Queer Places:
The Museum Center, The Mark Twain House, 351 Farmington Ave, Hartford, CT 06105
Quarry Farm, 131 Crane Rd, Elmira, NY 14901
14 W 10th St, New York, NY 10011
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Woodlawn Cemetery, 1200 Walnut St, Elmira, NY 14905
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1]
known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer,
humorist,
entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. His novels include
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),[2]
the latter often called "The
Great American Novel". Andrew J. Hoffman in "Mark Twain and Homosexuality" (American Literature
Vol. 67, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 23-49) affirms that while he was roughing it as
a young man in the mining camps and newspaper offices of the Wild West, Mark Twain had homosexual encounters.
Twain was raised in
Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer
and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and
then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his
older brother
Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the
Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred
humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the
Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise.[3]
His humorous story, "The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in 1865, based
on a story that he heard at
Angels Hotel in
Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The
short story brought international attention and was even translated into
French.[4]
His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and
peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and
European royalty.
Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, but he
invested in ventures that lost most of it—such as the
Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its
complexity and imprecision. He filed for
bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but he eventually
overcame his financial troubles with the help of
Henry Huttleston Rogers. He chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors
in full, even after he had no legal responsibility to do so.
14 W 10th St
Twain and Olivia Langdon corresponded throughout 1868. She rejected his
first marriage proposal, but they were married in Elmira, New York in February
1870,[32]
where he courted her and managed to overcome her father's initial reluctance.[35]
She came from a "wealthy but liberal family"; through her, he met
abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists for women's
rights and social equality", including
Harriet Beecher Stowe (his next-door neighbor in Hartford, Connecticut),
Frederick Douglass, and writer and utopian socialist William Dean Howells,[36]
who became a long-time friend. The couple lived in Buffalo, New York, from
1869 to 1871. He owned a stake in the Buffalo Express newspaper and
worked as an editor and writer. While they were living in Buffalo, their son
Langdon died of diphtheria at the age of 19 months. They had three daughters:
Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962),[37]
and Jean (1880–1909).
Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where he arranged the
building of a home starting in 1873. In the 1870s and 1880s, the family
summered at Quarry Farm in Elmira, the home of Olivia's sister, Susan Crane.[38][39]
In 1874,[38]
Susan had a study built apart from the main house so that Twain would have a
quiet place in which to write. Also, he smoked cigars constantly, and Susan
did not want him to do so in her house.
Twain wrote many of his classic novels during his 17 years in Hartford
(1874–1891) and over 20 summers at Quarry Farm. They include The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on
the Mississippi
(1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
The couple's marriage lasted 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904. All of
the Clemens family are buried in Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery.
Twain lived in his later years at 14 West 10th Street in Manhattan.[63]
He passed through a period of deep depression which began in 1896 when his
daughter Susy died of meningitis. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's on
December 24, 1909, deepened his gloom.[1]
On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers died suddenly. In 1906, Twain
began his autobiography in the North American Review.[64]
In April, he heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all that she
owned in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he volunteered a few
autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid
Coolbrith, George Wharton James visited Twain in New York and arranged for a
new portrait session. He was resistant initially, but he eventually admitted
that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.[65]
Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls whom he viewed as surrogate
granddaughters called the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. The dozen or so
members ranged in age from 10 to 16. He exchanged letters with his "Angel
Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games.
Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight".[27]:28
In 1907, he met Dorothy Quick (aged 11) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning
"a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death".[66]
Oxford University awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in letters in 1907.
Twain was born two weeks after Halley's Comet's closest approach in 1835;
he said in 1909:[46]
I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year,
and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of
my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no
doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in
together, they must go out together".
TTwain's prediction was accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21,
1910, in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to
Earth.
Upon hearing of Twain's death, President William Howard Taft said:[67][68]
MMark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions,
and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come
… His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by
Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has
made an enduring part of American literature.
Twain's funeral was at the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, New
York.[69]
He is buried in his wife's family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New
York. The Langdon family plot is marked by a 12-foot monument (two fathoms, or
"mark twain") placed there by his surviving daughter Clara.[70]
There is also a smaller headstone. He expressed a preference for cremation
(for example, in Life on the Mississippi), but he acknowledged that his
surviving family would have the last word.
Officials in Connecticut and New York estimated the value of Twain's estate
at $471,000 ($13,000,000 today).[71]
My published books:
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