The Life and Times of Mark Twain

The Life and Times of Mark Twain

Mark Twain has reemerged as a topic of interest, particularity in light of a new biography by Ron Chernow, and of course interest in the long running Hal Holbrook stage shows and Twain’s many other impersonators. My own interest is not so much his biography as it is his observations and opinions of the places, peoples and things he encountered throughout his life, the context, geography if you will, of his life. He was a product of America’s “Gilded Age”, a phrase he coined. Those who makes claims of “this is what Mark Twain thought…” have probably been seduced by his reputation rather than any knowledge of the man.

His views changed a great deal throughout his life but he was always able to present them with a degree of humor and intelligence that made him popular and attracted society’s intelligentsia and the wealthy. "In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy everybody was poor and didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it…” Most of his life was not, however, lived in poverty. He traveled extensively and stayed in the finest hotels, hobnobbed with wealth, nobility and the financial elite. He counted among his friends the likes of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Huddleston Rogers.

One opinion of his that bothers me the most was his continued hatred of Native Americans. It seems that even this became slightly ameliorated in his later years when he recognized Geronimo as a patriot of his peoples.

Throughout his life he experienced many changes, but money, or fear of a lack of money, was always a factor in what he did and where he went. At one point, in San Francisco, he considered suicide when the value of his silver mine stocks went to nothing.

It is widely believed that Twain was opposed to slavery, this is certainly not true of his early years. During his first trip to New York, looking for work as a type setter, he was offended by the difference in the Negroes he encountered from those where he grew up. He wrote to his mother, “I reckon I had better black my face, for in these Eastern States niggers are considerably better than white people.” Some years later he married into a wealthy abolitionist family.

Much of what most people believe about Twain is a product of those who sought to protect his reputation, such as Albert Bigelow Paine, his first biographer, and his daughter, Clara, who blocked much of his later writings from publication. Then we have Charles Neider’s edition of an autobiography and his rather bold pair of editorial scissors. I recall a comment I heard at an Elmira Symposium on Twain’s book, “Roughing It”, “he’s not my hero”. This was from someone who thought enough of the man to pursue scholarly research on his life but not fall victim to a false sense of idolatry.

So, rather than provide another in a long list of biographies, my on-going web site project, “Twain’s Geography”, follows where he went and as often as possible examines his opinions along the way. This would not be possible as a printed book as I tend to jump around, chronologically and geographically. As with Twain and his autobiographical dictations, I look at a time and place that piques my interest at that moment. I might be looking at Hannibal one day then Stormfield the next. I might be on the Alonzo Scott then find myself traveling over Henness Pass. I hope to find out about all the hotels he stayed at, all the venues he spoke at and all the railroads and ships he traveled on.

My intention on Substack is to utilize “Twain’s Geography” to generate essays for presenting on Substack. My first post here, “Mark Twain’s First Lecture”, is an example of what I hope to be able to continue to do.