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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2010
In 1895, an elderly, tired, and creatively challenged Samuel Clemens embarked upon a worldwide lecture tour whose primary purpose was to retire the debt which had driven him into bankruptcy. His personal woes were largely ignored by enthusiastic New Zealand audiences, which packed the halls and reveled in Clemens as Mark Twain. Some of Twain's novels preceded him, but his success in New Zealand owed more to his stage presence than to his literary prowess. This essay shows how Clemens performed Mark Twain to bridge cultural gaps halfway around the globe. In doing so, it highlights reading differences in English-speaking lands and between social classes. It also casts light on Twain's underappreciated skill in live performance, shows him as a flexible figure responding to particular audiences, and underscores the ways in which aspects of his stage show anticipate the shift to a celebrity-based culture.
2 Southland Times, Nov. 4, 1895Google Scholar.
3 Twain did not travel directly to New Zealand. But it took approximately five days to travel by train from Hartford to San Francisco and several more to get to Victoria, British Columbia, where Twain boarded a ship. An entire week was needed to sail to Hawaii, Twain's first port of call, and two more weeks to Sydney, Australia. The voyage from Sydney to Bluff, New Zealand, took four or five days, depending on the seas.
4 Twain, Mark, Following the Equator, vol. 1 (1897Google Scholar; New York, 1992), 211. It was actually more than 1,600 miles from Sydney, from whence Twain sailed, to Bluff.
5 Ibid., 211-15. The story is a Twain invention in the form of an apocryphal dialogue between himself and “Professor X.”
6 The wage-labor force of the late nineteenth century was fluid. Industrial capitalism's development was exceedingly uneven, and laborers were more transnational than manufactured goods for much of the period. In the 1860s and 1870s, some North Americans went to New Zealand to take advantage of plentiful land and a booming economy. Around 1878, however, the New Zealand economy went into a twenty-year tailspin often called the “Long Depression,” and outmigration often outstripped immigration. Australia was the favored destination, but Canada and the United States also hosted job-seeking New Zealanders.
7 1Southland Times, Nov. 4, 1895Google Scholar.
8 Wellington Evening Post, Dec. 10, 1895Google Scholar. The reporter noted that exacting photographs were “not always a trait of stars.”
9 For example, neither The GildedAge nor Roughing It enjoyed robust sales abroad, and neither book was well represented in New Zealand libraries until well after Twain's visit.
10 A wonderful resource for Twain studies is Rasmussen, R. Kent, Mark Twain A-Z (New York, 1995)Google Scholar.
11 General Catalogue of Grey Collection Free Public Library (Auckland, 1888)Google Scholar; Waipukurau Public Library Catalogue and Rules (1887)Google Scholar; Christchurch Public Library Catalogue (1895)Google Scholar; Wellington City Lbrary Book Register (1893)Google Scholar; Catalogue of the Library of the General Assembly of New Zealand (1885)Google Scholar. The Dunedin holdings were summarized by Jean Strachan.
12 Gillespie-Needham, Dulcie, The Colonial and His Books: A Study of Reading in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand (Wellington, 2004), 279–80Google Scholar.
13 Grey Collection Free Public Library; Waipukurau Public Ubrary Catalogue and Rules; Christchurch Public Ubrary Catalogue; Wellington City Library Book Register, and Catalogue of the Library of the General Assembly of New Zealand.
14 Cox, J. Randolph, The Dime Novel: A Source Book (Westport, CT, 2000)Google Scholar.
15 Haywood, Ian, The Revolution in Popular Literature: Print, Politics and the People, 1790-1860 (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar.
16 Wellington City Library Book Register.
17 Sinclair, Keith, A History of New Zealand (Harmondsworth, UK, 1986)Google Scholar.
18 Olssen, Erik, Building the New World: Work, Politics and Society in Caversham, 1880s-1920s (Auckland, 1995)Google Scholar.
19 Martin, John E., The Forgotten Worker: The Rural Wage Earner in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, (Auckland, 1990)Google Scholar.
20 For more on audiences and expectations in the United States, see Kasson, John, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Levine, Lawrence, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA, 1988)Google Scholar; Rosenzweig, Roy, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar.
