Bridgewater Review

Volume 4 | Issue 3 Article 6

Jan-1987 Mark Twain's Roughing It: A Humorist's Darker Side Joseph Yokelson Bridgewater State College

Recommended Citation Yokelson, Joseph (1987). Mark Twain's Roughing It: A Humorist's Darker Side. Bridgewater Review, 4(3), 7-10. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol4/iss3/6

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Mark Twain's Roughing It: A Humorist's Darker Side

Joseph YokeIson

oughing It was based rather ruary 1872 -- was for Twain one of gust, 1870, shortly after Twain signed roughly on a period of Twain's protracted crisis. the contract for Roughing It, Jarvis Rlife that began in 1861, when There was, first of all, a national Langdon died, and Olivia, worn down Twain went west with his brother crisis. The country was fully embarked by the nursing, collapsed and herself Orion: Orion had been appointed Sec­ on that profit-crazed and corruption­ needed constantcare. On top ofthis, in retary ofthe Nevada territory with the marked era that Twain was soon to September, Olivia's friend Emma Nye help of friend who had a friend in stigmatize in his first novel as "The came for a visit, contracted typhoid, Lincoln's new cabinet. Twain had just Gilded Age." Twain thought, like even and died in the couple's bed. More faded quietly out of the Confederate the optimistic Whitman, that democra­ than thirty years later, Twain was to army after suffering from boils and a cy was a failure. Second, there was a describe the days before Emma's death sprained ankle and never firing a shot. personal crisis. Just about the time as "among the blackest, the gloomiest, For a while out west, Twain prospected Twain began to think ofmaking a book the most wretched of my long life." for silver around Virginia City; then of his adventures in Nevada and Cali­ Nor was this the end. Shortly after for about two years he was a reporter fornia, he married Olivia Langdon, the Emma's death, Olivia had a near mis­ for the Virginia City Territorial Enter­ daughter of a wealthy coal-dealer in carriage and on November 7 she gave prise. In 1864 he drifted on to San Buffalo. This is not to say that marriage birth to a premature, sickly child who Francisco, where he was a reporter and is a crisis in a negative sense, but that it was not expected to survive but who a free-lance writer. In 1866 he was sent must have been for Twain is clear when held on, to die several months after the to the Hawaiian Islands by the Sacra­ we learn that Jarvis Langdon, his fa­ publication of Twain's book. Twain mento Union. The period covered by ther-in-law, offered the former steam­ wrote Orion: "I am sitting still with idle the book ends with his return to San boat-pilot, prospector, and journalist hands -- Livy is very sick and I do not Francisco, his first success as a lecturer, ten thousand dollars if he would stop believe the baby will live five days." and his boarding ship for the voyage drinking ale and smoking. Then fol­ Even when Twain started making good that was to take him to New York and lowed a series of disasters. Just when progress on his book the following his career as one of America's most Twain planned to get down to the spring, there were times when he famous writers. writing ofhis book, Jarvis Langdon was thought he was hearing "a popular The stretch between the inception found to have stomach cancer, and author's death rattle" [his own] -- a and the publishing of Roughing It -­ Twain and his frail wife personally feeling certainly added to by the sud­ from the beginning of 1870 to Feb- nursed him around-the-clock. In Au- den immense popularity of Bret Harte,

