The Portable Mark Twain (22 page)

We took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cinncinnati boat—either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it, the latter the western.

Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were “magnificent,” or that they were “floating palaces,”—terms which had always been applied to them; terms which did not over-express the admiration with which the people viewed them.

Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people's position was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not magnificent—he was right. The people compared them with what
they
had seen; and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent—the term was the correct one, it was not at all too strong. The people were as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer then anything on shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first class hotels in the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were “palaces.” To a few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they were not magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majority of those populations, and to the entire populations spread over both banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with the citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.

Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river-frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion,—the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with paling fence painted white—in fair repair; brick walk from gate to door; big, square, two-story “frame” house, painted white and porticoed like a Grecian temple—with this difference, that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door knob—discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen—in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany centre-table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade—standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of the house, and called a lampmat; several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them, Tupper, much pencilled; also, “Friendship's Offering,” and “Affection's Wreath,” with their sappy inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; “Alonzo and Melissa;” maybe “Ivanhoe;” also “Album,” full of original “poetry” of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed; two or three goody-goody works—”Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,” etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's “Lady's Book,” with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all alike—lips and eyelids the same size—each five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking from under her dress and letting-on to be half her foot. Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe passing through a board which closes up the discarded good old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural size, all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals—which they don't. Over middle of mantel, engraving—Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels by one of the young ladies—work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano—kettle in disguise—with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveller; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when we last met; Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o're that Brow a Shadow fling; Hours there were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence; A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it,
Ro
-holl on, silver
moo
-hoon, guide the
trav
-el-lerr his
way,
etc. Tilted pensively against the piano, a guitar—guitar capable of playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start. Frantic work of art on the wall—pious motto, done on the premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses: progenitor of the “God Bless Our Home” of modern commerce. Framed in black mouldings on the wall, other works of art, conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies; being grim black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice; name of criminal conspicuous in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, Trumbull's Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar. Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of the Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the family in oil: papa holding a book (“Constitution of the United States”); guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in slippers and scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who simpers back. These persons all fresh, raw, and red—apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out from a background of solid Egyptian night. Under a glass French clock dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers done in corpsy white wax. Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best effect; shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell—of the long-oval sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to end— portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done; the shell had Washington's mouth, originally—artist should have built to that. These two are memorials of the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the French Market. Other bric-a-brac: California “specimens”—quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains; three “alum” baskets of various colors—being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style—works of art which were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment—drops its under jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit—limbs and features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance—that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed—metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together—husband sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder—and both preserving, all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk “Now smile, if you please!” Bracketed over what-not—place of special sacredness—an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died. Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in time. Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding from under you. Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maids and ruined castles stencilled on them in fierce colors. Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the “corded” sort, with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed—not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly—but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no visitor likely to come along who has ever seen one.

That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way from the suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis.

Mark Twain began writing
Huckleberry Finn
sometime in July, 1876; he would not finish the book until seven years later. Though he may have worked on the manuscript intermittently throughout this period, the novel was written in three principal stints of composition. That first burst of composition in 1876 took Huck to the point in Chapter 18 where Huck asks Buck Grangerford, “What's a feud?” For whatever reasons, Twain pigeonholed the manuscript and did no significant writing on it until sometime in late 1879 or early 1880. At that time, he resumed the story where he had left off, with the Grangerford- Sheperdson feud, and developed his story to the end of Chapter 21 when the mob is resolved to lynch Colonel Sherburn for the murder of Boggs. The final stint of composition occurred June- September 1883. He resumed the confrontation between Sherburn and the town, though contrary to expectation Sherburn faces down his adversaries, and in an energetic burst of composition Twain brought the book to its narrative conclusion. During this final phase of the composition, he also interpolated into the novel the
Walter Scott
episode and the argument between Huck and Jim about “King Sollermun” (Chapters 12½-14 from that point in Chapter 12 where Huck and Jim spot the grounded riverboat, the
Walter Scott,
through to the end of Chapter 14).

Quite apart from the segmented course of composition, apparently there were also significant shifts in interest and authorial intention during these seven years. When he began the book, Twain's initial interest was one of idle amusement, though the episodes increase in seriousness and satirical significance soon enough. When he is first introduced, the slave Jim does not seem destined to play an important role in the story, but by Chapter 11, the fortunes of Huck and Jim are sufficiently linked for Huck to return to Jackson's Island, after learning that there is a $300 reward for Jim's capture, and to shout, “There ain't a minute to lose. They're after us.” Of course, “they” are not after Huck at all, for it is generally supposed that he has been murdered, perhaps by Jim himself. The picture of Huck and Jim floating down the Mississippi River on a raft has become a familiar image of idle and peaceful drift, but that raft was launched into the river on a note of fearful urgency.

From then on, if not before, Twain began to see proliferating comic and satiric opportunities. He could survey the manner of life along the river and describe it as would be perceived by a slightly quizzical, slightly perplexed, and wholly literal-minded boy and told in his distinctive voice. Twain's hatred of aristocratic privilege, his distrust of the mob, his suspiciousness of con men and hucksters and his mocking amusement of those gullible enough to be their prey, all of these mature convictions might be expressed effectively by having Huck describe a world in which these things disturb but do not outrage him. Because Huck does not quite understand the sloth, sentimentality, double-dealing, boastfulness, or cruelty he sees, he is, almost by definition, a satirical device. In order to dramatically satirize the object of his contempt, all Twain had to do was to have Huck try to admire it, as in his failed attempts to admire Emmeline Grangerford's poetry and drawings. But Huck's perceptions can also be refreshingly new and alive. In order to recapture the flavor of river talk, the beauty of sunrise on the river, or the majestically innocent speculations on the origins of stars, Twain has Huck report it, without judgment or explanation and without any attempt at rhetorical effect. In order to make his readers feel the force of the shamefulness of slavery, Twain has Huck, who is after all a mere boy, agonize over his moral predicament of helping Jim to freedom. In a word, by resolving to tell an extended narrative from Huckleberry Finn's point of view, Twain automatically created a multitude of imaginative possibilities, though he would necessarily have to develop the stylistic and technical means to develop them. He did this through painstaking revision and by setting aside his temptation to speak through Huck, so that an unlettered, unsophisticated boy might speak plainly and for himself. This required more artistic restraint than the opinionated Twain was accustomed to, but he rose to the challenge.

In the last phase of composition, however, Twain approached his material with mixed motives. He had acquired his own publishing house, and issuing
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
would be a commercial as well as an artistic venture. He seems to have written those concluding chapters with an eye toward a popular readership who had certain established expectations of a literary comedian. In any event, many regret the reappearance of Tom Sawyer at the Phelps farm and have found the last chapters to contain altogether too much burlesque and too little serious moral reflection. And the character of Jim, who had become in the middle chapters a fully developed human being, dignified, sympathetic, and intelligent, appears in the end to be cast in the role of a comic figure, and not much more. Perhaps Hemingway was right in saying that the concluding chapters were just plain “cheating.” That is a question individual readers will decide. It is more certain, however, that, even if there is a falling off at the end, Twain had created in
Huckleberry Finn
something quite distinctive and memorable.