Pod Insights American History Tellers Fan Favorite: Great American Authors | Mark Twain: Voice of a Nation | 3 About this episode In the late 1850s, a young man named Samuel Clemens started out piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. Within a few years, he embarked on a writing career, adopting the pen name that became famous: Mark Twain. Armed with a wry sense of humor and a natural flair for storytelling, Twain gained wide acclaim for his short stories, travel sketches, and novels.
In 1885, he published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story of two runaways on a quest for freedom. It would become one of the most celebrated, and controversial, books in American literature. But at the height of his popularity, his risky business ventures and his critiques of American policy abroad threatened to ruin his legacy.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:12 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's a sunny afternoon in March 1857 in New Orleans, Louisiana. You're a seasoned steamboat pilot and you're standing in the pilot house of the Colonel Crossman. Your hands grasp the large wooden wheel as you steer the boat out of New Orleans to begin another voyage up the Mississippi River. A figure appears in the doorway of the pilot house, a slender man with a shock of unruly red hair. You recognize him as Sam Clemens, the starry-eyed young man who spent much of the journey down from St. Louis chatting with you. Oh, it's you again. I thought you were off to find your fortune in the Amazon. Clemens shrugs as he joins you at the wheel. Change of plans. As it turns out, there won't be any ships heading that way for a long time,
0:54 Lindsay Graham? and I don't have the funds to wait around. So now what? Heading back to St. Louis? Clemens smiles. In a way. I'm hoping you'll take me on as a Cub pilot. You shake your head and return your gaze to the river. I like you, kid, but taking on an apprentice is a big responsibility, and I'm not interested in that. It won't be a burden. I swear, I'll make it easy for you. Navigating the Mississippi isn't for the faint of heart. It's over a thousand miles to St. Louis, and you need to learn every twist and turn. You need to know when a ripple on the surface means danger below, because if you mess up, an underwater tree branch or rock will rip the hull open wide. This is a job where inexperience can be deadly. Yeah, well, I'm tough, and I'm a hard worker. I'll do whatever it takes to prove myself.
1:39 Lindsay Graham? You narrow your eyes skeptically. His bright eyes radiate joy. Oh, come on. I know you like my company. What I lack in expertise, I'll make up for in lively conversation. Well, you know how to tell a good story. I'll give you that. And I grew up on this river. It's in my bones. I know it is. You scan the sprawling river beyond the window, considering the proposal. Fine, but don't expect coddling. Alright, you have to listen to everything I tell you, no arguments. Clemens nods eagerly. Of course, yeah, whatever you say goes. And I'm not doing this for free. It's gonna cost you $500. $100 down, and the rest will come out of your wages. $100. Got it, it's yours, I promise you, you won't regret this.
2:23 Lindsay Graham? We'll see, but we might as well start now. This section is calm enough, go ahead and take her. You stand back and surrender your position at the wheel to Clemens. With a confident grin, he closes his fingers around the polished wheel. But you sense a twitch of nervousness beneath his bravado. Kid's not stupid, and enthusiasm is not enough to navigate this river, where a small mistake can mean the difference between life and death.
2:54 Lindsay Graham? If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. It's destroying athlete, creator, and YouTube Maxer. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day. Plus, I get ad-free videos, background play, and so much more. YouTube Premium is like YouTube got some extra gains. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium.
3:23 Speaker 01 Hey, what's up, guys? It's Haley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad-free, I get background play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. So try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. That's a mouthful.
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4:29 Lindsay Graham? From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers: Our History, Your Story.
4:51 Lindsay Graham? In March 1857, 21-year-old Samuel Clemens persuaded a steamboat pilot to take him on as an apprentice on the Mississippi River. The murky waters of the nation's lifeline would prove a rich training ground for the man who would one day gain fame under the name Mark Twain. Twain lived a life of constant reinvention, one that mirrored the seismic changes unfolding across America in the second half of the 19th century. From his humble beginnings in rural Missouri, he crisscrossed the country, working as a typesetter, a steamboat pilot, and a prospector. But he ultimately found his calling as a writer. In newspaper articles, travel dispatches, comic sketches, and novels, Twain chronicled the complexities of his times, exposing corruption and inequality.
5:35 Lindsay Graham? With his cutting wit, sharp observations, and natural storytelling ability, Twain captured the voice of the American people and built a legacy as the quintessential American writer. But at the very height of his literary success, his obsession with financial gain threatened to destroy him. This is episode three in our six-part series on great American authors: Voice of a Nation. Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in the Hamlet of Florida, Missouri. That night, a streak of light blazed through the night sky. It was Halley's Comet, which orbits the sun roughly every 75 years.
