About Mark Twain (5)

After reading the Ron Powers biography of Mark Twain and the Justin Kaplan book, an abbreviation of his 1966 Pulitzer prize winner, I am finished with Twain for the moment. The Powers book is the best comprehensive look at Twain in recent years, and the Kaplan book, published in 1974, is the best short introduction to Twain.

My intent is to understand Twain within the context of the 19th century, for he was certainly one of the seminal figures of the latter half of that century. I read about his upbringing in Missouri and about his days as a steamboat captain. The coming of the railroads and the Civil War ended that career opportunity for Twain.

He served for all of a month in the service of the Confederacy before fleeing the war to Nevada and California. As much as anything, I enjoy reading about his Western days, in particular his time in San Francisco. I will never again walk along Montgomery St. in S.F. without thinking about Twain being there in the 1860's.

Twain figured he could not achieve literary fame without leaving the West and going East, which he did. He found favor with William Dean Howels, the dean of American Letters in the U.S. after the war, and he married into a prominent New York family, going from Buffalo to Elmira, and finally to Hartford, Connecticut, then a den of Eastern writers. Along the way, he superseded Bret Harte, one of his first intellectual benefactors. His model for his stage prescence---his career lecturing and performing from the stage---was Artimus Ward. Twain had his role models along the way.

He didn't strike it rich in the West---no gold or silver did he find hin his mining days out West during the war---but he eventually found financial success although he declared bankruptcy in 1895 after a foolish investment in a printing press that lost out in the marketplace. By the time he died, Twain had regained his financial footing.

Twain outlived his wife and three of his four kids. His last years were bitter because of his losses, but he kept his promise to live until Haley's Comet returned in 1910.