An illustrated tribute to Mark Twain’s life and work, featuring rare illustrations, photographs, popular prints, and more from the Library of Congress
WITH A FOREWORD BY LEWIS LAPHAM
Today we know Mark Twain as the author of classics of American literature, but in his time, he was a controversial satirist and public figure who traveled the world and helped heal post–Civil War America with tall tales, witty anecdotes, and humorous but insightful stories and novels. This richly illustrated volume, with a lively narrative by Harry L. Katz and numerous excerpts from Twain’s own writings, makes it clear that Twain is as relevant today as he has ever been. Focusing on the years 1850 to 1910, the book gives readers an intimate view of Twain’s many roles in life: as Mississippi river boatpilot, California gold prospector, “printer’s devil” at a small-town newspaper, frontier journalist, successful novelist, political pundit, public speaker extraordinaire, devoted family man, and our first major celebrity author. An in-depth timeline of key events during Twain’s lifetime reveals how he was shaped by the world he inhabited and, in turn, how he helped shape it. Among the reproductions are spectacular examples of Twain-related artifacts and period Americana from the unsurpassed collections of the Library of Congress: rare-book illustrations, letters and journals, vintage photographs, popular and fine prints, caricatures, and more. A delightful read and a visual treat as well, Mark Twain’s America is an intimate portrayal of the life and times of our most beloved humorist.
MARK TWAIN’S
A MERICA A Celebration in Words and Images
Harry L. Katz is former head curator in the Library of Congress’s Division of Prints and Photographs and the coauthor of Baseball Americana, an illustrated cultural history of the game.
MARKETING AND PROMOTION National media campaign, including print and online interviews ⋅ Digital marketing/publicity campaign, including features and reviews, specialized blog outreach, and downloadable excerpts Social network campaign, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Goodreads On-sale date: October 1, 2014 Biography ⋅ Hardcover 978-0-316-20939-7 ⋅ $40.00 US / 44.00 CAN 8 × 10 ⋅ 256 pages ⋅ 300 color and black-and-white photographs and illustrations
This is uncorrected proof. Not for sale. Little, Brown and Company littlebrown.com Copyright © 2014 by
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
HARRY L. KATZ AND THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CHAPTER ONE
River of Dreams
I
n 1835, the year Sam Clemens was born, rivers powered the nation’s commerce, transportation, and communications, serving as highways for freight and passengers. Roads and railways were few and far between. While Henry Clay and other politicians advocated for “internal improvements” to ease travel, open new markets, and move people, ideas, and products, speculators invested in local and regional waterways to attract development. Steamboats, barges, rafts, and riverboats delivered news and goods across the nation, linking rural homesteads and city parlors. For Clemens and many of his compatriots, rivers also represented the allure of exploration and escape. Unknown vistas and untold opportunities lay around the next bend. During the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, American artists and writers in the East found inspiration in the remote regions of the Hudson River, producing landscapes, poems, and novels portraying the Hudson River Valley as wild, picturesque, mysterious, and a sublime metaphor for the human spirit. Thomas Cole’s allegorical visions of wilderness and empire fueled the Hudson River School; Asher B. Durand went deep into the Catskills to immortalize Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant as kindred spirits, finding in nature a common source of spiritual knowledge and strength.
City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard. Aquatint engraving by William Bennett after George Cooke, painted by G. Cooke; engraved by W. J. Bennett, ca. 1833. This elegant etching, an aquatint mimicking the effects of watercolor, depicts the rural character of pre-industrial Washington, DC, a new capital rising from fields and swamps at the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. By the time Sam Clemens first saw the capital, in the 1850s, a growing population of legislators, lawyers, and lobbyists, and their aides, clerks, and assistants, had helped swell the population and transform the city.
15
CHAPTER ONE
River of Dreams
I
n 1835, the year Sam Clemens was born, rivers powered the nation’s commerce, transportation, and communications, serving as highways for freight and passengers. Roads and railways were few and far between. While Henry Clay and other politicians advocated for “internal improvements” to ease travel, open new markets, and move people, ideas, and products, speculators invested in local and regional waterways to attract development. Steamboats, barges, rafts, and riverboats delivered news and goods across the nation, linking rural homesteads and city parlors. For Clemens and many of his compatriots, rivers also represented the allure of exploration and escape. Unknown vistas and untold opportunities lay around the next bend. During the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, American artists and writers in the East found inspiration in the remote regions of the Hudson River, producing landscapes, poems, and novels portraying the Hudson River Valley as wild, picturesque, mysterious, and a sublime metaphor for the human spirit. Thomas Cole’s allegorical visions of wilderness and empire fueled the Hudson River School; Asher B. Durand went deep into the Catskills to immortalize Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant as kindred spirits, finding in nature a common source of spiritual knowledge and strength.
