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  Mark Twain

  MARK TWAIN

  The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens

  JEROME LOVING

  Frontispiece: Mark Twain shirtless (at about the time of Huckleberry Finn). Courtesy of the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library.

  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

  University of California Press, Ltd.

  London, England

  Copyright © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Loving, Jerome.

  Mark Twain : the adventures of Samuel L. Clemens / Jerome Loving.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-520-25257-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

  1. Twain, Mark, 1835–1910. 2. Authors, American—19th century—Biography. 3. Humorists, American—19th century—Biography.

  I. Title.

  PS1331.L68 2010

  818’.409—dc22

  [B]

  2009015366

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

  To Cathy, my “Livy”

  Contents

  Cover

  Contributors

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chronology of the Life and Works of Mark Twain

  Prologue

  I. HUMORIST IN THE WEST

  1 Life on the Salt River

  2 Window to the West

  3 Orion

  4 Southwest Humorist

  5 Tramp Printer

  6 Cub Pilot

  7 Death on the Mississippi

  8 Fetching Grant

  9 Lighting Out

  10 A Millionaire for Ten Days

  11 “Mark Twain”

  12 Governor of the Third House

  13 The Jumping Frog

  INSERT – Illustrations

  14 Vandal Abroad

  15 Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope

  II. WRITER IN THE EAST

  16 Westerner in the East

  17 Pilgrims on the Loose

  18 Love in a Locket

  19 The Innocent at Home

  20 False Start in Buffalo

  21 Back on the Lecture Circuit

  22 Home
in Hartford

  23 Sequel to a Success

  24 A Book about the English

  25 Colonel Sellers

  26 Mississippi Memories

  27 The Riley Book

  28 Banned in Boston

  29 The Innocent Abroad Again

  30 Down and Out in Paris and London

  III. THE ARTIST AND THE BUSINESSMAN

  31 Associations New and Old

  32 Return to the River and the Lecture Circuit

  33 Mark Twain and the Phunny Phellows

  34 Webster and Paige

  35 A Romance of the White Conscience

  36 Publishing Grant

  37 Brooding in King Arthur’s Court

  38 Progress and Poverty

  39 Europe on Only Dollars a Day

  40 A Dream Sold Down the River

  41 Family Matters

  42 A Friend at Standard Oil

  43 Broken Twigs and Found Canoes

  44 Back Home and Overland

  45 Lost in the British Empire

  46 Mark Twain’s Daughter

  IV. THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

  47 City of Dreams

  48 Winter Fantasies

  49 Weary Sojourners

  50 Exile’s Return

  51 Homeless

  52 A Death in Florence

  Epilogue

  Appendix A. Clemens Genealogy

  Appendix B. Books Published by Charles L. Webster & Company

  Notes

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  As I wrote this biography, certain classics in criticism and biography continued to guide me in my studies of Mark Twain and his work. A few that come directly to mind are by Walter Blair, Van Wyck Brooks, Louis J. Budd, Bernard DeVoto, Justin Kaplan, Albert Bigelow Paine, and Henry Nash Smith, but there are many others, too many to name on a subject more researched and written about than any other figure in American literature. To name one, I owe a permanent debt to James M. Cox’s Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor (1966).

  Without Robert H. Hirst, general editor, and the other editors, namely Victor Fischer and Lin Salamo, at the Mark Twain Project at the University of California at Berkeley, this biography would lack many of the insights born out of definitive editions of letters and texts, as well as the benefit derived from the Project’s vast archival holdings. Bob Hirst was extremely helpful in going through my manuscript with his magnifying glass. Another Mark Twain expert who took a turn at my work is Alan Gribben; I thank him for the care with which he read a late draft and made useful suggestions. I would also like to thank Kevin Mac Donnell of Austin, Texas, currently the world’s leading Twain collector, for not only reading my biography but also providing many of its unique illustrations, including the dust jacket photo. I owe Kenneth M. Sanderson a favor for allowing me to consult his unpublished paper “The Books of Charles L. Webster & Co.” for appendix B. I am grateful to Neda Salem, office manager of the MTP, for her assistance and many courtesies during my several visits to that most important archive.

  I owe a long-standing debt to my dear friend Ed Folsom, who has critiqued most of my work in manuscript over the last quarter of a century, including this biography. Another to thank in this regard is M. Jimmie Killingsworth, also a dear friend and colleague, currently head of the English Department at Texas A&M University, where I teach American literature. Louis J. Budd, the reigning dean of Mark Twain studies and my former professor at Duke University in the 1970s, read my manuscript and steadied my hand with regard to both facts and their application. My colleague William Bedford Clark, a poet and a specialist in southern American literature, was always generous with his insights about Mark Twain. I have also been fortunate to have professional advice from Bernard Beranek, Mary Boewe, Paul Christensen, Richard Hauer Costa, Carl Dawson, Susan Goodman, Ezra Greenspan, Cameron L. House, Donald R. House, Jr., David C. Loving, Patricia Loving, Philip McFarland, J. Lawrence Mitchell, Tom Quirk, Stephen Railton, Robert D. Richardson, Barb Schmidt, and Henry Sweets of the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal. Gary Scharnhorst kindly shared with me the typescript of his now published Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews (2006). At the University of California Press, I want to thank Stanley Holwitz, assistant director and acquisitions editor, who has supported my work for more than a decade. He was advised on this book by Frederick Crews and John Seelye. Thanks, too, to Laura Cerruti and Laura Harger, editors at the Press; copyeditor Steven Baker; Lorett Trees, archivist, Bryn Mawr College; Patricia Philippon, collections manager, Mark Twain House & Museum; and Katherine Collett, archivist at Hamilton College.