6:19 Lindsay Graham? Sam was the sixth of seven children born to John and Jane Clemens. John was a struggling merchant and lawyer. He suffered from chronic financial failure, and he rarely laughed. Sam inherited his playful sense of humor and way with words from his mother, Jane, who loved music, dancing, and telling stories. When Sam was three, his family moved to Hannibal, a small Mississippi River town 100 miles northwest of St. Louis. John hoped to find new opportunities there, but the family continued to live on the edge of poverty. That same year, Sam's older sister died of a fever. Three years later, he lost his older brother. These deaths left a lasting mark on him. He suffered from nightmares and was prone to sleepwalking.
7:02 Lindsay Graham? By the time he was seven, he began fleeing outside at every opportunity. He befriended a group of local boys and they went fishing on the Mississippi River, explored caves, and played pranks on their neighbors. And every summer, Sam spent several weeks at his uncle's nearby farm. At night, he and his cousins gathered in the home of an enslaved man they called Uncle Daniel, who told them tall tales and ghost stories that Sam would carry with him for the rest of his life. Growing up in Missouri, Sam was surrounded by slavery. His father and his relatives owned enslaved laborers. He later recalled, "In my schoolboy days, I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there was anything wrong about it." Even so, scenes of cruelty toward enslaved people stuck with him.
7:46 Lindsay Graham? He once witnessed a dozen enslaved people chained together on Hannibal's wharf, waiting to be sold downriver. He would forever remember the scythe, later writing, "Those were the saddest faces I have ever seen." When Sam was eleven, his father died of pneumonia. To help support his family, Sam left school to work as a printer's apprentice. And by the time he was fourteen, he started working for his older brother Orion, owner of the Hannibal Journal newspaper. There, Sam worked as a typesetter, performing the painstaking work of arranging the words and headlines on each of the journal's pages. But he also began writing, occasionally contributing articles and humorous sketches. But Orion neglected to pay his younger brother a steady salary, and by 1853, Sam had had
8:31 Lindsay Graham? enough. After promising his mother he wouldn't drink or gamble, he packed his bags and left Hannibal. He spent the next few years wandering the country, working as a typesetter in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. In eighteen fifty-seven, Clemens boarded a Mississippi River steamboat bound for New Orleans. From there, he intended to travel down to South America, where he planned to make his fortune trading cocoa plants. But by the time he arrived in New Orleans, he had a new dream. He persuaded a veteran steamboat pilot named Horace Bixby to take him on as an apprentice. Over the next two years, Bixby trained him in the difficult job of navigating the twisting twelve-hundred-mile river. Clemens was tasked with memorizing every landmark, bend, and changing depth.
9:16 Lindsay Graham? He later reflected, "The face of the water in time became a wonderful book which told me its most cherished secrets." By the spring of eighteen fifty-eight, Clemens was working as a Cub pilot on the steamer Pennsylvania. He persuaded his younger brother Henry to join the crew as a clerk, but shortly after, Clemens transferred to a different boat while Henry remained. Then, on June thirteenth, eighteen fifty-eight, the boilers on the Pennsylvania exploded, killing one hundred sixty people on board, including Sam's brother Henry. Clemens was just twenty-two years old. In the days after his brother's death, he wrote, "The horrors have swept over me. They have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time."
9:58 Lindsay Graham? Guilt over Henry's death would plague him for the rest of his life. The next year, in eighteen fifty-nine, Sam finally obtained his pilot's license. He thought he would live out the rest of his days on the river, savoring the freedom, the stable income, and the chance to meet people from all walks of life. But in the spring of eighteen sixty-one, the outbreak of the Civil War ground all river traffic to a halt and brought his pilot career to a premature end. When some of his childhood friends enlisted in a volunteer Confederate militia company in Missouri, he decided to join them, more for adventure than any ideological commitment to the Confederacy, but he quit after just two weeks before ever seeing battle.
10:38 Lindsay Graham? A few months later, in July eighteen sixty-one, Clemens's brother Orion was appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory as a reward for helping Abraham Lincoln's presidential campaign. Clemens decided to join him, and the brothers boarded a stagecoach and journeyed west. In Nevada, Clemens tried his hand at gold and silver mining, but after failing to strike it rich, he returned to his roots in the newspaper business. He began writing for the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada. It was the most widely-read newspaper between San Francisco and Chicago. Clemens relished the life of a journalist. As a territory on the cusp of statehood, Nevada had a charged political climate with plenty of story fodder.
