Uninteresting Lives? The Faith of Mark Twain

Transcription

1 Uninteresting Lives? The Faith of Mark Twain September 25, 2011 Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist Readings (1) It was February 6, 1870, and Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is writing to My First & Oldest & Dearest Friend Will Bowen. At one point he shifts from memoires of long ago events and is, he says, brought violently back unto this day & this generation. For behold I have at this moment the only sweetheart I ever loved, & bless her old heart she is lying asleep upstairs in a bed that I sleep in every night, & for four whole days she has been Mrs. Samuel L. Clemens! I am 34 & she is 24; I am young & very handsome (I make the statement with the fullest confidence, for I got it from her,) & she is much the most beautiful girl I ever saw (I said that before she was anything to me, & so it is worthy of all belief) & she is the best girl, & the sweetest, & the gentlest, & the daintiest, & the most modest & unpretentious, & the wisest in all things she should be wise in & the most ignorant in all matters it would not grace her to know, & she is sensible & quick, & loving & faithful, forgiving, full of charity & her beautiful life is ordered by a religion that is all kindliness & unselfishness. Before the gentle majesty of her purity all evil things & evil ways & evil deeds stand abashed, then surrender. Wherefore without effort, or struggle, or spoken exorcism, all the old vices & shameful habits that have possessed me these many many years, are falling away, one by one, & departing into the darkness. She is the very most perfect gem of womankind that ever I saw in my life & I will stand by that remark till I die. 1 (2) On August 9, 1876, he is writing to distinguished critic, author and friend William Dean Howells. 2 [I] began another boys book more to be at work than anything else. I have written 400 pages on it therefore it is very nearly half done. It is Huck Finn s Autobiography. I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have got, & may possibly pigeon-hole or burn the MS when it is done. 1

2 Huck Finn was published eight years later in 1884, sold an astonishing 50,000 copies in two months, and is an enduring classic. (3) Olivia (Livy), Clemens wife died in 1904, after 34 years of devotion to each other. Five years later, on Christmas Eve, his daughter Jean, age 29, died of heart failure after an epileptic seizure, a condition that had long afflicted her. He writes to confront and share his grief. This excerpt is from a journal entry that he chose for the concluding chapter of his posthumously published autobiography: 3 It is true. Jean is dead. A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines yet to appear, and now I am writing this. CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON. --Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals, and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this one--jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one. And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovely miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before. About three in the morning... [I was] wandering about the house in the deep silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be sought. Uninteresting Lives? The Faith of Mark Twain There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy. "The Refuge of the Derelicts" 1905 Just over a hundred years ago, May of 1909, our Minister Emeritus was Robert Collyer, and he officiated at the funeral of Henry Huttleston Rogers, who was an executive of Standard Oil. Rogers was one of the so-called Robber Barons of that Guilded Age of monopolies and excesses of American capitalism, never indicted and with a fortune of perhaps $1/2 billion. He was a member of our church, and Mark Twain 2

3 was a pallbearer that day. Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was one of the most famous men in the world at that time, because of his writing and lecturing, Twain and Rogers were good friends. Critics of the industrialist and those like him would argue that Rogers money certainly had to be tainted in some manner. As the story goes, Mark Twain agreed. While strolling one day down Union Street in New Bedford, Massachusetts (next door to Fairhaven, Rogers home town), Twain was accosted by a Whaling City dowager. "Mr. Clemens," she began earnestly, "how can you be so friendly with a man like Mr. Rogers, whose money is tainted?" "Right, madam," Clemens responded at once. "'Taint yours and 'taint mine." 4 For me, Mark Twain s wit is imprinted upon me and others in many ways, and one iconic image I carry is that of Tom Sawyer white-washing a fence as Aunt Polly s punishment for some misdeed. Tom somehow convinces his friends that it is the most fun thing he has ever done, and soon he has enlisted all of them to do his work, no doubt with a grin on his face. Each of the other boys ends up buying a turn painting the fence, while giving up treasures like marbles, firecrackers, and the like. Or perhaps you recall his comment when a cousin in London was extremely ill, and reporters mistakenly thought that Mark Twain himself had died. He responded saying, The reports of my death are an exaggeration. This morning my theme is the healing grace of laughter in a fragile and heartbreaking world, the balm of humor, and the power of satire to unveil injustice The theme is that in life s drama, its comedy and tragedy, something sacred appears because we are characters in a story of hope and courage. Like Mark Twain, all of us, we write our own scripts out of the circumstances given us. Some are not writ large, but there are no uninteresting lives. Theologically, in this installment of Spiritual Growth through Biography, this-worldly salvation is ours to create. Again I celebrate the blessing of cor ad cor loquitur which is Latin for heart speaking to heart. Mark Twain s Samuel Clemens s faith like so many is bittersweet, and I now realize quite Buddhist, which I shall come to in a bit. In My Own Autobiography, Clemens emphasizes what he calls the side excursions of ordinary events, which are the life of our life-voyage, rather than a strict chronology. In that spirit, I note that Mark Twain beginning in 1901 was Vice President of the American Anti Imperialist League until his death in Although he had supported the Spanish American War of 1898, he changed his mind when it came to the Philippine American War of In the New York Herald on October 15, 1900, he wrote 3

