Part 1 (1/2)

Mark Twain : rand adventure of his final years

Michael Shelden

PROLOGUE

How the Man in Black

Became the Man in White

CITIZEN TWAIN

ON A BlustERY Friday afternoon in December 1906, Mark Twain arrived for a special appearance at the Library of Congress, trailing sar The teloo dark overcoat and a derby from which thick curls of white hair protruded on either side At thethe Capitol, he entered the Great Hall of the Library andRooislation The Librarian of Congress-a dapperhi to escort Twain inside

All heads turned as the fauest strode to the front of the chamber, which was full of lobbyists, lawyers, authors, and publishers Nored roo,athering were the dozen or so ressional Committee on Patents, chaired by a jowly Republican lawyer froe

A representative of the player piano industry, a Mr Loas droning on about copyright protection for perforated est an addition to clause (b) of section 1”-when Twain reached his seat and paused to reesture he caused-as one observer later put it-”a perceptible stir” That was an understateed as a figure clothed all in white His outfit perfectly matched his hair, from his white collar and cravat-held in place by a ”crea so ray, he stood out as a gleanore2 ”Mark Twain Bids Winter Defiance,” said the headline in the New York Herald the next day ”Resplendent in a White Flannel Suit, Author Creates a Sensation” The New York World called his costume ”the most remarkable suit” of the season, and another paper said he was a ”vision from the equator” armed the hearts of his audience while ”the wintry histled around the dome of the Capitol” The best comment came from the Boston Herald: ”Oh, that all lobbyists could enter the congressional corridors in rai, Senator Kittredge and his colleagues had been listening to various experts explain the fine points of the nation's copyright laws, and much of the discussion had been dry and tedious The corown restless and bored as they listened to yet another lobbyist argue his case with statistics and legal precedents But the moment Twain reislators stared wide-eyed at the ood friend and fellow novelist Willia nearby, was so taken aback by this unconventional outfit that the first words from his mouth were ”What in the world did he wear that white suit for?” Appearing in such clothing at a for breach of etiquette In suton was full of people in white suits, but in December nobody dared to dress that way4 Twain's suit is now so famous that arb The conature look for e's otherwise dull co marked not only the public debut of Twain's unifor of an extraordinary period in which the author-who had just turned seventy-one-fashi+oned e by which he is still known a century afterward

He planned this debut carefully, and kne the world would react As aaudiences at lectures and banquets, he had a keen appreciation for the power of theatrical effects, and was sure that no one would forget the way he looked in white Only two ether courage enough to hite clothes all through the winterIt will be a great satisfaction to me to show off in this way” He wasn't asha, ”The desire for fame is only the desire to be continuously conspicuous and attract attention and be talked about” Indeed, his debut in white provoked coes everywhere For several days it was all anyone could talk about5 It wasn't by chance that he chose to reveal his new look in one of the reatest library Though the building was only ten years old, it was already regarded as a es Built in the style of the Paris Opera House, it had the kind of splendor usually associated with great landrand arches, and a est, the costliest, and the safest” library in the world For a literary e a sensational event, there wasn't a better backdrop6 Though the extensive press coverage pleased hi off He had serious business to conduct at the hearing, where he wanted to urge legislators to change the systeht lahich he considered archaic and unjust It was a subject close to his heart For years he had been fighting to ireater sense of urgency His long career was nearing its end, and the future of his life's as at stake

When he stood up to speak, he knew that he would coood showman, he understood that his words would see after so many lackluster speeches by ordinary men in conventional attire For al the rooh he had coh notes earlier in the afternoon, he didn't bother to refer to them He preferred to speak fro sound reasoning and a an occasional sardonic swipe at the glacial pace of reforer American public ould read of his appearance in their newspapers the next day

Many writers, unaccusto, would have felt intimidated But not Twain, whose confidence in his own rhetorical poas as high as his opinion of ressmen was low He once said that Aress” Teeks before coresses and Parlia for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity” For the benefit of his case, however, he treated the coht and thoughtful men and spoke to thehted works enjoyed protection for a period of forty-two years following the date of publication Senator Kittredge was sponsoring a bill with a new lian with the death of the author and continued for fifty years He considered this provisionto accept it But what A that ht in perpetuity for all literary works

Why should the rights of so literary property, he asked, be any different frouess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a ht just as well, after you had discovered a coal overnment step in and take it away”

