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A Further Perspective
The Phaeton Liberal
There is one thing left to say about Mark Twain.
Now that his death centenary has passed with the publication of the unexpurgated, 900-page Autobiography of Mark Twain (so ably reviewed by Joseph Bottum in a recent issue of TAS), is there anything left to say about Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, that hasn’t been printed by himself, or by a century of critical opinion?
Having read an earlier edition of the autobiography in paperback some thirty years ago, I skipped the latest magnum opus, but being in a Twain mood I recently read Justin Kaplan’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (1966). It’s the definitive biography of half a life, with Kaplan examining Twain on the brink of his career as America’s first literary celebrity. When the book opens, Twain is 31 and basking in the glory of the publication of his famous short story “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
He is certainly a young man on the make. After his western years of “living out of a valise,” Sam Clemens wants to write books, get happily hitched to Olivia “Livy” Langdon, and “be located in life,” as he writes to a friend. All of which he does after the publication of The Innocents Abroad (1869), his hilarious account of his first travels in Europe and the Middle East. Roughing It (1872) follows, as do offers to write for prestigious newspapers and magazines, such as the Atlantic Monthly, edited by his friend and literary conscience William Dean Howells.
Clemens’ increasing wealth and fame allows him to cultivate the liberal-minded gentry of Hartford, Connecticut, where he meets such luminaries as Harriet Beecher Stowe and oversees the building of a sumptuous mansion for his growing family. Around the same time he collaborates with a blueblood named Charles Dudley Warner on The Gilded Age (1873), a satire on one of the most financially and politically corrupt periods in American history (our own notwithstanding).
The great paradox of Mark Twain’s life was that while he never hesitated to use his “pen warmed up in Hell” to attack plutocrats, he always wanted to be one himself. Like many writers he suffered from the delusion that his talent also included that of a shrewd businessman, and this put his family into near penury a few times.
The small fortune that Twain amassed as the publisher of
the by-then-deceased U.S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs (an
American classic both historic and literary) went down the
financial rat hole of the infamous Paige Typesetter, the Edsel of
19th century printing technology. In an extended bleed from 1880 to
1894, Twain lost $300,000 (the equivalent of $7 million today),
mostly on the Paige Typesetter, which by the 1890s had become
obsolete with the advent of Linotype. At the same time, his
publishing company went broke by publishing one turkey after
another (The Life of Pope Leo XIII) following the success
of the Grant book. And his masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn
(1884) didn’t sell well in its first years. Twain went back on the
lucrative lecture circuit — easy money during his salad days, but
a grind that he increasingly hated.
Twain was rescued from financial ruin by one Henry Huttleston Rogers, who sat on the board of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. Rogers was a cutthroat businessman, but he was also a big fan of Mark Twain’s books, which he read to his children. He personally took over the management of the author’s finances and brought him once again to solvency, then wealth. Twain was grateful, writing of Rogers: “He is not only the best friend I ever had, but is the best man I have ever known.” The friendship endured until Rogers’ death in 1909, only a year before the writer’s own passing.
Yet Twain did not share Rogers’ politics. The author was America’s first limousine liberal (maybe in the 19th century context we can call him a “phaeton liberal” after the luxury conveyance of the time). His Rogers friendship — the friendship of a master satirist to a plutocrat — benefited Twain’s lust for influential wealth, and seems hypocritical.
Twain’s political views were those of a modern liberal. He was a supporter of civil rights (as outlined in Huckleberry Finn, for instance). He was pro-women’s suffrage, and — despite the Rogers friendship — he supported the national labor movement. He could definitely be counted among the Gilded Age’s most prominent reformist voices. His wife Livy was very influential in this way, as was Howells from his perch at the Atlantic Monthly (the Atlantic’s editorial stances reflected and influenced that staunch New England liberalism that is still present in a more radical, multicultural milieu today). According to Kaplan, Howells — the utopian socialist — once said of Twain that he was “a theoretical socialist and a practical aristocrat.” Twain’s opprobrium for John D. Rockefeller (“Satan, twaddling sentimental silliness to a Sunday school, could be no burlesque upon John D. Rockefeller…”) is paradoxical considering his dealings with Rogers, a Rockefeller man.
Twain in old age (the Letters from the Earth
Twain) is understandably more politically cynical than ever. The
Spanish-American War and particularly its theater in the
Philippines raise his ire: “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed
to having the eagle put its talons on any other land,” Twain told
the New York Herald in 1900. And a typical piece from this
period was his biting “The United States of Lyncherdom,” an attack
on the mindless violence against black people in the Jim Crow
South.