21 Otago Dailj Times, Nov. 7, 1895Google Scholar.
22 Ibid.
23 Andersen, Johannes, The Eure of New Zealand Book Collecting (Auckland, 1936)Google Scholar.
24 Twain gave his first publi c lecture in 1856, but he did not engage in regular tours until 1866.
25 Auckland Star, Nov. 22, 1895Google Scholar.
26 Paine, Albert Bigelow, Mark Twain: A Biography (New York, 1912), 2:447Google Scholar; Lorch, Fred, The Trouble Begins at Eight; Mark Twain's Lecture Tours (Ames, IA, 1966), 214–18, 226, 274, 305Google Scholar. See also Lorch, , “Mark Twain's ‘Morals’ Lectures during the American Phase of his World Tour,” American Literature, 26 (Mar. 1954), 52–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Otago Daily Times, Nov. 8, 1895Google Scholar.
28 New York Times, July 23, 1895Google Scholar.
29 Twain, Mark, “How to Tell a Story” in Complete Short Stories and Famous Essays of Mark Twain (New York, 1928), 405Google Scholar. Emphasis in original.
30 Howells, William Dean, ”Mark Twain,” Century, Sept. 1882, 782Google Scholar.
31 Baldanza, Frank, Mark Twain: An Introduction and Interpretation (New York, 1961), 26–27Google Scholar. “Grandfather's Ram” appears in Twain, Mark, Roughing It (1872; New York, 1980), ch. 53Google Scholar.
32 Actor Hal Holbrook capture s the essence of this tale; see Mark Twain Tonight!, Kultur Videocassette # 1891 (West Long Branch, NJ, 1967)Google Scholar.
33 Auckland Star, Nov. 22, 1895Google Scholar.
34 The bucking horse story is told in Twain, Roughing It, ch. 24.
35 Wellington Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1895Google Scholar.
36 Twain, Mark, Innocents Abroad (1869; New York, 1966), ch. 18Google Scholar.
37 Wellington Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1895Google Scholar.
38 Twain, Mark, A Tramp Abroad (1880; New York, 2003), 315–31Google Scholar.
39 Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884; New York, 1977), ch. 31Google Scholar.
40 Wellington Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1895Google Scholar. This is one of numerous accounts responding favorably to this story. Nearly every account of Twain's first “At Home” lecture praised the story.
41 Twain, , Following the Equator, 278–79Google Scholar.
42 Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) and Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) were role models for Clemens's Mark Twain persona. Both were popular among American readers and audiences in the 1860s, Browne having sold 40,000 copies of Artemus Ward: His Book in 1862 and Billings, around 90,000 of Farmer's Allminax in 1869Google Scholar. Also influential was Bill Nye. Libraries in Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington had Ward volumes, but by the 1890s Ward, Billings, and Nye were largely forgotten figures even in the United States. The last Ward reference is found in the Taranaki Herald on Dec. 3, 1895Google Scholar , but this is a reprint of an Auckland Star article that appeared on Nov. 22, 1895. The New Zealand Herald article is from Nov. 21, 1895Google Scholar.
43 Twain, , A Tramp Abroad, 10–14Google Scholar.
44 The Buck Fanshaw story appears in Twain, , Roughing It, ch. 47Google Scholar.
45 An account of the duel in Nevada's Comstock region appears in Paine, , Mark Twain, 1:45Google Scholar; also in Twain, Mark, “A Duel Prevented,” Territorial Enterprise (Virginia City, NV), Aug. 2, 1863Google Scholar; Twain, , Roughing It, ch. 45Google Scholar.
46 Twain composed a poem based entirely on Australian place names. See Twain, , Following the Equator, 1:36Google Scholar; Shillingsburg, Miriam, At Home Abroad: Mark Twain in Australia (Jackson, MS, 1988)Google Scholar.
47 Praise for the poem appears in the Otago Daily Times, Nov. 8, 1895Google Scholar , and the New Zealand Herald, Nov. 23, 1895Google Scholar. The Oamaru Mail, Nov. 12, 1895Google Scholar , offered suggestions for New Zealand additions.
48 Twain, Mark, Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)Google Scholar , www.gutenberg.org/etext/91 (accessed May 22, 2008). Lorch, , Trouble Begins at Eight, 330–31Google Scholar , prints a stage text of this story.