City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard. Aquatint engraving by William Bennett after George Cooke, painted by G. Cooke; engraved by W. J. Bennett, ca. 1833. This elegant etching, an aquatint mimicking the effects of watercolor, depicts the rural character of pre-industrial Washington, DC, a new capital rising from fields and swamps at the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. By the time Sam Clemens first saw the capital, in the 1850s, a growing population of legislators, lawyers, and lobbyists, and their aides, clerks, and assistants, had helped swell the population and transform the city.
15
the region as it actually was and not as he would have liked it to be, with its awesome natural beauty, impoverished populace, and terrible social conflicts. The river itself becomes a constant, brooding presence, an active participant in the drama, as Huck befriends the fugitive slave Jim and they embark on their epic journey down the Mississippi. The runaway slave and truant schoolboy flee civilization’s shackles along the watery corridor with few witnesses: We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn’t afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. . . . Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o’clock that still night. There warn’t a sound there; everybody was asleep. Huck described the river as a living thing, dominating the landscape and imposing its will on the towns and cities along its banks: On the riverfront some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, the people had moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land 50
as wide as a house caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river’s always gnawing at it. For Huck and his companions, the river provided passage and provisions. It also fueled Huck’s ruminations over social responsibility and the rights of all men and women, no matter their color or social station, to live freely. Moving along the river, Huck described his onshore foraging and the ethical dilemma it posed: Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more—then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p’simmons. We warn’t feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t ever good, and the p’simmons wouldn’t be ripe for two or three months yet. Although Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn brought Sam Clemens financial success and international renown, by the early 1890s he was broke and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Cover, British First Edition, 1884. Mark Twain was hugely popular with British publishers and their readers. Some of his writings, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, appeared first in England. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Frontispiece by E. W. Kemble, 1884. In contrast to Tom Sawyer, Huck appears entirely self-reliant, a legacy of his deadbeat dad, wearing shabby clothes, armed with a hunting rifle, and bearing a trophy for his dinner.
The Story of Sollermun. Illustration by E. W. Kemble in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The natural companionship of Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim, sharing a smoke while discussing life’s dilemmas in light of lessons from the Bible, offered a groundbreaking literary view of race relations.
51
the region as it actually was and not as he would have liked it to be, with its awesome natural beauty, impoverished populace, and terrible social conflicts. The river itself becomes a constant, brooding presence, an active participant in the drama, as Huck befriends the fugitive slave Jim and they embark on their epic journey down the Mississippi. The runaway slave and truant schoolboy flee civilization’s shackles along the watery corridor with few witnesses: We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn’t afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. . . . Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o’clock that still night. There warn’t a sound there; everybody was asleep. Huck described the river as a living thing, dominating the landscape and imposing its will on the towns and cities along its banks: On the riverfront some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, the people had moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land 50
as wide as a house caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river’s always gnawing at it. For Huck and his companions, the river provided passage and provisions. It also fueled Huck’s ruminations over social responsibility and the rights of all men and women, no matter their color or social station, to live freely. Moving along the river, Huck described his onshore foraging and the ethical dilemma it posed: Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more—then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p’simmons. We warn’t feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t ever good, and the p’simmons wouldn’t be ripe for two or three months yet. Although Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn brought Sam Clemens financial success and international renown, by the early 1890s he was broke and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Cover, British First Edition, 1884. Mark Twain was hugely popular with British publishers and their readers. Some of his writings, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, appeared first in England. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Frontispiece by E. W. Kemble, 1884. In contrast to Tom Sawyer, Huck appears entirely self-reliant, a legacy of his deadbeat dad, wearing shabby clothes, armed with a hunting rifle, and bearing a trophy for his dinner.
The Story of Sollermun. Illustration by E. W. Kemble in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The natural companionship of Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim, sharing a smoke while discussing life’s dilemmas in light of lessons from the Bible, offered a groundbreaking literary view of race relations.
51
Mississippi River, Keokuk, Iowa. Photographic print: gelatin silver by Frederick J. Bandholtz, ca. 1907.
bankrupt, his wealth, and some of his wife’s, lost in bad investments and huge debts. Saved by the intervention and support of financier H. H. Rogers, who loaned him money and took over his business matters, and a highly successful worldwide lecture tour, Clemens recouped his losses and regained his fortune. In May 1902, eight years before his death, and almost fifty years since he had first left town, Clemens made a final return to Hannibal. Although worries over Livy’s frail health haunted the trip, he did find comfort in the embrace of the townspeople, and he spent a few enjoyable days catching up with his former schoolmates, including Mrs. Laura Frazier. He visited his family gravesite, where his parents, Orion, and Henry lay buried. He was feted by the town; a reporter accompanying Clemens wrote, “Today Hannibal is full of Huck Finns,
This panoramic photograph captures the quiet commerce on the Mississippi River after the turn of the century. In the foreground are the railroad tracks that doomed river shipping.
Samuel Clemens and Laura Frazier/Becky Thatcher, 1902.
Mark Twain’s boyhood friends, 1922. Mrs. Laura Frazier, better known as Tom Sawyer’s love interest, Becky Thatcher, was among the old friends on hand to greet Mark Twain upon his final return to Hannibal in 1902. Twelve years after his death, Frazier assembled with several of Sam Clemens’s old pals for a group photo.
