Mark Twain: the sad humorist
 

Faith Ratnayake

LITERATURE: Mark Twain, the great humorist who enchanted people with his stories of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur, was paradoxically a man of great sorrows.

The early life of Samuel Clemens was difficult and full of contradictions. His mother believed strongly in the Christian Bible, and his father was a free-thinker. At 18, young Samuel left home to work in a variety of jobs, as a typesetter, then as a pilot on the Mississippi river.

He became a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War, a secretary, and a miner and then a newspaper reporter.

His writing career began in 1863 with The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country. His penname Mark Twain inspired by the chant of the boatmen, meaning "two fathoms", brought good fortune and a propitious start to his literary work.

He gained confidence as a man of letters after a visit to the Holy Land and the Levant. His wife, Olivia Landon, daughter of a New York coal millionaire, had a profound effect on his life: entry into high society and the literary circles of the Eastern seaboard and a great love.

He was then blessed with almost everything he could wish for - wealth, fame, pleasure and the love of a wonderful woman.

Immediately after marriage, he produced some brilliant best-seller works in rapid succession. Roughing It, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn brought him fame and fortune.

Describing it to his friend Howells, he said: 'It seems to me that whatever I touch turns to god'. Indeed, his friend Howells likened his house to a palace, with so many visitors that Mark Twain proposed a bus route from the railway station to his home.

He was so popular that one twelve-year-old boy, choosing the writer in a composition as the one 'With Whom I would Change Places', said it was because '...he is so jolly.. he makes so much money... he has a beautiful wife and children... he has everything a man could have'.

Marriage

Home life always meant more to him than his work. Marriage and three daughters epitomised the importance and beauty of family love. Although his wife was a semi-invalid, Mark Twain's devotion was summed up in his words: 'She remained both girl and woman to the last day of her life. She was always frail in body and she lived upon her spirit whose hopefulness and courage were indestructible'.

In an allegory entitled The Five Boons of Life Mark Twain tells of a good fairy offering a basket of gifts, from which a youth must choose wisely, for only one of them is valuable. The gifts were Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death.

The youth eagerly chose Pleasure, but each pleasure was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty. Repenting the wasted years, the youth wished he could choose again, more wisely.

The fairy appearing once more, he chose love. But... 'After many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home. And he communed with himself, saying, 'One by one they have gone away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last.

Desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, has sold me, I have paid a thousand hours of grief. Out of my heart of hearts I curse him'.

The man chose again Fame, but later repented for the third time. After long reflection on the two remaining gifts, he chose what appeared to be power. But repenting again, he cursed all the world's gifts as temporary disguises for lasting realities - Pain, Grief, Shame and Poverty.

The man then wished for the gift that would bring rest to body, mind and heart-the last gift of Death.

Allegory

Reflecting upon Mark Twain's life, it is obvious that this allegory if really his own life story - for he found pleasure, wealth, fame and love to be what they really are. From 1894, Mark Twain's fortunes suffered reversals.

His publishing firm went bankrupt, and refusing many offers, he embarked on a world lecture tour. Aged sixty, he became financially solvent again, but then real tragedy struck. While in London at the end of his lecture tour, he heard of the illness of his daughter Susy.

He waited all night at a London post office, for news. At last a cable reached him that she had died of spinal meningitis, at the age of twenty-five. Describing it to his friend Howells, he wrote.

'What a ghastly tragedy it was; how cruel it was; how exactly and precisely it was planned; ...it is my quarrel ... that traps like that are set. Susy ... given us in miserable sport, and then taken away'.

A dark pessimism grew within him. He began writing feverishly to keep the memory from his mind - The Man that corrupted Hadleyberg, What is Man? and The Mysterious Stranger. This trilogy was the cry of bitter sorrow that emanated from deep within.

In 1904 his beloved wife Olivia died. Again Mark Twain wrote to his friend Howells:

'It was too pitiful, these late weeks, to see the haunting fear in her eyes, fixed wistfully upon mine, and hear her say, as pleading for denial and heartening, 'You don't think I am going to die, do you? Oh, I don't want to die.' For she loved her life, and so wanted to keep it'.

He was unable to help her - only to watch in helpless sorrow. She was his life, his riches, and he described himself as a pauper. Four years later, Death ruthlessly took his daughter Jean with convulsion and heart failure while she was bathing. In his autobiography, written at the age of seventy-four, he described his loss:

'...Clara has gone away to live in Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! Jean lies yonder, I sit here ... we kissed hands good-bye at this door last night - and it was forever, we never suspecting it. How dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like mockery'.

Death

When his daughters died, he cursed, abused and blasphemed God. Drained and disillusioned, he contemplated on death. He thought it was indeed the last and greatest boon of life. He knew of no other way in which to meet death.

This boon of life came to him in his 75th year. His daughter Clara returned from Rome with her husband to be at his bedside. She wrote of this:

'On Thursday morning 21 of April 1910, he awoke with mental clarity and vigor but not inclined to converse... suddenly he opened his eyes, took my hand, and looked steadily into my face. Faintly he murmured, 'Good-bye dear, if we meet...'

Clara saw the peace of her father's face: a smiling peace. And Halley's comet was once more shining in the sky, as it had done at his birth seventy-five years before'.

What poignant words - 'if we meet'. Mark Twain, the man who valued family love above all else, wanted the comfort of being sure that he would meet his family again. But it was the uncertainty that caused this great humourist writer to become one of the saddest men at the close of his life.

The five tombstones of the Clemens family in the graveyard at Elmira stand in silent testimony of the family love, which lasted but a short while. And we know for sure, that Death is neither a friend, nor the greatest gift of life, but the last enemy to be destroyed.