Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as
Mark Twain, is perhaps the most
distinguished author of American Literature.
Next to William Shakespeare,
Clemens is arguably the most prominent
writer the world has ever seen. In 1818,
Jane Lampton found interest in a
serious young lawyer named John Clemens. With
the Lampton family in heavy
debt and Jane only 15 years of age, she soon married
John. The family
moved to Gainesboro, Tennessee where Jane gave birth to Orion
Clemens. In
the summer of 1827 the Clemenses relocated to Virginia where John
purchased
thousands of acres of land and opened a legal advice store. The lack
of
success of the store led John to drink heavily. Scared by his addiction,
John
vowed never to drink again. Even though John now resisted alcohol, he
faced
other addictions. His concoction of aloe, rhubarb, and a narcotic cost
him most
of his savings and money soon became tight (Paine 34-35). The family
soon grew
with the birth of Pamela late in 1827. Their third child, Pleasant
Hannibal, did
not live past three months, due to illness. In 1830 Margaret
was born and the
family moved to Pall Mall, a rural county in Tennessee.
After Henry’s birth in
1832, the value of their farmland greatly
depreciated and sent the Clemenses on
the road again. Now they would stay
with Jane’s sister in Florida, Missouri
where she ran a successful business
with her husband. Clemens was born on
November 30, 1835, in the small
remote town of Florida, Missouri. Samuel’s
parents, John Marshall and Jane
Cohen 2 Lampton Clemens never gave up on their
child, who was two months
premature with little hope of survival. This was
coincidentally the same
night as the return of Halley’s Comet. The Clemenses
were a superstitious
family and believed that Halley’s Comet was a portent of
good fortune.
Writing as Mark Twain, Samuel L. Clemens would claim that
Florida,
Missouri "contained 100 people and I increased the population by
one percent.
It is more than the best man in history ever did for any
other town" (Hoffman
15). 1847 proved to be a horrific year for John
Clemens. He ventured to Palmyra
in order to find work on the county seat. On
his voyage home he found himself in
a devastating snowstorm which left him
ill with pneumonia. He stayed at his
friend Dr. Grant’s house, ill and jaded,
where he rested and grew weak. He
died on March 24, 1847 at the age of 48
(Kaplan 112-125). Samuel was eleven
years old when his father passed away. He
was of ambiguous emotions. He had
dreaded his father, yet at the same time
respected him. The onus of taking care
of the family was now on Samuel and
Orion’s shoulders. He attended school and
for additional cash delivered
newspapers and aided storekeepers. His expertise
was with Joseph Ament,
editor of the Missouri Courier, where he was an
apprentice. In the fall of
1850, Samuel’s brother Orion purchased a printing
press and expected Samuel
to work on his newspaper. They began work on the
Hannibal Western Union
where Orion printed all of Samuel’s essays and
articles. Although the
newspaper was unprofitable, and deemed a failure by most,
Orion and
Samuel saw themselves as a success. They soon changed the name to
the
Journal and now had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the
region. It
was filled with works both original and copied from other sources.
This was
acceptable in a society without copyrights. When the Journal gained
success,
Orion refused to print some of Samuel’s works. He, however took
his writing
elsewhere. He wrote for the Carpet-Bag and the Philadelphia
American Cohen 3
Courier, berating his old town and the Hannibal natives.
He signed each work
with the initials "S.L.C." Orionleft town for awhile and
gave the duty of
editor to Samuel. He quickly took advantage of Orion’s
absence. He wrote
articles of town news and prose poetry that revealed
characteristics of the boy
who would eventually transform into Mark Twain. In
these articles he would use
his first of many pseudonyms, W. Epaminondas
Adrastus Blab. Orion’s return
ended both Samuel’s developing humor and
burning satire. Orion decided to
publish the Journal daily and it gave Samuel
an opportunity to write more
material, but at the same time overworked him.
When Orion deleted local news
from the newspaper, interest was lost and the
rival Messenger began outselling
the Journal. This prompted Samuel to leave
Orion and the Journal behind at the
age of eighteen. He had bigger
aspirations and vowed never to let a place trap
him again. His journeys would
take him to St. Louis, New York City, and then
Philadelphia (Hoffman
32-36). The best position he found involved night work as
a substitute
typesetter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Clemens wrote about the
sights of
Philadelphia which he copied from a guidebook, but altered the
descriptions
into a style much more mature than in previous writings. Clemens’
well-known
writing style had a loose rhythm of speech and he wrote as if he were
telling
an unbelievable story which he expected his listeners and readers to
believe.
He was a master of the "tall story" of the frontier and delighted
his
audience with his storytelling abilities (Lyttle 65). One can see this
unique
style in his description of the nation’s capital: The public buildings
of
Washington are all fine specimens of architecture, and would add greatly
to
the embellishment of such a city as New York- but here they are sadly out
of
place looking like so many palaces in a Hottentot village. . . .The
[other]
buildings, almost invariably, are very poor--two and three story
brick Cohen 4
houses, and strewed about in clusters; you seldom see a compact
square off
Pennsylvania Avenue. They look as though they might have been
emptied out of a
sack by some Brobdignagian gentleman, and when falling, been
scattered abroad by
the winds (qtd. in Paine 27). In his time, most novels
were a form of enriching
entertainment. Light reading that would do no harm
and might even do the reader
some good. They were written with an
intelligent, well-behaved audience in mind,
an audience that expected to read
about people like themselves. They were most
comfortable reading the language
they used in public. William Gibson belies
that, "Twain developed one of the
great styles in the English language because
he had a firm grasp of the
American vernacular"(qtd. in Long 205). His letters
to the Keokuk Papers in
St. Louis proved to be most successful for Clemens. He
signed these letters
with the pseudonym Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass. His
narrations made the
western readers feel more intelligent by laughing at the
character’s idiocy.
"Snodgrass" would continue to write letters until the
editor refused to pay
him. He then decided to leave the city and travel along
the Mississippi River
in a steamboat. By the middle of 1857, Clemens had made
five runs up and down
the river, and this is where he first used the name, Mark
Twain. On river
boats, one member of the crew always stood near the forward
railing measuring
the depth of the water with a long cord which had flags spaced
a fathom
apart. When the crewman saw the flags disappear he would call out
"Mark One!"
for one fathom and for two fathoms he called out
"Mark Twain!" Two fathoms
meant safe clearance for river boats, so
Clemens chose a name which not
only recalled his life on the river but which
also had a motivating meaning
(Robinson).