SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 67 (of 78)
Goodbye to Hannibal (1902)
Chapter 67
Goodbye to Hannibal (1902)
When I returned to my boyhood home of Hannibal in 1902, I could not help but feel as did Lincoln when he returned to Springfield, and found things so changed in what seemed such a short span of time. As the Great Emancipator experienced it, I too felt as if I was in a “midway world twixt earth and paradise.”
I knew that this would be my last visit to those scenes of play, and playmates loved so well. On this stopover I bid my townspeople both hail and farewell.
Among those I encountered were a few that I had known some three score prior; others I thought I recognized – but they were the children or grandchildren of those I had known so well, half of whom were now inhabiting the six feet of ground that all are allotted when they take passage to the undiscovered country. Others still were newcomers and did not know me. Still others had come along long after I was last there, but knew me by my wide infamy.
Among these last was a group of youthful scholars whom I addressed by invitation after I had stopped by the schoolhouse to take a look at them. I do not like to spout without something memorized to say, but I acceded to their wishes only as an excuse to gaze upon them while I absentmindedly reeled off some nonsense. Had I spoken what was truly in my heart, I may not have been able to get it out without breaking down.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Twain is here referencing Abraham Lincoln’s poem “My Childhood’s Home I See Again.”
***
In chapter 54 of Life on the Mississippi, Twain related how, after getting lost in a reverie about the old times while visiting Hannibal on one of the four other occasions he returned there prior to 1902, he had to “play the clown” lest his mask come off and reveal his true face:
On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house which was my home when I was a boy. At present rates, the people who now occupy it are of no more value than I am; but in my time they would have been worth not less than five hundred dollars apiece. They are colored folk.
After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up some of the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils might compare with their progenitors who had sat with me in those places and had probably taken me as a model—though I do not remember as to that now. By the public square there had been in my day a shabby little brick church called the ‘Old Ship of Zion,’ which I had attended as a Sunday-school scholar; and I found the locality easily enough, but not the old church; it was gone, and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in its place. The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors; and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness, and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other, so many years gone by—and, Lord, where be they now!
I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be allowed to remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendent who had been a tow-headed Sunday-school mate of mine on that spot in the early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wild nonsense to those children to hide the thoughts which were in me, and which could not have been spoken without a betrayal of feeling that would have been recognized as out of character with me.
***
In a letter to his brother Orion in 1865, Twain had gone on record that one of his great ambitions in life had been to become a minister of the gospel. And he often referred to his moralizing as “preaching.” On one occasion he did actually address a church, and this was on that last visit to his hometown of Hannibal in 1902. Twain was entirely serious throughout. In his “sermon,” he gave his mother the highest possible praise:
I will not take the pulpit, for I should be embarrassed with unsanctified tongue if I did. It might be well for me to stand there on a week day, but on Sunday I think the place for laymen is in the pew, so with your permission I shall remain here at my seat and tell you what I have to say. Here any one can talk without reproach. Even here in this humble capacity I am doing what you are always doing—preaching. The art of preaching is to influence you. From the pulpit and from the mouths of all of you the preaching goes on all the time. Our words and acts are not for ourselves but for others. They are like the tidal waves of the seas that encircle the earth. They are heard about us when they are uttered. We are preaching all the time, even if we do not know it. We forget that we carry influence. We ought to remember it, however, and make it a constant reminder. We had better see that our conduct is of a favorable nature.
My mother lies buried out in the beautiful city of the dead on the hill south of the city overlooking the waters of the mighty Mississippi. At this age of mine she cheers me. She was a support to me during her life. Her preaching did not perish when she passed away, but goes on and on with me. Although there are many long silent in the grave, they have not ceased so to preach. They did not stop when their mouths were closed in death. See that your preaching, when alive, be of the character that, when you are dead, others may reap the secondary effort of what you did. Let it be good, not bad. Preaching, when dead, is not lost. . . . Words sometimes perish, but conduct is lasting.
***
Twain wrote The Five Boons of Life in 1902, a fable wherein a fairy offers a youth a choice of five gifts, or “boons”: Fame, Love, Wealth, Pleasure, or Death. Choosing each option in turn, they all end up sour for the favored one, until he is left only the last boon, which he concludes to be the best one after all.
In that year, Twain also wrote Does the Race of Man Love a Lord? One of Twain’s life-long near-obsessions had to do with royalty and why such a “humbug” was allowed to exist and continue.
You can listen to this chapter here:
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
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.