49 Taranaki Herald, Nov. 23, 1895Google Scholar.
50 Lorch, , Trouble Begins at Eight, 324Google Scholar.
51 Lyttleton Times, Nov. 16, 1895Google Scholar.
52 Twain, Mark, “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning” in Complete Short Stories, 473–78Google Scholar. The story was especially well received in Dunedin, according to the Otago Daily Times, Nov. 8, 1895Google Scholar.
53 Twain, , Complete Short Stories, 407–08Google Scholar.
54 Shillingsburg, , At Home Abroad, 121Google Scholar.
55 Twain, , Complete Short Stories, 130–33Google Scholar.
56 Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.
57 This apocryphal story comes from Mason Locke Weems and first appeared in A History of the Life and Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington, published in 1800. It quickly entered American mythology.
58 Twain, “Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington,” http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/washington/twain/gwbio/index.html (accessed May 22, 2008). Christchurch audiences were among those who understood the joke, as noted by the Lyttleton Times, Nov. 17, 1895Google Scholar.
59 Twain, , Complete Short Stories, 417–19Google Scholar.
60 Lorch, , Trouble Begins at Eight, 320–21Google Scholar.
61 Ibid., esp. ch. 8.
62 Southland Times, Nov. 6, 1895Google Scholar; Timaru Herald, Nov. 5, 1895Google Scholar.
63 Otago Daily Times, Nov. 6-9, 1895Google Scholar; Oamaru Mail, Nov. 8, 1895Google Scholar; Grey River Argus, Nov. 9, 1895Google Scholar.
64 MTimaru Herald, Nov. 11, 1895Google Scholar.
65 Oamaru Mail, Nov. 11, 12, 1895Google Scholar.
66 Lyttleton Times, Nov. 14-17, 1895Google Scholar; Oamaru Mail, Nov. 14, 1895Google Scholar; Weekly Tress, Nov. 21, 1895Google Scholar. The Savage Club was a social organization for working writers, artists, and journalists.
67 Weekly Tress, Nov. 21, 1895Google Scholar.
68 New Zealand Mail, Nov. 21, 1895Google Scholar.
69 Auckland Star, Nov. 21, 22, 1895Google Scholar.
70 Ibid., Nov. 23, 1895; New Zealand Graphic, Nov. 23, 1895Google Scholar.
71 All of Twain's venues had scaled ticket prices, and none cost more than four shillings. There were always seats priced as low as two shillings, and for some venues, such as Auckland and Hawera, tickets went for as low as a single shilling. This would have been affordable even to domestic servants making roughly twelve shillings per week.
72 Poverty Bay Herald, Nov. 25, 27, 1895Google Scholar.
73 Hawke's Bay Herald, Nov. 28, 1895Google Scholar.
74 Ibid., Nov. 29, 1895.
75 Ibid.
76 Wanganui Herald, Nov. 30, Dec. 1, 3, 1895Google Scholar; Taranaki Herald, Dec. 3, 1895Google Scholar.
77 Wanganui Herald, Dec. 4, 1895Google Scholar.
78 Taranaki Herald, Dec. 6, 7, 1895Google Scholar.
79 Evening Post, Dec. 7, 10, 11, 1895Google Scholar; New Zealand Mail, Dec. 5, 12, 1895Google Scholar.
80 New Zealand Mail, December 19, 1895Google Scholar.
81 Oamaru Mail, November 14, 1895Google Scholar.
82 Twain, , Following the Equator, vol. 1, chs. 30–35Google Scholar.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid., ch. 30; For more on Dr. Hocken, see Strachan, S. R., “Hocken, Thomas Morland 1836-1910” in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, www.dnzb.govt.nz (accessed May 22, 2008Google Scholar.) In Following the Equator, Twain misspelled Hocken's name as “Hockin.”
85 William Hodgkins's sketches of Twain are housed in the Alexander Turnbull Library's Photo Collection; see E-147-025 and A212/24, album 4.
86 Oamaru Mail, Nov. 14, 1895Google Scholar. A Twain remark in Sydney embroiled him in a dispute between followers of Henry George who believed in free trade and those who supported protectionist policies. For the rest of his time in the Antipodes, Twain declined to make political comments with more depth than generalized praise for democracy. See Shillingsburg, , At Home Abroad, 23Google Scholar.
