SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 30 (of 78)
Awakening Out Of A Long Sleep, and Death of Jennie (1863, 1864)
Chapter 30
Awakening Out Of A Long Sleep, and Death of Jennie (1863, 1864)
I was always “Sam” to my family and boyhood friends, “Youth” to Livy, and “Papa” to my daughters. Friends of later years either called me “Clemens”—as Howells always did—or “Mark.”
It was in early 1863 that, at the bottom of a dispatch sent to my paper, the Territorial Enterprise, I first signed the name I would thereafter be known by to most people.
I have said other things about it in the past, but the truest story of why I adopted my nom de guerre is this:
The steamboat leadsman’s cry of “Mark Twain” indicates the edge, or boundary, of danger—and the frontier of safety, as well. That call, depending on which direction you’re heading—either into deeper water or shallower—indicates either that you are on the verge of reaching safety, and can relax, or else that you are leaving safety behind and heading into danger, and must be on the watch and vigilant.
I always tried to do that with my scribblings—and lecture platform spouting. What I write and say must be on the edge of danger to be interesting. And if it is not of interest to the reader or hearer, who among that throng would read it, or listen to it? I don’t want to actually crash into a sugar plantation, but if my audience, or my readers, are at the railing, wondering whether I will or not, I have achieved my goal.
The playful provocations that were common in those days between editors of rival papers sometimes crossed the line and became serious. An occasion when this happened precipitated my leaving Virginia City for California.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Prior to adopting the name he is best known by, Samuel Clemens had used a number of pseudonyms, pen names, or nom de plumes—or “nom de guerres,” as he put it—such as Fred Ballard, Rambler, Grumbler, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins, Sergeant Fathom, Josh, S’cat, etc.
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The “Howells” Twain mentions is author and editor William Dean Howells, to whom Twain once wrote:
Possibly you will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a hundred years,—it is the fate of the Shakespeares & of all genuine prophets …In that day I shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too,—thus: “Mark Twain; history & occupation unknown—but he was personally acquainted with Howells.”
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Twain was involved in two fires in 1863. In the first one, he was one of the residents of a Virginia City hotel which went up in smoke, forcing him to jump out of a window in order to escape the flames. All of his earthly belongings were converted to ashes thanks to the inferno at his back. But Twain still had his talent, which he could use to ignite figurative flames.
The second conflagration Twain was involved in during 1863, mentioned in the previous chapter, did revolve around these incendiary writings of his. He penned what he thought would be detected as an obvious hoax, but his newspaper article A Bloody Massacre Near Carson was taken by many at face value, as was another hoax of his from the previous year, namely The Petrified Man. In both cases, a careful reading, especially by anyone familiar with the area, would quickly reveal the tongue-in-cheek nature and utter impossibility of the tales.
But not all people are careful readers, and Twain took the heat from the public and from rival papers for the shockingly gruesome fabrications that some were duped into accepting as factual reportage.
It continued to be the case that many people didn’t know when to take Twain’s writings seriously, and when not to. In 1896, he was concerned enough about people viewing his book Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc as comic—simply because he wrote it—that he at first kept his authorship of that book a secret.
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In the latter part of 1863, comic lecturer Artemus Ward performed in Virginia City. Ward’s stage manner and mannerisms greatly influenced Twain in his future forays behind the footlights—in fact, Ward was probably one of Twain’s three biggest influences as far as his speaking and story-telling went, along with his mother and “Uncle Dan’l”—but this influence came close to never bearing fruit, as the two, while taking a drunken midnight walk on Virginia City housetops, were taken for burglars and only avoided being shot by a watchman when a member of their party shouted to the trigger-happy sentinel that it was Mark Twain and Artemus Ward up there, not a pair of criminals.
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Although he mentioned nothing about it above, Twain lost a niece early in 1864. On February 1st of that year, Orion and Mollie Clemens’ only child, eight-year old Jennie, died of meningitis—the same disease that would claim Twain’s daughter Susy a third of a century later.
Twain kept watch at Jennie’s deathbed in her final days-- together with the parents, of course.
In accord with his usual response to anything that touched him deeply, Twain responded by (albeit indirectly) writing about the event. He went on a minor rampage against undertakers in general. What prompted it was how his niece’s funeral arrangements were handled.
In a dispatch to the Territorial Enterprise entitled Concerning Undertakers written shortly after Jennie’s death, Twain took the Carson City undertaker to task for taking advantage of grieving people by charging exorbitant rates for his services. Not stopping there, Twain also castigated a local (Carson City) newspaper, the Independent, for doing nothing to expose the undertaker’s shady business practices. First, he attacked the undertaker in no uncertain phraseology:
There is a system of extortion going on here which is absolutely terrific, and I wonder the Carson Independent has never ventilated the subject. There seems to be only one undertaker in the town, and he owns the only graveyard in which it is at all high-toned or aristocratic to be buried.
