Louis Roney: Twain

Mark Twain, born in Florida, Mo., in 1835 and raised in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Mo., was to wander – and to wonder – plenty before he died in 1910. Most of his nagging questions remained unanswered.

I think that Twain was bothered incessantly by the fact that “man” – the loftiest of all creatures – could sink so low so much of the time.

Twain expressed the humorous thought that he would gladly accept the Darwinian concept of man’s descending from the apes, except that it would denigrate the apes.

In 1894, Twain’s novel, “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson,” dared to tackle head-on the fact of racial discrimination, an accepted “fact” that could not pass muster in his indefatigably logical mind.

Fairness was not an “unattainable ideal” to Mark Twain. To Twain, fairness was the inevitable conclusion of simple down-to-earth logic. Fairness works, i.e. it best satisfies all concerned. At the end of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Huck blames himself for his unconventional fair attitude toward the lowly Jim. This moment holds a signal stroke of Twain’s inventive genius.

Huck’s noble self-deprecation is expressed as a willingness to apologize for the “fault” of not being racially prejudiced.

Twain eschewed “preaching” in his writings. He said, “If you want to send me a message, use a telegram.”

Years ago, I had pleasure of spending time with the remarkable Hal Holbrook immediately after his onstage impersonation of Mark Twain. I asked Holbrook if “expressing” Twain’s thoughts through the years had changed Holbrook's life. He said “yes,” that it was, “Kind of like a skeptical minister who repeats the words in the Bible so often that he slowly comes to believe them.”

There was always a lot of the wide-eyed little boy in Twain, even when he was sorely perplexed by the various cosmic inequities that he lumped together under the term “the human predicament.”

His eyes saw things in 19th century American life that his honest common-sense could not live with in peace. At first glance, Twain impresses with his humorous directness and his “down to earth” compassion. The more Twain we read, the more his philosophical profundity asserts itself as his outstanding characteristic.

The author we know as “Mark Twain” was christened “Samuel Langhorne Clemens.” His famous nom de plume derived from his early days as a Mississippi riverboat pilot. “Mark Twain” was a steamboat-deckhand’s call to the pilot, telling him the water’s depth measured in fathoms. “Mark twain” was two fathoms, or 12 feet.

Twain was good-humoredly wise to the good and evil in human beings. He said, “I’d rather you turn me over to a taxidermist than to a tax-collector. The taxidermist will take no more than my skin.”

In the ancient “Faust” legend, an octogenarian alchemist in the Middle Ages barters away his soul with “Mephistopheles” (the Devil) in exchange for recovering his lost youth, and all the profane pleasures that went with it.

Twain was skeptic and doubted that any human being gets through life without selling at least a smidgen of his soul in return for temporary custody of the goodies he prizes, and can get no other way.

The mature Mark Twain was a sardonic “Menschenkenner,” i.e. a German word meaning “a person who understands human nature.”

Witty as Twain was, his opinion of homo sapiens was flavored with a large dose of bitterness, a sentiment that came from his own observations of the ways most people treat each other in order to get what they want for themselves.

Duke Ellington performed a song, “How Come You Do Me Like You Do?” A disillusioned Mark Twain seemed to sing these lyrics to God throughout his life. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are so many people so rotten if we are truly created “in the image of God?”

“God, I doubt You because you have given me so little evidence,” was Lord Bertrand Russell’s stance re: his own agnosticism.

When Twain spoke of “the human predicament,” I conclude that he was referring to the ethical dilemma of every human being who might long to “get somewhere,” and at the same time preserve at least a small memory of his soul.

When Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” was he speaking to the actual personage of the Devil? Or was he setting a living example of saying “No!” to the lure of the “loser’s nemesis,” i.e. the voluptuous temptations that do battle within us against our will to win? Must we, then, learn to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan” to all temptations in order to emerge victorious?

Mark Twain was aware of the difficulty of self-criticism, of being able to “see ourselves as others see us.” In his smiling skepticism, he once remarked: “Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves, and how little we think of the other person.”

Mark Twain’s autobiography, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, appeared in 1924.

In 1940, in a Harvard Yard classroom where Emerson and Longfellow had lectured (and yes — also Mark Twain) I attended some “Mark Twain Lectures” by Twain scholar Bernard DeVoto. DeVoto’s then-new book, “Mark Twain in Eruption,” contained a great many Twain items omitted in the autobiography. These Twain sayings are from my 1940 lecture notes:

“Under certain circumstances profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

“Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like, and let the food fight it out inside.”

“Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

In his big shipwright-crafted house in Hartford, beloved Mark Twain piloted his own way across the last far horizon.