87 For Twain's racial views, see Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, “Mark Twain and Race” in A Historical Guide to Mark Twain, ed. Fishkin, (Oxford, 2002), 127–62Google Scholar.
88 Twain, , Following the Equator, 1:280Google Scholar; for remarks on Maori, see ch. 32, 35.
89 Ibid., ch. 32.
90 (lOn Clemens's sympathy for working people, see Weir, Robert, “Mark Twain and Social Class” in Historical Guide to Mark Twain, 195–225Google Scholar.
91 ”This story, originally related in Paine, Mark Twain's Notebook, comes from Shillingsburg, , At Home Abroad, 167Google Scholar. Twain complained that his room was “astonishingly small.” He called the landlord “fat, red, ignorant, made of coarse clay, possibly mud,” and mused that management disavowed responsibility for lost luggage, yet there were “no keys to the doors.”
92 Parson, Coleman, “Mark Twain in New Zealand,” South Atlantic Quarterly 61 (Winter 1962): 51–76Google Scholar.
93 Twain, , Following the Equator, 1:277Google Scholar.
94 Oamaru Mail, Nov. 14, 1895Google Scholar.
95 Twain, , Following the Equator, 1:219Google Scholar.
96 Hartford Times, Nov. 12, 1897Google Scholar; New York Sun, Nov. 12, 1897Google Scholar. Reviews reprinted in Budd, Louis, ed., Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews (New York, 1999), 463–66Google Scholar. Following the Equator also received favorable reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 12, 1897Google Scholar; New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 30, 1890Google Scholar; Dial, Mar. 16, 1898Google Scholar; The Critic, Feb. 1898Google Scholar; and Overland Monthly, Apr. 1898Google Scholar.
97 Chap-Book, Mar. 15, 1898Google Scholar , and Sydney Bulletin, Jan. 15, 1898Google Scholar; repr. in Budd, Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews, 457.
98 Boston Herald, Dec. 11, 1897Google Scholar; Providence Journal, Dec. 26, 1897Google Scholar; Springfield (MA) Republican, Jan. 2, 1898Google Scholar; New York Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 18, 1897Google Scholar , repr. in Budd, Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews, 463-73.
99 Melton, Jeffrey Alan, Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism: The Tide of a Great Popular Movement (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2002), 138, 139, 147, 155Google Scholar.
100 Susman, Warren, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1984)Google Scholar.
101 Mencken, H. L., “Mark Twain's Americanism,” New York Evening Mail, Nov. 1, 1917Google Scholar.
102 Rasmussen, , Mark Twain A to Z, 255–63Google Scholar. Critics habitually greeted Twain's later published fiction ambivalently, and his later plays, essays, satires, and social and cultural criticism failed to attract the attention he desired.
103 Lorch, , Trouble Begins at Bight, 255–70Google Scholar.
104 Ibid., 257-58.
105 Twain, , Following the Equator, 1:200Google Scholar.
106 Rasmussen, Mark Twain A to Z, 277–79Google Scholar.
107 Gribben, Alan, “The Importance of Mark Twain” in American Humor, ed. Dudden, Arthur (New York, 1987), 24–49, quotes 36, 33, 48Google Scholar.
108 A personal note: As a youngster I too saw Twain performed (by Hal Holbrook) before I ever read him. One cannot help but speculate that Twain as a pop-culture icon—in everything from movie adaptations of his novels to a Holodeck character in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode—has similarly made Twain familiar to others who have yet to read him.
109 See Kevin MacDonnell's “Mark Twain Collectibles,” housed in the MacDonnell Rare Books collection at the University of Texas Austin. A sample is available at http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/sc_as_mt/merchandiz/macdonnell.html (accessed May 22, 2008).
110 Contemporary novelist Richard Russo is among those who are frank about the need for writers to be visible if they hope their books to sell. Russo noted that only several hundred fiction writers in the entire United States support themselves entirely by writing, and even they must give lectures, teach workshops, and make public appearances. Remarks of Richard Russo delivered at Smith College, Oct. 13, 2007.