Biography of Mark Twain

Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written ~ Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Autobiography

Mark Twain wasn't born until February 1863 in Virginia City, Nevada. Samuel Clemens, however, exited the womb of Jane Clemens and entered the world on the 30^th of November in 1835. Clemens adopted his famous penname in Nevada during a time period when turbulent and volatile attitudes pervaded the territory (American National Biography). Nevada had recently separated from the Utah Territory and was, like all new land, a budding flower of prosperity, hope, greed, and everything else that encapsulated the American Dream of the 19^th century (Thompson and West 567-622).

Clemens set out to Nevada in order to build capital, avoid the ongoing Civil War, and to help his brother Orion (who was appointed Secretary to Nevada). Silver mining-and mining in general-was the leading industry in Nevada at the time, and Clemens staked out claims in both mining and timber while doing freelance writing on the side (570-573). However, by September 1862, Clemens was desperate for cash and took a

full-time job as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise-this would serve as the beginning of Clemens' professional writing career (American National Biography).

Nevertheless, his reckless and choleric writing style brought Clemens to the attention of local authorities, who weren't amused by his sarcastic approach towards documenting Virginia City politics and culture (Answers.com). In homage to Clemens' days as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, he took on the name Mark Twain, which was a Mississippi leadsman's call that indicated two fathoms or twelve feet, the proper depth needed for safe travel with a riverboat (American National Biography). The reasoning behind the name choice was that the pseudonym Mark Twain would allow for safe travel out of Nevada to California (Answers.com).

However, before Mark Twain was Mark Twain he was Samuel Clemens, a man who led an equally impressive life. Before he had significantly influenced the world of literature, he managed to increase the population of Florida, Missouri by one whole percent. Of course, the town's population was only one-hundred at the time, but according to Twain, "It is more than many of the best men in history could have done for a town (Twain 1)."

Clemens' childhood heavily influenced his writing, especially the summers he spent on his Uncle John's farm, four miles outside of Florida, Missouri (4). In his autobiography, he reminisces about the "sumptuous" dinners, eating sap straight from the trees, and placing garter snakes in his Aunt Patsy's work basket to give her a good scare (8-9). Clemens' summers on the farm are what essentially shaped the setting of some of his most famous works such as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, in addition to countless others (7-8).

As a child, Clemens suffered from chronic illness for the first seven years of his life, but once his health improved, Clemens managed to lead a fairly active childhood (Twain 12). Clemens recalls his deep affinity for bats and exploring a cave in which they lived, three miles outside of Hannibal-the town Clemens' moved to a the age of four (9).

Some days he would travel to the cave after school and capture a bat. "Often I brought them home to amuse my mother with," Clemens writes, "...She was not a suspicious person but full of trust and confidence; and when I said, 'There's something in my coat pocket for you,' she would put her hand in. But she always took it out again, herself...It was remarkable the way she couldn't learn to like private bats. The more experience she had the more she could not change her views. (9)"

And it was the bat cave that Clemens used to set up his frequent practical jokes that inspired one of the most famous scenes in Tom Sawyer. The scene involved the death of "Injun Joe" by starvation. Twain writes, "Injun Joe, the half-breed, got lost in there once and would have starved to death if the bats had run short. But there was no chance of that; there were myriads of them...In the book Tom Sawyer I starved him entirely to death in the cave but that was the interest of art; it never happened (9)."

Unfortunately, tragedy seemed to haunt Clemens for most of his childhood as he experienced the loss of a sister and a brother, which caused Clemens to suffer from bouts of sleepwalking (American National Biography). And it was the death of his father, John Marshall Clemens, that would mark the official end of Clemens' childhood in 1847 (American National Biography). At the time, Clemens was twelve and an epidemic of measles had swept the town of Hannibal (Twain and Neider 479). A child died nearly every day, and because of this the children were quarantined to the safety of their own home (Twain and Neider 479).

In an essay titled, The Turning-Point of My Life, Twain remembers feeling more like a prisoner than anything else (480). The mood of the home was not cheerful, but incredibly miserable (480). No fun was allowed to be had. Instead only prayer consumed the home and Clemens had decided it would better to die than to continue "life on these miserable terms (480)." His neighbor was suffering from the measles and Clemens snuck out of his home in order to contract the malady himself by sneaking into his neighbor's bed (480). He was successful in doing so and the entire town thought he would die, but he didn't (480).

