MIRK TWAIN.
OME thirty-five years ago Mr. Samuel Clemens—or Mark
Twain as it is pleasanter to call him—was deputed by his fellow-passengers to ask for recognition from the Royal Humane Society for the captain and the lifeboat crew of the steamer ' Batavia' for saving life at sea. Quite characteristi- cally, he asked for no reward for himself. He was satisfied if he had been of any service "standing around the deck in a furious storm, without any umbrella, keeping an eye on things and seeing that they were done right, and yelling whenever a cheer seemed the important thing." That was enough for him ; but what he asked for was recognition for the captain and the crew from the Humane Society, who, he wrote, would "in so remembering them increase the high honour and esteem in which the Society is held all over the civilised world." Perhaps we may reapply the words to the position of the author at the present moment. Another " humane society" is proposing to confer a distinction upon an honoured personage. The University of Oxford has offered an honorary degree to Mark Twain, which will be conferred upon him at the forthcoming Commemoration, and it is certainly true that in honouring the great American writer Oxford honours herself. To the majority of her sons, perhaps, it falls to " stand around the deck " and to cheer whenever a cheer seems necessary, while the distinguished few occupy the attention of countries and continents. But it is the privilege of all, as owning the same motherhood, to bestow fraternal honours and compli- ments. Such a distinction as an honorary degree is offered in hearty recognition of the name, not only of a man of letters, but one who has set an example of upright, brave, and strenuous living.
For the record of Mark Twain's life, apart from its aspect as belonging to a distinguished writer, is one of fine energy, undaunted resolution, and the widest experience of men and manners. He was horn seventy-one years ago, in 1835, and his work begins with his decision, at the not very mature age of thirteen, to become a printer. Besides his printing work, he was engaged, according to his own account, to scribble on a paper belonging to his uncle, "the Weekly Hannibal Journal, two dollars a year in advance—five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and un- marketable turnips." A year or two later he was travelling, still as a journalist, picking up what work he could, and it was perhaps at this stage that he came in for the quaint adventures which he has described in that admirable little piece of satire, "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper." In this interesting journal, it may be remembered, the temporary editor gave the valuable advice that "turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much better to send a boy np and let him shake the tree"; also, that "the guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it." But these journalistic experiences, although they doubtless involved some hard knocks, and probably on occasion that lack of food which is salutary to the soul of a young writer, were not the hardest part of his schooling. It was as a pilot on the Mississippi River that he gained the experience which enabled him eventually to give the world a real hook. As a pilot, indeed, he literally "made his name" as no other living writer has made it ; he was casting about for a pseudonym by which to sign a squib he had written on the captain of his steamboat, and the name was suddenly called to him by a deck-hand heaving the lead "mark twain." After that as private seem- tau to his brother, "Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence" of Nevada Territory, seeing all that a young man could wish to see of Indians, highwaymen of the Rocky Mountains, Mormons, and silver-miners ; later, again, as professed journalist, author, and successful lecturer ; later still, when his reputation as writer and humourist had spread through the English-speaking inhabitants of five continents, compelled through the failure of a publishing firm to work as hard as ever to rehabilitate his fortunes,—in all these changes and chances preserving the same courage, independence, and health of vision, he has earned the title of a good deal more than a man of letters; he has been a man of action. "Com- pelled" to work, indeed, is hardly the right word to use in reference to his position when the publishing firm with whom he was connected in later years became bankrupt. He was sixty years old in 1896 when the firm came to grief, even as Scott was fifty-six when the house of Ballautyne fell seventy years before ; and, like Scott, he set himself at once to mend the shattered pieces. " Compelled" to work he was, but only by the vigour and bravery of his own character.
Mark Twain will always be remembered first and fore;nost as a humourist; but it is only because his claims as a humourist are overwhelming that he has not been acclaimed as a serious student of character, a novelist, and a charming writer of whimsical historical romance. His "output" has been large and continuous; but if out of the many volumes filled with his writings we were to select as typical of his best work "Tom Sawyer," "A Tramp Abroad," and that moat delightful of fantasies for children, " The Prince and the Pauper," he would take his stand as the author of three books which are classical of their kind, and we should still be leaving out of account such admirable work as "Life on the Mississippi," "Huckle- berry Finn," "The Innocents Abroad," and the extremely clever and imaginative tour de force, "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur." As for " Tom Sawyer," Mark Twain once described it to a youthful journalist on whom he did not think he was wasting a two hours' interview as "all the boy that I have known or recollect." But "Tom Sawyer" contains a good deal more than a mere study of irresponsible boyhood, admirably as such a study is presented, not only in the wild escapades of that honest and engaging scapegrace, but in the childish tenderness of such passages as the scribbling of the message, " We ain't dead—we are only off being pirates," on the sycamore-bark left to console the sorrowing Aunt Polly. There are two or three scenes in the book which grip the heart : Tout and Huck hiding in the churchyard, the stealthy digging of the bodysnatchers, the moon suddenly shining on the poor pallid thing taken from the grave, and Injun Joe, the half-breed, creeping with his knife round the doctor wrestling with his drenken " pard"; Tom and Becky Thatcher with the bats flying round their heads in the depths of the cave, and the horror of darkness as their only candle goes out; and last, the hideous end of the half-breed, walled up in the cave and hacking away at the door with his broken bowie-knife, not because he hopes to get out, but for something to do. Those three scenes must always haunt any reader who has taken np the book as boy or man. " Tom Sawyer," of course, pairs with "Huckleberry Finn." Out of the two chief books of travel, it would be more difficult to select three, and three only, characteristic passages. If three are to be chosen, perhaps the "Tramp Abroad" contains them in the immortal Gambetta-Fourtou duel, with the "postage-stamp containing several cartridges," and the lamentable consequences to M. Gambetta's second ; Mark Twain's search in the dark for his odd slipper, during which the pedometer marked forty-seven miles; and, of course, the wonderful ascent of the Riffelberg, with the mule that ate the nitro-glycerine, the paregoricking of the corps of guides, the boiling of the thermometer, and the descent by the glacier. It is all, surely, the most admirable fun and light-heartedness. But fun, light-heartedness, and an unrivalled sense of humour are by no means Mark Twain's only, nor even, perhaps, his most commanding, characteristics. He has a peculiar power of presenting pathetic situations without "slash," as could be proved by a dozen charming scenes from that daintiest of children's stories, "The Prince and the Pauper." But he is, above all, the fearless upholder of all that is clean, noble, straightforward, innocent, and manly. If there is a certain meaning to the phrase "American journalism" which is distasteful to Englishmen, Mark Twain, of American writers, stands for all that Englishmen like best. He has his extravagances; some of his public, indeed, would insist on them. But if be is a jester, he jests with the mirth of the happiest of Puritans; the has read much of English knighthood, and translated the best of it into his living pages; and he has assuredly already won a high degree in letters in having added more than any writer since Dickens to the gaiety of the Empire of the English language.
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