The Portable Mark Twain (7 page)

In November, begins a four-month lecture tour with George Washington Cable.

In December, the English edition of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
is published.

1885
His own publishing house, Charles L. Webster & Company, issues the first American edition of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
on February 18.

“The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” is published in the December issue of
Century.

Begins investing in the Paige typesetting machine.

1889
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
is published by Charles L. Webster & Company.

Optimistic about the prospects for the Paige typesetter and that he will be able to retire from writing and live off the profits.

1890
His mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, dies.

1891
With the publishing house deeply in debt, he stops his payments for the support of the Paige typesetting project.

Unable to afford the maintenance of their Hartford house, the family moves to Europe.

1893
“Extracts from Adam's Diary” is published in
Niagara Book.

1894
Clemens declares voluntary bankruptcy.

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins
is published by the American Publishing Company.

1895
Begins his round-the-world lecture tour in order to pay creditors.

1896
His daughter Susy dies.

1898
Remaining debts paid in full.

1901
“To the Person Sitting in Darkness” is published in the
North American Review
and as a pamphlet by the Anti-Imperialist League.

The family moves to Riverdale-on-the-Hudson in New York.

Writes “Corn-Pone Opinions”; published posthumously.
1902
Visits Hannibal and St. Louis for the last time.

Receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

1903
Settles in Italy for Olivia's health.

1904
Olivia Clemens dies June 5.

1905
Writes “Eve's Diary,” published in
Harper's Magazine.

A seventieth birthday party in his honor is given at Delmonico's; 172 people attend.

1906
What Is Man?
is published anonymously by DeVinne Press.

Begins to publish “Chapters from My Autobiography” in the
North American Review.

1907
Receives an honorary Litt.D. degree from Oxford.

Publishes “Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven” in
Harper's Magazine
(Dec. 1907-Jan. 1908).

1908
Conceives the idea of forming a club called the “Aquarium,” whose members would be schoolgirls between ten and sixteen years old called “angelfish.”

Moves into new house in Redding, Connecticut, and at daughter Clara's suggestion calls it “Stormfield.”

1909
Daughter Jean dies December 24.

1910
Travels to Bermuda; begins to have chest pains.

Returns to Stormfield; dies April 21.

Twain's genius was constitutionally eruptive, and for that reason much of his best work is to be found in his short fiction where the spontaneity of his imagination, combined as it almost always was with meticulous revision, could be given free rein. The writer was naturally adept at most short forms—the tall tale, the sketch, the burlesque and parody, the fable—but he was also disposed to ring some changes on narrative conventions. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a case in point. Clemens had heard a man named Ben Coon tell the story in a mining camp in the California foothills and made brief notes for a tale to be written at some future date. When Artemus Ward requested a humorous tale of him for a collection of such stories, Twain had his opportunity, and he chose the familiar form of the frame tale to structure the narrative. A frame tale typically begins with a genteel narrator (educated, correct, and a bit stodgy) who comes in contact with a vernacular character (unrefined and ungrammatical) who, in his turn, spins a humorous yarn. The genteel character returns at the end to round things off. Because this sort of humor was popular in Eastern periodicals, there was a temptation for the writer to condescend to the frontier ruffian and to make him a figure of fun in order to please an audience generally perceived to be above and apart from such types. Twain, on the other hand, more often than not makes the teller (in this case Simon Wheeler) and the principal character (here, Jim Smiley) amusing and certainly limited in understanding and opportunities, but they are sympathetic too. And within Wheeler's frame of reference, Smiley and the mysterious stranger who bests him are men of “transcendent genius.” The Twain persona, on the other hand, is blind to the humor of the story and only belatedly recognizes that he has been, from the beginning, the butt of a joke concocted by Artemus Ward. “The Story of the Old Ram” is another frame tale, and once again, Twain, in the role of tenderfoot in the Nevada Territory, realizes that he has been set up by the “boys.” In believing that he has the privilege of hearing the notorious story of the old ram, told by a man who must be “symmetrically” drunk to tell it, Twain perceives, by the end, that he has been “sold.” Jim Blaine, on the other hand, is unaware that anything he has said is funny, and, instead of concluding a tale that really has never gotten started, he falls asleep midsentence.

“How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once,” “Buck Fanshaw's Funeral,” “Letters from Greeley,” and “An Encounter with an Interviewer” do not depend on the device of the frame tale as a form, but they do participate in the humor of encounters between and among characters of different backgrounds and experience. Two of them benefit from Twain's journalistic experience—he wrote “How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once” at a time when he was one-third owner of a Buffalo newspaper and was involved in making editorial decisions of his own; as a journalist and, later as something of a celebrity himself, Twain had been on both sides of the reporter's notepad and knew something about the latent comedy in any encounter with an interviewer. His days in the West had thoroughly acquainted him with the slang and argot of the mining camps, and with men such as Buck Fanshaw, a “bully boy with a glass-eye” and who never “shook his mother.” “Letters from Greeley,” on the other hand, is founded on two widely known facts—that Greeley was an amateur farmer who published his views on agriculture and that his handwriting was notoriously illegible. All of these tales depend on some form of miscommunication for their humor, but beyond and above that common foundation, Twain's humorous imagination might soar to unexplored territory. Everyone has had trouble deciphering another's handwriting, but who else but Twain could read into the scrawl: “Bolivia extemporizes mackeral.” Everyone in a temper has improvised some sort of profanity, but who else but Twain could unleash these ripe expletives upon the regular editor of an agricultural journal: “you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower . . . You turnip! . . . Yam! . . . Pie-plant!”

In dramatic contrast to Twain's tall tales and humorous sketches, “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” is a morally serious story. Nevertheless, Clemens enlisted the devices of humor and modified them to his purpose. The Aunt Rachel of this tale was, in fact, Mary Cord, the servant of Clemens's sister-in-law, Susan Crane, at Quarry Farm, which overlooks the town of Elmira, New York. Clemens had more than once boasted that, because he had grown up around slaves in Missouri, he was better acquainted with the temperament of blacks than New Yorkers. Susan Crane was not convinced, and urged Clemens to ask Mary Cord to tell her own story. Clemens was reluctant, but one evening he did ask the woman about herself, and the result was the inspiration for one of his finest short works. By the end of her story, Clemens must have known that he had been set up by Susan Crane and that the effect of Mary Cord's tale was transforming. Once again, Sam Clemens had been “sold,” but in an entirely serious way. “A True Story” is not merely a transcript of what he heard, however. He shaped the narrative, giving it a coherent beginning, middle, and end; and through the artful management of gesture, what Twain sometimes called “stage directions,” he made Aunt Rachel a dignified and powerful moral presence. Twain submitted the story to the
Atlantic
magazine and—somewhat to his surprise—the editor, William Dean Howells, was pleased to publish it. It was the first time Twain had had anything accepted by that prestigious magazine. And it was probably the first time, as well, that he recognized that he could tell a genuinely “literary” tale with a serious moral purpose entirely in dialect. This recognition would later prove important when he began to write
Huckleberry Finn.

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend,
Leonidas W.
Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that
Leonidas W.
Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous
Jim
Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named
Leonidas W.
Smiley—
Rev. Leonidas W.
Smiley—a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in
finesse.
To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

 

There was a feller here once by the name of
Jim
Smiley, in the winter of '49—or may be it was the spring of '50—I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him—any way just so's he got a bet,
he
was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solitry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there were two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to
him
—he would bet on
any
thing—the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerably better—thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy—and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, “Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, any way.”

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.