11:19 Lindsay Graham? He especially enjoyed drinking, smoking, and playing cards with his fellow reporters. And it was there in February 1863 that he signed an article as Mark Twain, a name derived from his piloting career. Mark Twain was the term used for two fathoms, or 12 feet, the safe depth for steamboat navigation on the Mississippi River. He would use this pen name for the rest of his career. The Territorial Enterprise often published satirical, semi-fictional stories, and in October 1863, Twain used such a story to bring attention to a San Francisco water company that was defrauding its investors. He invented a tale about one of the investors becoming so deranged that he killed and scalped his wife and seven children.
12:02 Lindsay Graham? The gruesome hoax article sparked widespread outcry and made Twain infamous.
12:11 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's early November 1863 in Virginia City, Nevada. You're the editor of the Territorial Enterprise, and after a long day at work, you're finishing a glass of ale in a dimly-lit saloon. The scent of whiskey and stale cigars lingers in the air. You're trying to get the attention of the bartender, and someone pulls up a seat beside you. It's one of your reporters, Sam Clemens. You clap him on the shoulder. "Hey, Sam, how are ya?" Sam shrugged sheepishly. "I've been looking all over for you. I want to apologize for that story. I'm sorry, I never should have written the damn thing." "Oh, forget it, it's water under the bridge. No need to keep dwelling on it." Sam runs a hand through his hair. "Well, I think I should tender my resignation." "Don't be ridiculous.
12:56 Lindsay Graham? We've already gone above and beyond by issuing a retraction, there's nothing more to be done. And besides, anyone with half a brain could tell it was satire. The piece was full of all the usual clues, they should have known it was fictional." "Well then, how come the Sacramento Union and the San Francisco Evening Bulletin picked up the story and presented it as fact? It's like I said, not everyone has the brains to appreciate your humor." You give the bartender a grateful smile as he finally refills your glass. You turn back to Sam, and he shifts his weight in his seat. It's clear he's still troubled. Well, it doesn't change the fact that the readers are canceling their subscriptions. They're probably all gonna start reading the Daily Union instead. I tell ya, I fear I've done irreparable damage to the credibility of the enterprise. You set your glass down in frustration.
13:41 Lindsay Graham? Oh, now, look. If you hadn't written such a sensational story, no one would've paid any attention to the water company's fraud. You made up that investor and his family, so what? The parts of the story that really mattered were all true. Hmm, I guess so. And you're not the first reporter to write a hoax article. We walk a fine line between fact and fiction, and sometimes we stumble. So you took it a little too far, but you're a rare talent, and I'm not gonna let you resign. Sam's eyes meet yours. He nods, and you clap him on the back again. All right, enough of this, I'm buying you a drink, but only one. Don't forget, you owe me a story by noon tomorrow. A smile tugs at the corner of Sam's lips as you signal the bartender.
14:24 Lindsay Graham? You're relieved to keep Sam on staff, because your newspaper needs his insight and sharp wit.
14:33 Lindsay Graham? After stirring controversy with his hoax article, Twain tried to resign from the enterprise, but his editor refused. He continued writing for the newspaper, but by the spring of 1864, Twain was ready for a new adventure. He moved to San Francisco, where he continued working as a reporter. There, he was shocked by violence toward the city's growing Chinese immigrant population. He wrote a story about white men attacking a Chinese immigrant as police stood idly by, but his editor refused to publish it. A few months later, Twain was fired. Having lost his job, Twain set off for the Sierra Foothills to try prospecting for gold. In January 1865, he was sitting around a campfire when he heard a man tell a story about a gambler
15:16 Lindsay Graham? who would bet on anything, even a jumping frog. Twain wrote the story down, adding his own comic flourishes, and sent it to a friend, who submitted it to the New York Saturday Press, who published it. The story was soon reprinted in newspapers throughout America to wide acclaim, and Twain had his first big break. On the heels of this success, in 1866, the Sacramento Union hired Twain to write travel dispatches from Hawaii, then an independent kingdom. His stories were hit with readers. In one article, he mocked the efforts of American Christian missionaries, writing, "How sad it is to think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knew there was a hell." When Twain returned to the United States, he went on the lecture circuit, turning his
16:01 Lindsay Graham? articles into sold-out stage performances. Audiences were delighted by his vivid descriptions and deadpan humor. In the summer of 1867, a San Francisco newspaper hired him as a travel writer. He joined a five-month pleasure cruise bound for Europe and the Middle East. In widely-read articles, Twain satirized the wealthy tourists onboard the ship. And unlike previous American travel writers, who assumed the superiority of European culture, Twain wrote from a distinctly American perspective. He compared the Nile River to the Mississippi, and the rocky hills of Greece to the rough terrain of Nevada. During his journey, he met a fellow passenger named Charles Langdon, who showed Twain a picture of his sister, Olivia. For Twain, it was love at first sight.
