mark Twain throws over his ethical suggestion—a suggestion, by contrast, of the very converse of his literal words—the veil of paradox and exaggeration, of incongruity, fantasy, light irony. Yet beneath this outer covering of art there is a serious meaning that, like murder, will out. If demonstration were needed that Mark Twain is sealed of the tribe of moralists, that is amply supplied by that masterpiece, that triumph of invention, construction, and originality, 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg'. Here is a pure morality, daring in the extreme and incredibly original in a world perpetually reiterating a saying already thousands of years old, to the effect that there is nothing new under the sun. It is a deliberate emendation of that invocation in the Lord's Prayer "Lead us (not) into temptation." The shrieking irony of this trenchant parable, its cynicism and heartlessness, would make of it an unendurable criticism of human life—were it accepted literally as a representation of society. In essence it is a morality pure and simple, animated not only by its brilliantly original ethical suggestion, but also by its illuminating reflection of human nature and its graciously relieving humour. In that exultant letter which the
Diabolus ex machin
wrote to the betrayed villagers, he sneers at their old and lofty reputation for honesty—that reputation of which they were so inordinately proud and vain. The weak point in their armour was disclosed so soon as he discovered how carefully and vigilantly they kept themselves and their children out of temptation. For he well knew that the weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire. The familiar distinction between innocence and virtue springs to mind. And it is worthy of consideration that Nietzsche, and Shaw after him, both point out that virtue consists, not in resisting evil, but in not desiring it! 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg' is a masterpiece, eminently worthy of the genius of a Swift. It proclaims Mark Twain not only as a supreme artist, but also as eminently and distinctively a moralist.

It is impossible to think of Mark Twain in his maturer development as other than a moralist. My personal acquaintance with Mr. Clemens convinced me—had I needed to be convinced—that in his later years he had striven to grapple nobly with many of the deeper issues of life, character and morality, public, religious and social, as well as personal and private. I never knew anyone who thought so "straight," or who expressed himself with such simple directness upon questions affecting religion and conduct. He was absolutely fearless in his condemnation of those subsidized "ministers" of the Gospel in cosmopolitan centres, who, through self-interest, cut their moral disquisitions to fit the predilections of their wealthy parishioners, many of whom were under national condemnation as "malefactors of great wealth." Animated by love for all creatures, the defenceless wild animal as well as the domestic pet, he was unsparing in his indictment of those big-game hunters who shamelessly described their feelings of savage exultation when some poor animal served as the target for their skill, and staggered off wounded unto death. His sympathy for the natives of the Congo was profound and intense; and his philippic against King Leopold for the atrocities he sanctioned called the attention of the whole world to conditions that constituted a disgrace to modern civilization. His diatribe against the Czar of Russia for his inhumanity to the serfs was an equally convincing proof of his noble determination to throw the whole weight of his influence in behalf of suffering and oppressed humanity. Some years before his death, he told me that he never intended to speak in public again save in behalf of movements, humanitarian and uplifting, which gave promise of effecting civic betterment and social improvement.