4 I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. Writer Ambrose Bierce at the time defined War as God s way of teaching us geography. Mark Twain designed a new flag for the nation, featuring little skulls in place of stars. General Frederick Funston, a Medal of Honor winner, suggested Twain ought to be hanged for treason. 5 From time to time, I have quoted from Mark Twain s War Prayer from 1905, which in part reads, O Lord, our Father, [as] our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle be thou near them!... help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire... [It goes on about creating widows and orphans and continues] blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage... We ask it, in the spirit of love... with humble and contrite hearts. Mark Twain s politics also included speaking out against lynching of blacks (he spoke of the United States of Lyncherdom), defending Walt Whitman against charges of writing pornography, opposing censorship (such as he suffered at times for Huckleberry Finn and Eve s Diary), and arguing for improved copyright laws. One can imagine in our time, he would have protested the savagery and inequities of capital punishment so sickening and saddening this past week with the death of Troy Davis and so many others. In considering Mark Twain s faith, his attitude toward Christianity reflects his penchant for satire and critique. In his The Mysterious Stranger published six years after his death, he gives voice to Satan, who reports It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years, five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of in its grand achievement of killing people. 6 4

5 For the first time, as he had arranged, all his writings intended for his autobiography were published last year, including these words he instructed to be held back for 100 years. There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is in our country, particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt. 7 At the same time, he was nominally still a Presbyterian, who sometimes went to Congregationalist churches. He via Satan in The Mysterious Stranger also argues that we are sheep, ever ready to give up our liberties for conformity, to follow the crowd. He adds, The vast majority whether savage or civilized, are secretly kindhearted and shrink from inflicting pain 8 yet can be swayed by a minority. And pushing further, Satan reports that it is clear enough that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination for a sane man sees what a fearful thing life is. 9 To be sure, his sarcasm is aimed at challenging us to engage our better selves, and before moving toward his latent Buddhism and affirming faith, I do want to turn to a few of the details of Mark Twain s life, for a bit of context for his life of drama, comedy and tragedy. Samuel Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri in 1835, and moved 35 miles east to Hannibal, along the Mississippi at age 4. His father, a lawyer, then a judge, died of pneumonia when he was 11, and the boy apprenticed himself to a typesetter. This craft took him to New York by age18 as a printer. He educated himself in the public and union libraries. At age 22, he returned to Missouri where he became a master riverboat pilot after two years of study of the 2000 miles of the Mississippi. He then joined his older brother out west for a period with adventures in silver mining, newspaper work, and eventually short story writing by the age of 30. Samuel Clemens wrote in 1865 to his brother, I never had but two powerful ambitions in my life. One was to be a pilot, & the other a preacher of the gospel. I accomplished the one & failed in the other, because I could not supply myself with the necessary stock in trade i.e. religion. I have given it up forever. I never had a call in that 5

6 direction, anyhow, & my aspirations were the very ecstasy of presumption. But I have had a call to [literature], of a low order i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit. 10 It was that same year, at age 30, that he found national success with his story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," published in a New York weekly, The Saturday Press. With magazine funding, he traveled widely and his reports were well received, providing as well a foundation for his first lectures. Upon returning to the United States, Twain [then 33] was offered honorary membership in the secret society Scroll and Key of Yale University in Its devotion to fellowship, moral and literary self-improvement, and charity suited him well. (Wikipedia) His lectures and his writing of humorous tales, travel pieces, essays, short stories and then novels like the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court, and so many others made him world famous and wealthy. However in the 1890s, he went bankrupt because of massive losses on investments in a new method of printing and some of his efforts in publishing. A European lecture completed in 1900 restored him to considerable wealth. A friend had introduced him to a sister, Olivia Langdon, and they married in 1870, first living in Buffalo and then making Hartford, CT their home. As we saw in the reading, his devotion to his wife was complete, and their children were central to his life. His son died at age 19 months from diphtheria, and Sam Clemens felt he was at fault for having taken the young boy in a carriage ride while careless in keeping him safe from winter chill. In his later years, he suffered many losses: his favorite daughter Susy died in 1896 from meningitis, his wife in 1904, followed shortly by the death of his sister and then the death of his friend Henry Rogers in the spring of 1909, followed by another daughter s death in 1909 from an epileptic seizure. Among his awards, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford University in In 1909, Twain reportedly said, I came in with Halley's Comet in It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together. (Wikipedia) In 1910, the day after the comet s closest approach to the Earth, he died of a heart attack, age 74. His grave is in Elmira, NY, where his family summered for more than 20 years. 6