16:46 Lindsay Graham? And after the tour ended in late 1867, Langdon introduced Twain to his sister, who was called Livy by her friends and family. Unlike Twain, Livy had a serious demeanor and a strong religious devotion. Despite their differences, Twain was smitten. He started writing daily letters to her. Livy was determined to reform him and send him copies of her Reverend's sermons. Twain promised to give up drinking and attend church if only she would have him. Twain also got to know Livy's father, Jervis Langdon, who made his fortune in the coal industry. Langdon held such strong abolitionist beliefs that he left the church when it refused to condemn slavery. Before the Civil War, Jervis worked as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, helping runaways escape slavery.
17:31 Lindsay Graham? And the more time Twain spent with the Langdons, the more he questioned the racist views he absorbed during his childhood. His changing ideals were made apparent as he got to work on his first book. During his time in Italy in 1867, he met a black man who had escaped slavery in South Carolina and was working as a tour guide in Venice. Twain was impressed by his knowledge of languages and art history, writing that "he reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and French with perfect facility." And in July 1869, Twain published these observations in The Innocents Abroad, an account of his voyage overseas. It was a subscription book, sold door-to-door to rural farmers and tradesmen, the types of readers who rarely visited bookstores.
18:16 Lindsay Graham? But in 18 months, it sold more than 80,000 copies, and Twain earned approximately $16,000 in royalties, nearly $400,000 in today's money. It was a critical success, earning a positive review in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly Magazine. Twain would later write, "I have never tried to cultivate the cultivated classes. I always hunted for bigger game: the masses." Twain's publisher promoted him as "the people's author", and even before his 35th birthday, Twain had become one of the most popular writers in America. But his greatest heights and darkest lows were still to come.
18:56 Lindsay Graham? If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. It's destroying athlete, creator, and YouTube Maxer. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day. Plus, I get ad-free videos, background play, and so much more. YouTube Premium is like YouTube got some extra gains. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium.
19:26 Speaker 01 Hey, what's up, guys? It's Haley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad-free, I get background play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. So try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. That's a mouthful.
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21:03 Lindsay Graham? On February 2, 1870, Mark Twain married Livy Langdon in her father's parlor in Elmira, New York. The next day, the couple set off for Buffalo, New York, where Jervis Langdon helped Twain obtain part-ownership of a local newspaper. Twain was stunned to discover that his father-in-law had also furnished the newlyweds with a lavish home and household staff. Twain was grateful for the luxuries, which he could not afford on his own. But tragedy struck that August when Jervis died of stomach cancer. A month later, a close friend of Livy's also died. And then in November, Livy gave birth prematurely to the couple's first son, Langdon. Though he survived, the infant remained sickly. The following year, the Clemens family decided to start over
21:47 Lindsay Graham? in the prosperous city of Hartford, Connecticut. In March 1872, Livy gave birth to a healthy daughter named Susie. But just nine weeks later, their firstborn, nineteen-month-old Langdon, died from diphtheria. Twain blamed himself for not dressing the child warmly enough for a carriage ride. Livy stopped going to church, declaring that she was almost perfectly cold toward God. After their son's death, Twain threw himself into his work. By the summer of eighteen seventy-two, he had sold nearly seventy thousand copies of his latest book, Roughing It, a rollicking semi-autobiographical account of his adventures in the West. The following year, he collaborated with his Hartford neighbor, writer Charles Dudley
22:29 Lindsay Graham? Warner, on his first novel, entitled The Gilded Age. It was a biting satire of the corruption, excess, and feverish speculation that dominated post-war America. The novel gave the era its name. But despite his criticisms of the rich in The Gilded Age, Twain held contradictory ideas about wealth. On the one hand, he believed that the pursuit of wealth was corrupting America. He criticized the politicians and industry titans who gained money and power at the expense of ordinary working people. But at the same time, Twain desperately wanted to avoid the financial struggles that dominated his childhood. He craved the comforts that eluded his father. He was obsessed with money, both making it and spending it.
