MARK TWAIN.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 13

MARK TWAIN.

(SPECIALLY TYBITTC:* »0» THB TRESS.)

[By G. M. L. Listbb.]

Willa Gather in a preface to on© of Miss Jewett's books says that "Huckleberry Finn," by Mark Twain, is one of throe books by American writers which are sure of immortality. "Willa Gather is a clever writer; it does not follow that she is a penetrating critic. Be that as it may, it will be granted that "Huckleberry Finn" is a considerable literary achievement. Yet in some of his lesser work, Mark Twain reached perhaps the lowest level to which American literature had fallen in his time. Between these two extremes lies the personality of Samuel L. Clemens; or as the -world knows him best, Mark Twain.

Three Visitors. During the middle period of Victoria's reign, three distinguished Americans visited Europe. They were one and all accorded a royal welcome, both from society and from the literary world of their day. They represented three types of character eminently American. Each of them had won his reputation at the point of his pen. Bret Hart© represented the melodramatic sentiment which has found its perfect flowering in tho groves of Hollywood. The emotional world of Dickens and Tennyson welcomed him, ucclaimed him—and he is now forgotten. Emerson, a far finer type, a visitor from the stars, one of those just men for whose, sake a guilty world is spared, had, it is true, a. succes d 'estime, but, save among a few fine spirits, was accounted cold and disappointing. Yet bis influence was ielt, and will be felt wherever men strive to rise above the shows of things, and to touch reality. Mark Twain, of all these three, was the greatest success. He dined with emperors: literary constellations coruscated at his touch: never was a celebrity so popular among so many. And this not in virtue of his writings, but of his amazing personality. He represented, as no other man of his time, the "average man" of Walt Whitman: the ideal for a tiruo of American democracy. His influence on the European world of his day was not indeed lasting, but for the moment it was unmistakably intense. A Great American Victorian. For readers of to-day, his barbario voice, as loud and challenging as that ot Walt Whitman is rendered strange and unreal by- the rowdy journalese in which it was recorded in print. Nevertheless, the memory of his massive head, with its aureole of white hair, of his shrewd Yankee eyes, and his defiant chin will long linger among those to whom the Victorian age is a matter of interest and delight. It does not lie within my competence, nor is it my purpose here to attempt an estimate of Mark Twain as a literary man. This much, however, I may hazard. Certain authorities claim him as a literary genius; ethers, while they rank him high as a humorist, deny him any real literary quality; and others again go further, and assert that even his humour is perilously near buffoonery. His true literary value, of course, lies somewhere between these extremes. He wa3 a very üble journalist, and at times, when his subject Buited him, he was a master of narrative, or perhaps I should say, of the art of the story-teller. But when all is said and done, the fact that his books have an appeal which will not readily die out depends rather on the largeness of his heart than the agility of his brain. To this quality of large-heartedness, though it may seem to involve a paradox, we must add the slightly sardonic detachment, which we find in almost all of the narrative writers who can be called great.

Ctexdal Spectator. Twain, as far tu bis philosophy of life went, was an optimistic fatalist, but in the practice of living,. he was a large-hearted helpful man. He penetrated, either by sympathy, or by actual experience, every of the natures of the boys and men whom he depicted: and then in his role of spectator he narrated cheerily, and above aU humorously, the reaction of these puppets to the fated onflow of destiny. I have been deafened by the roar of his.rollicking laughter, bored by the tedious tilting at conventionality, which was almost his only serious gospel; yet I have never failed to share m ,some measure his detachment, and to chuckle with the genial giant, as he watches his queer boy friends evolve The tangled dance oi then- petty fS Mark Twain was geniaV he was a. te oi ff£^« wiff bo »any of the homely AmeriCa Thei form a marginal on a letter no; to own S hi % S TW Llwis f0 by Sn riskOf his life, saved oertSn relations of his mastei■from the r,eriis of a runaway horse and gig. The 1 had been thanked banqueted negro " , Yi watch by an instrument for saving those ..£;«„«T lives the honnor conferred than the feat perf this remarkable letter to Fowells; Howells broke.out intopaeans of admiration, wanted m fact to use t in a story. Not so Mark Twaxn His own native dignity responded tothat nf the neero, and these four woras, -That is weli said," were witness to their complete accord.

Twain's Letters. The double role of hearty sympathiser, and almost cynical observer which is, I think the. key tc.thelasting quality of Twain's humour, is shown most clearly in his letters. One St almost say that these letters are both the fine flower of his literary attainment and also the complete expression of his, character Those which he wrote to his mother in the intimacy of a mutual affection are perhaps the best. Mrs Clemens was a simple Ic-v----inc American mother; brave m the. present, but ever beset with fears for the future. Whenever she _ let her glance stray from the in hand, she saw lions in the way. Her terrors never lasted long, for by every available post came letters from Mark full of chaff and cheques. If a lion stood in the way he blew ifc up to comic proportions with the breath of his humour, pricked it with the point of his wit, and tickled the old dame to reluctant laughter. Then, lest her nerves should be overwrought, he never omitted to administer the unfailing tonio of a 'cheque or, other instrument of exchange.