MARK TWAIN 1835-1910

              His real name was Samuel Langhorne Cle­mens, but he is better known by his pen name Mark Twain. One of the most impor­tant figures in American literary history it holds a unique position in American lit­erature. He was not only a great writer, he was also a famous humorist, a journalist who satirized the hypocrisy of man and society, and a novelist who used laughter to fight against the tyrannies that sun to take away man’s freedom.

             Born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, the son of storekeeper-lawyer father, Samuel Clemens was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, where his family had set­tled when he was 4 years old. Sam never finished elementary school but got his ed­ucation chiefly in the school of experience and from his keen observation of people and events common to a sleepy frontier town located on the western bank of the Mississippi River.

             Young Sam’s favourite pastime was watch­ing the mighty paddle wheel steamboats as they made their why up and down the riv­er. Nearly every time a steamboat docked at Hannibal, Samuel Clemens was there to greet it, to look, and to listen as for trap­pers, Southern gentlemen, salesmen from the East, and ladies in fine clothes came down the gangpark.

             In 1847, the death of Sam’s father, brought an end to his carefree days, and he had to go to work as the age of 12 as a printer’s apprentice. In three years he went to work as a printer for his brother Orion, publish­er of the Hannibal Journal. Samuel worked for his brother as foreman, sub-editor, a feature writer and doubtlessly learned a good deal about writing.

              At about the age of 16, he began to publish some of his own writing in the Hannibal Journal — humorous poems, joking com­mentaries on the news, and satirical obser­vations of fellow town’s people.

              When he was 17, Samuel left Hannibal and wandered east-ward as far as New York. Along the way he worked as a printer in several cities and wrote often to Orion, who printed his letters in a special column in the newspaper. After he returned to the West, Samuel again went to work for Ori­on, who had moved to the State of Iowa.

              As the age of 21, Samuel returned to the river to realize an old ambition, that of be­ing a Mississippi River steamboat pilot. In 1857, after 18 months’ apprenticeship as pilot of the steamboat, Paul Jones, Samuel Langhorne Clemens earned his steamboat pilot’s license. For the next four years he steamed up and down the Mississippi and got to know the name and position of every feature of the river. He describes this expe­rience in Life at the Mississippi.

              In 1861, the Civil War* disrupted Missis­sippi River traffic and ended Samuel Cle­mens’ career as a steamboat pilot.

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* Civil War — war 1861-1865 between the Southern or Con­federate States of America and the Northern of Union States.

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               His ca­reer as Mark Twain, the writer, was about to begin. In that same year, he and Orion boarded an overland stagecoach for a 1,700- mile Journey from St Joseph Missouri, to Carson Cites, Nevada. Orion had been ap­pointed territory secretary for Nevada and had asked Sam to accompany him to his new job.

              Samuel quickly adjusted to the rugged life of a frontier mining town but soon suc­cumbed to silver mining fever. During the long months of his search for easy wealth, Samuel heard and remembered many min­ers’ years which he was later to utilize in his writings.

             Nevada’s leading frontier newspaper, the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, print­ed several of Samuel’s colourful and humor­ous sketches of frontier life and finally of­fered him a job as an editor. Within two years he was known throughout the west­ern frontier as the “Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope”.

             In 1863, he assumed the name Mark Twain, a term he remembered from his days on the steamboat meaning “a depth of two fath­oms — clear passage”. In becoming Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens became a new per­sonality.

             By December 1864, Mark Twain was forced to leave Virginia City after he and rival newspaper tried to settle a difference of opinion by fighting a duel. He went from Virginia City to San Francisco, a city shill caught up in the excitement of gold fever. While there, he published a miner’s yarn, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country”. The tale was an immediate suc­cess and made the name of Mark Twain fa­mous all over the USA.