What orse, he went on, the current system didn't benefit anyone except publishers ”It merely takes the author's property, merely takes froives the publisher double profitAnd they continue the enjoyeneration, for they never die They live forever, publishers do”8 He was the last speaker of the day, and there was a general feeling a waiting” Their faces softened, and they leaned forward to catch every word As one reporter noted, ”Heimpression, and the humorous parts set the Senators and Representatives in roars of laughter”9 Though he was one of the oldest men in the room, he didn't act it His ure straight and tri speech was-in the words of the New York Times-”a star performance,” and the response couldn't have been better ”When the last sentence was spoken,” an eyewitness wrote, ”the applause came like an explosion”10 As much as his audience enjoyed the speech, it hat he wore thatvoices The Washi+ngton Posta linen duster in the o paper joked that he was parading through the capital in ”last su clothes” But the author was oblivious to such criticism, and-as he expected-his new look as the Man in White quickly becaination William Dean Howells revised his initial opinion that the outfit was inappropriate and adnificent coup” (He would later joke that he always felt underdressed when Thite, ”as if I had cohty”)11 As soon as the news of his appearance at the Library of Congress became widely known, everyone wanted to see the new costu in it for photographers again and again He asked his tailor to produce a set of six identical suits in both serge and flannel withshi+rts, ties, and waistcoats More were added later, while a few gray suits were reserved for travel and ordinary wear

In the twilight of his career Tasaccepted as factual-that he was one of a kind, an Aone, and whose works would surely last as long as the Library of Congress itself He could dress in white and get aith it because he was Mark Twain, and that was the only excuse he needed As he had explained to a New York audience earlier in the year, ”I was born modest, but it didn't last”12 A GREAT EXAGGERATION

I have achievedstrictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else

It is easy to understand why Mark Twain's new lookireement, however, on why he suddenly wanted to hite for the rest of his life Soe with cleanliness It's true that he once told an audience he could wear one of his suits ”for three days without a blear ash wherever he went, he didn'tto be taken any more seriously than his occasional claim that he didn't like ”to attract toofun with reporters when he informed them that his suit was ”the uniform of the American association of Purity and Perfection, of which I am president, secretary, and treasurer, and the only ible to ht new clothes there was a inal, which appealed to his sense of the absurd while at the sa a real spirit of innocence and freshness that reinforced his reputation for boyish high jinks and recalled his youth in the Mississippi Valley, where-in Huck Finn's words-successful men often appeared in ”linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it”15 There was also a hint of rebellion against adult conforrow old As Howells once said of him, ”He was a youth to the end of his days, the heart of a boy with the head of a sage; the heart of a good boy, or a bad boy, but always a willful boy” Sounding like an overgrown Huck Finn a fancy Easterners, Twain once referred to his white outfit as ”my dontcareadam suit” To a reporter for the New York Tribune, he declared, ”When you are seventy-one years old youas you pleaseWhen I look around at the reeably impressed with the fact that they are no more cheerful and no h he was inclined to say as about his new look whenever he spoke of it to the press, the uniforloonificant behind his choice of such an unconventional outfit Wearing white at his age was a kind of joke on death-a playful way of pretending that it had little power over hiood and ready Determined not to waste his last years in a dreary shuffle toward extinction, he wanted to go out in the grand fashi+on of a man who had made a deep i about hiotten

In a candid discussion with his friend and authorized biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine-who later published the details of their talk-Twain confessed that in his old age he wanted to set hiloos, and-inevitably-fro end

”I can't bear to put on black clothes again,” he told Paine ”If we are going to be gay in spirit, why be clad in funeral garments?When I put on black it reminds me of my funerals I could be satisfied hite all the year round”

A little while later he carapher and announced, ”I have made up my mind not to wear black any more, but white, and let the critics say what they will”17 After returning fro in ”snohite”-to use his description-he made much of the fact that everyone else had looked ”funereal” as they stood around in ordinary dark suits ”Like delegates to an undertaker's convention,” he scoffed ”As for black clothes,” he said, ”ht to mind some of the most painful moments from his intimate life as a father and husband Three deaths haunted hidon, more than thirty years earlier; then, in the 1890s, the death of his favorite daughter-Susy-after a brief illness ended her life at twenty-four; and, finally, the loss of his beloved wife, Olivia-or ”Livy,” as he called her-who slowly succumbed to heart disease Her death took place only two and a half years before he -as alith Tas crucial

