SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 61 (of 78)
Around-the-World Lecture Tour (1895, 1896)
Chapter 61
Around-the-World Lecture Tour (1895, 1896)
In 1895, I ended up having to do something I had sworn to never do again, and whose very thought was detestable to me: embarking once again on a lengthy lecture tour.
I had hoped to avoid the lecture platform for the rest of my life, at least as far as extended tours were concerned. The time on stage I didn’t mind, but the enjoyment that part of the enterprise brought me no longer compensated for the dreary traveling and the disruptions to my comfortable routine and family life.
Yet, our finances were in such poor shape that I saw no other way out. In order to pay off our debts, I must again mount the platform and yell into the vast dark recesses. So I resolved to canvas the earth’s populace yearning for education at my stand, and at the end of it all write a book about the trip and its points and matters of interest, and thus escape the Wall Street bondsman’s lash.
So I would spend a year girdling the globe, from the summer of 1895 to the same time a year later. I would make a return visit to the West and to the Sandwich Islands. I would see parts of the British empire I had never seen before, such as Australia & New Zealand & India. Livy was to accompany me, and also Clara; Susy and Jean opted to remain at home. It would be hard for the family to be separated for such a long time, but it needed to be done for us to get back on a solid financial footing—meaning, most particularly, to pay off our creditors, in full, dollar for dollar.
It is ironic that as a boy I had wanted to be a clown in a circus, painting my face and cavorting around the stage, and now here I was about to do that very thing long after the desire to make myself conspicuous in that way had withered away. But to earn the money necessary to pay off our debts was the respectable thing to do and the only way Livy would have it. Honor is a harder master than the law; it knows no statute of limitations.
Truth be told—and this is my final opportunity to do that—I would have been happy to pay 50 cents on the dollar—a deal that Rogers and I were able to work out with my creditors—as I did not really feel personally responsible for all of those debts. Much of those obligations were due to the poor or even criminally negligent—or deliberately criminal—actions of Webster during his mismanagement of my affairs, and the treacheries of that ass Paige.
But when my nephew and namesake Samuel Moffett put those lofty words about honor knowing no statute of limitations into my mouth in an interview he wrote for his paper, and Livy saw it, she found it such a fine sentiment that she was adamant that we pay the full amount of our debts, whether such burden should rightly fall to us or not.
In hindsight, I’m glad that we did end up paying the debts in full, because it made Livy happy and content. It burns me yet, though, when I think of those blatherskites, and the pain and misery they put us through.
Still, it was not a totally ill wind that blew us abroad. We all enjoyed it, at intervals. And we all benefited, at times. One way was due to the fact that travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. And sometimes we who have traveled need a refresher course in those lessons.
As to that, I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.
Finally, the seasons of toil were up. After a full year of raids made upon audiences in Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and other places along the route, we were able to settle down once again.
But then, the worst event of my life—up to that time, at any rate—occurred.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Twain was in poor health throughout much of the tour, from the beginning suffering from carbuncles which sometimes forced him to remain abed for days at a time, which led to the canceling or postponing of shows. Due to a quarantine, they were only able to view the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) from afar. Despite all this, there was ample enjoyment and points of interest to make the trip a success; Twain especially enjoyed India, a place he later said he “often dreamed of and deeply longed to return to.”
Besides the places already mentioned above, they made stops in Tasmania, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Mauritius, not to mention several cities in North America at the start of the tour, such as Cleveland, Winnipeg, four cities in Montana, five in the State of Washington, and ending the American leg of the tour in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Twain had wanted to lecture in San Francisco again, too, but that did not work out. As was the case with Hawaii, Twain was destined to never return to California again.
When the tour ended, Twain and Livy and Clara stayed in England, eagerly awaiting the family reunion soon to be enjoyed with the anticipated arrival of Susy and Jean by ship. That long-yearned-for event was not to be, though.
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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.