23:12 Lindsay Graham? In eighteen seventy-four, he used his book royalties and Livy's inheritance to begin construction on a new, permanent family home. It was an ostentatious mansion in Hartford, complete with Tiffany-stained glass, Venetian tapestries, and a large household staff. Even after construction was complete, he continued adding expensive improvements. Livy wrote, "Mr. Clement seems to glory in his sense of possession." In June of eighteen seventy-four, Livy gave birth to another daughter, named Clara, and a third daughter, Jean, would soon follow. Starting that year, the family spent their summers at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, where Livy's sister Susan lived.
23:54 Lindsay Graham? Susan had a hilltop study built on the farm, so Twain could write in isolation. It was an octagonal pavilion with sweeping views of the valley below. Over the next two decades, Twain would write his most famous books in this summer refuge. For hours each day, he wrote until his hand cramped, all while puffing on a cigar. In the evenings, he gathered his family around him, read aloud, and gauged their reactions to his work. One summer evening in 1874, Twain and his family sat down on the porch of Corey Farm with Susan's cook, a formerly enslaved woman named Mary Ann Cord. Cord recounted her life story, describing the agony of her former owner separating her from her husband and seven children.
24:36 Lindsay Graham? Years later, she unexpectedly reunited with her youngest son. He had become a Union Army soldier and turned up at the camp where Cord was a cook. Twain was shocked and moved by what he heard. He wrote her story down, word for word, in her own voice, changing her name to Aunt Rachel. He sent the piece off to The Atlantic Monthly, where it was published later that year. He was paid an unprecedented $20 per page. For Twain, it was a lesson in how vernacular could be used to convey raw emotions and unvarnished truths. Cord's story would also inspire him to revisit scenes of slavery from his youth in his writing,
25:14 Lindsay Graham? with a new perspective on the harsh cruelty suffered by Black Americans. Over the course of 1874 and 1875, Twain wrote his first solo novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Drawing from Twain's own childhood, Tom Sawyer followed the antics of a mischievous boy, loosely based on Twain himself, growing up near the Mississippi River. Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn was based on a childhood friend of Twain's, and Twain called the novel "A Hymn to Boyhood." It was published in 1876 and did well, though sales lagged behind his previous works. So despite his successful writing career, Twain constantly searched for business ventures that would make him even wealthier.
25:59 Lindsay Graham? Over the course of his life, he would invest in several dubious inventions and schemes, including a steam generator, a watch company, a protein powder, and self-adjusting suspenders. He would later admit, "I must speculate in something, such being my nature." But no invention attracted more of his attention or money than the page compositor, a bulky machine that promised to automate the laborious job of setting type for books and newspapers, the very same job that Twain performed when he was just 14 years old. In 1880, Twain was introduced to the smooth-talking inventor James Page. At the time, dozens of inventors were scrambling to create an automatic typesetter. Many had failed.
26:41 Lindsay Graham? Page's machine had 18,000 parts and weighed three tons, which made it complicated and unreliable. But when it worked, it was faster and more sophisticated than its chief competitor, the Linotype, developed by a German watchmaker. After seeing Page's prototype in action, Twain was dazzled. He declared Page the Shakespeare of mechanical invention and invested $2,000 into the machine. He would continue sinking money into the compositor in the hope that, once it was perfected, it would revolutionize the publishing industry and make him rich beyond belief. But while Twain looked to the future in his business ventures, his writing continued to draw from the past.
27:21 Lindsay Graham? In 1883, he published Life on the Mississippi, a memoir of his time as a steamboat pilot and the colorful characters he encountered on the river. He also returned to a manuscript he had begun seven years earlier. Ever since the release of Tom Sawyer in 1876, Twain had worked on a novel about Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn. In the summer of 1883, he experienced a burst of creative energy at Quarry Farm, and in just six weeks, he wrote nearly 700 pages by hand. Titled The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this novel would be his masterpiece. Set before the Civil War, the book follows white teenage runaway Huck Finn and the escaped slave Jim as they journey down the Mississippi River in search of freedom.
28:06 Lindsay Graham? As they float deeper into slave territory, the voyage grows more perilous for Jim. Over the course of the novel, Huck is changed by his experiences with Jim. And in a journey that mirrors Twain's own life, he grapples with morality, racism, and personal freedom. Though it has been criticized for perpetrating racial stereotypes, Huckleberry Finn was revolutionary. Through the characters of Huck and Jim, Twain delivered a subtle critique of the harsh realities of slavery and challenged prevailing racist attitudes. He wrote in plain regional vernacular, offering an authentic and unfiltered perspective on the American South. For decades, American writers had tried to imitate their British counterparts, but Twain turned ordinary American speech into literature.