7 Mark Twain continued

a competitor in wrltmg about the It is time for examples. I would like been out-group victims of the estab~ West, who threatened to eclipse Twain to suggest that in spite ofthe narrator's lished religious society ofthe East. But by his sentimental depiction ofprospec~ exhilaration at the start of the book, the Mormons, now installed in Utah, tors and prostitutes. These personal pessimistic implications appear as early have in their turn, Twain finds, shown misfortunes provide an essential back~ as Twain's account of the career of a the same proneness to intolerance and ground for Roughing It, for although desperado named Slade, who has killed crude exertion of force in the name of the novel is generally read as the work twenty-six people and is talked about true religion demonstrated originally of a comic writer, it has a darkly everywhere. At one stage~station the by the establishment they fled. Once pessimistic side. narrator finds himself seated at the again the problem of the springs of It seems to me that Twain's con~ same table with Slade, who "gentleman­ human behavior presents itself to scious, clear intention in Roughing It ly~appearing, quiet, and affable," po~ Twain and he backs off. His sympathy was to debunk the values, including the litely presses the remaining coffee on for the out~group warring with his religious ones, of respectable ~~ read him. Hearing three years later that aversion, he resorts to potshots against eastern ~~ society and to explore the Slade begged for mercy at his excution, the Book of Mormon and Brigham values that arise in the choas offrontier the narrator indulges in perhaps the Young, making merry with the idea conditions. To realize his intention most complex and serious speculation that Young is being bankrupted by Twain creates a narrator who is looking in the book. Although Slade, a true having to give equal favors to all of his back at his initiation into the life ofthe desperado, was "a man of peerless wives. West. Much of the wonderful humor bravery," he would take "infamous Twain's prose is cliched and porten~ ofthe book comes from the successive advantage ofhis enemy" and at the end tous when he describes the mountains discomfitures of the initiate until he cried "under the gallows." Thus one he has come through on the way to wises up and learns to deal with his new could not say that "moral" courage Utah: they are "a convention of Na~ world. was the source of his bravery. ture's kings" or "Sultans ... turbaned Or at least that is the direction the Then, if moral courage is not the with tumbled volumes of cloud." But book should have gone in -- towards a requisite quality, what could it an alkali desert 100 miles west of Salt happy positive resolution. But while have been that this stout~hearted Lake evokes some ofhis finest descrip~ the narrator has become a successful Slade lacked? -- this bloody, des~ tive writing, oddly capped offby verbal lecturer in the last two chapters, his perate, kindly~mannered,urbane foolery: contact with the West and with charac~ gentleman, who never hesitated Imagine a vast, waveless ocean ters who live apart from the conven~ to warn his most ruffianly ene~ stricken dead and turned to tional culture ofthe East has provided mies that he would kill them ashes; imagine this solemn waste him with no code as an effective alter­ whenever or wherever he came tufted with ash~dusted sage~ native to that of eastern culture. There across them next! I think it is a bushes ... imagine team, driver, is much ~~ and it came as a surprise to conundrum worth investigation. coach, and passengers so deeply me as I read the book -- connected with Twain never does investigate -- per- coated with ashes that they are all the narrator's failure to find a code ~~ to haps because he cannot face the one colorless color.... The sun find, as it were, solid ground: haunting thought that if Slade is not moved by beats down with dead, blistering, episodes and images, some on the moral courage, which implies free selec­ relentless malignity; ... there is surface comic, which suggest that dur~ tion of right from wrong, he is a not the faintest breath of air ing Twain's stay in the West deeply mechanism operating according to stirring; ... there is not a living troubling symbols ofthe dark nature of some mechanical law. creature visible in any direction life were sown in his mind -- symbols Now the narrator reaches the Mor­ whither one searches the blank that were to reappear as expressions, mon country in Utah, and Twain is as level that stretches its monoto~ perhaps, of the ordeal he was going puzzled by the Mormons as he was by nous miles on every hand; there through while writing the book. W.O. Slade and possibly for the same reason. is not a sound ~~ not a sigh -~ not a Howells, who was to become Twain's The Mormons irritate and intrigue whisper. best literary friend but had known him him. In five chapters and two appen­ Arrived at the next station, the narra­ only for a short time when Roughing It dices he discusses their history, their tor is hard put to describe his reliefand appeared, had this insight into the control of Utah, their supposedly po­ the tiredness of the mules: book's symbolism: "All existence lygamous leader Brigham Young, and To try to give the reader an there [in the West] must have looked the Book ofMormon. The appendices idea of how thirsty they were, like an extravagant joke, the humor of -- strangely split ~~ recount both the would be to "gild refined gold or which was deepened by its nether-side persecution of the Mormons which paint the lily." of tragedy." Interestingly, many of finally drove them to the untenanted Somehow, now that it is there, Twain's gag~lines appear within or just West, and a massacre supposedly com~ the quotation does not seem to after some of the darker symbolic mitted by the Mormons against a fit -- but no matter, let it stay, passages, as if he were trying to reject wagon~train of "gentiles." Clearly anyhow. I think it is a graceful some deeply troubling knowledge. Twain sees the Mormons as having and attractive thing and therefore

8 ~A New Book by a Well Known Author.

