



Produced by David Widger





                               MARK TWAIN

                         By Archibald Henderson

                With Photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn




                    "Haply--who knows?--somewhere
                    In Avalon, Isle of Dreams,
                    In vast contentment at last,
                    With every grief done away,
                    While Chaucer and Shakespeare wait,
                    And Moliere hangs on his words,
                    And Cervantes not far off
                    Listens and smiles apart,
                    With that incomparable drawl
                    He is jesting with Dagonet now."

                                        BLISS CARMAN.




                                 PREFACE

There are to-day, all over the world, men and women and children who owe
a debt of almost personal gratitude to Mark Twain for the joy of his
humour and the charm of his personality.  In the future they will, I
doubt not, seek and welcome opportunities to acknowledge that debt.  My
own experience with the works of Mark Twain is in no sense exceptional.
From the days of early childhood, my feeling for Mark Twain, derived
first solely from acquaintance with his works, was a feeling of warm
and, as it were, personal affection.  With limitless interest and
curiosity, I used to hear the Uncle Remus stories from the lips of one
of our old family servants, a <DW64> to whom I was devotedly attached.
These stories were narrated to me in the <DW64> dialect with such perfect
naturalness and racial gusto that I often secretly wondered if the
narrator were not Uncle Remus himself in disguise.  I was thus cunningly
prepared, "coached" shall I say, for the maturer charms of Tom Sawyer
and Huckleberry Finn.  With Uncle Remus and Mark Twain as my preceptors,
I spent the days of my youth--excitedly alternating, spell-bound,
between the inexhaustible attractions of Tom, Huck, Jim, Indian Joe, the
Duke and the Dauphin, and their compeers on the one hand; and Brer
Rabbit, Sis Cow, and a thousand other fantastic, but very real creatures
of the animal kingdom on the other.

I felt a strange sort of camaraderie, of personal attachment, for Mark
Twain during all the years before I came into personal contact with him.
It was the dictum of a distinguished English critic, to the effect that
Huckleberry Finn was a literary masterpiece, which first awoke in me,
then a mere boy, a genuine respect for literary criticism; for here was
expressed an opinion which I had long secretly cherished, but somehow
never dared to utter!

My personal association with Mr. Clemens, comparatively brief though it
was--an ocean voyage, meetings here and there, a brief stay as a guest
in his home--gave me at last the justification for paying the debt
which, with the years, had grown greater and more insistently
obligatory.  I felt both relief and pleasure when he authorized me to
pay that debt by writing an interpretation of his life and work.

It is an appreciation originating in the heart of one who loved Mark
Twain's works for a generation before he ever met Samuel L. Clemens.  It
is an interpretation springing from the conviction that Mark Twain was a
great American who comprehensively incorporated and realized his own
country and his own age as no American has so completely done before
him; a supreme humorist who ever wore the panache of youth, gaiety, and
bonhomie; a brilliant wit who never dipped his darts in the poison of
cynicism, misanthropy, or despair; constitutionally a reformer who,
heedless of self, boldly struck for the right as he saw it; a
philosopher and sociologist who intuitively understood the secret
springs of human motive and impulse, and empirically demonstrated that
intuition in works which crossed frontiers, survived translation, and
went straight to the human, beneath the disguise of the racial; a genius
who lived to know and enjoy the happy rewards of his own fame; a great
man who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

                                        ARCHIBALD HENDERSON.

LONDON,
August 5, 1910.


NOTE.--The author esteems himself in the highest degree fortunate in
having the co-operation of Mr. Alvin Langdon Coburn.  All the
illustrations, both autochrome and monochrome, are the work of Mr.
Coburn.




                                 CONTENTS

PREFACE

I.   INTRODUCTORY
II.  THE MAN
III. THE HUMORIST
IV.  WORLD-FAMED GENIUS
V.   PHILOSOPHER, MORALIST, SOCIOLOGIST




     "I've a theory that every author, while living, has a projection of
     himself, a sort of eidolon, that goes about in near and distant
     places, and makes friends and enemies for him out of folk who never
     knew him in the flesh.  When the author dies, this phantom fades
     away, not caring to continue business at the old stand.  Then the
     dead writer lives only in the impression made by his literature;
     this impression may grow sharper or fainter according to the
     fashions and new conditions of the time."

     Letter