Forty-five years after its publication, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, if not the definitive biography of a life, remains the best portrait of the public, private and complex character of our most intrinsically American writer.
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (45) | Leave a comment
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Kitty| 7.22.11 @ 6:59AM
Given its history, I've never understood how New England can be so liberal. My own ancestors arrived in Massachusetts on the ship Fortune in November of 1621. They survived because they didn't depend upon a government handout. I'll never understand how New England morphed from rugged individualists into the progressives of today.
PJ| 7.22.11 @ 9:23AM
There are many reasons but here's a few starting from the 1800s: unions, immigration, political cronyism, & of course wealthy, do-gooders.
Most "rugged individualists" of NE packed up & moved west; very few stayed home.
JP| 7.22.11 @ 9:24AM
Kitty, to answer that question, one would need a book. In short, New England's strong Protestant tradition emphasized education. New England's citizens became some of the most educated in the world. Besides excellent primary schools, some of the most prestigious colleges in the world cropped up in Mass. , New Hampshire, Conneticut, and New York.
After the famous Protestant revival (The Great Awakening) in the early part of the 19th Century, a groundswell of charitable activities blossomed in New England. However, even as the religious temper began to subside in New England, the socio-political committments grew. Everything from prison reform, abolition, sufferage, and the temperence movement grew. The first Progressive ideas came out of New England; fueled by the self-righteousness of thier forebears, as well as being highly educated, as well as prosperous, New Englanders fueled what would become the Progressive Movement. Add in the wealth of Wall st and it is no wonder that they became the political-cultural center of the US.
PJ| 7.22.11 @ 9:43AM
I may add that the educated Germans who were kicked out by Bismark & immigrated to the States may have started the Progressive Movement here. (There was a reform movement going on in Germany at the time.) If not then they certainly added huge amts of "fuel to the fire."
BackToBasics| 7.23.11 @ 1:32AM
CHristian friends of mine and I have commented occasionally about how it seems that the most Christian parts of America became the most liberal and anti-Christian 2 to 3 ceturies later.
Now I think I see it happening in the South too.
It's ifficult to come up with concrete answers to this. One of my guesses is that American Christianity at least has lost its grit. The Puritans and early evangelists were not afraid to call sin a sin and to speak about what the consequnces of it are. Now there's too much "compassion without wisdom and grit."
Secondly, I do believe in Satan and believe he works "overtime" to undo adavnces made by faithful and strong Christianity such as we had more of, although not universal, in the naiton's beginning. The Spiritual level is one that seems tobe there but, being spiritual, you cannot really pin it down.
The first part of what I wrote is something that can bee seen and the results of this compassion without wisdom that stems from are Christian roots may prove to be our undoing.
BackToBasics| 7.23.11 @ 1:34AM
typo - stems from our Christian roots...
POST American| 7.22.11 @ 7:04AM
-------BTW
WHY is Twain aways represented as being
an atheist when he was, IN FACT, a full
blown, high degree FREEMASON?
----ALAS, yet another FAKE op...
PJ| 7.22.11 @ 9:32AM
Twain was a hypocrite as the article implied. He took up many socialist causes but loved basking in wealth & fame.
I didn't know about him being a freemason. He probably joined for the business connections.
canuckistani| 7.22.11 @ 10:01AM
First of the limousine liberals?
PJ| 7.22.11 @ 10:28AM
It would seem so.
J.C.Eaton| 7.23.11 @ 12:21PM
I accord that dishonor to Tom Jefferson.
simon templar| 7.23.11 @ 6:44PM
Do you always believe every thing you read? Are all your opinions based on prevailing notions, name calling, and speculation? The author of this article knows nothing of Twain, conservativism, liberalism, or history. These were not socailist causes here in America at that time but were republican conservative constitutional aims and were given birth (women's suffrage and black freedom) by the republican party. Twain was more of a conservative free market libertarian who had distrust of military adventurism not a frigin Liberal!
Herb| 7.22.11 @ 7:41AM
My favorite Mark Twain vignette comes from his days with a Richmond newspaper when the telephone was becoming a widely used instrument. One morning Twain answered it only to hear a caller in a bellowing rage protesting the morning edition's publication of his own obituary!
Twain calmly replied, "Sir, where are you calling from?"
alice moore| 7.22.11 @ 7:55AM
Our apologies, the report was premature.
