The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (5 page)

When Artemus Ward passed through California on a literary tour in 1864, Mark Twain regaled him—as he regaled all worthy acquaintances—with his favourite story, 'The Jumping Frog'. Ward was delighted with it.

"Write it out," he said, "give it all the necessary touches, and let me use it in a volume of sketches I am preparing for the press. Just send it to Carleton, my publisher, in New York."

It arrived too late for Ward's book, and Carleton presented it to Henry Clapp, who published it in his paper, The Saturday Press of November 18, 1864. In his Autobiography, Mr. Clemens has narrated how 'The Jumping Frog' put a quietus on 'The Saturday Press', and was immediately copied in numerous newspapers in England and America. He was always proud of the celebrity that story achieved; but he never sought to claim the credit for himself. He freely admits that it was not Mark Twain, but the frog, that became celebrated. The author, alas, remained in obscurity!

Carleton afterwards confessed that he had lost the chance of a life—time by giving The Jumping Frog away; but Mark Twain's old friend, Charles Henry Webb, came to the rescue and published it. About four thousand copies were sold in three years; but the real fame of the story was in its newspaper and magazine notoriety. In 1872 it was translated into the 'Revue des Deux Mondes'; and it was almost as widely read in England, India, and Australia as it was in America.

Meantime Mark Twain was still awaiting the rewards of journalism, and doing literary hack work of one sort or another. In 1866 the proprietors of the 'Sacramento Union' employed him to write a series of letters from the Sandwich Islands. The purpose of these letters was to give an account of the sugar industry. Mark told the story of sugar, but, as was his wont, threw in a lot of extraneous matter that had nothing to do with sugar. It was the extraneous matter, and not the sugar, that won him a wide audience on the Pacific Coast. During these months of "luxurious vagrancy" he described in the most vivid way many of the most notable features of the Sandwich Islands. Nowadays such letters would at once have been embodied in a volume. In his 'My Debut as a Literary Person', Mark Twain has described in admirably graphic style his great "scoop" of the news of the Hornet disaster; how Anson Burlingame had him, ill though he was, carried on a cot to the hospital, so that he could interview the half-dead sailors. His bill—twenty dollars a week for general correspondence, and one hundred dollars a column for the Hornet story—was paid with all good will. On the strength of this story, he hoped to become a "Literary Person," and sent his account of the Hornet disaster to Harper's Magazine, where it appeared in December, 1866. But alas! he could not give the banquet he was going to give to celebrate his debut as a "Literary Person." He had not written the "Mark Twain" distinctly, and when it appeared it had been transformed into "Mike Swain"!

When Mark returned to San Francisco, he resolved to follow the example of Stoddard and Mulford, and "enter the lecture field." The "extraneous matter" in his letters to the Sacramento Union had made him "notorious"; and, as he put it, "San Francisco invited me to lecture." The historic account of that lecture, in 'Roughing It', is found elsewhere in this book. Noah Brooks, editor of the Alta California, who was present at this lecture, has written the following graphic piece of description "Mark Twain's method as a lecturer was distinctly unique and novel. His slow, deliberate drawl, the anxious and perturbed expression of his visage, the apparently painful effort with which he framed his sentences, and, above all, the surprise that spread over his face when the audience roared with delight or rapturously applauded the finer passages of his word-painting, were unlike anything of the kind they had ever known. All this was original; it was Mark Twain." Employing D. E. McCarthy as his agent, Mark gave a number of lectures at various places on the Pacific Coast. From this time forward we recognize in Mark Twain one of the supreme masters of the art of lecturing in our time.

In December, 1866, he set out for New York, preparatory to the grand tour around the world. His own account of the circular describing the projected trip is famous. He had proposed, for twelve hundred dollars in gold,—at the rate of twenty dollars apiece, to write a series of letters for the 'Alta California'. Brooks, the editor, fortified the grave misgivings of the proprietors over this proposition; but Colonel John McComb (then on the editorial staff) argued vehemently for Mark, and turned the scale in his favour. While Mark was in New York, he was urged by Frank Fuller, whom he had known as Territorial Governor of Utah, to deliver a lecture—in order to establish his reputation on the Atlantic coast. Fuller, an enthusiastic admirer of Mark Twain, overcame all objections, and engaged Cooper Union for the occasion. Though few tickets were sold, Fuller cleverly succeeded in packing the hall by sending out a multitude of complimentary tickets to the school-teachers of New York City and the adjacent territory. That lecture proved to be a supreme success—Mark's reputation as a lecturer on the Atlantic coast was assured.