It was at this point that his mother made the decision to withdraw him from school and apprentice him to a printer as a means to keep him out of mischief (480). In 1851 Clemens became a typesetter and editorial assistant for a newspaper that was run by his brother Orion. Nevertheless, Clemens suffered from wanderlust and didn't stay in one spot for long. After a brief stint in Iowa, Clemens tried to find work in New York and Philadelphia as a typesetter while writing a few travel letters for his brother's paper (American National Biography).

In 1855, Clemens returned to Iowa to work at Orion's print shop, but a book about the Amazon had piqued Clemens' interest in South America (American National Biography). Again, Clemens was sidetracked and ended up working a steady job as a typesetter in Cincinnati for five months (American National Biography). When April 1857 came around, Clemens made the choice to head to New Orleans where he would board a ship to Para (Twain and Neider 481-482). His plan was to make a fortune selling coca, the plant which cocaine is made from, but circumstances encountered in New Orleans would prevent Clemens from ever getting to South America (Twain and Neider 481). Upon arriving in New Orleans, Clemens learned that no such ship to Para existed, and being broke, Clemens had to borrow from a riverboat pilot who agreed to train him as a steamboat operator (482).

Clemens apprenticed under several pilots until he was licensed in April 1859, running numerous trips from New Orleans to St. Louis until 1861 when the American Civil War closed down traffic along the Mississippi (American National Biography). Clemens was in New Orleans when Louisiana seceded from the Union (Twain 111). The date was January 27, 1861 when Clemens headed north towards Missouri. In June, Clemens joined the Confederates in Ralls County, Missouri (111). After two weeks of fighting, nearly being captured by Ulysses S. Grant, Clemens resigned from his position as second lieutenant under General Tom Harris (111).

Meanwhile, his brother Orion was struggling financially as his print shop in Keokuk, Iowa was barely breaking even (111). Fortunately, an old friend of Orion's and member of President Lincoln's first cabinet, Edward Bates, helped get Orion appointed as the Secretary of the Territory of Nevada (112). The Clemens brothers set out for Nevada, where Sam Clemens became Mark Twain. The Life of Mark Twain

The events, or more accurately, the event that led to Twain's decision to flee Nevada began with the issuing of a duel to Mr. Laird, the proprietor of the Enterprise's rival paper, The Virginia Union (Twain 126). The duel came about a year after the Enterprise's editor, Joe Goodman, shot the Union's editor, Tom Fitch, in the leg during a duel (Twain 125). Both Goodman and Fitch were in San Francisco when Twain issued a duel to Laird. At the time, both Twain and Laird were the de facto editors in the absence of the official ones (125-126).

As Twain admits, he was very fortunate that Laird called off the duel (128). The morning of the duel both Twain and Laird were practicing their shot. The two could hear each other shooting, and Twain feared Laird and his crew coming over the ridge as Twain hadn't hit any of the targets he was shooting at (127). And fortunately for Twain, his co-worker, Steve Gillis managed to shoot the head off a flying bird prior to Laird and company coming up to check on his progress (127-128).

When asked who shot the bird, Gillis covered for Twain by saying it was Twain who shot the bird from about thirty yards (127-128). That night Laird called off the duel, but due to a new law that stated a person could only issue a duel if a person had slandered them publicly first, Twain and Gillis faced up to two years in jail for not abiding by duel etiquette (128).

And since local authorities weren't fans of Twain's writing, they used the incident to get Twain to leave Nevada immediately or face legal repercussions (128). Twain headed to California where he worked as a reporter-the only reporter according to Twain-for the Morning Call newspaper in San Francisco (129-130). Again, his honest and critical writing on local politics and law caused him to take a break as a means to prospect-yet again-this time in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties (American National Biography).

It was at this point that Twain wrote the short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which was his first story to gain national notoriety (Answers.com). Nevertheless, he returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1865, where his likable persona and dependability landed him the job as a Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) correspondent for four months (American National Biography).

His correspondence from Hawaii, which included a slew of travel letters that expertly encapsulated the essence of the islands, had successfully boosted his popularity, causing the Alta California to pay his expenses for a worldwide excursion that would lead to one of Twain's best known works, The Innocents Abroad (American National Biography). In June 1867, Twain boarded the Quaker City, which took him across the Atlantic towards Europe (American National Biography). On his travels he visited much of North Africa, parts of the Middle East including the Holy Land, and much of western and southern Europe. The Innocents Abroad, Twain's first book, was published in 1869 and further increased Twain's popularity, causing many publications and publishing houses to make him offers (American National Biography).

