"Rebel With a Cause: Mark Twain's Hidden Memoirs" — Chapter 1
Tuesday Serialization of the fact-based biography masquerading as an autobiography
Chapter 1
Coming in With the Comet (1835)
I cannot vouch for the truthfulness of it, as I was too young to examine into matters at the time, but I have been told by those who were there that I was born on the last day of November, 1835, in Florida. Florida, Missouri, that is.
It was the merest little bit of a village—hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri, where nothing ever happened. The village contained a hundred people and I increased the population by 1 percent. It is more than many of the best men in history could have done for a town. It may not be modest in me to refer to this, but it is true. There is no record of a person doing as much—not even Shakespeare. But I did it for Florida, and it shows that I could have done it for any place—more than Bacon did for London or Franklin did for Boston.
During that first part of my life, I was simply experimenting—doing, watching, and trying to process it all—trying to “get my bearings,” as it were; to locate, orient, and position myself in the universe, or at least in the world. Where was I? Who was I? And who were all these people around me? What did it all mean? Where did I fit in—within my family, and within the community in which I resided--not to mention the country, the world, the universe?
That portion of my life lasted until I decided to light out for the (Nevada) Territory shortly after the outbreak of the great conflagration that divided the nation on sectional grounds.
When I arrived there as a sort of earthbound satellite of Halley’s Comet, Missouri was at the far edge of the American frontier. It was considered the West. The Far West, even. I was the first in my family to be born in Missouri, my older siblings all having been born in Tennessee. Although born two months prematurely, I was conceived in Tennessee, as the family had only been in Missouri a few months when I afforded the almost invisible village of Florida its first glimpse of a Clemens baby while simultaneously accomplishing the service of augmenting the population of that place by a full percent.
I do not remember much about my infancy other than the dubious expression on the faces of the neighbors when they examined me. When a neighbor lady came visiting soon after I was born, she looked at me in my crib, then turned to my mother and said, “You don’t expect to raise that babe, do you?” My mother allowed she would try.
The family doctor saved my life several times. Still, he was a good man and meant well.
Not long before she died, I asked my mother, “I suppose that during all that time you were uneasy about me?”
“Yes, the whole time” she admitted.
“Afraid I wouldn’t live?”
After a reflective pause—ostensibly to think out the facts— “No—afraid you would.”
EDITOR’S NOTES: In 1905, seventy years after his birth, Twain claimed to remember details of his arrival, and spoke about it in an after-dinner speech given at Delmonico’s in New York City:
I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person born with high and delicate instincts — 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, I had to go to my first banquet just like that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a village — hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village — I — why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and months; and although I say it myself that shouldn’t, I came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two years. Well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and I shouldn’t have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody did. Their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and I feel those opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as long as — well, you know I was born courteous, and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. I was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and I turned. I knew very well the strength of my position; I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and I came out and said so. And they could not say a word. It was so true. They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well, that was the first after-dinner speech I ever made. I think it was after dinner.
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