SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 47 (of 78)
“The Gilded Age” (1873)
Chapter 47
“The Gilded Age” (1873)
In the early part of 1873, Livy and I and our neighbors and good friends the Warners were sitting around the table one evening talking, when Charles and I began to tease our wives about the low quality of the novels they were then reading.
Our wives responded to our chaffing by challenging us to write a better novel, promising to read it if we would—and could—do it. Charles and I snatched up the gauntlet and began preparations for joining forces on a work which would expose the extreme materialism of the day.
How could we turn down the dare? I did not stop to contemplate at the time that Mrs. Clemens’ allowing herself the company of novels of that ilk may have been the escape she needed from the all-consuming grief of losing Langdon; something to merely distract her, that is, without having to ponder weighty thoughts and philosophies.
The result of our efforts turned out to be called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The novel—America’s first about Washington politics—proved a resounding success. What I mean by that, primarily, is that our wives read it, and gave it their approbation.
As far as the book’s popularity outside of our Nook Farm neighborhood goes, it had that, too, but I ended up making even more money from the plays produced based on the book’s chief character, Colonel Sellers, than from the book.
Of perhaps greater value, though, is that this exposure that Charles and I made has lasted without letup until now, for our example of pillorying these pasteboard plutocrats—such as Gould, Rockefeller, Frick, Vanderbilt and their ilk—has not abated. Not completely, anyway.
Yet in general I do not care for the medium—novels, that is. You may find this inconsistent, as I myself have written them, but that really proves nothing; just because a thief likes to rob people doesn’t mean that he enjoys being robbed himself.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Twain’s “pen warmed up in hell,” which would become far more often his stylograph of choice beginning around the turn of the century, is already on display in The Gilded Age as he rails therein against not only “pasteboard plutocrats” but also ignorant juries, the abuse of insanity pleas, persecution of minorities, and other injustices he perceived in society.
Sales of the book actually began quite well—40,000 copies in the first two months, which Twain claimed was the largest two-month’s sale any American book had ever achieved, with the sole exception of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But perhaps the story’s greatest effect, in the long haul, has been that the term “The Gilded Age” is still used in referring to that era of robber baronism and heedless greed. It was followed by an 1892 sequel, The American Claimant, a wild and woolly tale of rampant speculation, zany schemes, mistaken identity, and exploited zombies.
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Ever the tinkerer and always willing to introduce new and improved ways of doing things, Twain, who had already invented and patented an improved version of suspenders (an “elastic garment strap”) in 1871, came up with the self-pasting scrapbook in 1873. “Mark Twain’s Patented Self-Pasting Scrapbook” was actually quite popular, earning him $12,000 (the equivalent of $300,587 in 2021) in 1877 alone.
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Although of course neither he nor anyone else knew it at the time, Twain’s life was at its midpoint in early 1873. Livy, ten years younger than her husband, was also nearing the midpoint of her life. Susy, at only eleven years of age, was also almost there.
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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.