The Portable Mark Twain (5 page)

There was a curious discrepancy in his system, however, since, in contradiction of his own mechanical and materialistic assumptions, Twain retained a belief that the mind, or “me,” existed apart from its own mental machinery. That “me” took many forms, apparently. After his daughter Susy's death, Clemens complained to his friend Howells that he had become a “dead” man, a mere “mud image, & it puzzles me to know what it is in me that writes, & that has comedy-fancies & finds pleasure in phrasing them. . . . the thing in me forgets the presence of the mud image & goes its own way wholly unconscious of it & apparently of no kinship with it.” In
A Connecticut Yankee,
he has Hank Morgan proclaim man's duty in this “sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly
me.
” Elsewhere, he describes this self as a “vagrant thought,” “wandering among the empty eternities.” In a letter to his sister-in-law, Susan Crane (reprinted in this volume), he muses that his whole life might have been a dream and that he has no certain way to prove it otherwise. These are not the musings of an out-and-out materialist who believes human beings are machines and nothing more.

In any event, his system served him well enough in the creation of such short fiction as “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1899),
What Is Man?
(1906), “Little Bessie” (ca. 1908), and
Letters from the Earth
(ca. 1909); and in parts (but only in parts) of
Pudd'nhead Wilson
(1894) and
A Connecticut Yankee.
Twain might even explain the physical organization of microorganisms as a form of social hierarchy governed chiefly by pride and envy, as he did in “Three Thousand Years among the Microbes” (1905). He would reaffirm his philosophy in essays such as “Corn-Pone Opinions” (1901) and “The Turning Point of My Life” (1910) and in several of his letters. In one of his more amusing philosophic outbursts in a letter to Joseph Twichell (reprinted in this volume), he describes his experience of reading the Puritan Jonathan Edwards on the will as resembling “having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic.” In a word, however dark this philosophic vision may have been, it did not harness the sheer audacity of his humor or the sting of his wit. Nor did it impinge upon his social and political convictions or restrain his fiery denunciation of tyranny, imperialism, and demogoguery.

On the other hand, Twain was continually driving beyond the limits of his own philosophy, without regard to logic, system, or continuity. In Chapter 31 of the novel, Huckleberry Finn is tortured by his guilty conscience for depriving Miss Watson of her rightful property by helping Jim to freedom. However improbable his decision is (and given his upbringing it is improbable indeed), he is heroic in choosing to go to hell rather than betray his companion. Twain himself later described Huck's conduct as the triumph of a “sound heart” over a “deformed conscience.” Hank Morgan believes that “training is everything” and foolishly attempts to transform King Arthur's England by introducing nineteenth-century ideas of political and religious liberty and the conveniences provided by industrial progress and technological efficiency. The conjunction of these two worlds makes for wonderful comedy, of course. However, in the end the dying Morgan believes his own modern world is the product of delirium and dream and reaches out, across thirteen centuries, for everything that is dear to him—his wife, his child, his friends, his antique life.

Ultimately, Twain's determinism is not very interesting in itself, not as philosophy and not as an existential position he fashioned out of his own disappointments. Ironically perhaps, it was useful because it permitted him certain antic freedoms that were more in his line than synthetic explanations of human behavior. And his philosophizing does seem to have supplied him with a rationalized defense post from which he might launch repeated attacks on human vanity or, alternately, on a God that equipped human nature with a “moral sense” but without the necessary means to lead, except passively, the moral life. Twain might ridicule human conceit in several ways: by locating his species as a mere speck in the infinite vastness of space or by treating the human creature as the assembled concatenation of infinitesimally small but overproud particles or as the product of millions of years of evolutionary process leisurely fumbling its way toward some undisclosed end. It was the very absurdity of the human condition, regarded through the lens of incongruous frames of reference, that inevitably summoned humorous remark. “It is easy to find fault if one has that disposition,” Pudd'n-head Wilson records. “There once was a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.”

In 1896, Twain remarked, “The mysterious and the fabulous can get no fine effects without the help of remoteness; and there are no remotenesses any more.” That was a dilemma he might easily remedy. By locating the human comedy in the distant reaches of space or in a cholera germ in the bloodstream of a tramp, or by reaching back into prehistory, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, Twain found there remained plenty of fine effects to be had. He might observe human foibles in himself and others and dramatize them under such alien conditions and thereby construct a different sort of comedy, one that applied broadly to universal human nature and could teach the lessons of humility and a common destiny. Humility is a social virtue and laughter is its companion. Humiliation, by contrast, is a stigma, alienating and corrosive. However cynical Twain became in his later years, his comedy never degenerated into the merely derisive or spiteful. He remained to the end the reader's genial companion and ally.

Despite his insistence that originality was impossible, Twain often enough transcended the terms of his own intellectual system and explored literary territory that was at least fresh and often unexampled. He did this in his “Autobiography” by ransacking his recollection vaults, creating a life out of fickle remembrance, and offering it to an indefinite future. He did it as well in his comedies of first and final things. His Captain Stormfield, who sailed for heaven but arrived at the wrong port, is sympathetically ridiculous because he has brought with him the baggage of wrongheaded but conventional expectation about the hereafter. Stormfield learns that planet Earth is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things; it is referred to locally as the “Wart.” He tries his hand at plucking a harp (he knows only one tune) and using his wings (he collides with a Bishop, and they exchange sharp words), only to find out that these customs are not required. When Stormfield drops his pre-possessions about paradise and his final reward, he begins to see things anew and more clearly, and we do too. We also begin to suspect why he is there and not the other place.

