Twain, Mark: Selected Obituaries
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Chicago Tribune Obituary
From the Vicksburg (Mississippi) Evening Post
22 April 1910
[anonymous]
The millions who have laughed over the writings of the gentle-hearted Mark Twain will grieve over his death. His life was used in bringing sunshine and happiness into the lives of others. He was a great and vivid writer and he will be remember for ages. His tenderness and true manhood was perceptible beneath his humor. It is gratifying that this great writer was appreciated, honored and rewarded, as was his due, by the American people, and that his closing years, aside from his bereavements caused by the ruthless hand of death, have been years of ease and happiness.
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Minneapolis Tribune Obituary Notice
THE HISTORIAN OF AN EPOCH From the Minneapolis Morning Tribune
23 April 1910
[Anonymous]
Mark Twain will live as the historian of an epoch. He is a humorist because the epoch was humorous. We begin to realize that as we get away from it. No nation can take a joke at its own expense.
The most vital, native and racy period of American history was the nineteenth century. Before that we imitated Europe. Since then we have begun to imitate Europe again. But for near a century we lived our own national life in our own way, as fresh as the land we spread over, as original as the experiences we met. The period culminated about the middle of the century in the middle of the country. That was the time and scene of Clemens' biggest books.
We had grown hot when European tourists laughed at us. We grew cool when our own writers taught us to laugh at ourselves. He was not the first to portray the fugitive type of the American in the making, but he was the greatest. Cooper began it. His sentimental slush would not have outlived him but for the unconscious humor in it, and the fidelity to type under all exaggeration.
The New England writers caught and preserved local phases of the new human species. Less known writers of the Middle states added others. It was not till the lure of gold drew a thin sheet of plastic American population across the continent that the social ferment of new life on new soil under new stimuli carried the native type to its highest development. Then came its clearest expression in books.
Again Mark Twain was one of many to make the new literature, Bret Harte and the others for California, the post bellum school for the South, Howells for the West and the newer New England, caught imperishable films of the kind of American people and institutions McMasters tries to portray in serious history. We believe that posterity will see this vanished time most plainly in the books of Clemens' early period. They are the supreme Americans.
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Detriot Free Press Obituary Notice CLEMENS IS DEAD BUT MARK TWAIN LIVES
From The Detroit Free Press
23 April 1910
[Anonymous]
His name "of record" was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but he lives in the affections of the world as Mark Twain. Through many years, he made the world laugh in pure healthful enjoyment. He made it chuckle and he made it think sane thoughts when it might have become gloomy or morose. In dying he caused grief for the first time.
Perhaps one reason why Mark Twain gained so large a place in the hearts of his fellow men, was that men understood, or thought they understood him. Few writers have taken the public into their confidence in more pleasing and, at times, in more touching manner. Those who know most of the man's history are nowise surprised to hear the verdict of his physician, that he died of a broken heart.
Americans at least, realize that underneath the bubbling humor, the gentle searching satire that are the most apparent characteristics of his later and better work, mere craftmanship aside, there is a solid foundation of solid good sense, broad sympathy, keen perception, quick, accurate observation, which drag from their hiding places false pretense, poor logic, counterfeit charity. Critics he had and will always have, because some natures seem unable to appreciate his genius. Mark Twain was never, even at the beginning a mere juggler of words. His quips were never aimless. His funny stories were funny for what there was in them. His "Prince and Pauper" has satire on the social order clothed in sobriety of style. His "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," displays that satire in its more playful but no less effective aspect.
It was in large part his ability to interpret and portray character and the condition of humanity that gave Mark Twain his great strength as a humorist. His philosophical outlook was by no means to be despised. How delightfully, how lightly he could pillory the villain, the fakir and the cheat! Mark Twain was one of the giants of American literature along with Irving, Hawthorne and Poe. His humor was less gentle than that of Irving, but it meant infinitely more, because it probed farther into the world soul. This perhaps was in part because the world dealt less gently with him, but chiefly because his perceptions were more rapier like.
Mark Twain had his joys and his sorrows. He was acquainted with grief, and his fellow countrymen rejoiced with him and mourned with him because they recognized him as one of themselves. They envied him his pipe, his reprehensible habit of writing and smoking in bed, his disregard of the rules of mere convention, his affectations, which, perhaps after all were only acted satires. They admired the manhood that would not permit him the refuge of the bankruptcy court, but forced him into years of privation. They loved him for his ideal beautiful home life, his deep affection for and tender tributes to his wife and children. They will cherish his memory.