Nevertheless, it was the interactions he had with people aboard the Quaker City that would lead Twain to his wife, Olivia Louise Langdon. Olivia's brother, Charley, had met and come to enjoy Twain while on the Quaker City (Twain 189-190). Twain and Olivia first met when the Langdon's had Twain accompany them to a reading by Charles Dickens in New York City (190). The two would later be married and it was Olivia who Twain considers the "greatest happiness" of his life (190).

His soon-to-be father-in-law had lent Twain some money, which allowed him to buy part of the Buffalo Express in August 1869, where he was both the editor and a topical columnist (American National Biography). By February 1870, Twain was married to Olivia and began a domesticated life for the first time in sixteen years (American National Biography). Oddly enough, the tragedy and stir craziness that seemed to terrorize Twain as a child in Hannibal returned while living in New York.

His father-in-law had died, his newborn son was dying, work at the Buffalo Express had become tedious and mind numbing, all of which prompted Twain to move from Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York to Hartford, Connecticut in October 1871 (Twain 208). Money from his books and lectures had allowed the couple to purchase Nook Farm (American National Biography).

In 1872, Twain published Roughing It, another travelogue in the vein of The Innocents Abroad, but written less carelessly. His daughter Olivia Susan (commonly called Susy) was born and his son, Langdon, had finally died from illness (American National Biography). At the time, Twain was experiencing great success from his books, but started to suspect Elisha and Frank Bliss of the American Publishing Company of swindling him out of royalties (Twain 246-247). It wasn't until 1879-roughly 10 years after he first signed a deal with Bliss and the APC-that he confronted Bliss about the weak royalties (246). Of the books that Twain received a considerably low amount of money from were: Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, The Gilded Age, and others (248).

Twain had returned in 1879 from a fourteen month excursion to Europe, which produced another book, A Tramp Abroad, at which point he decided to start publishing himself. He met up with a friend, Charles L. Webster, and helped establish Webster and Company, Publishers (255-256). A Tramp Abroad came out in 1880, but more importantly, Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was published by Webster and Company in 1884, netting Twain around $54,500 in only a year (Twain 257). Twain's decision to self-publish was a wise one as it made him more than half the money he had made combined while under contract with the American Publishing Company (240-257).

While Twain's intentions for Webster and Company were to publish only his own books, Webster ended up publishing General Grant's memoirs in 1884, after Grant wasn't happy with the deal being offered by the American Publishing Company (258-269). This led Webster and Company to become more than Twain's special publisher-his greatest publisher of all time contends Twain in his autobiography (277-278).

Nonetheless, in 1894 Webster and Company declared bankruptcy, Twain gave his power of attorney to a director at John Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, Henry Rogers, and assigned all his copyrights to his wife Olivia (American National Biography). From that point forward, Twain, his wife, and daughter, Clara, began a tour around the world living in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Italy, and England (American National Biography). While Twain was abroad, his first daughter Susy passed away as a result of meningitis in Hartford in August 1896 (Twain 351-353). His wife and Clara were aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean towards America at the time (351).

October 1900, Twain returned to America where the press and fans greeted him at the New York City dock, further solidifying his role as a great American hero (American National Biography). While Twain blamed finance capital for destroying the "Eden of his childhood" and privately condemned the principles of people like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan, some were perplexed by his close relationship to Henry Rogers, who was an influential oil tycoon and a director of the Standard Oil Company (American National Biography). Then again, Rogers did save Twain from financial disaster in 1894 as well as arranging a publishing contract that guaranteed Twain and his heirs $25,000 annually; for that Twain was grateful (American National Biography).

The death of his wife in June 1904 at their villa in Florence was to Twain, the "greatest disaster" of his life (Twain 353). It is responsible for the bitter and melancholy tone in Twain's work until his death from heart failure in 1910 (American National Biography). Nevertheless, Twain always believed that circumstance dictated how a man would act. He writes, "Circumstance is man's master-and when Circumstance commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter-that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation-but it won't do any good, he must obey. (Twain and Neider 480)." And Twain seemed to always obey, as much of the circumstance he encountered throughout his busy life required drastic action, and Twain will certainly be remembered for a man who acted without fear of the consequences, for good or ill.

Works Cited

Budd, Louis J. "Mark Twain." American National Biography Online. American National Bipgraphy. Champlain College, Burlington, VT. Jan.-Feb. 2008.

"Mark Twain: Biography and Much More From Answers.Com." Answers. Jan.-Feb. 2008 .

Thompson, and West. The History of Nevada. Oakland: Pacific P, 1881. Virginia City. Jan.-Feb. 2008 .

Twain, Mark. The Autobiography of Mark Twain. New York: Washington Square P, 1961.

Twain, Mark. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. Garden City: Doubleday and Comapny, Inc., 1963.