Twain also wrote often about beginnings, most extensively about the experiences of Adam and Eve in the Garden and after. By doing so, he was willfully depriving himself of his constituted gospel of training and inherited ideas. Eve characterizes the pair's situation in their innocent state: “Interests were abundant; for we were children, and ignorant; ignorant beyond the conception of the present day. We knew
nothing
—nothing whatever. We were starting at the very bottom of things—at the very beginning; we had to learn the a b c of things.” Twain did not conceive of the pair, nor do they really conceive of themselves, as children—obedient or otherwise. They are self-appointed “scientists,” who through repeated observation and experimentation are trying to get the hang of the place called Paradise. It is Adam's assigned task to name things, but Eve beats him to the punch every time, simply because she
knows
the right name for every beast and bird. She also knows that Sunday is a day of rest, whereas Adam thought every day was. Thereafter, his diary for Sunday is always the same: “Pulled through.” Eve puts up signs everywhere—“Keep off the grass.” “This way to the Whirlpool.”—and believes Eden would make a swell summer resort.

Adam and Eve are evicted from the Garden, but not for eating of the apple. The forbidden fruit, it turns out, is the “chestnut.” Adam partook of this fruit in the form of a hackneyed joke he told, as old as creation, and he compounded the felony by laughing himself silly over it. Many years earlier, in
The Innocents Abroad,
Twain stood at the Tomb of Adam and tearfully lamented that the old man had not lived to see him, “his child.” In “Extracts from Adam's Diary” Twain re-imagines his ancestor as one who has discovered a hairless and toothless creature he can't quite identify. Eve has instinctively named it Abel. Adam supposes it might be a fish and throws it in the water. Eve retrieves it. It might be a frog, a bird, or a snake; but it isn't. He decides it is “either an enigma or some kind of bug.” He becomes so convinced that it is a kangaroo that he names it
“Kangaroorum Adamiensis.”
He rejects that hypothesis and concludes it must be a “zoological freak,” either that or a tail-less bear. Adam wears himself out looking for another specimen of the species; meanwhile Eve has caught another one and named it Cain.

There is preposterous and affecting comedy in these, our first parents, trying to discover where babies come from and establishing themselves, without benefit of consultation or clergy, as the first family. Driven from the Garden, Adam and Eve discover in a new and apparently unsponsored world the lasting pleasures of one another's company. “After all these years,” says Adam, “I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. . . . Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit.” If an old joke brought about the Fall, it appears that Adam and Eve have had the last (and the first) laugh.

In his old age, Twain's once hopeful optimism may have reached the end of its tether, but, for forty years and more, the imaginative reach of his humor had traveled far and wide—from the Nevada Territory to the Black Forest, from Plymouth Rock to the Rock of Gibraltar, from the outer reaches of the universe to the inner life of microbes, from the creation to the hereafter. Through it all, in multiple personae and in unequal doses to be sure, his antic geniality, his irascible sympathy and self-righteous indignation, his zany irreverence, and ridiculous solemnity traveled with him. The ebullient humor and amiable presence of Twain can be felt on nearly every page of his best work and remain, perhaps, his most important and durable features. Those qualities are good companions, and portable indeed.

Suggestions for Further Reading

The sheer volume of criticism and scholarship concerning Mark Twain's life and writings is immense. The bibliography below is meant to list resources for reliable information about the author and his work, identify certain collections or editions of Twain's writings that may be of interest but not generally known, and to indicate the range of interpretive approaches to his work, particularly
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Under the general editorship of Robert Hirst, The Mark Twain Project has prepared and continues to prepare authoritative texts of Twain's notebooks, travel narratives, short fiction, novels, letters, and unpublished writings. These texts are published by the University of California Press and the historical introduction, notes, and annotations are an unusually rich resource of accurate and pertinent information about Twain and his writing. Readers with a specialized interest in Twain scholarship will find these volumes especially rewarding. The items listed below were selected as particularly appropriate for a general audience.

Camfield, Gregg,
The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain
(New York, 2003)

LeMaster, J. R., and James D. Wilson, eds.,
The Mark Twain Encyclopedia
(New York, 1993)

Long, E. Hudson, and J. R. LeMaster,
The New Mark Twain Handbook
(New York, 1985)

Rasmussen, R. Kent,
Mark Twain A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings
(New York, 1995)

Tenney, Thomas Asa,
Mark Twain: A Reference Guide
(Boston, 1977). Annual supplements to this reference guide have been published in
American Literary Realism
(1977-1983) and the
Mark Twain Circular
(1984-present)

Baetzhold, Howard G., and Joseph B. McCullough, eds.,
The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood
(New York, 1996)

Budd, Louis J., ed.,
Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays,
2 vols. (New York, 1992)

Fatout, Paul, ed.,
Mark Twain Speaking
(Iowa City, Iowa, 1976)

Kiskis, Michael, ed.,
Mark Twain's Own Autobiography
(Madison, Wis., 1990)

Zwick, Jim, ed.,
Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1992)

Andrews, Kenneth R.,
Nook Farm: Mark Twain's Hartford Circle
(Cambridge, Mass., 1950)

Baetzhold, Howard G.,
Mark Twain and John Bull: The British Connection
(Bloomington, Ind., 1970)

Fatout, Paul,
Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit
(Bloomington, Ind., 1960)

Dolmetsch, Carl,
“Our Famous Guest”: Mark Twain in Vienna
(Athens, Ga. 1992)

Emerson, Everett,
Mark Twain, a Literary Life
(Philadelphia, 2000)

Ferguson, Delancey,
Mark Twain: Man and Legend
(New York, 1943)

Harris, Susan K.,
The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain
(New York, 1996)