 Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on
Nov. 30, 1835, the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. Several years later, in
1839, the family moved to nearby Hannibal, where Clemens spent his boyhood
years.
During his youth, Clemens had a strong tie to the
Mississippi River, along which his town was located. Steamboats landed at the
prosperous town three times a day, and Clemens' boyhood dream was to become a
steamboatman on the river.
Clemens' newspaper career began while still a boy in
Hannibal. In 1848, a year after his father's death, he was apprentice to printer
Joseph Ament, who published the Missouri Courier. By the age of 16, in 1851, Sam
was working for his brother Orion's Hannibal Western Union, for which he wrote
his first published sketches and worked as a printer. Over the next two years,
he continued at the Western Union, occasionally taking stints as editor in
Orion's absence. In 1852, Sam published several sketches in Philadelphia's
Saturday Evening Post.
Clemens left Hannibal in 1853, at age 18, and worked as a
printer in New York City and Philadelphia over the next year. During his trip
east, he published travel letters in the Hannibal Journal. Upon returning to the
Midwest in 1854, Clemens lived in several cities on the Mississippi; the most
prominent of these was Keokuk, Iowa, where his brother Orion founded the Keokuk
Journal.
By 1857, a 21-year-old Clemens was in New Orleans, seeking
a berth on a ship going to South America, when he met steamboat pilot Horace
Bixby. He persuaded Bixby to accept him as an apprentice and teach him the
Mississippi for a fee of $500. After living on the river for two years as a cub
pilot, Sam received his pilot's license in 1859, at the age of 23.
With the start of the Civil War, in April 1861, river
traffic on the Mississippi was suspended, and Clemens' steamboat pilot career
came to an end. He joined a volunteer militia group called the Marion Rangers,
which drilled for two weeks before disbanding. By the summer of 1861, Sam
accompanied Orion to the Nevada Territory by stagecoach; Orion had been
appointed by President Lincoln as secretary of the new Territory, and Sam was to
be his secretary.
In
1861, the Nevada Territory was being inundated with gold and silver prospectors,
inspired by the 1858 discovery of the Comstock Lode, one of the largest metal
deposits in the world. Almost immediately upon reaching Nevada, Clemens became
involved with mining, travelling to some of the most promising prospecting
regions, including Humboldt, Esmeralda, and Aurora. Clemens never did strike it
rich, and was forced to work in a quartz mill to support himself.
Clemens had been sporadically contributing humorous
letters to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, the territory's most
well-known newspaper, and, by September 1862, was accepted a job to be a
reporter for the paper, at $25 a week. Clemens covered the territorial
legislature, local news items, and contributed humorous pieces. During his stint
at the Enterprise, the 27-year-old Clemens was greatly influenced by Joseph
Goodman, the paper's founder, and Dan De Quille, a star writer; both men would
be friends of Clemens for years to come.
After 17 months, Clemens left the Enterprise for San
Francisco, apparently to avoid antiduelling laws after challenging a rival
editor to fight. Arriving in San Francisco in 1864, Clemens went to work for the
Call, a local paper, as a full-time reporter, and then was the Pacific
correspondent for the Territorial Enterprise.
Clemens was based in San Francisco for the next four
years, writing for Golden Era, the Californian, and other publications. He was a
central figure in the literary scene of the city, which included Bret Harte,
C.H. Webb, and others. In 1866, he took a four-month trip to Hawaii as a
correspondent for the Sacramento Union. Upon returning to San Francisco, a
30-year-old Clemens capitalized on the success of his "Sandwich
Islands" letters by organizing a lecture on the topic. The success of this
venture prompted him to arrange his first lecture tour, a two-month swing
through northern California and western Nevada. For the remainder of his life,
Clemens was to be one of the most loved and coveted speakers in the United
States.
Clemens left California at the end of 1866, and headed to
New York City. Shortly after arriving there, he arranged to be a correspondent
for the San Francisco Alta California aboard the Quaker City, which was
departing for a voyage to Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. Before departing
on the trip, Clemens arranged to publish his first book, The Celebrated Jumping
Frog Of Calaveras County, And Other Sketches, a collection of published stories
from his Western days. He also performed his Sandwich Island lecture at the
Cooper Union, New York's largest hall, and took a lecture tour through the
Missouri and Iowa, including a return stop in Hannibal. Through his lecture
tours and his popular letters from the Quaker City, the 31-year-old Clemens was
becoming quite a well-known celebrity.
