04 - Mark Twain; his life and work. A biographical sketch by William M. Clemens

Delve into the intriguing life of Mark Twain through the eyes of Will Clemens, who, despite not being related to the famed author, became an acquaintance and penned what may be the first comprehensive biography of Twain. Published on July 1, 1892, as No. 1 in The Pacific Library, this 200-page work was available for just 25¢ and garnered enough attention to be republished in 1894 by a Chicago publisher. In this insightful sketch, Clemens draws heavily on previously published works by other authors, offering a unique perspective on Twains literary legacy. (summary by John Greenman)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is chapter four of Mark Twain, His Life and Work,
a biographical sketch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Mark Twain, His Life and Work, A Biographical Sketch, Chapter
four one of The Innocence, read by John Greenman. During
the winter months of eighteen sixty six sixty seven, a

(00:23):
coterie of bright journalists eked out a miserable existence in
San Francisco. Prominent among the bohemians who lunched together at
the Miners restaurant were Charles Warren Stoddard F. Brett Hart,
Charles H. Webb, Prentice Mulford, and Mark Twain. None of
these gentlemen were quite so poor and needy as Sam Clemens,

(00:46):
who on several occasions ventured upon the dangerous border land
of starvation. One day, a comedian from a local theater
approached Mark on the street. See here. Clemens said, he
I need a half dozen good Joe, get them up
and I'll give you five dollars. Sorry, old man, answered

(01:06):
Mark thoughtfully, But I'm afraid the scheme won't work. Why not, Well,
the fact is I'm so damned poor. If I was
found with five dollars on my person, people would say
I stole them. On the other hand, if you got

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off any decent jokes, people would say you stole them too.
In January eighteen sixty seven, Stoddard and Mulford gave several
successful public entertainments in San Francisco, and fired with ambition,
Mark Twain started forth upon a lecture tour through the
smaller cities of California and Nevada. In those days, most

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any sort of an entertainment brought out a crowd, and
when it was announced one day in Carson City that
Mark was to deliver a lecture for the benefit of
something or other at the Episcopal Church, it was generally
understood that the house would be crowded. Well the night arrived,
writes a friend who was present, Mark ascended the steps

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into the pulpit about eight o'clock, there being a whole
lot of the boys and young women friends of his,
as well as a good many old people in front.
Mark made a very polite bow and then unfolded a
gigantic roll of brown paper. People thought at first it
was a map, but it turned out to be his lecture,

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written on great sheets of grocer's brown paper with an
ordinary grocer's marking. Brush. After his bow, he turned his
back around to the audience and craned his head up
to the lamp, and thus read from the big sheets,
as though it would be impossible for him to see

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any other way. The lecture was on the future of
Nevada and was the funniest thing I ever heard. He
prophesied the great era of prosperity that was before us,
and sought to encourage us residents of the Sagebrush region
by foretelling what appeared to be Goldcoonda like tales of

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impossible mineral discoveries. Right on the heels of it, however,
came the remarkable discoveries of Virginia City, and then we
thought he wasn't so far off in his humorous productions.
Many a time have I thought of that lecture of
Mark Twain. It ought to have been published. I have
read all his books, and I never saw anything in

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any of them better than this. For several months, mister
Clemens continued this platform experience with Prophet the while writing
interesting letters to the Eastern newspapers and contributing sketches to
the periodicals. In March eighteen sixty seven, he pumped first book,
The Jumping Frog of calaveras a collection of his best

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fugitive sketches, and this immediately aroused public attention, not only
in America, but also in England. Soon after, he sailed
for New York by way of Panama, and, upon arriving there,
having found that his little volume was well received, arranged
for an English edition, which was published by Missus Routledge
and Sons of London. From New York, Mark proceeded to Washington,

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where he endeavored to earn his living by writing letters
to the San Francisco Alta and delivering a lecture or two.
His lecture experience in Washington's brief, but interesting, and he
tells about it in his inimical way, as follows, well,
now I'll have to tell you something about that lecture.

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It was a little the hardest and roughest experience I
ever underwent in my whole career as lecturer. Now I
had not been in Washington more than a day or
two before a friend of mine came to my room

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at the hotel early one morning, wakened me out of
a sound sleep, and nearly stunned me by asking if
I was aware of the fact that I was to
deliver a lecture at Lincoln Hall that evening. I told

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him no, and that he must be crazy to get
out of bed at such an unseemly hour to ask
such a foolish question. But he soon assured me that
he was perfectly sane by showing me the morning papers,

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which all announced that Mark Twain was to lecture that evening,
and that his subject would be the Sandwich Islands. To
say that I was surprised would be putting it mildly.
I was mad, for I thought some one had put
a game on me. Well, on careful inquiry, I learned

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that an old theatrical friend of mine thought he would
do me a favor. So he made all the necessary
arrangements for me to lecture, with the exception of the
slight circumstance that he neglected to inform me of any

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of his intentions. He rented Lincoln Hall, builled the town,
and sent the newspapers advertisements and notices about the coming lecture.
And the worst of it was he had done all
his work thoroughly. After learning this, I was in Alemma.

