Mark Twain Fakeographs

Abstract

Mark Twain was an occasional target of fakeographers, a school of paparazzi and engravers who employed an early type of photoshopping to manipulate images published in newspapers and magazines.1 In the periodical press there were several points at which manipulation could take place: by overlaying two or more camera negatives; by inking out parts of the single or multiple exposure; or by alterations performed on the engraving process block. The altered yet realistic image, different from line-drawn caricature, occasionally had nefarious uses but was usually designed for comic effect. For example, in February 1892, the London Idler printed an altered version of a photograph by Napoleon Sarony taken in 1883. (Figure 1.) In the fakeograph Mark Twain clenches a corncob pipe in his teeth.2 (Figure 2.)The frontispiece to Following the Equator (1897) taken by photographer Walter G. Chase3 (Figure 3) famously became the basis for a gag fakeograph by Thomas S. Frisbie with Twain sitting in a chair in the back of a crude cow-and-horse drawn carriage.4 (Figure 4.) In a letter to Frisbie, an employee at the American Publishing Company, Twain comically expresses his satisfaction: “I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.”5But by far the most egregious example of a Mark Twain fakeograph, a hoax without comic purpose, was syndicated in newspapers across the country a few days after the marriage of Twain's secretary Isabel Lyon and business manager Ralph Ashcroft in New York on 18 March 1909. Though Twain thought their wedding “was an insane idea & unbelievable,” he agreed to attend. Counting the bride, groom, minister, the Holy Trinity, and himself, as he joked later, nine persons were present. He told a reporter that the newlyweds’ romance began as a “business association,” “ripened into warm friendship, and then grew worse.”6 The bride and groom posed for photographs after the ceremony.7 Six days after the wedding, the first fakeograph based on a wedding photo of the couple and featuring Mark Twain appeared in out-of-town, mostly provincial newspapers. Credited to the photographer William Ironson (1867–1929), who worked for the Hearst Syndicate and the Hearst-based International News Service, it was copied in the Central New Jersey Home News, the Owensboro, Ky., Messenger, the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, the Washington Herald, the Butte Miner, and the Winston-Salem Journal.8 But make no mistake: it was a fraud. Ironson superimposed a candid snapshot of Twain with Olivia Langdon Clemens taken around 19029 (Figure 5) onto Lyon and Ashcroft's photograph to make it appear that their employer blessed their union, although ironically Michael Selden observes that Twain “appeared like a bystander” in the wedding shot.10 (Figure 6.) For the best of reasons: he was added to the picture.