Between the birth of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his trimphant success as a writer, the path was long and crooked. A seven-months child, Sam was born in the tiny hamlet of Florida, Missouri—population one hundred—on November 30, 1835. His family had arrived there from Tennessee only six months before. Two years later the Clemenses moved thirty-five miles northeast to Hannibal, the Mississippi River town now celebrated for its famous son. The connections between the town and the writer are especially close because the author was to draw on his childhood experiences again and again in his most enduring works, in both fiction, especially Tom Sawyer, and in some of the best passages of his mostly factual autobiography. He especially celebrated summers at his Uncle Quarles’s farm.
He was just sixteen when he first described Hannibal in the Philadelphia American Courier. “This town is situated on the Mississippi river, about one hundred and thirty miles above St. Louis, and contains a population of about three thousand…. Among the curiosities of this place we may mention the Cave, which is about three miles below the city. It is of unknown length; it has innumerable passages, which are not unlike the streets of a large city.”1 This cave, Hannibal’s steep hill, the steamboats (over a thousand arrived each year), the islands in the river, his uncle’s farm not far from Florida—Mark Twain would utilize all of these in memorable scenes within the American literary landscape.
Of his boyhood summers he was to recall in “Early Days” (1897–98):
I spent some part of every year at the farm until I was twelve or thirteen years old. The life which I led there with my cousins was full of charm, and so is the memory of it yet. I can call back the solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flowers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the far-off hammering of woodpeckers and the muffled drumming of wood pheasants in the remoteness of the forest, the snapshot glimpses of disturbed wild creatures scurrying through the grass—I can call it all back and make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed.2
For several pages he conjured up the sights, tastes, touches, sounds, and smells of his past. Sentence after sentence begins hypnotically “I know how” and “I know” and “I can remember.”
Sam’s father, John M. Clemens, justice of the peace, carried the title of Judge Clemens. He was described in the St. Louis Republican as
a stern, unbending man of splendid common sense … the autocrat of the little dingy room on Bird Street where he held his court. … Its furniture consisted of a dry-good box which served the double purpose of a desk for the Judge and table for the lawyers, three or four rude stools and a puncheon for the jury. And here on court days when the Judge climbed upon his three-legged stool, rapped on the box with his knuckles and demanded, “Silence in the court” it was fully expected that silence would reign supreme.3
Like Judge Driscoll in Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, he was “very proud of his Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners he kept up its traditions”; he was “a free-thinker” (chap. 1). Judge Clemens was a man of dignity with a good standing in the community, but at his death in 1847 he left his family very little. He had supposed that riches might be found in the thousands of acres in Tennessee he had purchased in the 1820s and 1830s, and for years members of his family imagined that this land speculation was to make them rich. They were, however, mistaken.4
Sam’s mother was no doubt a stronger influence on the writer-to-be. (Much later he assumed considerable responsibility for his mother’s financial well-being until her death in 1890.) Jane Lampton Clemens saw to it that young Sam went to Sunday school, first at the Methodist church and later at the Presbyterian church that she had joined. Subsequently, the writer was to recall his Sunday school experiences when he wrote Tom Sawyer.
The author’s affectionate description of his mother is much lengthier and more emotional than that of his father. Among the characteristics he described, two may be mentioned.
She had a slender small body, but a large heart; a heart so large that everybody’s griefs and everybody’s joys found welcome in its hospitable accommodation. The greatest difference which I find between her and the rest of the people I have known, is this, and it is a remarkable one: those others felt a strong interest in a few things, whereas to the very day of her death [at age eighty-seven] she felt a strong interest in the whole world and everything and everybody in it…. When her pity or her indignation was stirred by hurt or shame inflicted upon some defenceless person or creature, she was the most eloquent person I have heard speak. It was seldom eloquence of a fiery or violent sort, but gentle, pitying, persuasive, appealing; and so genuine and so nobly and simply worded and so touchingly uttered, that many times I have seen it win the reluctant and splendid applause of tears.5
Clearly, Sam’s lifelong humanitarianism owed a debt to his mother.
Sam was a troublesome child, plagued by illnesses. In 1882 he wrote, “During the first seven years of my life I had no health—I may almost say that I lived on allopathic medicines.”6 His behavior was often eccentric, and he had a tendency to wander away from home. His formal education (soon to be interrupted) was such as a small town could offer. He himself referred to it dismissively in the early 1870s: “Attended the ordinary western common school in Hannibal, Mo., from the age of 5 till near the age of 13. That’s all the schooling—if playing hookey & getting licked for it may be called by that name.”7 Of necessity his later education was picked up elsewhere than in schools. As a boy he read adventure stories of pirates and knights in the heroic fiction and poetry of such authors as Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and James Fenimore Cooper. Had he not chosen initially to think of these writers as exemplary, he would not have become the highly original writer that in time he became. He was always a reader, though he usually chose to present himself as far from being bookish.
Sam was only eleven years old when his father died in 1847. Already poor, the Clemens family now became almost destitute. Before 1849, when his schooling came to a close, Sam undertook part-time work that would lead to a career. After serving as delivery and office boy, he became a printer’s apprentice for the hometown newspaper, the Hannibal Courier. He was following in the footsteps of his brother Orion, nearly six years his elder, who had become an apprentice in 1839. Twenty years later Sam Clemens wrote, “Education continued in the offices of the Hannibal ‘Courier’ & the ‘Journal,’ as an apprenticed printer.”8 Sam served in all capacities, including staff work. The Courier’s makeshift library introduced him to humorous publications such as The Spirit of the Times, regularly drawn on for “fillers.” In early 1851, having completed his apprenticeship, Sam went to work for Orion as a journeyman printer on the Hannibal Western Union.
Even before this time, Sam had published “A Gallant Fireman” in the Western Union for January 16. Soon he was showing incipient signs of genuine literary ambition. On May 1, 1852, a Boston comic weekly, The Carpet-Bag, published his short sketch entitled “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter.” Although the piece is not in itself striking (it resembles a sketch that its author may well have read in the Hannibal Courier of 1850, “Doin’ a Dandy”), it is notable that this short sketch appeared in remote Boston. It was signed “S.L.C.” Sixty years later, the writer would say of this sketch and of his description of Hannibal published the same year, “Seeing them in print was a joy which rather exceeded anything in that line I have ever experienced since.”9
His Boston publisher was B. P. Shillaber, creator of Mrs. Partington, a character who was later to influence the creation of Tom