Upon returning to New York, Clemens accepted a position as
secretary to Senator William M. Stewart, in Washington, D.C. He was asked by
Elisha Bliss, of the American Publishing Co., to write a book about his Quaker
City experiences, which would become The Innocents Abroad, released in July
1869. Also, shortly after returning to New York, Clemens met Olivia (Livy)
Langdon, the older sister of Jervis, a friend from the Quaker City trip.
The following year, 1868, was a busy one for Sam. He
travelled back to California and Nevada on a lecture tour, finished Innocents in
San Francisco, published several sketches in various publications, and began
courting Livy. By the end of the year, Sam, now 33, became secretly engaged with
Livy to be married. Over the next two years, Clemens travelled extensively on
lecture tours around the East and Midwest, published his book, bought an
interest in the Buffalo Express, and wrote numerous sketches.
With his marriage in 1870 to the 25-year-old Livy,
Clemens' life took a dramatic turn toward stabilization and normalcy. The couple
settled down in Buffalo, N.Y., in a house bought by Livy's father, and Sam
worked on the Express as editor. He also wrote a monthly column for the Galaxy,
a New York literary magazine. Besides all of this activity, Clemens contracted
to write Roughing It, an account of his experiences in Nevada and California.
During this period in 1870, however, tragedy struck the young couple. First
Livy's father died; then her close friend died while staying with the Clemenses;
finally, their first child, Langdon, was born premature, and lived only two
years in a sickly state.
The situation stabilized the following year, when Sam
rented a house in Hartford, Conn.'s, upper class Nook Farm. He published
Roughing It, continued on lecture tours throughout the country, bought a parcel
of land in Nook Farm on which to build a house, and visited England for the
first time. In March 1872, Susy Clemens is born.
On a return trip to England with his family in 1873, the
38-year-old Clemens, by this time a substantial literary celebrity, met such
notables as Ivan Turgenev, Robert Browning, Anthony Trollope, and Lewis Carroll.
He also published The Gilded Age, with Charles Dudley Warner, his first
fictional book. By June 1874, Sam and Olivia's second daughter, Clara, was born.
Their third and final child, Jean, was born in 1880.
Now settled into his own home in Hartford, Clemens devoted
himself to writing novels and sketches, and performing the occasional lecture.
It was the period of Clemens' greatest literary output.
At this time, Sam began tapping into his youthful
experiences in Hannibal as material for some of the most famous novels in his
catalogue — The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876; Life On The
Mississippi, 1883; and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885. The family spent a
year and a half in Europe, in 1878/79, in order for Sam to collect material for
a travel book, which resulted in 1880's A Tramp Abroad. A year later, The Prince
And The Pauper was released. This was Clemens' first attempt at writing
historical fiction with a serious theme, a marked departure from the humorous
books of his earlier career. Another classic historical novel, although more
satirical, was A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, released in 1889.
Although now a settled family man, Clemens managed to
partake in several lecture tours around North America in 1884/85. Dissatisfied
with most of his publishers, Clemens founded his own publishing company in 1884,
called Charles L. Webster & Company. The firm was in existence for 10 years,
and was an early success after the publication of Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs in
1886, and reissues of Twain's earlier books. From 1887 on, however, the company
faced difficulties and suffered setbacks, finally closing its doors in 1894 due
to bankruptcy.
During the 1880s and early 90s, Clemens became heavily
involved with investing in the Paige compositor, an automatic typesetting
machine. He poured great amounts of money in the machine, and even founded a
company in 1886 to manufacture and distribute it. The advent of the linotype
machine, however, sent the Paige compositor to its doom.
After the second model of the machine failed a test run at
the Chicago Herald in 1894, where 32 linotypes were running smoothly, the
machine was scrapped. Clemens contributed to the bankruptcy of his publishing
company when he shifted funds from that firm into the compositor.