On June 10, 1867, the Quaker City set sail for its Oriental tour. It bore on board a comparatively unknown person of the name of Clemens, who, in applying for passage, represented himself to be a Baptist minister in ill-health from San Francisco!

It brought back a celebrity, destined to become famous throughout the world. Prior to sailing he arranged to contribute letters to the 'New York Tribune' and the 'New York Herald', as well as to the 'Alta California'.

"His letters to the 'Alta California'," says Noah Brooks, "made him famous. It was my business to prepare one of these letters for the Sunday morning paper, taking the topmost letter from a goodly pile that was stacked in a pigeon-hole of my desk. Clemens was an indefatigable correspondent, and his last letter was slipped in at the bottom of a tall stack.

"It would not be quite accurate to say that Mark Twain's letters were the talk of the town; but it was very rarely that readers of the paper did not come into the office on Mondays to confide to the editors their admiration of the writer, and their enjoyment of his weekly contributions. The California newspapers copied these letters, with unanimous approval and disregard of the copyrights of author and publisher."

It was the Western humour, and the quaintly untrammelled American intelligence, focussed upon diverse and age-encrusted civilizations, which caught the instantaneous fancy of a vast public. It was a virgin field for the humorous observer; Europe had not yet become the playground of America. It was rather a
terra incognita
, regarded with a sort of reverential ignorance by the average American tourist. By the range of his humour, the pertinency of his observation, and the vigour of his expression he awoke immediate attention. And he aroused a deeply sympathetic response in the hearts of Americans by his manly and outspoken expression—his respect for the worthy, the admirable, the praiseworthy, his scorn and detestation for the spurious, the specious and the fraudulent. In this book, for the first time, he strikes the key-note of his life and thought, which sounds so clearly throughout all his later works. It is the true beginning of his career.

On his return to the United States in November, he resumed his newspaper work, this time at the National Capital. On his arrival there he found a letter from Elisha Bliss, of the 'American Publishing Company', proposing a volume recounting the adventures of the "Excursion," to be elaborately illustrated, and sold by subscription on a five per cent. royalty. He eagerly accepted the offer and set to work on his notes.

"I knew Mark Twain in Washington," says Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada, in his reminiscences 'A Senator of the Sixties', "at a time when he was without money. He told me his condition, and said he was very anxious to get out his book. He showed me his notes, and I saw that they would make a great book, and probably bring him in a fortune. I promised that I would 'stake' him until he had the book written. I made him a clerk to my committee in the senate, which paid him six dollars per day; then I hired a man for one hundred dollars per month to do the work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat, like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an evil-smelling cigar butt, very much frazzled, protruded from the corner of his mouth. He had a very sinister appearance. He was a man I had known around the Nevada mining camps several years before, and his name was Samuel L. Clemens."

It was during this winter that Mark wrote a number of humorous articles and sketches—'The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract', the account of his resignation as clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, and 'Riley—Newspaper Correspondent'. His time was chiefly devoted to preparing the material for his book; but finding Washington too distracting, he returned to San Francisco and completed the manuscript therein July, 1868. For a year the publication of the book was delayed, as recorded in the Autobiography; but it finally appeared in print following Mark's indignant telegram to Bliss that, if the book was not on sale in twenty-four hours, he would bring suit for damages. Mark Twain records that in nine months the book had taken the publishing house out of debt, advanced its stock from twenty-five to two hundred, and left seventy thousand dollars clear profit. Eighty-five thousand copies were sold within sixteen months, the largest sale of a four dollar book ever achieved in America in so short a time up to that date. It is, miraculous to relate, still the leader in its own special field—a "bestseller" for forty years!