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Spokesman-Review Obituary Notice
Mark Twain. From The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review
22 April 1910
[Anonymous]
The world has had three colossal laughers: Aristophanes of Greece, Rabelais of France and Mark Twain of America; and it is not impossible that the last will finally be ranked first.
For greatness in humorous literature is as much a matter of variety and range of subject as of power and art; and in the scope and richness of his subject-matter Clemens, the nineteenth-century American, surpassed the sixteenth-century Frenchman and the Greek of the fifth century before Christ. The world of the Athenian was the Mediterranean world, that of the Parisian the European world, but that of the Yankee was the whole world; and the modern materials of humor and wit are far more numerous and far richer than those of medieval and ancient days.
Mark Twain was an American of such sort as only western pioneer American could create, and his humor was American to the core. Living the rough life of the Mississippi pilot and the western miner and reporter, he accumulated funds of hard but humorous experience that he, like Cervantes, turned to literary account. Out of it came "Roughing It," which made the country laugh till its sides were sore, to be followed by such stories or novels of humor as "Innocents Abroad," "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn" and "Pudd'nhead Wilson." There were other works, sixteen or more of them, but those named best reveal his genius for humorously exaggerated description and sarcastic wit. No other writer so vividly portrayed the irresponsible American boy or so adequately expressed the big-hearted, homespun, violent life of the wild west.
Twain's character had its serious side, to which Joseph Twitchell, his pastor at Hartford, Conn., paid public tribute; and when the failure of his publishers ruined him he played the hero as nobly as Scott and Grant and redeemed his fortunes. But he will be remembered as America's colossal laugher; and Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Tom Sawyer will live with Falstaff, Gargantua and Sancho Panza.
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Charleston News & Courier Obituary Notice
From The (Charleston) News and Courier
22 April 1910
[Anonymous]
The announcement of the death of Mark Twain yesterday will be received with sorrow all over the world. His kindly humor won for him a unique place in American life. Aside from his literary work he was known and appreciated. Domestic sorrow weighed heavily on him, and the recent death of his close friend, Mr. H. H. Rogers, accentuat
ed his burden of sorrows. Even so, Mark Twain was cheerful to the end, his optimism being present to the last. He will be greatly missed. There is no other to take his place.
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Literature's Rewards
From The (Charleston) News and Courier
25 April 1910
[Anonymous]
We are now told by one of Mark Twain's publishers that the author probably left a fortune of more than a million dollars. It is estimated that over 5,000,000 of the humorist's books have been published in America, and abroad he was the best known and most widely read of all contemporaneous American authors, his works having been translated into many tongues. The publisher quoted says that the books of no other author, living or dead, are selling more rapidly to-day and he also tells us that no other author received more per work for his stories or was paid higher royalties for them in book form.
Acceptable information this, not only because all of us loved Mark Twain and rejoice to know that his labors were substantially rewarded, but because it is gratifying to discover that it is possible for a man to make a million dollars honestly, and with a pen! It may be just as well to note, however, that it was not the desire to make money which caused Mark Twain to adopt literature as a career.
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DEATH OF MARK TWAIN.
Noted Humorist Passes Away At Ripe Old Age.
From the Virginia City (Nevada) Daily Territorial Enterprise
22 April 1910
[Anonymous]
Redding, Conn., April 21 -- Samuel Clemens, known to the people generally as Mark Twain, died this evening after an illness of some weeks.
Mark Twain began his literary career on the Enterprise, where he was employed in the early sixties as a reporter and some of the improbable stories he then wrote afterwards made him famous. Before coming to the Comstock he resided for many years at the old mining camp of Aurora. He took first rank as a humorist and there is hardly a person in the civilized world who has not read some of his stories. Twain came to Nevada as private secretary to his brother, who had been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory, and experienced the ups and downs of the early settlers. His story, "Roughing It," attracted great attention and the sales were great, which put Twain on Easy street and life with him had since been easy.
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MARK TWAIN.
From The Indianapolis News
22 April 1910
[Anonymous]
The thousands of people who have loved the great author for his works seldom thought of him as Samuel Langhorne Clemens. To them he was always Mark Twain, a writer of inimitable humor, whose voluminous writings were read with the keenest enjoyment. His life was long and varied. He had known hardship and he had known failure, but he had known as complete literary success as any modern writer. The success of "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras" was probably as great a surprise to him as it was to his publishers. It opened a new variety of humor, which is always welcome in America. When this was followed by "Innocents Abroad" and then by "Roughing It" the fame of Mark Twain as a popular writer of entertaining books was established. "Old Times on the Mississippi," "Tom Sawyer," and "Huckleberry Finn" gave to the reading public a delightful and intimate view of a phase of American life which was enjoyed as well by those who were not personally familiar with it as by those who were to the manner born.