7 Twain s Faith For all his caustic comments about human nature and organized religion, Mark Twain kept his faith in the human conscience, the radiance of moral dignity, which we see in a scene in Huckleberry Finn. Perhaps you recall when Huck has decided that he must betray the whereabouts of his friend, Jim, a runaway slave. If he does not tell Miss Watson where Jim is, Huck is convinced that he shall go to hell, such is the plain hand of Providence. It was his duty to do so. Having written the letter to Miss Watson, Huck feels all washed clean of sin. For the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and [he says] I knowed I could pray now. He reflects upon his new state of being, and how it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell for keeping Jim s hiding place a secret. But then Huck began to think about Jim and the rush of the river and the talking and the singing, the laughing, the friendship. Then I happened to look around and see that [betraying] paper I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling because I d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath and then says to myself: All right, then, I ll go to hell and tore it up. The God of justice and the God of love or at least the summons to do justice, love kindness and to walk humbly these for Twain trump and triumph over that very strange vengeful, bigoted God of our culture that Huck in his heart and soul knew must be resisted. The Buddhist part? From Samuel Clemens deep suffering and sadness, the first Noble Truth that the world includes suffering, pain, and loss was deeply a part of him. The losses included his father s death when he was 11, early deaths of three out of four of his children, financial reversals, and anger at social hypocrisy, racism and war-mongering. Like the Buddha, who spoke of our ego attachments as the Second Noble Truth, Twain knew of false gods, ego of others and himself, his own showmanship, and attachment to money. He also discerned there are ways to let go the Third Noble Truth and have appreciative awareness mindfulness and compassion. One of his primary steps, not so much the Eight-fold path of the Buddha, was the gift of laughter. In the acerbic The Mysterious Stranger, Satan concludes, For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution these can lift at a colossal humbug, --push it a little crowd it a little 7

8 weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. 11 He who laughs, lasts A piercing, healing proverb. We who laugh, endure. Homer among the ancient Greeks in the Iliad speaks of unquenchable laughter, the laughter of the gods. Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, invites us into its blessing of irony, satire, knowing smiles, belly laughs, and joy in all its gazillion varieties. With Mark Twain, it seems so true, what we know of ourselves and others: There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy. We too write our stories amid heartaches and wonder as characters profoundly interesting characters in a story of courage and hope. And beyond humor, laughter, and awareness of life s mystery, Mark Twain gave us his passion, his zest for authenticity, and his insights to challenge and to bless us. Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain has the final words this day: Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great. Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't. The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession. Comedy keeps the heart sweet. A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first. It is in the heart that the values lie. Finally, from Eve s Diary published in 1905, and banned in Charlton, Massachusetts in 1906 for some rather tame drawings: Some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing; no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. And it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. If there wasn't 8

9 anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out You have to be patient and go on experimenting I wish I could make [you] understand that a loving heart is riches, and riches enough. ** Now, isn't imagination a precious thing? It peoples the earth with all manner of wonders, strange beasts and birds, angels, cherubim and seraphim. And it has to be exercised. No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful. What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. 1 Mark Twain s Own Autobiography, 2 nd edition, University of Wisconsin Press, 2010, Autobiography, Autobiography, Henry Huttleston Rogers, ( ), An evaluation on the 150th Anniversary of his Birth by Earl J. Dias, The Millicent Library Fairhaven, Historical Series 5 Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors, p The Mysterious Signet Classic, 1962, PBS News Hour (July 7, 2010). "Mark Twain's Autobiography Set for Unveiling, a Century After His Death". dec10/twain_07 07.html. 8 Stranger, Stranger, Autobiography, Stranger,