The proprietors of the 'Alta California' were exceeding wroth when they heard that Clemens was preparing for publication the very letters which they had commissioned him to write and had printed in their own paper. They prepared to publish a cheap paper-covered edition of the letters, and sent the American Publishing Co. a challenge in the shape of an advance notice of their publication. Clemens hurried back to San Francisco from the East, and soon convinced the proprietors of the 'Alta California' of the authenticity of his copyright. The paper-covered edition was then and there abandoned forever.

Before leaving the West to settle permanently in the East, Mark Twain was associated for a short time with the 'Overland Monthly', edited by Bret Harte. In his review of 'The Innocents Abroad', Harte asserted that Clemens deserved "to rank foremost among Western humorists"; but he was grievously disappointed in the first few contributions from Clemens to the Overland Monthly—notably 'By Rail through France' (later incorporated in The Innocents Abroad)—because of their perfect gravity. At last, 'A Mediaeval Romance'—a story which has been said to contain the germ of 'A Connecticut Yankee', because of its burlesque of mediaevalism—won the enthusiastic approval of Bret Harte.

From this time forward, Samuel L. Clemens is seen in a new environment, in association with new ideas and a new civilization. The history of this second period does not fall within the scope of the present work. It has just been narrated with brilliancy and charm by his close associate and most intimate friend, Mr. William Dean Howells, in his admirable book 'My Mark Twain'. In the subsequent portion of the present work attention will be directed solely to those features of Mark Twain's life which have a direct bearing upon his career as a man of letters, and which throw into relief the progressive development of his genius.

The South and the West contributed to Mark Twain's development, and added to his store of vital experience, in greater measure than all the other influences of his life combined. From the inexhaustible well of those experiences he drew ever fresh contributions for the satisfaction of the world. His mind was stocked with the rich, crude ore of early experience—the romance and the reality of a life full of prismatic variations of colour. The civilization of the East, its culture and refinement, tempered the genius of Mark Twain in conformity with the indispensable criteria of classic art. Under the broadening influence of its persistent nationalism, he became more deeply, more profoundly, imbued with the comprehensive ideals of American democracy. He never lost the first fine virginal spontaneity of his native style, never weakened in the vigour of his thought or in the primitiveness of his expression. His contact with the East compassed the liberation of that vast fund of stored—up early experiences, acquired through grappling with life in many a rude encounter.

Out of its own life, the East never contributed to Mark Twain's works, in any appreciably momentous way, either volume or immensity of fertile, suggestive human experience. If we eliminate from the list of Mark Twain's works those books which have their roots deep set in the soil of South and West, we eliminate the most priceless assets of his art. Indeed, it may be doubted whether, were those works struck from the catalogue of his contributions, Mark Twain could justly rank as a great genius. To his association with the South and the Southwest are due 'Tom Sawyer', 'Huckleberry Finn', 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', and 'Life on the Mississippi'. 'The Jumping Frog' and 'Roughing It' belong peculiarly to the West, and even 'The Innocents Abroad' falls wholly within the period of Mark Twain's influence by the West, its standards, outlook, and localized viewpoint.

Colonel Mulberry Sellers is a veritably human type, the embodiment, laughably lovable, of a temperamental phase of American character in the course of the national development. But 'The Gilded Age' has long since disappeared from that small but tremendously significant group of works which are tentatively destined to rank as classics. Much as I enjoy the satiric comedy of 'A Yankee in King Arthur's Court', I have always felt that it set before Europe an American type which is neither elevating nor inspiring—nor national. It tends to the gratification of England and Europe, even in the face of its democratic demolition of feudalistic survival, by sealing a certain cheap type of vulgarity with the national stamp. One must, nevertheless, confess with regret that this type is the embodiment of an "ideal" still only too commonly cherished in America. The national type, I take it, is found in such characters as Lincoln and Phillips Brooks, in Lee and Henry W. Grady, in Charles W. Eliot and Edwin A. Alderman, and not in a provincial 'Connecticut Yankee', jovial and whole—hearted though he be. I say this without forgetting or minimizing for a moment the art displayed in effecting the devastating and illimitably humorous contrast of a present with a remotely past civilization. 'Joan of Arc' has no local association, being a pure work of the heart, the chivalric impulse of a noble spirit. 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg', viewed from any standpoint, is a masterpiece; but its significance lies, not in the locality of its setting, but in the universality of its moral.