SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 41 (of 78)
Labors of Love (1868)
Chapter 41
Labors of Love (1868)
1868 was a hectic year for me; I was feverishly courting Livy, trying to get the book based on my Quaker City travels and travails written and published as quickly as possible—primarily to prove to Livy and her family that I could support her—and tormenting my righteous soul on railroad and lecture platforms, in an enforced exile from my dear one. I wanted to be with her, but duty prodded me to work, work, work!
The writing and publication of this book was certainly a turning-point for me. Not only was The Innocents Abroad my first “real” book, but without the success of that book, and the impetus it gave to my lecture career, I don’t know if I would have gained the approval of the Langdon family which I felt was needed for me to ask them for Livy’s hand in marriage.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Twain spent a portion of the interval between his return from the Quaker City excursion and the publication of “The Innocents Abroad” working as a secretary for a politician in Washington, D.C. Although he didn’t mention that episode in his life above, nor his time reporting on the Territory of Nevada’s political sessions in the early 1860s, it must be deduced that those experiences did influence his thinking, as he later made this comment, alluding to both of those periods:
“I was a reporter in a legislature two sessions and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”
Many of the sketches Twain wrote on politics were informed by his experiences among those bodies.
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At the time of Twain’s death in 1910, his three best-selling books were his first two (The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It) and his first novel written without a coauthor (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). So his most famous (as well as perhaps most infamous) book today, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was not even in his top three sellers at that time, although a quarter of a century had passed since its publication.
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In May of 1868, Twain watched an especially depraved murderer hang, in Virginia City. He reported:
I saw it all. I took exact note of every detail, even to Melanie's considerately helping to fix the leather strap that bound his legs together and his quiet removal of his slippers -- and I never wish to see it again. I can see that stiff, straight corpse hanging there yet, with its black pillow-cased head turned rigidly to one side, and the purple streaks creeping through the hands and driving the fleshy hue of life before them. Ugh!
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.