Consequently, when a man loses his wife or his child, or his mother, this undertaker makes him sweat for it. I appeal to those whose firesides death has made desolate during the few fatal weeks just past, if I am not speaking the truth. Does not this undertaker take advantage of that unfortunate delicacy which prevents a man from disputing an unjust bill for services rendered in burying the dead, to extort ten-fold more than his labors are worth? I have conversed with a good many citizens on this subject, and they all say the same thing: that they know it is wrong that a man should be unmercifully fleeced under such circumstances, but, according to the solemn etiquette above referred to, he cannot help himself. All that sounds very absurd to me. I have a human distaste for death, as applied to myself, but I see nothing very solemn about it as applied to anybody -- it is more to be dreaded than a birth or a marriage, perhaps, but it is really not as solemn a matter as either of these, when you come to take a rational, practical view of the case. Therefore I would prefer to know that an undertaker’s bill was a just one before I paid it; and I would rather see it go clear to the Supreme Court of the United States, if I could afford the luxury, than pay it if it were distinguished for its unjustness. A great many people in the world do not think as I do about these things. But I care nothing for that. The knowledge that I am right is sufficient for me. This undertaker charges a hundred and fifty dollars for a pine coffin that cost him twenty or thirty, and fifty dollars for a grave that did not cost him ten -- and this at a time when his ghastly services are required at least seven times a week. I gather these facts from some of the best citizens of Carson, and I can publish their names at any moment if you want them. What Carson needs is a few more undertakers - there is vacant land enough here for a thousand cemeteries.
The local newspaper responded to Twain’s complaints about the undertaker by claiming to know nothing of the matter, and that they had heard no other like complaints.
Twain then took them to task in his response to their wishy-washy rebuttal by referring to their:
... insipid chalk-milk editorials, defending the abuse and apologizing for the perpetrator of it; or when public sentiment is too well established on the subject, pretending, as in the above case, that you are the only man in the community who don’t know anything about it. Where did you get your notion of the duties of a journalist from? Any editor in the world will say it is your duty to ferret out these abuses, and your duty to correct them. What are you paid for? What use are you to the community? What are you fit for as conductor of a newspaper, if you cannot do these things? Are you paid to know nothing, and keep on writing about it every day? How long do you suppose such a jack-legged newspaper as yours would be supported or tolerated in Carson, if you had a rival no larger than a foolscap sheet, but with something in it, and whose editor would know, or at least have energy enough to find out, whether a neighboring paper abused one of the citizens justly or unjustly? That paragraph which I have copied, seems to mean one thing, while in reality it means another. It’s true translation is, for instance: “Our name is Independent -- that is, in different phrase, Opinionless. We have no opinions on any subject -- we reside permanently on the fence. In order to have no opinions, it is necessary that we should know nothing -- therefore, if this undertaker is fleecing the people, we will not know it, and then we shall not offend him. We have heard no complaints, and we shall make no inquiries, lest we do hear some. ... wilfully see no wrong in this undertaker’s impoverishing charges for burying people -- charges which are made simply because, from the nature of the service rendered, a man dare not demur to their payment, lest the fact be talked of around town and he be disgraced. ...
The editor of the Independent says he don’t know anything about this undertaker business. If he would go and report a while for some responsible newspaper, he would learn the knack of finding out things. Now if he wants to know that the undertaker charged three or four prices for a coffin (the late Mr. Nash’s) upon one occasion, and then refused to let it go out of his hands, when the funeral was waiting, until it was paid for, although the estate was good for it, being worth $20,000 -- let him go and ask Jack Harris. If he wants any amount of information, let him inquire of Curry, or Pete Hopkins, or Judge Wright. Stuff! Let him ask any man he meets in the street -- the matter is as universal a topic of conversation here as is the subject of “feet” in Virginia. But I don't suppose you want to know anything about it. I want to shed one more unsolicited opinion, which is that your Independent is the deadest, flattest, [most] worthless thing I know -- and I imagine my cold, unsmiling undertaker has his hungry eye upon it.
It is for writings such as the above that Twain earned the honorary sobriquet “Moralist of the Main.” It reveals what he felt the obligations of the press were, and doubtless many readers were in wholehearted assent with his appraisal of this particular situation—at least, those who had experienced similar fleecing at the undertaker’s stand. Some things never change.
You can listen to this chapter here.
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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.