  For assistance in securing a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities that allowed me to complete this biography in time for the centennial of Mark Twain’s death, I thank Lawrence Buell and Alan Trachtenberg. I would also like to acknowledge the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for its support during the early work on this book. At home, this biography was also sponsored by a grant from the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, where I thank Dean Charles A. Johnson. Two others on my campus to thank are Stephanie Darrow and Stephanie Rivera, my student assistants in 2008–2009.

  Permission to publish quotations from letters in multiple collections comes through the MTP (where copies are available) from the following libraries and institutions: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library; Cornell University Library; Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts, New York Public Library; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; Hamilton College Library; Huntington Library; James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, California; Library of Poultney Bigelow, Bigelow Homestead, Malden-on-Hudson, New York; Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut; Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal; Middlebury College Library; Oxford University Library; Pierpont Morgan Library; Princeton University Library; St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, California; University of Illinois Library; University of Louisville Library; University of Southern California Library; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas Library; University of Virginia Library; University of Wisconsin Library; Vassar University Library; and Yale University Library.

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Cathleen C. Loving, my first reader. We are the lucky grandparents of six boys and girls. Sam Clemens very much wanted grandchildren and never lived long enough to see his only granddaughter. I think he would approve of my naming ours in a book about him. So thanks to Mandy, Maya, Jack, Mary, Dave, and Charlie.

  Chronology of the Life and Works of Mark Twain

  1835: Samuel Langhorne Clemens born two months premature in Florida, Missouri, on the Salt River, November 30, the sixth of seven children.

  1839: Clemens family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River.

  1847: John Marshall Clemens, Sam’s father, dies March 24.

  1849–1852: Apprenticed to Joseph P. Ament, editor of the Hannibal Courier, and subsequently to his older brother Orion Clemens, editor of the Western Union and Hannibal Journal. Writes earliest fiction for area newspapers and “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter” for the Boston Carpet-Bag.

  1853–1854: Leaves home for St. Louis, New York City, and, Philadelphia, where he works as a journeyman printer. Visits Washington, D.C.

  1855–1857: Lives and works in Keokuk, Iowa; St. Louis; and Cincinnati. In February of final year he meets Horace Bixby while traveling on the Mississippi River to New Orleans to sail for South America. Bixby agrees to make him an apprentice steamboat pilot for $500.

  1858–1861: Serves as a pilot on nineteen or twenty different steamboats operating between St. Louis and New Orleans. Younger brother Henry dies a week after a steamboat accident on June 13, 1858. When Civil War breaks up river commerce in June 1861, Clemens joins the Marion Rangers, a ragtag state militia that disbands after two weeks. Departs for Nevada Territory July 18 with brother Orion, who has been appointed by the Lincoln administration as secretary to the territorial governor. Arrives in Carson August 14. Becomes a silver and gold prospector.

  1862
: Joins the staff of the Virginia City Enterprise and writes “Petrified Man” and other unsigned items.

  1863: Adopts the nom de guerre “Mark Twain,” makes his first visit to San Francisco, meets Artemus Ward in Virginia City, and publishes “A Bloody Massacre near Carson,” also known as the “Empire City Massacre Hoax.”

  1864: Elected “Governor of the Third House” by fellow journalists in Carson City, Nevada. Writes hoax suggesting that funds collected for Union soldiers went to a “Miscegenation Society” in the East. Moves permanently to San Francisco to avoid prosecution for challenging an editor from a competing newspaper to a duel resulting from his hoax. Writes for the San Francisco Morning Call and the Californian, where he meets fellow contributors Bret Harte, Charles Henry Webb, and Charles Warren Stoddard. Writes many of the sketches that would make up his first book, including “Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man.” Following a run-in with the police involving Steve Gillis, he relocates to Jim’s Gillis’s cabin in the mining town of Jackass Hill.

  1865: Returns to San Francisco. Writes “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” first published in the New York Saturday Press of November 18, 1865.

  1866: Visits Hawaii as a reporter for the Sacramento Union; lectures on the Sandwich Islands in California and Nevada; travels to New York via the Nicaragua Isthmus for the San Francisco Alta California.

  1867: Lectures for the first time in New York City. Publishes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches; sails

  on the Quaker City for Europe and the Holy Land; returns from cruise in November. Meets Olivia Langdon (Livy) and her parents in New York City.

  1868: Visits Livy on New Year’s Day. Travels in April to San Francisco to negotiate with the Alta California over book rights to the letters he wrote for newspaper publication from Europe and the Holy Land; finishes manuscript for The Innocents Abroad; lectures in California; courts Livy in Elmira, New York. Meets the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, later a lifelong friend and fellow resident in Hartford, Connecticut.

  1869: Becomes engaged to Livy Langdon; and purchases with help from his future father-in-law, Jervis Langdon, one-third interest in the Buffalo Express. Publishes The Innocents Abroad. Meets William Dean Howells in Boston.

  1869–1870: Lecture tour with James Redpath Agency between November and January.