28:51 Lindsay Graham? While he was completing the novel in 1884, Twain launched his own publishing firm to gain control of the profits from his work. In February 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn became the first book his firm published. The novel instantly sparked debate. Several critics hailed Twain's genius, but many readers and reviewers condemned the book as vulgar. Twain wrote from the perspective of Huck, whose unique dialect reflects his rural, uneducated upbringing in Missouri. Readers objected to the use of slang, poor grammar, and words like "ain't" and "reckon." Many also took offense to Huck's questionable morals, citing scenes in which he steals, cheats, lies, and ridicules religion. The public library
29:35 Lindsay Graham? and the famous literary community of Concord, Massachusetts banned the novel, calling it "the various trash, suitable only for the slums." This decision garnered national headlines and other libraries followed suit. Twain laughed off the book bans, insisting they would only help sell more copies. Then in December of 1885, Twain's publishing company released the memoir of former president and Civil War Army General Ulysses S. Grant. Twain and Grant had been friendly for several years, and Grant was plagued by debt after losing his life savings in the stock market. Twain offered Grant 75% of the profits, a much better deal than his publishing rivals. Grant's memoir was an instant bestseller and would ultimately earn Twain $200,000,
30:19 Lindsay Graham? or more than $6 million in today's money. It was by far his most successful business venture. He boasted, "It seems to me that whatever I touch turns to gold." By this time, Twain had just celebrated his 50th birthday. He was the richest and most acclaimed author in America. He had a loving family, and he lived in a mansion that was a far cry from his childhood home in the backwoods of Missouri. But he was spending $30,000 a year maintaining his lavish home and lifestyle, and he had a compulsive desire to be richer than he already was. At this time in 1886, he had started work on a time travel novel called A Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court, but his progress was achingly slow.
31:01 Lindsay Graham? His daughter Susie observed, "Papa's literary career was grinding to a halt, and Papa didn't seem to care. His writing was suffering because an entirely different project was demanding his attention." Imagine it's late at night in February 1886 in Hartford, Connecticut. You're a business manager, and tonight you're in the mansion of your friend and client, Samuel Clemens, playing a game of billiards with your host. A fire is blazing in the fireplace, and you're enjoying Sam's favorite cocktail, a Scotch Whiskey Sour. He leans over the table with a cue in hand, his white hair illuminated underneath the warm glow of a low-hanging chandelier. He sinks a ball into a pocket and looks up at you, his eyes twinkling.
31:46 Lindsay Graham? There's something I want to discuss with you. Tips on how to improve my game? Sam chuckles and pulls a cigar and matchbox from the carved fireplace mantel. No, afraid not. You're on your own there, but I just heard from James Page. He has a new proposal for me. Immediately, your guard goes up at the mention of Page. Clemens has already invested too much money for your liking in Page's invention, an automatic typesetter. Oh, what does he want now? He's working on a new model of the machine. He estimates that the cost of building a prototype, including wages, drawings, patent applications, will be no more than $30,000, and he's offered me half ownership. I just need to underwrite the expense of the prototype, raise the capital needed for its manufacture, and help promote it.
32:30 Lindsay Graham? You take a sip of your whiskey. Is that all? Sam, you've already given this man $13,000. If you keep going down this road, it's going to bankrupt you. Sam takes a puff from his cigar. "All that's nonsense. Once the machine is in perfect working order, I'll be able to get plenty of wealthy investors to go in with me. Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, who knows who else? Don't you think you'd be better off focusing on your next novel? It's in progress, but you know I can't resist a good investment opportunity." Sam pulls an envelope from his jacket pocket. On the back of it, he scribbled a series of calculations. "Look at how much I stand to make once the machine goes to market. We're talking tens of millions." You scan the figures, trying to make sense of the numbers. "These are just projections.
33:15 Lindsay Graham? I mean, investments can be unpredictable. You know that as well as anyone. For there's no reward without risk, and Page has assured me that this model would be different. Besides, with my gift a gab, this machine is sure to be a sensation." Sam picks up his cue to line up his next shot. But your mind is far from the billiards table. It's clear that nothing you say will change Sam's mind. You fear his relentless pursuit of fortune is going to lead him to ruin. Twain was convinced that he could make more money as a businessman than as an author. In February 1886, he ignored the warnings of his business manager and assumed half-ownership of the Page compositor. James Page assured Twain that the machine was close to perfection, but the device demanded
34:00 Lindsay Graham? constant readjustments. Over the next few years, Twain contributed thousands of dollars to its development every month. Years later, in 1889, Twain finally published A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Reviews were poor, as were sales. And by then, he had sunk $150,000 into the Page compositor, and the machine was still not ready. It was deep in debt, and the fortune he had amassed from his life's work was all but gone. So to rescue his family, Twain would need to once again uproot himself in search of a new beginning.
