Samuel Clemens
The most famous pen name in American History belongs to this man, perhaps better known as Mark Twain. A self educated man who was comfortable around the giants of industry, politics, science and the arts, he was loved for his unpretentious humor and strong convictions.
Born on November 30, 1835, in Florida,
Missouri, he soon moved about thirty miles to Hannibal, his boyhood town.
He grew up in an
apartment above his father's grocery store. Soon after his father's death in
1847, he went to work as a printer's assistant, and during the next decade
worked for printers in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati.
Clemens, like Benjamin Franklin, educated himself by reading through printers'
libraries. He loved history, and the more he read,
the more he reacted against intolerance and tyranny.1 When he
was about twenty two he returned to Hannibal, where he became a steamboat pilot
on the Mississippi River. He learned to navigate the nearly twelve hundred
miles between New Orleans and St. Louis. In 1861, he joined a volunteer
militia group known as the Marion Rangers (Confederates), but when they shot an unarmed man, he
quit in disgust.
He moved to Nevada, and failed at mining silver, and began writing articles about silver mining camps. It was here that he first used the name, Mark Twain. His humorous articles became a hit, and soon he was published in many of the nation's most popular newspapers and magazines. He was a travel correspondent that shared his experiences from all over the world. He travelled the country, giving lectures and entertaining small town America with his humorous antedotes.
Samuel Clemens married Olivia Langdon, in 1870, and his writing became more serious. She edited most of his written work and lecture presentations. He credited her good sense with keeping him out of trouble. While she abhorred alcohol, tobacco and vulgar language, he relished in all three, smoking up to forty cigars a day. They lived in a large three story home they had built in Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1875, he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, using his own boyhood experiences on the Mississippi River as a backdrop about a trouble prone but resourceful orphan boy. Ten years later he followed with his most famous work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story of fourteen year old boy, son of the town drunk, who ran away and took up with an escaped slave, Jim. During their adventures, Huck's view of Jim, changed from that of sub-human slave to a trusted friend, entitled to as much liberty as any man. His book helped many Americans travel over that same attitude bridge.
In 1884, he began a publishing company and Huckleberry Finn was the first work published. A year later, he contracted with his friend, Ulysses S. Grant to publish his memoirs. Grant had become deeply indebted, as a victim of a financial scheme, and was suffering from throat cancer. He struggled to finish his memoirs, and did so, two months before his death. Clemens was also in debt, due to his unsuccessful investments in failed inventions. The memoirs were a huge success and Grant's widow was saved from financial ruin, as was Clemens. Eventually the publishing company failed. He amassed huge debts, which he could have eliminated through bankruptcy, but instead paid off through a speaking tour lasting several years.
Clemens had humourously predicted that because his birth had coincided with Halley's comet, so would his death - he was right - he died on April 21, 1910, at the age of seventy five. He had outlived his wife and three of his four children.
Samuel Clemens was an outspoken foe of bigotry and prejudice and many of his views were controversial. He was a spiritual man, like Jefferson, often critical of organized religion. He respected the liberties of a new nation by living them fully. He was an American individualist, who took full ownership and responsibility for his own actions, whether successful or not.
Gerald Frendt, November, 2008.
For more information:
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