In the after children-Clara and her younger sister, Jean, both adults-dressed in black for an extended period, as was the custo fro not only black dresses, but also heavy black veils A striking photograph froure swathed in black, looking as lifeless as a statue positioned beside her solee froain her health had failed after a stay of eight rim atmosphere was all-pervasive, and Twain ca his wife, he lahten again” A few days later he wrote, ”In ue and colorless 67 of them are contrasted with the deep blackness of this one”19 As the weeks ofturned to months, the dark cloud slowly lifted, and he tried to shun any oppressive thoughts of death He began to take an active part in society again, seeing old friends, going to s talks in New York By the end of 1906, he was ready toto the opposite extreme of Clara's behavior, he decided to wear only white fron of affirmation, a show of faith in what rehter, Clara, was so fond of wearing black that her piano teacher in Vienna, Theodor Leschetizky, nicknaht”

As it happened, he didn't have much time left-only three and a half years But he would turn this period into one of the most eventful of his life He would make new friends, create a few enemies, pursue some old drea the limits of what he could say and do

And there would be no lack of dra, Connecticut, survived a burglary by a couple of gun-toting thieves, enjoyed flirtatious friendshi+ps with some of the prettiest actresses on Broadway, debated female sexuality with the woroup of sluer, stayed out until four in the s, explored Bermuda, pretended that he had been lost at sea, joked with the king and queen of England on the grounds of Windsor Castle, recited Romantic poetry to society ladies at the Waldorf-Astoria, used his influence to avoid being called for jury duty in the ragtiirls how to play billiards and cards, published books on heaven and Shakespeare, and al he had

On the return voyage from Italy after her mother's death, Clara was inconsolable and covered herself fro for many months Two years later Twain remarked, ”When I put on black it reminds me of my funerals I could be satisfied hite all the year round”

And while all these things were happening, he held fast to his stated policy and took every opportunity tothe rich and powerful, he regarded himself as the equal of anyone and often hts with King Leopold of Belgiued Theodore Roosevelt at an international exhibition, talked politics with Winston Churchill at the House of Coolf with Woodrow Wilson, and appeared in a filave encouragehost stories with the author of Dracula, finding pro a bond of e Bernard Shaw

Just before turning seventy-one, he looked ahead and acknowledged the usual worries about what he once called ”troubled and foreboding Age” But he also found reasons to be opti with a friend's claiins at seventy” He wanted to enjoy his money and fa exactly as he pleased for the rest of his life ”You have earned your holiday,” he told hi over how much time he had left, he decided that he wouldn't be ruled by the calendar and would concentrate on having fun21 He had a long history of dis the question of his death with artful, and memorably comic, statements He was a relatively robust sixty-one when a journalist-Frank Marshall White-asked for his response to a ru White sent a cable to his New York editor with Twain's faeration” Other press accounts altered this to read, ”The reports of rossly” was soon replaced by ”greatly” in the ,” Twain told White, ”but I' any faster than anybody else” He was amused at how often his initial co, ”It keeps turning upin the newspapers when people have occasion to discount exaggeration”22 He liked to joke about the possibility of preparing his own obituary It was an idea that he e, P T Barnu as to see his own obituary printed To oblige Barnued to publish a ”premature” report ”Great and Only Barnum,” the headline said teeks before he died in 1891 ”He Wanted to Read His Obituary; Here It Is”

Several years later, Mark Tent to the trouble of writing afor ”access to e-if this is not asking too , not their Facts, but their Verdicts” As an incentive for coested a reward of no small value: ”For the best Obituary-one suitable for ret-I desire to offer a Prize, consisting of a Portrait of me done entirely in pen and ink without previous instruction” A few papers responded by printing tongue-in-cheek tributes to the ”dead” author The New York World truy with a nice pun on the false assertion in the headline, ”Here Lies Mark Twain”23 A subversive at heart, Twain loved undercutting easy assumptions-even his own Which is one reason why he was so fond of exaggeration It undercuts itself He jested so often about death thathiht outlive hties-as his mother had done-or even survive into his nineties and beyond His adine a world without hi with the notion that his ghostly appearance in white clothes created the impression that he was already beyond death's reach ”Ti,” he said at the turn of the twentieth century ”I ae; in 1977 I shall be 142”24 As long as he planned on being around for a while, it islation as the place to reveal his new look There was an extra incentive for extending his life if he could also extend the life of his books by keeping theuaranteeing protection for at least fifty years after the author's death, then the longer Twain lived, the longer his ould survive for the benefit of his heirs

