SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 55 (of 78)
Meet Me on the River (1883)
Chapter 55
Meet Me On The River (1883)
One day back in 1874, as we were on one of our walks in Hartford, I was regaling Twichell with some tales of my steamboating days. Full of interest in them, he thought they should be shared with a wider audience, and implored me to “do them up” for public consumption.
So I jotted down the particulars of some of the striking incidents of those days and sent them on to Howells, to see if his magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, might be interested in them. They were; very much so, in fact. Not satisfied with just one article, Howells plied me for more of the similar until it became a series entitled Old Times on the Mississippi. Those articles appeared in 1875, the year before “Tom Sawyer” was unleashed on the youth of the land.
In this way Howells, who had been so influential in the wide acceptance of my first book, The Innocents Abroad, played a great role in the eventual appearance of Life on the Mississippi also. This came about when, years later, I revisited and revised those articles, expanding them into what became that book.
To gather fresh material, in 1882 I returned to the scene of my crimes to write with immediacy about not just the misty past but the changes of the present—the present of that time, that is, a quarter of a century ago now.
The difficultest part of writing Life on the Mississippi, which was published in 1883, was the orthographic challenge it afforded me; although I knew how to spell the name of the eponymous river, I didn’t know quite when to stop.
Even after this long intervening stretch of years, I am still proud of “Life on the Mississippi.” It doesn’t sell as well as “The Innocents Abroad” and it doesn’t stir people up as much as “Huck Finn” does, but all in all I consider it my crowning literary achievement.
In fact, I had recently begun revising it, to improve it further, but have put it away forever now. I have resolved to leave well enough alone. Let it go.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Man of letters Hamilton Mabie, in referring to Life on the Mississippi, said that La Salle was the first to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark Twain was the first to chart, light, and navigate it for the whole world.
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According to Howells, Twain considered Life on the Mississippi to be his greatest book. Although Twain also made that claim about other books at other times (such as “Huck Finn” and even “Joan of Arc”), what Howells said may actually have been the most accurate of all such claims, as Life on the Mississippi was the only book Twain attempted to rewrite following its publication. Normally he “screwed down the lid” on books after writing them, as far as revising them goes. In fact, he had stated in a letter, “My interest in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.” Twain began working on a rewrite of Life on the Mississippi in 1908 but, as he admitted above, never completed the revision.
In 1902, in response to a letter from a young admirer who had apparently asked him which of his books was his favorite, he replied:
My favorite? It is “Joan of Arc.” My next is “Huckleberry Finn,” but the family’s next is “The Prince and the Pauper.” (Yes, you are right—I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions.)
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In 1884, Twain embarked on a lengthy and profitable lecture tour with southern author George Washington. George Washington Cable, that is. It was billed the “Twins of Genius” tour. Twain tried out on these audiences some of the “Huck Finn” material from his finished-but-as-yet-unpublished novel.
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Although not written and published until 1893, Twain’s sketch Traveling With a Reformer was apparently based on an actual incident that took place in late 1884, with Twain (rather than a fictitious military officer) as the chief protagonist.
In her 1931 book My Father, Mark Twain, Clara Clemens relates the details of this incident:
In illustration of one marked characteristic of my father, I will quote part of an early letter. He did not easily or meekly succumb to rules and regulations imposed upon the public by railway companies or civic organizations of any kind. If some rule seemed unreasonable to him he fought it and could go the greatest lengths to oppose these official requirements. On this particular occasion he was traveling from Hartford to Pittsburgh and had broken some rule, though what rule the letter does not disclose.
(Twain’s letter, dated Dec. 28, 1884, follows)
More railroad rules! I was infringing one of them today—and suspected I was. The drawing-room conductor came and ordered me to stop.
“Why shall I stop?”
“Because it is against the rules of the company.”
“Who gave the company authority to curtail my liberties?”
“I do not know anything about that—I only know it is a rule of the company, and that it is my business to enforce it.”
“Very well, then, I am curious to see how you are going to enforce it. I don’t see but that you have got rather an embarrassing contract on your hands.”
He didn’t appear to know just what to do next, so he went and brought the train conductor, who said, with fine bluster:
“That won’t do—you’ll have to stop that!”
“I have been told that already, and I said I wouldn’t stop it—and you see yourself, that I haven’t stopped it. I am a free citizen, and not the property of your railroad company. This rule of yours is an impertinence and I shall drag it in the dirt all day. Now tell me how you propose to prevent it.”
He modified his manner then and became exceedingly civil. Said he had no option; that he was required to inflict the rule and would be discharged if he didn’t; he supposed he ought to report me. I said:
“You must report me; if you don’t report me, I will report you for not doing it. I want this thing to run its full course, for I am not going to allow this company to hector me around just at their good will and pleasure.”
Of course he couldn’t do anything, so he had to leave me alone—to the joy of all the passengers. They said they had often seen the rule applied, but had never seen it resisted before. I wonder if we shall have any liberties left, by and by, if we keep up our American habit of meekly submitting to every imposition that is put upon us.
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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.