have tried time and time again to MARK Tn' AIN. work it in where it would fit, but could not succeed ... it seems to IBOWDIO BOW' .. JtECORD me best to leave it in ... since this ... lORE. NONTal or VARIED will afford at least a temporary PLElBUIE TUP EIPEIlIEIICEB respite from the wear and tear of w,f! K.l:TOD&D TO or TilE trying to "lead up" to this really J. TEAM or ..("Tllon apt and beautiful quotation. IE"'E" r •••I, I:'" Twain is having his fun with the &XD TBB l'ARWnl P<"!ITJQSI learned prose of the estabishment, no CAt'SE! TDEaEFO.; or LIFE, ""1111.& E.~-nOt·TC doubt, but certainly the joking repre­ WITH .. aI:L.lTIO" or ...."'T FRO" TIUT sents a retreat -- a "respite" -- from the llOYD or A picture ofthe universe suggested by the IVlIOIOVI alkali desert -- a picture like Melville's &~n l!'ltyftUCTln:. nlll:~ ClnZIN. of"the heartless voids and immensities TO rR.\T or of the universe" that stab us "from CO~OCt:ctED WITH A )IILLlO~.l.InE behind with the thought of anni­ TR £ ED..:JC.l.TJO'; hilation." 0' AM BACK TO illS After the narrator reaches Carson I!lNOCi.II1:I:. OltIGISAI. ('OSDnIO~ City, some fifteen chapters deal with the "silver fever" that infects him and others. Everyone is in the "grip" -­ Hundreds of Characteristio Engravings rushing about staking claims, deceiving EXECl"T£11 BT 50:\lE' OF TilE himself or others about the richness of his "vein." Monomania or automatism BEST ARTISTS IN THE LAND seems to abound: a Swede is forever ADD INTEREST TO THE TEXT. singing the same song, a character '01: voLnu: "'ILL coslun o' named "Arkansaw" is always drunk and looking for a fight. Things con­ Nearly 800 Ootavo Pages. nected with or around the characters .&sD WILL R. ..U.U" TO oo,,"unc MOT O~LY IIUTTU or All " ..nlliG en,nAnn, at:'T f'O .& .. TALU.&8LI: .lSD CORIlSC'r III~OItT n .. .aM I~TE~!lF.LT 1!\o"Tla~Tll'O ":llIOD, are in equally crazy motion: the narra­ wlnr LWDlC1t.O't"1 DI'.ecaI"IO~~ or IW[~E11 ~!"Ir:a liroat. lralnE!'f ,[,Po tor is duped into buying a Mexican horse that bucks too outrageously to be ridden; a flood occurring in perfect­ Elisha Bliss's prepublication advertising circular ly clear weather isolates him, along N.... Vorl< Public Libluy with the Swede and Arkansaw, in a hotel whose outbuildings melt down exists in the waters except "a white When their canteen water turns brack­ "like sugar" in the rushing waters. feathery sort ofworm, one-halfan inch ish, they search the island for a spring At the end of the sequence the long, which looks like a bit of white but find only "picturesque" mocking narrator, pursuing an elusive character thread frayed out at the sides ... They jets ofstream, near one ofwhich stands named Whiteman, who is in turn hunt­ give to the water a sortofgrayish-white the island's only tree; all else is "soli­ ing for a fabulous lost gold mine, takes appearance." Thousands of flies come tude, ashes, and a heartbreaking si­ time out on the shores of Mono Lake, to feed on the worms washed up on lence." Then noticing that the wind has the "Dead Sea of California": shore. Twain continues in parody of risen, they go to secure their boat -­ Mono Lake lies on a lifeless, nineteenth-century pulpit language: which is fifty yards from the shore. treeless, hideous desert, eight Providence leaves nothing to go Since it would be fatal, according to thousand feet above the level of by chance. All things have their Twain, to try to swim to the mainland, the sea ... This solemn, silent, uses and their part and proper they are prisoners. Luckily the boat sailless sea ... is little graced with place in Nature's economy: the drifts by about a yard from Higbie, the picturesque. It is an unpre­ ducks eat the flies -- the flies eat who leaps into it; and the two fight tending expanse ofgrayish water the worms -- the Indians eat all their way to the mainland through the ... with two islands in its center, three -- the wildcats eat the Indi­ billows of the alkaline lake, the boat mere upheavals of rent and ans --the white folks eat the wild­ going over at the last minute. The scorched and blistered lava, cats -- and thus all things are "agony that alkali water inflicts on snowed over with gray banks and lovely. bruises, chafes, and blistered hands, is drifts ofpumice-stone and ashes. With his companion Higbie, Twain, unspeakable," Twain writes; but that is This lake, which Twain tells us has no as we can perhaps call him now, goes all they suffer. outlet, is so nearly pure lye that no life out to one of the islands in the lake. Mono Lake is the landscape of the 9 Mark Twain continued