For years he had been piling up one He wanted to entertain posterity by leaving to his heirs the job of issuing neorks every decade or so These were o off like ti his name in the news and his fame alive Such would prove to be the case when soan appearing in the 1930s and 1940s-especially those collected in a volume called, appropriately, Mark Twain in Eruption These works were enthusiastically received in just the rave ”He said things after his death,” a surprised Theodore Dreiser declared of Twain in 1935, ”that he never dared say in his life”25 While diligently dictating his autobiography in old age, Twain often paused to consider the areeted by posterity Never one to think small, he had no doubt that his vast literary output would continue attracting readers into the next century, and that the demand would always exist for fresh revelations fro in 1906 on what future audiences would say of his unpublished cootry and social hypocrisy, he took a long view ”The edition of AD 2006 will make a stir when it co around taking notice, along with other dead pals” (If he h the su the cover of Tiinal Superstar”)26 As an author as used to seeing his works lavishly illustrated, and who appreciated the ies, he are that his new look ettable illustration of his own star appeal The Man in White was not only an entertaining sight, but one that seeel come to life, with a mischievous eye on this world, and a curious one on the next Such a figure furnished a spectacle that was both coic, a spirited celebration of life's rewards and a clown's lament of his own mortality

The full effect ht he was siinning that his decision to adopt a new ie was inextricably linked to his unavoidable encounter with death ”I have reached the age where dark clothes have a depressing effect onisto the eye and enlivens the spirit Now, of course, I cannot co just forand wear it ely at an end, he wanted to use all the creative force re touches on a life as co in his fiction As Howells rerew less and less and his life more and more” In many ways Tas never more alive-and never more perceptive-than in this eventful period that lasted a inning with his appearance in Washi+ngton at the end of 1906 and concluding with the world's parting glimpse of him in April 1910, when the many mourners at his funeral in New York looked down at his open casket and saw Mark Twain still splendidly arrayed in white28 STRAINED RELATIONS

All of us contain Music & Truth, but e was uessed-especially at the very end-it was also funnier and a lot happier than later generations of critics and biographers have been willing to adhted in one way or another is considerable

It is true that ainst the frailties of human nature, the cruelties of life, and the chaos of the universe Surely, the reasoning goes, the bitter, scathing antagonist of the ”damned human race” felt overwhelly The septuagenarian Tho is so often portrayed as nothing but an acerbic old cynic is supposed to sound like this: ”Isn't human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in prettybut to be stood up on the street corner as a convenience for dogs? Man, 'Know thyself-& then thou wilt despise thyself, to a dead moral certainty”

These would see his teeth and pulling out his white hair in an old man's rant But, no, these are Mark Twain's words in a letter written to a friend in 1884, when he was still in his forties-at the peak of his powers, in the bloo family in one of the finest houses in the fair city of Hartford, Connecticut30 In fact, he was always fond of savagely attacking thetheir distorted views of thee to discover that hu that changed between uarded about sharing his unvarnished opinions, putting them in formal literary pieces intended for eventual publication rather than s to sympathetic friends in letters or conversations

With close companions such as Howells and Joseph Twichell-his Hartford neighbor and fa vitriolic outbursts against all kinds of injustice, knowing they would understand that his fierce tirades didn't represent the sum of his views nor the full ry letter to Reverend Twichell on the subject of political hypocrisy, he declared, ”I have written you to-day, not to do you a service, but to do myself one There was bile in me I had to empty itI have used you as an equilibriuuess”31 Twain's ed frequently, and it is unrealistic to saddle hi his final years, when he was as likely to assury prophet As Clara once observed of her father, he was always a man of many emotions, a ”cyclonic warrior one moment-lily-of-the-valley the next” He could easily shi+ft fro hu Valentine's Day verses to little girls the next Writing in 1906 to the wife of a close friend, he was in typical for low and worn out eht He explained that it was only a short bout of ”a disease I am not much subject to-depression of spirits,” and added, ”I a, in all ways”32 He was fearless in his ability to delve deep into the shadows of life and to confront the painful truths lurking there But what sets hi into the abyss is his ability to face the worst and still find reason to laugh So, or weary, but often it was simply an expression of his inexhaustible love of the coluer with a joke

In our ht his darker side, we do hi that his matchless sense of humor suddenly failed him in his last years At his best, he was never hted in slylyconfusion between theushed, ”How God must love you!” he sole added in a perfect deadpan, ”I guess she hasn't heard of our strained relations”33 If he had been an ordinary ht have been crushed by the various disappointan in the steae and ended ale But ine hiet how difficult his life had been fro He survived into his seventies for a reason He waslearned early to cope with adversity in a frontier environreith two thousand htiest river at his feet As a young steamboat pilot he learned to follow the twists and turns of that river for hundreds of ht and in darkness, upstream and down And he also learned how to take the measure of the many men and women who flocked to the river from all parts of the world Some came to revel in the freedom of frontier life, some to undermine and corrupt it