By Mark Bennett
TERRE HAUTE — On a quiet day, Michael Shelden strolled a cemetery in Hannibal, Mo.
He’d come to that small Mississippi River town to do research for a book about its most famous son, writer Mark Twain. Despite the fact that Hannibal’s status as Twain’s boyhood home attracts thousands of tourists to the city each year, Shelden didn’t expect to encounter any fellow visitors at this cemetery. After all, Twain isn’t buried there; his grave is 930 miles away in Elmira, N.Y.
Nonetheless, within a few minutes, a car pulled in, and a man got out and started looking around.
“I wondered what he was doing there,” Shelden said, “and my question was answered by his plate.”
The vanity license plate on the guy’s vehicle read: “Huck.”
Yes, nearly a century after Twain’s death, fascination remains intense for anything even remotely, connected to the man who penned classics such as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “Life on the Mississippi,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and dozens of others.
Almost a century after he died, that passion for all things Twain has not subsided.
“It’s pretty amazing how he’s endured,” Shelden said. “You always have to shake your head every few years and say, ‘Shouldn’t this person be obsolete?’”
The decision by Time magazine to devote an extensive 2008 cover story to Twain’s legacy answers that question. The piece labeled him the nation’s “original superstar.”
That timeless aura is why even a slice of Twain’s life is worthy of deep analysis in book form. Shelden, an author and English professor at Indiana State University, studied the misunderstood twilight of Twain’s life for nearly a decade. He reveals his discoveries in a new 528-page biography “Mark Twain: Man in White (The Grand Adventure of His Final Years).” Shelden’s book, published by Random House ($30 in hardback), hits bookstores Tuesday.
“Man in White” is a breakthrough, according to Alan Gribben, a fellow Twain researcher. It “entirely revises our thinking about Twain’s final years and does so in eloquent, moving prose that brings every scene into vivid focus,” Gribben wrote.
After an adventurous youth and adulthood that took Twain from mischievousness in Hannibal to careers of varying success as a printer, silver miner, journalist, steamboat pilot, author, investor, humorist and lecturer, Twain didn’t fade away quietly. His knack for stirring emotion remained razor sharp.
In 1906, just four years before his death, Twain went to Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress on copyright laws. He walked inside the Capitol wearing a common overcoat. The 71-year-old icon shocked the politicians he loved to needle with his words. “He took off his coat, and people practically fainted,” Shelden said. He shattered protocol by wearing a striking, tailor-made, snow-white suit, which became his trademark.
Tracing Twain’s steps
Shelden traveled almost as extensively as Twain himself to uncover nuggets from the last half-decade of the author’s 74-year life. That includes a journey to Bermuda, an island paradise that offered Twain an escape from the harshness and complexities of America.
Twain spent a total of 187 days in Bermuda from 1867 to 1910 — most of them, in his final years, according to bermuda-online.org. Lonely and heartbroken, Twain returned to the island after the death of his daughter, Jean, during Christmas 1909. His beloved wife, Olivia, just 59 years old, had died in 1904. His eldest daughter, Susy, died at just 24 in 1896. Twain’s only surviving child, daughter Clara, was frequently away, wandering the country as a concert singer.
Longing to again feel the closeness of a family, Twain moved in with Bermuda friends Charles and Marion Allan. The Allans’ home included their son and daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. Twain knew he was dying. His 20-cigars-a-day habit (which Twain half-joked that he began at age 8) left him with painful angina. So he cut back to four a day, Shelden explained.
Shelden found never-before-published details of Twain’s stay, from late 1909 until April 1910, in the Bermuda National Archives. In a 50-page memoir by Mrs. Allan, she portrayed Twain as her family’s “adopted grandfather,” Shelden said.
Finally, with his fragile health failing, Twain traveled by boat back to his home in Redding, Conn. There, Mark Twain — born Samuel Langhorne Clemens — died on April 21, 1910.
The release of Shelden’s “Man in White” coincides neatly with the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death. This year also marks the 175th anniversary of Twain’s birth on Nov. 30, 1835, and the 125th anniversary of the publication of “Huckleberry Finn,” renowned as the great American novel. Interest in his life and works is at a peak, particularly at prime Twain sites, such as his boyhood home and museum in Hannibal, his stunning riverboat-shaped house in Hartford, Conn., and his writing haven in Elmira, N.Y. Even Nashville, Tenn., is in the midst of a “Twain and Twang” celebration.
“Mark Twain is still as valid and relevant today as he was when he started,” said Ryan Murray, marketing and community relations director at the Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal.
Late last year, the Mark Twain House in Hartford started getting calls from foreign media about its 100th-anniversary. When asked why a 19th-century writer is so relevant in 2010, Twain House publicist Steve Courtney quoted a news story written last week about the current U.S. economy. That report contained a quote from Twain: “A creepy and awful stillness has given us an atmosphere of apprehension. The phrase ‘laying off’ has been common; the laying off of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 men has become familiar. But there is a more disastrous laying off going on all over America: the discharging of one out of every three employees in every humble, small shop and industry from one end of the U.S. to the other. A blight has fallen upon us, and the monarchy of the rich and powerful are the authors of it.”
As Courtney put it, “Talk about relevance.
“You can just keep mining him for insights and his particularly acerbic view of society over and over again, and never go away dissatisfied,” he added.
Diamonds
in the archives
Shelden dug up some new gems in “Man in White.” He used digital databases at the ISU and Indiana University libraries to comb through the archives of numerous American newspapers. Shelden found story after story detailing Twain’s travels and appearances in his final years. Newspaper reporters, obviously, loved to document his every comment and gesture.
A New York reporter covering one of Twain’s boat trips back from Bermuda witnessed the ship’s rocky arrival in New York Harbor. A wave knocked the elderly author flat onto the ship’s deck. The reporter asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Clemens?” Twain answered, “Yes, but I never knew the ocean was so wet, before.”
Another quip Shelden uncovered referred to Twain’s attire: “Clothes make the man, and naked people have little or no influence in society.”
Shelden said, “That’s one of the selling points of the book, that we’ve recovered some of these ‘Twainisms.’”
Shelden specializes in the clever arrangement of words, too. “Man in White” is his fourth biography. The 58-year-old documented the life of George Orwell in “Orwell: The Authorized Biography” in 1991, earning Shelden a runner-up finish for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote “Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon” in 1989, and “Graham Greene: The Man Within” in 1994. Shelden is now planning a biography of Winston Churchill.
In addition to books, Shelden spent 10 years as a feature writer for the London Daily Telegraph, profiling celebrities from singer James Taylor, to tennis star Serena Williams, comedian Bob Newhart, David Rockefeller, a trio of Nobel Prize laureates, and Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. When Shelden began research for “Man in White” a decade ago, he was writing literary reviews for the Baltimore Sun. The features and reviews “sidetracked” Shelden from his Twain biography, he said. But he never stopped.
One of Shelden’s grandest finds was a stash of 50 unpublished photographs from the old Bain News Service. The images were preserved on glass negatives. “We were able to get just stunningly sharp reproduction,” Shelden said. “Man in White” will introduce those pictures to a world still hungering for the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain.
“There’s such a deep love for him,” Shelden said. “People just adore him. They think he represents what is good about America.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
