The Long Wondrous Life of Mark Twain

Unless you were raised in a cave, you’ve heard someone quote Mark Twain. Folks have been using his quips and quotes like a condiment for over 100 years, peppering speeches and blog entries with his humorous witticisms. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain - the “father of American literature” - lived as vividly and adventurously as any of the characters he wrote into fiction. So get ready for some awesome facts about his Mark Twain, peppered with quotes!

Holy Halley’s

Clemens was born during the weeks that Halley’s Comet made its migration across the skies in 1835, and would famously say “It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet.” In the year 1909, the year before its return, he proclaimed:

“The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’ ” Twain had ‘predicted’ correctly: he in fact died during the return of Halley’s Comet in 1910.

Twain’s fascination with his own death was affected by the death of his brother in a riverboat explosion, which he foresaw in a vivid dream a month before it occurred. This haunted Clemens the remainder of his years, and it would lead to a lifelong interest in parapsychology.

Young Sam

Back in his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, Clemens witnessed several brutal murders - scenes which would appear later in his novels. During this same period his father died of pneumonia. Young Sam Clemens, 11 years old, actually hid away in a secret spot to watch his father's autopsy.

When he was fourteen Clemens left school to become a printer’s apprentice. A few years later he began work as a typesetter at his brother Orion’s newspaper, The Hannibal Journal. By the tender age of 16 Clemens had begun his writing career, submitting humorous sketches and articles under the name Josh.

After ten years of toiling away as a printer, Clemens yearned for something more adventurous. Upon reading that the natives of South America chewed coca leaves for energy, he decided to travel South to open up the coca leaf trade (which is an example of one of his ‘get rich quick’ ideas). But by the time he reached New Orleans, Clemens had a better idea.

On his way down the Mississippi Twain decided to become a riverboat pilot. For two years he set about “the stupendous task of learning the twelve hundred miles of the Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans – of knowing it as exactly and unfailingly, even in the dark, as one knows the way to his own features.” Riverboat pilot’s made about $250 a month, or $75K a year in today’s money.

As a child Clemens hated going to school. He famously said ” I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Having dropped out of school very young, Twain taught himself, and learned what he wanted to know by working as a journalist. That said, in 1907 he was awarded a Doctorate of Letters from Oxford University, officially making him Dr. Twain.

Twain the Man

During his days as a reporter in Nevada, Twain was infamous for publishing and popularizing hoaxes. One famous hoax centered around the supposed discovery of a petrified man in the desert. Another, the “Empire City Massacre,” described the deeds of a Carson City man who killed his wife and six children.

Clemens spent summers on his uncle’s farm in Missouri. There he picked up slave stories, folk tales, and the various dialects he used in his work. He addressed this in the preface to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

“A number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary ‘Pike-County’ dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guess-work; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several patterns of speech.”

Mark Twain disliked Jane Austen and her work: “Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.” So it’s better to have an empty library than one with books by Jane Austen? Down with the Janeites!

Some have claimed that Mark Twain’s book Tom Sawyer(1876) was the first novel ever to be written on a typewriter. This is not true. Twain was the first author to submit a typed manuscript to his publisher, but a). It had been written longhand first, and was typed later. And b). The book was in fact Life on the Mississippi.

Twain loved cats. It has been noted that he lived with up to 19 at one time: “Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

Have any favorite facts or fun quotes by Mark Twain? Post ‘em here! Just remember, before you quote Mark Twain, that many of the quotes that get ascribed to him, he never said. But we’ll cover that next time.

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