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36:39 Lindsay Graham? In June 1891, Mark Twain and his family closed their Hartford mansion and set off for Europe. Twain hoped his family could live more cheaply abroad and that the rest would be good for Livy, who was suffering from heart problems. Although he continued writing, his debts far exceeded his earnings. And in March 1893, he left his family behind in Italy and sailed to New York in hopes of salvaging his floundering publishing company. He arrived just in time for the start of the Panic of 1893. The stock market crashed, factories shuttered, and millions of Americans lost their jobs. The post-war economic boom was over, and loans were harder to secure than ever. In a letter to Livy, Twain wrote, "The billows of hell have been rolling over me.
37:24 Lindsay Graham? A body forgets pretty much everything these days, except his visions of the poorhouse." But in September 1893, Twain had a stroke of good luck. A friend introduced him to a Standard Oil executive named Henry Huddleston Rogers. Rogers was worth more than $100 million. He was the type of ruthless businessman that Twain had satirezed 20 years earlier in his novel The Gilded Age. But when the pair sat down for drinks in a New York City hotel, they became fast friends. Twain would later write, "He's a pirate all right, but he owns up to it and enjoys being a pirate. That's the reason I like him." Rogers offered to help Twain put his finances in order. Following his instructions, Twain declared bankruptcy on his publishing company in the spring of 1894.
38:09 Lindsay Graham? He and Livy both felt humiliated by the failure. And Livy confessed, "I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace." But Rogers found a way for Twain to retain his most important assets, his Hartford house and his book copyrights. Rogers also tried to rescue the page compositor. In September 1894, he persuaded the Chicago Herald to install the machine in its print shop for a 60-day field test. And at first, the test went well, but before long, it was mangling type and causing delays. The machine proved too unwieldy to meet the practical needs of a newspaper, and the Herald's publisher ended the test. Twain was devastated. He wrote, "The news hit me like a thunderclap. It knocked every ragged sense out of my head."
38:54 Lindsay Graham? After pouring 12 years of his life and at least $170,000 into this machine, he was forced to accept it was all for nothing. So in his 60th year, Twain decided to start over again. Because he had declared bankruptcy, he was not legally required to pay his creditors in full, but he felt duty-bound to pay dollar for dollar. And he knew the best way to make money quickly was to return to the lecture circuit. So in July 1895, he embarked on a grueling worldwide lecture tour with his family. He would make nearly 150 appearances over the next year, performing for packed houses on five continents. But the next summer, in 1896, 24-year-old Susie Clemens died unexpectedly of spinal
39:39 Lindsay Graham? meningitis. In typical fashion, Twain blamed himself for causing her illness, writing, "My crimes made her a pauper and an exile. The Clemens family would never be the same." After burying Susie in New York, the family returned to Europe, where they could live more economically. Twain threw himself into his writing, and in 1897, he published a book about his year-long world lecture tour called Following the Equator. His visits to India, Australia, and South Africa had exposed him to the impact of colonialism on native people. In one instance, in early 1896, the sight of a German hotel manager slapping an Indian servant reminded him of witnessing a white man, a hidden enslaved person, during his Missouri childhood.
40:22 Lindsay Graham? He wrote, "In many countries, we have taken the savages' land from him and made him our slave. There are many humorous things in the world, among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages." Profits from the book and his lectures helped Twain regain financial stability, and in the fall of 1900, he finally paid off his debts. He and his family sailed back to the United States and moved into a rented house in New York City. The press applauded him for pulling himself out of his financial hole. And now, in his late 60s, Twain increasingly weighed in on political matters. He voiced his support for women's suffrage and black civil rights. He spoke out against political corruption and antisemitism.
41:04 Lindsay Graham? But nothing was more controversial than his stance on America's expansion abroad, which he attacked as aggressive imperialism.
41:16 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's February 1901 in Hartford, Connecticut. It's a bitterly cold day, and you and your friend Sam Clemens are walking through the quiet streets of town. You should be writing your next sermon, but something else is occupying your thoughts. You carry a rolled-up copy of the New York Times under your arm, and you're steeling yourself for a difficult conversation with your friend. You stop at a street corner while a horse and carriage pass, its wheels splashing dirty snow onto the sidewalk. Clemens turns to you. He has a nearly spent cigar stub in hand, and his eyes spark with curiosity. Well, not that I'm not enjoying this fine weather, but why don't you tell me what's on your mind, so we can both go home? You take a deep breath as you cross the street. Well, Sam, it's this recent essay of yours.