52
Tom Sawyers, and Beckys.” It was a satisfying yet bittersweet experience. He acknowledged the visit as his last, saying, “I realize that this must be my last visit to Hannibal, and in bidding you hail I also bid you farewell.” Saying goodbye to Hannibal and the riverfront that had fired his imagination and that symbolized his achievements, Clemens soon returned to his family and the challenges to come as his life and career came to a close.
Mark Twain standing in doorway of his boyhood home on Hill Street, Hannibal, Missouri. Mark Twain bid a final farewell to Hannibal in 1902, surrounded by former friends and neighbors and a town filled with “Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns.”
53
Mississippi River, Keokuk, Iowa. Photographic print: gelatin silver by Frederick J. Bandholtz, ca. 1907.
bankrupt, his wealth, and some of his wife’s, lost in bad investments and huge debts. Saved by the intervention and support of financier H. H. Rogers, who loaned him money and took over his business matters, and a highly successful worldwide lecture tour, Clemens recouped his losses and regained his fortune. In May 1902, eight years before his death, and almost fifty years since he had first left town, Clemens made a final return to Hannibal. Although worries over Livy’s frail health haunted the trip, he did find comfort in the embrace of the townspeople, and he spent a few enjoyable days catching up with his former schoolmates, including Mrs. Laura Frazier. He visited his family gravesite, where his parents, Orion, and Henry lay buried. He was feted by the town; a reporter accompanying Clemens wrote, “Today Hannibal is full of Huck Finns,
This panoramic photograph captures the quiet commerce on the Mississippi River after the turn of the century. In the foreground are the railroad tracks that doomed river shipping.
Samuel Clemens and Laura Frazier/Becky Thatcher, 1902.
Mark Twain’s boyhood friends, 1922. Mrs. Laura Frazier, better known as Tom Sawyer’s love interest, Becky Thatcher, was among the old friends on hand to greet Mark Twain upon his final return to Hannibal in 1902. Twelve years after his death, Frazier assembled with several of Sam Clemens’s old pals for a group photo.
52
Tom Sawyers, and Beckys.” It was a satisfying yet bittersweet experience. He acknowledged the visit as his last, saying, “I realize that this must be my last visit to Hannibal, and in bidding you hail I also bid you farewell.” Saying goodbye to Hannibal and the riverfront that had fired his imagination and that symbolized his achievements, Clemens soon returned to his family and the challenges to come as his life and career came to a close.
Mark Twain standing in doorway of his boyhood home on Hill Street, Hannibal, Missouri. Mark Twain bid a final farewell to Hannibal in 1902, surrounded by former friends and neighbors and a town filled with “Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns.”
53
An illustrated tribute to Mark Twain’s life and work, featuring rare illustrations, photographs, popular prints, and more from the Library of Congress
WITH A FOREWORD BY LEWIS LAPHAM
Today we know Mark Twain as the author of classics of American literature, but in his time, he was a controversial satirist and public figure who traveled the world and helped heal post–Civil War America with tall tales, witty anecdotes, and humorous but insightful stories and novels. This richly illustrated volume, with a lively narrative by Harry L. Katz and numerous excerpts from Twain’s own writings, makes it clear that Twain is as relevant today as he has ever been. Focusing on the years 1850 to 1910, the book gives readers an intimate view of Twain’s many roles in life: as Mississippi river boatpilot, California gold prospector, “printer’s devil” at a small-town newspaper, frontier journalist, successful novelist, political pundit, public speaker extraordinaire, devoted family man, and our first major celebrity author. An in-depth timeline of key events during Twain’s lifetime reveals how he was shaped by the world he inhabited and, in turn, how he helped shape it. Among the reproductions are spectacular examples of Twain-related artifacts and period Americana from the unsurpassed collections of the Library of Congress: rare-book illustrations, letters and journals, vintage photographs, popular and fine prints, caricatures, and more. A delightful read and a visual treat as well, Mark Twain’s America is an intimate portrayal of the life and times of our most beloved humorist.
MARK TWAIN’S
A MERICA A Celebration in Words and Images
Harry L. Katz is former head curator in the Library of Congress’s Division of Prints and Photographs and the coauthor of Baseball Americana, an illustrated cultural history of the game.
MARKETING AND PROMOTION National media campaign, including print and online interviews ⋅ Digital marketing/publicity campaign, including features and reviews, specialized blog outreach, and downloadable excerpts Social network campaign, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Goodreads On-sale date: October 1, 2014 Biography ⋅ Hardcover 978-0-316-20939-7 ⋅ $40.00 US / 44.00 CAN 8 × 10 ⋅ 256 pages ⋅ 300 color and black-and-white photographs and illustrations
This is uncorrected proof. Not for sale. Little, Brown and Company littlebrown.com Copyright © 2014 by
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
HARRY L. KATZ AND THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS