Mark Twain's Letters, Volume II: 1867-1868 (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 197 can think of few scholars whose energy and expertise better equip them for such a challenge. Alistair M. Duckworth University of Florida Harriet Elinor Smith & Richard Bucci, eds. Mark Twain's Letters, Volume II: 1867-1868. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 672 pp. If anyone ever doubted the prominence of Mark Twain's place in the pantheon of important American writers, a glance at this second volume of his letters, the latest from the University of California and the Mark Twain Project, should settle the matter . What else is one to conclude from a volume in which the letters themselves take up only about one third of the printed pages, once the annotations and appendices and editorial apparatus are subtracted? In his autobiography Clemens remarked that humorists of a "mere" sort cannot last whereas humor which includes clandestine preaching—his sort—would live forever. "By forever [he said], I mean thirty years." This second volume of letters effectively makes that "forever" literal. Jesting aside, anyone who studies the life and career of Sam Clemens will be grateful for the effort the Mark Twain Project demonstrates in this volume—and in all its work. Publishing "the most reliable and the most legible text possible for every personal and business letter written by (or for) Samuel L. Clemens" (479) in itself is a large and painstaking task. But there are also other efforts on the part of the editors to provide the means for fuller accounts of Mark Twain—for example, the unexpected bonuses found in the appendices, including the numerous photographs of people prominent in the life of Sam Clemens at the time. (Notable are photos of members of the Quaker City excursion, especially Dr. Jackson, who furnished the model for the deadpanning doctor in The Innocents Abroad.) Another example is the unfinished farce Clemens wrote about the Quaker City pilgrims and sent in a letter to Charles Henry Webb on 25 November 1867. But all of those efforts pale beside the annotations to the letters, which often include reviews of his lecturing during the period, portions of other people's contemporaneous letters, or published reminiscences about Sam Clemens as well as identification of and complete biographical information on anyone mentioned in the letters. Altogether the editorial effort is truly astonishing. Some might say the annotations represent an overly zealous goodwill, something like the advice one receives from good friends on the eve of a momentous decision. I suspect most readers will treat the bounteous annotations just like that advice, feeling free to ignore some but also feeling very grateful for them whenever they prove helpful or interesting. The time frame for this second volume of letters, 1867-1868, was a pivotal one, encompassing what was, arguably, the crucial event in the life of Samuel L. Clemens: his participation in the Quaker City excursion. Reading the letters, I am struck that this participation is at least as important as Clemens's earlier decision to go west with his brother Orion shortly after the Civil War had begun or his later decision to finance the Paige typesetter and thus set in motion events that would eventually cause his bankruptcy. Not going on the cruise could have meant not writing his letters to the San Francisco Aha California, letters that established a somewhat notorious celebrity status on the east coast, created a launching pad for his success as a comic lecturer, and 198 biography Vol. 15, No. 2 brought an invitation from Elisha Bliss to write a book based on the Quaker City experiences , which became The Innocents Abroad. Not going on the cruise would have also meant not meeting Charlie Langdon and thus not meeting, subsequently, Charlie's sister, Olivia. Sam and Livy were married in February of 1870, the sales of The Innocents Abroad and the success of Mark Twain as a lecturing phenomenon providing Clemens the financial wherewithal. In short, the letters from this time period will immediately engage anyone interested in the career of Mark Twain. The marriage itself falls outside the bounds of this collection of letters, which breaks off with a letter written 31 December 1868 to Livy, one of many he wrote while...