Herb| 7.22.11 @ 8:12AM
"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
Appleby| 7.22.11 @ 9:45AM
Read "The Innocents Abroad" -- the section on his travels in the Holy Land are hilarious and still apply today.
sinanju| 7.22.11 @ 10:14AM
I know! I read the Jerusalem passages and when he gets to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I'm rolling in the aisles! I like to think one can be a person of faith without having to take that ridiculous place seriously.
ConantheContrarian| 7.22.11 @ 10:04AM
As a conservative, I have to ask myself and others, what was the point of the Spanish-American War? Maybe I agree with Twain on that one.
lrgon| 7.22.11 @ 3:27PM
The point was to break Americans free from the advice of Washington, John Q. Adams and others of the Founding era who were not interventionists; advocated peace not war.
The SA war broke with our purely defensive war doctrine and thrust America onto a course of aggressive warfare and involvement in political and military alliances that have led us into one war after another.
Aggressive war is the ultimate form socialism. War requires, and politicians, provide the excuse to build bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is socialistic in nature.
Westie| 7.23.11 @ 6:01AM
Fabian/Marxism roots + International Leftism + never let a manufactured crisis go to waste.
Westie| 7.23.11 @ 6:01AM
Fabian/Marxism roots + International Leftism + never let a manufactured crisis go to waste.
J Baustian| 7.28.11 @ 1:24PM
Note that Americans, or at least some Americans, had been looking at Cuba as fertile ground for future expansion since the 1840s. That impulse foundered then because of opposition from Northern abolitionists, and after the Civil War because there was so much Western land to settle.
By 1898 most of the world was being grabbed up by European nations, and with Spain being so weak there was a fear that Germany would take over Spanish territories including Cuba.
The US got what it wanted from Cuba: the base at Guantanamo. It got the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Puerto Rico. And until 1991 it had the Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines... which we sure could use these days.
There was never any serious consideration given to annexing Cuba or the Philippines. I'm not sure what the futures holds for Puerto Rico, but it is worth holding onto unless the people there really want to be independent.
Petronius| 7.22.11 @ 10:12AM
Clemens was the first to become trapped in the same situation that galls every doctrinaire Liberal. All the prating and preening towards altruism clash with material well being as well as his self proclaimed intellectual superiority and revulsion against his roots of Missouri's rural fundamentalism. He was never at peace with what he was, because that prevented him from becoming what he believed he should have been. His roots in the midwest was the one thing he couldn't live down. Today's crop of beastly Bostonians, nasty New Yawkers, beltway bastards, and left coast loonies are no different. They all blame their parents. The same lame trope that they can't ever really "be hip" because dad sold insurance in Iowa is still the ultimate ick. Read that last short story Twain wrote ant that the Atlantic Monthly published a few years back and say it ain't so.
Vern Crisler | 7.22.11 @ 10:35AM
Kaplan was writing during the day when Freud's views were uncritically accepted, especially by literary types. His Jekyll and Hyde interpretation of Twain made me want to take out my cane and hit Kaplan over the head with it.
Also, while Twain was partially Progressive (change is everything, he once claimed, rather unchangingly), it would be anachronistic to say he was a modern liberal. He himself claimed to be a Mugwump "from the marrow out." These were Republicans who bolted from supporting the corrupt candidate Blaine. He would probably more accurately be described as an Independent today.
JP| 7.22.11 @ 11:26AM
During his time, Progressivism would be considered RINO territory today. Twain didn't totally buy the Third Way politics of his time; but, he belonged to that class of New England busy body do-gooderism that went national in during his lifetime. He spouted all the right slogans. But I wonder how committed he really was? Another wit (who possessed much less talent), HL Mencken, knew better than to believe any of that claptrap. As a matter of fact Mencken made a career out of ridiculing such people.
JimH| 7.22.11 @ 1:41PM
Clemens was in some ways Americas Voltaire, a tame iconoclast who while criticizing the ruling class was in fact kept as a pet by them. There are similar types today, Bill Maher comes to mind, albeit with no were near the talent.
Occam's Tool| 7.22.11 @ 1:55PM
His essays are brilliant. Perhaps the best, and least political, is "The Literary Offenses of Fennimore Cooper," which saved me from reading the Natty Bumpo series and allowed me to spend that time reading Twain on the different types of Courage (his second best essay ever).
