Mark Twain by Middlekauff
Two years ago Robert Hirst, the editor of the Mark Twain Papers, suggested that I consider working on Twain in the Twain Project in the Bancroft Library. He believed that a historian should take a crack at Twain. I do not think that he meant that literary scholars should end their research, but only that Twain offered a challenge to all sorts of scholars.
As a matter of fact, over the years a number of historians have studied and written about Mark Twain. One of the best, Dixon Wecter, came to the Department of History from the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino as the editor of the Twain Papers shortly after the end of the Second World War. Wecter died a few years later, but not before completing what was published posthumously as Sam Clemens of Hannibal . It is a marvelous book and though now almost fifty years old, it is still the standard study of Twain's early years.
Mark Twain, 1880 |
Robert Hirst's kind invitation and the example of Dixon Wecter helped convince me that I should begin to study Twain. Mr. Hirst spoke to me at just the right time; I had just published a book on Benjamin Franklin and I was looking for a big subject that would carry me into retirement. That The Bancroft Library housed a collection of Twain materials and was supporting their publication made the idea even more appealing. But of course the chief appeal was Twain himself, a fascinating man, a great writer, and to me at least a mysterious, even enigmatic figure.
So I made my way to the Twain rooms in the Bancroft where the staff made me feel at home, even though having me there made their quarters more cramped than ever. If ever a great publication project needed more and better space, and more money, this one does.
Since I began working in the Papers, I have been asked what I am doing there. The question owes something to the way American history is divided up by professional historians. The main boundary, really a dividing line, is usually drawn at 1789. All those historians who study the early period, 1607–1789, are colonial and revolutionary historians; those who study what comes after 1789 are national period historians. For a long time neither type crossed the line—and, to bring this to my case, I fall on the wrong side of the line. Mark Twain lived from 1835 to 1910, and I am an historian of the English colonies in America.
Anyone who has read this far might conclude that in studying Twain I have wandered into unknown territory, indeed that I am lost. Anyone who reaches this conclusion would be right. In these early months of my research, I find myself in two kinds of wilderness. The first is (for me) the unknown ground of nineteenthcentury America; the second, the wilderness that is "post-modern" literary scholarship. Sustained effort in the form of reading Mark Twain's writings—fiction, letters, speeches, and the like—and the historical scholarship and some of the sources of nineteenth-century America will eventually get me out of the first kind of wilderness, or at least help me get my intellectual bearings; I have no such hope of ever fathoming the meaning of much recent literary scholarship; and I plan to escape its wilderness by wild flight, or better yet avoidance.
Historians usually begin research on a problem with questions; the answers, they assume, will emerge from original sources. Asking the right questions is one thing; finding the appropriate sources, another. I know enough to ask questions of some importance about the America that existed for Mark Twain. But when I began reading Twain's writings, I did not feel that I knew enough about him to frame questions that would lead to anything illuminating about him. And there was— and is—the matter of his connections to his time. Because of my ignorance, I began my work in an unaccustomed way—I started reading the scholarship about Twain, and for the most part I stayed away from his writings. As I have implied above, my usual practice is to begin with the original sources. The body of scholarship that bears on the questions I have in mind comes later. But in this case, I abandoned my old methods in order to get a sense of what others have done. Last summer I shifted course, having had my fill of literary, or what is today more commonly called "cultural" studies, and began reading Twain—his works and his correspondence. That is where I am now.
It is an exhilarating assignment. The major difficulty for me at this stage in my work is that everything Twain wrote that I have read is interesting and so is almost everything that interested him. The difficulty comes in sorting things out with the intention of finding something manageable that I can write about without repeating what others have said. At present my questions are focused on the American democracy of Twain's time. Just about everything he wrote reveals something about the subject, everything from Roughing It to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (and including virtually all that came in between these wonderful books).
In my research I have the splendid resources of the collection in The Bancroft Library, the definitive editions already published under the auspices of the Twain Project, and the advice and counsel of the experts on the staff headed by Robert Hirst. It is hard to conceive of a more attractive opportunity for an historian.
Robert Middlekauff,
Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History
Volume 116
Spring 2000
Table of Contents
The Silent Multitude of Voices in the Reading Room
From the Director: Bancroft Goes Digital
Highlights from Bancroft's Web Resources
Paramount Theatre Archives at The Bancroft Library
Three Monuments in the History of Science Arrive at Bancroft
Ancient Lives: The Tebtunis Papyri in Context
From Mine to Natural Reserve: ROHO records the transition
Chemistry Symposium in Honor of Kenneth S. Pitzer Held January 9 to 13, 2000: Oral History Presented
Welcome, Iris Donovan, Circulation Supervisor in Bancroft