By the early 1890s, Clemens' financial situation was in
poor shape as a result of these failures, and the cost of living an extravagant
social lifestyle at the house in Hartford. In order to stave off personal
bankruptcy, Sam closed down the Hartford house in 1891, and took the family to
live in Europe. Throughout most of the decade, the Clemens family lived at
various addresses in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.
Regardless of his financial situation, though, Clemens
still managed to finish numerous novels and sketches; the most prominent of
these were The American Claimant (1892), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), Pudd'nhead
Wilson (1894), Personal Recollections of Joan Of Arc (1895), and "The Man
That Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1898). In 1895/96, Clemens and family undertook
an around-the-world lecture tour, which also provided him with material for his
final travel book, Following The Equator (1897). Tragedy struck during the tour,
however, when eldest daughter Susy died in Hartford in 1896, a tragic blow to
the family.
By 1898, Clemens had managed to pay off all of his
creditors, a feat that elevated him to heroic status in the eyes of the public.
Providing invaluable financial assistance during this time of financial hardship
was Standard Oil executive Henry Rogers.
In 1900 and 1901, Clemens lived in New York City (14 West
10th St.) and in Riverdale, N.Y., just outside the city. He lectured extensively
during this period, and took an active role in New York's social scene. Yale
University presented him with an honorary degree in 1901, and the University of
Missouri did likewise in 1902. Shortly after buying a house in Tarrytown, N.Y.,
Livy became seriously ill and spent long periods of isolation in Maine, before
being advised to seek the warmer climate of Florence, Italy, in late 1903. Sam
and Livy were apart for most of the time leading up to her death in Florence in
June 1904.
Clemens spent the years following Livy's death primarily
in New York City. After selling the Tarrytown house in 1904, he lived at 21
Fifth Ave. until 1908, primarily writing and making public appearances. In 1905,
Clemens dined at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt, and a gala 70th
birthday banquet was held at Delmonico's in New York. In 1907, Clemens received
an honorary degree from Oxford University.
Twain's more significant writings during the first decade
of the 20th century included: "A Double-Barrelled Detective Story"
(1902), "Was It Heaven? or Hell?" (1902), Extracts From Adam's Diary
(1904), Eve's Diary (1906), What Is Man? (1906), Chapters From My Autobiography
(1906/07), Extract From Captain Stormfield's Visit To Heaven (1908), and Letters
From The Earth (1909).
By 1908, Clemens moved into his final home, a residence in
Redding, Conn., which he called Stormfield. During the final years of his life,
Clemens organized the Angelfish Club, an informal organization of schoolage
girls, called Angelfish, whom he kept in correspondence with and invited to stay
with him. Declaring himself the admiral of the club, Clemens set the rules for
admittance: sincerity, good disposition, schoolgirl age, and intelligence. The
billiard room of Stormfield was the offical headquarters, and various other
parts of the house were given fish-related names. Sam also set the rule that any
Angelfish who went three months without writing to him would be suspended.
Although this setup might appear inappropriate, Clemens' relationship with the
girls appears to have been fully platonic.
In December 1909, Clemens' youngest daughter, Jean, died
at Stormfield. Immediately after this tragedy, Twain wrote "The Death Of
Jean", the last substantial writing he completed. The piece recalled the
sudden tragedy of the death, and his feelings regarding the loss of his other
family members. Following its completion, Clemens vowed never to write again.
Clemens' health rapidly deteriorated after Jean's death.
In January 1910, he went to Bermuda for his health, but sensed that he wasn't to
live long. On April 21, 1910, Clemens sank into a coma at Stormfield. At sunset,
his heart failed and he died in his bed. He was 74 years old. On April 23, a
large funeral procession was held in New York City, and a service was held at
the Presbyterian Brick Church. Clemens was buried alongside his wife and
children at Woodlawn Cemetary, in Elmira, N.Y.
In November 1835, at the time of
Clemens' birth, Halley's Comet made an appearance in the night sky. Strikingly,
the comet's next appearance came during April 1910, the period of Clemens'
death. Throughout his life, Clemens said that he would "go out with the
comet," knowing the 75-year span between the comet's appearances. His
prediction was amazingly accurate.
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