alkali desert again, but in more men~ in one chapter gives several pages of covered" is not altogether accurate. acing form. The pessimistic implica~ statistics on the silver industry, then Probably when he went west, there was tions for the nature of the world seem almost casually talks about visiting one pessimism in his luggage, and more for once to be on the conscious level in ofthe mines. The descent is like "tum~ when he sailed from San Francisco to the parody passage. It would hardly bling down through an empty steeple"; the east to conquer the literary world. seem likely for such knowledge to the tunnels are supported by a "world It has been rather clearly shown that resubmerge, but that may be just what of skeleton timbering"; and when you pessimism is one ofthe secrets ofgreat it does. leave you are "dragged up to daylight humorists. They share perhaps a deep The instability of mankind rather feeling as if you are crawling through a sense ofthe irrationality, the absurdity,

than of nature is the concern of the coffin that has no end to it." The end of the u when you get down to it --tragedy second half of the book. Hucksterism, the chapter tells what it is like to be in a ofthe world. And the way they are able even if for a good cause, sweeps the mine after a cave~in, with "things crack~ to transcend this sense is to transform crowd along in one chapter; in another ing and giving way, and ... the world it into art, the performance of the we are told that the first twenty~six overhead ... slowly and silently sinking humorist. (Interestingly, Twain's book graves ofVirginia City are occupied by down upon you." The whole mining ends with his launching of himself on murdered men, that juries are made up enterprise is associated with these im~ his career as a lecturer.) Butthe humor~ of the feckless, that desperadoes re~ ages of loss of control, death, ist has to know tragedy, had to live with ceive more acclaim than community nothingness. it. Twain notes in the Lake Mono leaders. One chapter is given over to Soon after Twain leaves for the episode that in order to reach the boat showing how a murder breeds only Promised Land of California ~~ which Higbie was prepared to swim for a while further murders -- in short, irrational he finds "grave and somber," the for~ in the fatal alkali lake. Perhaps the feuds. One of the funniest episodes in ests monotonous. San Francisco, close remark of one of Twain's early re~ the book sums up the irrational atmo~ up, is full of "decaying, smoke~grimed viewers is appropriate: "The aggrieved sphere. A western character, Scotty wooden houses" and has a monoto~ way in which he gazes with tilted chin Briggs, comes to arrange with a clergy~ nous climate. In the Sacramento valley, over the convulsed faces of his audi~ man, fresh from the East, a funeral left a waste land by the gold rush fifteen ence, as much as to say, 'Why are you service for his companion Buck Fan~ years before, lurk old ghost~like min~ laughing?' is irresistible." Why are you shaw. He addresses the clergyman: ers. While in San Francisco, Twain laughing? I have saved the best com~ "Are you the duck that runs the gospel­ "enjoys" his first earthquake; and peo~ ment for the last. "The secret source of mill next door?" pIe streaming out of buildings are ex~ humor itself is not joy but sorrow. "Am I the -- pardon me, I believe I do posed in a double sense: many are There is no humor in heaven." That not understand?" naked, and many respectable people was said by Mark Twain. With another sigh and a half~sob, emerge from non~respectable places. *Most ofthe secondary material in this article is Scotty rejoined: Everyone experiences nausea. In the from Justin Kaplan's Mr. Clemens and Mark "Why you see we are in a bit oftrouble, following chapter Twain portrays him~ Twain. and the boys thought maybe you would self as living in the direst poverty and give us, if we'd tackle you -- that is, if "slinking" around the streets, haunted I've got the rights of it and you are the by a double who is "homeless and head clerk of the doxology works next friendless and forsaken." All of these door. " images, it seems to me, work together "I am the shepherd in charge of the to convey a sense of vertigo, of depres~ flock whose fold is next door." sian brought on by exposure of the "The which?" nether world. In effect, we are seeing "The spiritual adviser ofthe little com­ not only California, but Twain's inte~ pany of believers whose sanctuary ad­ rior landscape. joins these premises." If I have made the work of a great Scotty scratched his head, reflected humorist seem rather grim, I can only a moment, and then said: stress that I was surprised by Twain's "You ruther hold over me, pard. I negative rendition ofhis western adven~ reckon I can't call that hand. Ante and tures. Literary critics warn against the pass the buck." biographical fallacy -- against the illu~ And so on. The point here is not alone sian that there is a clear connection Joseph Yokelson is Professor of English at the stuffiness of the minister but that between life and literature, but Rough­ Bridgewater State College. He received his neither man is making sense to the ing It tempts me to the heretical Ph. D. from Brown University and wrote his dissertation on Hemingway. He teaches a other. Scotty is as roundabout in his thought that the disasters in Twain's seminar on Mark Twain. and finds both expression as the minister. life while he was composing the book writers interesting due to the complexity of Once again, as if trying to fight off are projected onto the western land~ their outlooks. the knowledge ofsenselessness, Twain scape, or discovered in it. But "dis~

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