SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 65 (of 78)
Free and Clear (1898/1899)
Chapter 65
Free and Clear (1898/1899)
All through my life I have been the easy prey of the cheap adventurer. He came, he lied, he robbed and went his way, and the next one arrived by the next train and began to scrape up what was left. The worst of these swindles played upon me were the crooks at Webster & Co., and that erratic genius Paige and his nefarious typesetting machine, the combination which threatened to ruin me and my family in the mid-1890s.
It was Mr. Henry Huttleston Rogers who came to our rescue and was able and willing to set things right for us, as long as we did what he advised. We followed his instructions and finally, at the end of ‘98 or the beginning of ‘99 he cabled me, at Vienna, “The creditors have all been paid a hundred cents on the dollar.”
Rarely have I received a more gratifying communication. There was even eighteen thousand five hundred dollars left over.
We then began making plans to return to the United States from our self-imposed exile.
EDITOR’S NOTES: The “eighteen thousand five hundred dollars left” over in 1899 was the equivalent of more than $595,000 in 2021.
The Clemens family did not return to America to live until 1900. They later returned to Europe for a time (Florence, Italy, to be specific) in an attempt to restore Livy’s failing health.
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Twain’s essay Concerning the Jews was published in 1898. In it, he wrote: “A few years ago a Jew observed to me that there was no uncourteous reference to his people in my books.”
In an 1897 letter to Joe Twichell, Twain wrote of the Jews: “It’s a marvelous race, by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose.”
Twain’s daughter Clara would later marry a Jewish man, and give birth to Twain’s only grandchild shortly after Twain’s death.
Perhaps Twain was especially sympathetic to prejudice against Jews because he had been the target of anti-Semitic sentiment himself. Although his ancestors had been inhabitants of the United Kingdom (Welsh, English, and Scots-Irish), many of the Boston “blue-bloods” suspected he was Jewish.
And not just them—during the time that Twain was in Vienna, it seemed obvious to many Austrians that Twain was a Jew. After all, they reasoned, he had a hooked nose; he was a liberal; he held Dreyfus to be innocent; he associated with Jews; and last but not least, he had good things to say about the Jews. It was intended to be derogatory when the anti-Semitic press referred to him as “der Jude Mark Twain” (The Jew Mark Twain).
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In 1899, Twain’s The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg was published.
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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.