Mark Twain Archives - The Skittish Library

Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens as he was sans pen name) was about as big a fan of smoking as it’s possible to be. Starting his cigar habit at the startling age of 8, he once said that “If smoking is not allowed in heaven, I shall not go.” He is said to have smoked incessantly, anything from 22 to 40 cigars per day, although he also declared that “I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time.”

On one of his attempts to give up, he wrote,

“I pledged myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me every day and all day long. I found myself hunting for larger cigars…within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions that I could have used it as a crutch.”

Which brings to mind the Camberwell Carrot of cigars.

The Camberwell Carrot, from Withnail and I

So, this endorsement from Mark Twain for Players Navy Cut tobacco (in pipe form, this time) seems like it could be plausible. And yet….despite the fact that the man was hardly ever pictured not smoking, this didn’t sound quite right to me.

Nottingham Evening Post, 24th November 1909

So I did a big of digging and I found that this advert was actually the subject of a threatened lawsuit from Clemens. It seems his private secretary Ralph Ashcroft, mentioned in the advert, arranged this campaign without his knowledge. Clemens wrote to his friend Elizabeth Wallace about this:

“In England Ashcroft committed a forgery in the second degree on me, and sold for £25 my name (and words which I would not have uttered for a hundred times the money.) Sh-! say nothing about it – we hope to catch him and shut him up in a British jail.”

Ashcroft managed the financial affairs for Clemens, cannily trademarking the name “Mark Twain” and setting up the Mark Twain Company. He was married to Isabel Lyons, Clemens’ secretary, but Clemens evidently ended up loathing them both. The spectre of this loathing has recently arose again with the publication of volumes 1-3 of his autobiography. Written in his final years, he decreed that it should not be published until 100 years after his death, and so in 2010 the first volume was released. Volume 3, published in 2015, contained what is known as the ”Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript”, denouncing both for what he considered to be their treachery. More here, and it’s just spurred me on to get going on his autobiog.

Mark Twain was the greatest ever American writer, as far as I’m concerned. Not only a genius-level author, he was a thinker, and a very funny man to boot. His mind was as independent of its time as far as that is possible – just read the incredible ending to The Mysterious Stranger, an attack on the hypocrisy of organised religion.

His mind was always on the go, and here, in the 1889 Manchester Courier, is the report of his latest invention, a self-pasting scrapbook. I have suddenly realised this is exactly what I need for my recipe scrapbook – a copy of River Song’s diary from Doctor Who that I used to paste in recipes I find from newspapers and magazines. I certainly identify with the “barrels and barrels of profanity” when finding my Pritt stick is “so hard it is only fit to eat.”

Here he is, in typically amusing fashion.

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MARK TWAIN’S LATEST INVENTION

Not long ago, Mark Twain took the public into his confidence as to the achievements of a marvellous type-setting arrangement which he had devised. He now offers another boon to mankind in the shape of a scrap-book for newspaper cuttings, in which it is only necessary to wet the gummed columns in order to affix the cutting. The inventor modestly speaks of his achievement as follows: – “I hereby certify that during many years I was afflicted with cramps in my limbs, indigestion, salt rheum, enlargement of the liver, and periodic attacks of inflammatory rheumatism complicated with St Vitas’ dance, my sufferings being so great that for months at a time I was unable to stand upon my feet without assistance or speak the truth with it. But as soon as I had invented my self-pasting scrap-book and begun to use it in my own family, all these infirmities disappeared. In disseminating this universal healer among the world’s afflicted you are doing a noble work, and I sincerely hope you will get your reward – partly in the sweet consciousness of doing good, but the bulk of it in cash.” The following remarks are extracted from a letter to the publishers of the “notion”: – You know that when the average man wants to put something in his scrap-book he can’t find his paste – then he swears; or if he finds it, it is dried so hard it is only fit to eat – then he swears; if he uses mucilage, it mingles with the ink, and next year he can’t read his scrap – the result is barrels and barrels of profanity. If you still wish to publish this scrap-book of mine, I shall be willing. It is a sound moral work, and this will commend it to editors and clergymen, and, in fact, to all right-feeling people. If you want testimonials, I can get them, and of the best sort and from the best people. One of the most refined and cultivated young ladies in Hartford (daughter of a clergyman) told me herself, with grateful tears standing in her eyes, that since she began using my scrap-book she has not sworn a single oath. Truly yours, MARK TWAIN

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