41:59 Lindsay Graham? It wasn't enough that you had to attack the work of Christian missionaries abroad, you had to bring the President, the British Prime Minister, and the German Kaiser into it too? Well, it would have been tricky to critique imperialism without mentioning them. I'm concerned, Sam. You know, I've always supported your writing, but if you're not careful, you're going to do damage to your book sales. What will your publisher think? Sam takes a long drag of his cigar. Well, if I lose my bread and butter, then so be it. It won't be the first time. You place a hand on his elbow, beckoning him to sit beside you on a bench. Well, listen to this. You unfold your copy of the Times, opening the newspaper to the page you've dog-eared. "Mr. Twain changed his tune from lively to severe.
42:42 Lindsay Graham? He is tumbling in among us from the clouds of exile, and discarding the grin of the funny man for the sour visage of the austere moralist." It sounds to me like they're telling you to stick to humor. Sam chuckles. It seems to be the gist of it. Sam, this is serious. You're risking thirty years of goodwill you built with the American people. Sam's eyes suddenly blaze with anger. I don't understand it. You ask me to compromise my beliefs to appease the masses? I'm suggesting you be more careful. Is that what you teach your congregation? To hide their opinions about right and wrong, lest it affect their wallets? You're supposed to be a moral leader. Clemens extinguishes his cigar on the icy ground and walks away, leaving you on the cold bench alone.
43:27 Lindsay Graham? Even though his words sting, you're still worried for your friend, who seems more determined than ever to sabotage his own career.
43:38 Lindsay Graham? By 1901, the United States was at war in Spain's former colony in the Philippines. At first, Twain was a supporter of America's efforts, condemning Spain's treatment of the colony. But as news of US atrocities on the islands mounted, he turned more critical of America's interventions abroad. In February 1901, Twain published a blistering critique of imperialism and US colonization of the Philippines, declaring, "We have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty. We have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world." Twain's views were in the minority, but he ignored criticism from the press and even longstanding friends, becoming the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League and keeping up his attacks.
44:20 Lindsay Graham? Through all Twain's ups and downs, Livy had remained a grounding force in his life. But in 1902, she fell badly ill. She died two years later. Twain's writing had grown darker after the death of his daughter Susie eight years prior. But after losing his wife, his writing reached new levels of bitterness and despair. He worked on his autobiography, but he also wrote about the cruelty of humans and God. He chose not to publish many of these works during his lifetime. By the time Twain was in his 70s, his celebrity was his main comfort in life. His daughter Jean suffered from epilepsy and was sent to live in a sanitarium. His other daughter Clara got married and moved to Europe in October 1909.
45:02 Lindsay Graham? A month later, Jean died after drowning in a bathtub during a seizure. At the age of 73, Twain started suffering from chest pains. He cut back from smoking as many as 40 cigars a day to just four. Speaking to a friend, he declared, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It's coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." In April 1910, Clara left Europe and rushed to the bedside of her dying father. As the sun was setting on April 21st, Twain died peacefully in bed. Halley's Comet appeared in the sky that night. Two days later, more than 3,000 mourners turned out for Twain's funeral in New York City. Soon after Twain's death, his friend, the influential literary critic William Dean Howells,
45:47 Lindsay Graham? pronounced Twain "the Lincoln of our literature." Decades later, writer Ernest Hemingway declared, "All modern American literature comes from one book, by Mark Twain, called Huckleberry Finn." Twain would remain one of America's most iconic and influential authors. Through his humor, his use of vernacular, his incisive social commentary, and his keen observations of human nature, Twain held up a mirror to a changing nation and gave American literature a distinctive voice. From Wondery, this is episode three of our six-part series Great American Authors from American History Tellers. On the next episode, John Steinbeck immerses himself in the lives of migrant workers in
46:29 Lindsay Graham? California, elevating their stories in books like The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. His novels eventually earn him the Nobel Prize for Literature, but privately, his failed marriages take their toll. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsay Graham for Airship. Audio editing by Christian Paraga. Sound design by Derek Behrens. Music by Lindsay Graham. This episode is written by Ellie Stanton, edited by Dorian Marina, produced by Alita Rozansky. Coordinating producer Desi Blalock, managing producer Matt Gant, senior managing producer Ryan Lor, senior producer Andy Herman.
47:08 Lindsay Graham? Executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marsha Louis for Wondery. American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you, so thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.
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