Mr. Clemens had a genially eccentric personality. He was always saying and doing things that no one else thought of saying or doing. But his wit was not vindictive or malicious. It never cut nor bit. It really came to the point where people always expected him to say something that would cause the immediate laugh and would leave no after-bitterness to rankle; and he seldom failed them. Particularly was this true when he appeared as a lecturer or an after-dinner speaker, in both of which capacities there was a great demand for him until the infirmities of age made it necessary for him to husband his strength. But even then he did not cease his work. Mentally he was as active as ever and the productions of his pen continued to appear in the magazines and in book form until almost the very end. If anything his imaginings appeared to grow quainter with his increasing years.
The sterling integrity of his character was manifested by his heroic struggle to meet the obligations of the publishing firm in which he had been interested and which failed disastrously. At an age when most men are ready to retire from the fiercer activities of life he gave himself no peace and no rest until by his lectures and his pen he had paid off every dollar. It was the feat of Sir Walter Scott over again.
While one thinks of Mark Twain first and foremost as a great humorist, yet he was more than that. Along with his humor there is depth of insight -- penetration into human life and character, keen and searching and true. As a recent writer has said:
Three decades ago the literary specialists and arbiters of belles-lettres dismissed Mark Twain with the phrase, "professional humorist." But the critics began to see more clearly as the years mellowed "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" into classics. Their standards became less academic, broader and more humane, and the change was marked by a universal acceptance of Mark Twain as a creator of racy American types, as an artist who had caught and preserved for posterity the rich, quaint flavor in certain fascinating phases of native life. A genuine humorist, yes, let it be said to his eternal honor, yet one who was not content with merely tickling the ribs, but who reached the hearts that beat beneath them. He was like Cervantes in making people laugh first and think afterward. Three generations grinned and made merry of "Don Quixote" before anyone realized that it was anything more than merely a funny tale; the same phenomenon, upon a smaller scale, might be recorded of "Huckleberry Finn."
There are few persons who have either known Mark Twain or have read his works that will no experience a feeling of sorrow at his death. It leaves a void that will probably never be filled in a branch of literature that is peculiarly American. For he was thoroughly American in sentiment, manner and methods.
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer Obituary Notice
Mark Twain.
From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
22 April 1910
[Anonymous]
The death of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known throughout the enlightened world as Mark Twain, removes a noble figure, and an influence of great value, from the literary circles of America. It has been common in this country and abroad to speak of Mark Twain as "the American humorist": the apparent exclusiveness of the title is not wholly unjustified, for he came nearer realizing the nobility and dignity of the American conception of humor, and possessed a keener appreciation of the humorous possibilities inhering in American types of character than any other writer in the history of the republic.
Because of the grace and inoffensiveness which marked his delineative work, his writings possess an enduring quality, and they will long be read with increasing interest, pleasure and profit.
Humor of the emphatic sort is a thing of changing quality. Consider, for instance, the grotesqueness of the stage and the caricatures of current prints. Men today laugh at that which would have offended the men of yesterday, and it is equally certain that the things which amuse the men of today will no longer amuse the men of tomorrow.
Mark Twain, with easy and insideous grace, wrote to the smile, and if occasionally convulsive laughter marked the pleasant pilgrimage of the reader, it was probably because the reader's nature was rich and full to overflowing with light and cheery qualities of heart and mind, rather than because of any effort on the author's part to distort, and exaggerate beyond human semblance, the figures he struck from the fancies of the moment; for behind Mark Twain's portraitures, somewhere in the sphere of his ample experience and studious observation, real pulsing, moving characters could be found to match them, as faithfully, in most instances, as Hamlet's mouse trap scene matched players and principals in the act which lays bare the brewing villainies of the court.
Mark Twain contributed much to the sum of huma
n contentment, and while he moved and toiled in a sphere totally different from that which Emerson and Lowell, and Longfellow and Holmes and Whitman adorned, he has not contributed less enduringly to the prestige and brilliance of American literature.
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San Francisco Examiner Obituary Notice
A Great Author;
A True American
From The San Francisco Examiner
22 April 1910
[Anonymous]
MARK TWAIN is dead! In those four words America announces to a weeping world the loss of her foremost literary man. Assuredly of all our authors he was "first in the hearts of his countrymen."