DaveS| 7.22.11 @ 2:33PM
You may as well interview his pens as talk about his political and societal inclinations. Big effing deal. Samuel Johnson did the same thing, to wit: chat/dine with the rich and travel with the beautiful. Don't take Twain - except between the end leaves.
lrgon| 7.22.11 @ 3:33PM
Mark Twain referred to American soldiers in the Philippines as “our uniformed assassins,” though his invective was more often and more appropriately aimed at the government that sent them there.
http://thenewamerican.com/hist.....ooed-talk-
Jack Kenny of The new american.com writes: "... it is not hard to imagine the outrage that description would provoke were it uttered today about our troops in Afghanistan or Iraq..."
Vern Crisler | 7.24.11 @ 1:54PM
Twain was a naive anti-Imperialist, more committed to an ideology of anti-colonialism than willing to inform himself of the reality on the ground in the Philippines and elsewhere.
lrgon| 7.22.11 @ 3:39PM
Mark Twain's war prayer excerpt:
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit...."
lrgon| 7.22.11 @ 3:48PM
Liberalism
Bill Croke opines that twain's liberla views would mesh with today's liberals. I disagree since Liberals talk against war only until they sign the check to fund more war!
john bunny| 7.22.11 @ 4:24PM
Mark Twain was born in 1835 on the edge of the Great West. In trying to pin down his politics why not call him a Jacksonian? Hickory was still alive when Mark was born.
Vern Crisler | 7.24.11 @ 1:55PM
But he started working as a reporter during the Civil War, so he could be regarded as a Lincolnian to some extent.
e track from saq| 7.22.11 @ 6:22PM
I'm currently reading Innocents Abroad in preparation for my own trip to the Holy Land.What I take away from Mark Twain is a person a little too smart to be an idiot lefty,despite the mental diseases he apparently harbored late in his life my feeling is that if he were alive today he would be one of the good guys.
simon templar| 7.23.11 @ 6:35PM
Follow your instincts. He was certainly not a Liberal and the author of this article is dead wrong and knows nothing.
Vern Crisler | 7.24.11 @ 2:00PM
Twain did not have any mental diseases later in his life. You must be confusing him with Nietzsche.
POST American| 7.23.11 @ 12:14AM
"--And understand folks, at this point
our entire literary establishment, ALLL
the authors, most esp. 'bestsellers' and Sci Fi,
have been 'brought in' and funded to program
'the agenda'. Better drop that image of
the lone writer working with his idea by a candle.
It's been that way for half a century. The whole
thing's a set up. Really."
-ALAN WATT
(awesome coverage online)
-----And even Twain?
john dubose| 7.23.11 @ 10:13AM
Twain was largely into exposing hippocracy and injustice. They had plenty. Since modern "liberals" are rolling in it, I would like to think that if he was here now, he would be more a Libertarian.
simon templar| 7.23.11 @ 6:55PM
You are spot on sir!
simon templar| 7.23.11 @ 6:32PM
Twain's political views were those of a modern liberal.
Thanks, it always good to come out to a so-called conservative Republican web site and be told that conservatives and republicans have a rich history of racism and oppression of women and are imperialist. Better yet, it is always nice to read about a great American of the past and have him be labeled a liberal of today by a conservative magazine.
You sir, are a jackass! You no nothing. Nothing. Ignorant as shit and a disservice. Republicans and conservatives have been the primary forces behind both the womens suffrage movement and the freedom of blacks and gave birth to both movements. If you pick up a history book you would know that. Twains views are more in line with the conservative libertarain movement of today not Liberals. Twain was a free enterprise free market conservative libertarian who supported traditional family values of his time, supported constitutional freedoms for all citizens, and was wary of military adventurism. These are not liberal values. He was not an atheist nor did he support left wing communism or free handouts or big government. The readers in this thread just by instinct know this from whatever little they no about him. Do not listen to this idiot. Does TAS have an editorial board or any kind of oversight? Or can you just write any crap and put it out here?
Tiddly| 7.24.11 @ 2:16PM
"You no nothing."
Especially you no nothing about spelling.
simon templar| 7.24.11 @ 3:23PM
Yeah, I am sure you never made a typo in your life. Insightful..great contribution to the thread. Go diddle with your tiddle.
simon templar| 7.24.11 @ 3:24PM
BTW, great name you got there. It fits perfectly.
mzk1| 7.28.11 @ 12:50PM
To be fair, women's sufferage was pushed by the evangelicals, just as prohibition was considered a women's issue. Then again, William Jenning Bryan is sometimes considered the founder of the modern (liberal) Democratic party.