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I had never prepared any lecture on the Sandwich Islands.
What was I to do? I could not back out
by telling the people that I was unprepared. Now that
that was out of the question because the people wouldn't
believe it. The billing of the town had been too

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well done for that. So there was only one thing
left for me to do, and that was to lock
myself in my room and write that lecture between the
breakfast hour and half past seven that evening. Well, I
did it, and was on hand at the advertised hour,

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facing one of the biggest audiences I ever addressed. I
did not use my manuscript, but in those days I
always had my lecture in writing and kept it on
the reading stand at one end of the place where
I stood on the platform. I was very good at

(08:08):
memorizing and rarely had any trouble in speaking without notes.
But the very fact that I had my manuscript near
at hand, where I could readily turn to it without
having to undergo the mortification of pulling it from my pocket,

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gave me courage and kept me from making awkward pauses.
But the writing of that Sandwich Island lecture in one
day was the toughest job ever put to me. One afternoon,
while sitting in his dingy little room smoking his cob pipe,

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Mark became deeply interested in reading about the contemplated trip
of the steamship Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land,
and saw the chance of his He wrote to General
John McComb one of the proprietors of the San Francisco
Daily Alta, California, asking for an advance of one thousand,
two hundred dollars in gold, proposing to pay it in

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letters at fifteen dollars apiece. It was no small request
to make of a San Francisco newspaper in the sixties,
but macombe induced his partners to grant the request. That
was how Mark Twain formed one of the party who
sailed in the steamship Quaker City Captain Duncan for an
extended excursion to Palestine and the Holy Land. This voyage

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to the different seaports of Southern Europe and the Orient
gave him an opportunity of which he made abundant use.
The excursion was a very exclusive sort of affair, and
Captain Duncan his authority for the statement that Clemens had
represented himself when he applied for passage on the Quaker
City as a Baptist minister in ill health from San

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Franciscomans had accompanied the excursion party solely as a newspaper correspondent.
He fell in with a crowd of good, respectable bourgeois
and bourgeoisises, and if the exaggerated narrative of the Innocence Abroad,
published two years later is to be relied upon, he
certainly must have kept his pious minded fellow voyagers in

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a constant state of nervous excitement. The story of that
eventful tour has been well told in Innocence Abroad. He
set out to explore the Holy Land and Egypt, stopping
by the way at Athens. His description of the city
at night as one of the most vivid vignettes on record.
The full moon was riding high in the heavens now.

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We sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the
lofty battlements of the citadel and looked down a vision,
and such a vision Athens by moonlight. It lay in
the level plain right under our feet, all spread abroad

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like a picture, and we looked upon it as we
might be looking at it from a balloon. We saw
no semblance of a street, but every house, every window,
every clinging vine, every projection were marked as clearly as
it were at noonday, and yet there was no glare,

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no glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive. The harshest city was
flooded with the yellowest light that ever streamed from the moon,
and seemed like some living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber.
On its further side was a little temple whose delicate

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pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich luster that
chained the eye like a spell. And nearer by the
Palace of the King, reared its creamy walls out of
the mist of a great garden of shrubbery that was
flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights,

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a spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in
the glory of the moon, and glinted softly upon the
sea of dark foliage, like the pallid star of the
milky Way. Overhead, the stately columns, majestic still in their ruin.

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Under foot, the dreaming city in the distance, the silver sea.
The picture needed nothing. It was perfect, equally realistic, vivid
and interesting were his sketches of scenes and incidents in
Palestine and Egypt, of his experience with a camel in

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se Syria, he wrote as follows in a vein of
the richest humor in Syria. At the headwaters of the Jordan,
A camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents
were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye,
all over with as much interest as if he had

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an idea of getting one made like it. And then
after he was done figuring on it as an article
of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article
of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted
one of the sleeves out with his teeth and chewed

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and chewed at it, gradually taking it in and all
the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind
of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything
so good as an overcoat before in his life. Then
he smacked his lips once or twice and reached after

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the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and
smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain
to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing
about an overcoat. The tales went next, along with some

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percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig paste from Constantinople,
and then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took
a chance in that manuscript letters written from the home papers.
But he was treading on dangerous ground. Now. He began

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to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was
weighty on his stomach, and occasionally he would take a
joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth.
It was getting to be perilous times with him, but

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he held his grip with good courage, and hopefully till
at last he began to stumble on statements that not
even a camel could swallow. With impunity, he began to
gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and

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his forelegs to spread, and in about a quarter of
a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's
work bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I
went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and

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found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on
one of the mildest and gentlest statements of act that
I ever laid before a trusting public. The trip of
the Quaker City was not designed as a lengthy tour
of Europe, but merely a midsummer excursion of a few months.

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Brief as was the voyage, however, Mark Twain made the
most of it and gathered the material not only enough
in quantity to produce a large volume, but enough in
quality to give him everlasting fame. Returning to New York,
he proceeded to Washington, where he commenced a new career
as the special correspondent of newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago,

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and elsewhere. End of chapter three of Mark Twain His
Life and Work, a biographical sketch read by John Greenman,