             In 1865, after spending five months in the Sandwich Islands — as Hawaii was then called — Twain returned to the continent and launched a public lecture tour about his experience. He was an overnight suc­cess, and in 1867, with the money he had earned from lecturing, he was able to go abroad for the last time, visiting France, Italy, Spain and Palestine. Newspaper accounts of his trip were later revised and published as The Innocents Abroad (1969) his find important book.

             It was in Hartford, in the years between 1871 and 1891, that Twain wrote his two masterpieces, The Adventures of Tom Saw­yer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckle­berry Finn (1884). These novels — together with other Twain writing of the period, A Tramp Abroad (1886), The Prince and The Pauper (1882), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), are felt by many crit­ics to mark the beginning of modern Amer­ican literature.

             Twain’s greatest fame and his importance in American letters rest largely on his two best-known novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The latter is generally consid­ered to be his greatest novel. These two novels are filled with concrete details which he had observed, remembered ful­ly, and set down. Idyllic in nature, Huck­leberry Finn presents a picture of the town of Hannibal in the days of Twain’s boy­hood, yet the story of Huck and Jim has dark overtones. The world that they see is not a hoped -for of peace and beauty. It is a world of fear and cruelty and vio­lence and injustice in which the innocence of Huck and Jim provides a sharp con­trast between. What is good in the natu­ral boy or man and what has gone wrong which adult society.

               All of Twain’s books are modeled from the days of his past; in most of them he is the hero. Roughing It and Life on the Missis­sippi are almost completely autobiographi­cal; The Innocents Abroad caricaturizes the gullible American tourist; The Prince and the Pauper expresses Twain’s hatred of in­justice and of the need for mercy.

                As he grew older, Twain grew increasingly depressed and disillusioned by what called “Its damned human race”, and her later works such as Pudd’nhead Wilson (1899) and The Mysterious Stranger (published posthumously in 1916) mirror his growing bitterness. The Mysterious Stranger, his last book, is an allegory that suggests that life is in reality only a dream.

                Twain’s success as an author, public speak­er, husband and father, was not reflected in his choice of business investments, and at the all of 55, he found himself on the verge of bankruptcy. In June 1891, with funds he had manages to scrape to gath­er, he left Hartford and took his family to Europe where living was cheaper. A gypsy life followed as the family moved from city to city while wrote ceaselessly and ever gave lectures to learn enough money to overcome his financial losses. His efforts were fruitless, however, and in April 1894, he declared bankruptcy with debts totaling $ 94,000. Nevertheless, by 1898, true to his Midwest code of ethics Twain had paid off all his obligations, al­though during those 4 difficult interven­ing years he had endured the added bur­den of ill health and the death of his daughter, Suzy.

                As the height of his fame, Twain and his family returned to the USA after nine years of self imposed exile. His popularity was so great that he was deluged with honours and invitation to lecture, and by the turn of the 20^th century, he was one of the best known public figures in the USA, and world-fa­mous as well.

                The joy of his success, however, was dulled by two personal losses, the death of his wife in 1904 and his young daughter, Jean, five years later. In spite of his grief, Twain con­tinued to amuse the American public with a seemingly inexhaustible store of wit and humour. For example, on reaching the age of 70, he said: “Seventy! I’m old. I recog­nize it, but I don’t realize it”.

              On April 21, 1910, while Hailey’s Comet*, which has ushered in his birth 74 years earlier, flashed across the night sky, Samuel Langhorne Clemens died.

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* Hailey’s Comet — comet that orbits the sun about every 76 years, named after Edmond Hailey (1656-1742) who calculated its orbit..

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               Shortly before his death, he had remarked to his friend: “I came in with Hailey’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it”.

               Mark Twain left his mark upon American literature. The stories he told still delight millions of people around the world. What he wrote was full of the gusto of the west and the colourful life he had known inti­mately and recorded as a student of human nature and the common life. What he left as an added legacy is the inspiration of a man who rose above setbacks and tragedy to carry on, sustained by his indomitable spirit of creativity.