Mark Twain and John T Lewis

 “Huck and Jim in Their Final Years”

In 1903, on his last visit to his in-laws at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, Mark Twain (1835-1910) posed for this photograph with his friend, John T. Lewis (1835-1906), who was born a free man in Maryland and who had migrated to upstate New York. They met in 1877 after Lewis saved the lives of Twain’s sister-in-law and her daughter by courageously stopping their runaway carriage at no small risk to his own safety. Lewis was an Elder in the Church of the Brethren (the Dunkers), and he and Twain often talked about religion and other such matters. Lewis loved to read, and Twain would send him every one of his books when they came out, with a loving inscription in each one. After Lewis retired from farming, Twain and his in-laws arranged to have him receive a pension. When Twain returned to writing Huckleberry Finn, in 1879 while at Elmira, Lewis was one of the real-life people upon whom he based the character of Jim, and it is even possible that his acquaintance with Lewis caused Twain to continue working on the novel after having earlier set it aside.

Twain’s friendship with Lewis was hardly atypical; of all the white authors in this period, he was the one most fully immersed in and appreciative of African American culture and the one most at home in the company of African Americans. Near the end of his life he recalled a time in New York City when he was walking with another black friend, George Griffin, and people stared at them: "a 'white man' & a negro walking together was a new spectacle to them. The glances embarrassed George, but not me, for the companionship was proper: in some ways he was my equal, in some others my superior.”

Published in 1884/1885, Huckleberry Finn is about a racist boy’s realization of the full humanity of a fugitive slave. Ten years later, in Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain would deconstruct the very idea of race itself as nothing more than "a fiction of law and custom" without any basis in biology. As Toni Morrison stated, "Mark Twain talked about racial ideology in the most powerful, eloquent, and instructive way I have ever read."

Mark Twain and John T. Lewis are both buried with their families in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira

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Huckleberry Finn published

 

December 10. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published on this date in 1884. Twain had the idea to write a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, one that would follow Tom's friend Huck all the way into adulthood. He toyed with the idea for a long time, starting and stopping, and eventually setting it aside for years. When he took up the project again, Twain changed his approach, and instead of writing in a formal literary style, Huck narrated his story in a dialect. The book opens with the line, "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter." Later writers, like T.S. Eliot and Ralph Ellison, were great admirers of Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway was a big fan of the book, famously stating: "All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain. It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing since." Thanks Writer's Almanac

Late Nov 30 birthday details

Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain...

 It's the birthday of the man who said, "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it": Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri (1835). In 1867, he published his first book, a book of short stories called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It didn't sell many copies, but two years later, he published The Innocents Abroad (1869), a humorous book of travel writing. It was an immediate best-seller, and remained the best-selling of all Twain's books during his lifetime. In it, he wrote: "We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can 'show off' and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our own untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off. All our passengers are paying strict attention to this thing, with the end in view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad."

During the next 25 years, Twain published most of his best-known books: Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Then he teamed up with his nephew to publish the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which were hugely successful. But after these successes, things began to fall apart. Twain invested money into all sorts of companies, including throwing a huge amount of money behind an invention by one of his friends: an automatic typesetting machine called the Paige Compositor. Twain was dazzled by the invention; he described the machine as a "magnificent creature" and a "sublime magician of iron and steel." He wrote to his brother: "All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle. Telephones, telegraphs, locomotive, cotton gins, sewing machines [...] — all mere toys, simplicities, The Paige Compositor marches alone and far in the lead of human inventions." The typesetter was a dismal failure, and Twain went bankrupt.

Twain published another book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), but it got bad reviews and didn't sell very well. His financial situation got worse and worse, and he moved to Europe, where his family could live well for less money. He sold rights for a new novel to Century Magazine for $6,500, and quickly wrote Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894). It sold better than A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but not well enough, so he earned money on a worldwide lecture tour.

In 1896, his favorite daughter, Susy, died at the age of 24 from spinal meningitis. Twain, his wife, Livy, and their daughter Clara were living in England when they got word that Susy was ill, and she died before they could make it home. After Susy's death, Twain sank into depression. A few years later, in 1904, his beloved wife, Livy, died. A year after her death, on this day in 1905, Twain turned 70 and had a huge party at Delmonico's restaurant in New York City. There were 170 guests, including Willa Cather, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Andrew Carnegie. The guests assembled in a parlor, and at 8 p.m. a 40-piece orchestra played a march to alert them that it was time for dinner. Each guest's menu had drawings of Twain in different stages of his life, including in his most recent career as a lecturer — that drawing showed him proclaiming, "Be good and you will be lonesome." Each guest received a 12-inch bust of Twain as a souvenir.

After dinner, several telegrams were read aloud, including one from President Theodore Roosevelt, lamenting the fact that he could not attend; and another full of birthday wishes from a group of British writers, including Rudyard Kipling, J.M. Barrie, Thomas Hardy, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Twain's good friend, the writer and publisher William Dean Howells, gave a toast that ended in a sonnet he had written for the occasion.

After Howells' toast, Twain got up and gave a speech. He compared his 70h birthday to his first, and decided that the 70th was far superior; he said: "I remember the first one very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. [...] Why, even the cradle wasn't whitewashed — nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any clothes." He said, "I have achieved my 70 years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else." Then he proceeded to explain the lifestyle that had gotten him there, which included eating mince-pie after midnight; smoking at all times when he was awake (including in bed); avoiding exercise at all costs; and living what he called "a severely moral life." He ended his speech: "I am 70; 70, and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart."
Thanks Writer's Almanac updated 2013

Nov. 30 three birthdays...each of which deserve their own post!

 Three for one...Nov. 30 birthdays:

It’s the birthday of statesman Sir Winston S. Churchill, born at Blenheim Castle, England (1874). His long political career led to him becoming Prime Minister in 1940. He said, “I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour.” He rallied the English people with his courage and great oratory. He wrote a six-volume history of World War Two.

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It’s the birthday of Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in Florida, Missouri (1835). He left school at 12 to work as a printer, then as a riverboat pilot. During the Civil War, he went to Nevada where he tried gold mining and then edited a newspaper. When he was 29 he went to San Francisco as a reporter, and achieved his first success with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865). He took a trip to Europe and the Holy Land, and described his experiences in The Innocents Abroad (1869). When he returned to America, he settled in the East, married Olivia Langdon, and had four children. They built a distinctive house in Hartford, Connecticut, and he won wide popularity with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and later, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

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It’s the birthday of satirist Jonathan Swift, born in Dublin, Ireland (1667), author of Gulliver’s Travels. He wrote, “I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities, and all my love is towards individuals.” While walking to London one day, he ducked under a tree during a cloudburst, and was soon joined by a man and a pregnant woman who told him they were going to London to be married. Swift informed them that he was a clergyman, and offered to perform the ceremony on the spot. They agreed, and afterwards, when the groom asked for a certificate of marriage, Swift obliged with a poem:

Under an oak, in stormy weather,

I joined this rogue and whore together;

And none but he who rules the thunder

Can put this rogue and whore asunder

From Writer's Almanac 2000