ALitA 2010, Session 1A, Mark Twain: The Perils of Biography and Anthology
Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford), “American Literature in Transnational Perspective: The Case of Mark Twain”
Laura Skandera Trombley (Pitzer), “Fighting Ghosts: The Writing of Mark Twain’s Other Woman” [paper withdrawn?]
Michael Shelden (Indiana State), “Mark Twain and Lord Curzon: Imperialism and Twain’s Honorary Degree from Oxford”
Martin Zehr, “Mark Twain and the Chinese: The Celestial Connection”
[I am the only person in this session using a laptop, it seems.]
I walked in late, due to train delays, and missed Fishkin’s paper. Michael Shelden was discussing the granting of SLC’s honorary Oxford degree and the complex British political situation (Curzon, Kipling) of which SLC was largely unaware. SLC wasn’t calculating; he felt honored for being recognized despite being a grade-school dropout. Ralph Ashcroft accompanied SLC as his assistant and had his eyes opened by how others treated SLC and how SLC reacted.
Shelden noted that there’s been much controversy about Lyon and Ashcroft. Ashcroft gained Lyon’s assistance after the Oxford trip, i.e., after seeing how easily SLC was taken in by praise and how readily he trusted others. Thus Ashcroft gained power of attorney (which Lyon had already) and began transferring money to a corporation he controlled, a little at a time—all quite legal—partly because neither Jean nor Clara was in a position then to manage the estate. When Lyon and Ashcroft married, it set off alarm bells, and eventually SLC fired both of them. He then wrote what’s now known as the Ashcroft-Lyon narrative: not bitter but a kind of narrative triumph, essentially finished in spring 1909.
[Curious that Lyon in this account loses agency: Ashcroft “directed” how she looked at things, etc.]
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Martin Zehr brought some images to pass around due to an apparent failure of projection technology—Anson Burlingame + Chinese delegation, 1867; Workingman’s Party candidate listing for an SF election in the 9th Ward, 1875 (anti-Chinese platform); SLC + Bret Harte portraits on calling cards in Gurney’s Studio, NY, 1869 (one yr after treaty with China); advertising card, Baltimore, 1870s; toy cast-iron pistol 1875ish Ives Mfg Co with two figures atop, courtesy of Toy and Miniature Museum in Kansas City, MO (“some gringo” holding a Chinaman’s queue, and when the gun’s fired, the white man kicks the other in the butt: engraved “THE CHINESE MUST GO”).
Zehr’s article is now online, Journal of Transnational American Studies. He’s a clinical psychologist and amateur MT scholar.
The treaty with China is long neglected vis à vis Twain Studies and the topic of SLC and race. Compare his 1853 letter full of epithets to his mother with his later writings. [Zehr a bit hard to hear.] A 7000-word 4 Aug 1868 NY Tribune piece—seemingly editorial, but at the end it turns out to be by SLC—Zehr read a few excerpts. Discusses problems of “enlightened” American beliefs re: imperialism, illusion of religious freedom in U.S. versus actual openness then in China. [Wonder whether he or Burlingame knew about e.g. the Hui, i.e. Huízú.]
Zehr observed that one could make the argument that SLC was trying to ingratiate himself as a Westerner with the East Coast establishment and had therefore to look like an abolitionist, etc. But one cannot make those arguments re: the transformation of his expressed attitudes regarding the Chinese over the long haul. Fourteen years after the treaty with China, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed; it’s not as though SLC was being pressured socially to play nice to the Chinese [as distinct, then, implicitly, from African Americans]. “John Chinaman in New York”—tea shops had to hire Irishmen and dress them in yellowface to get a “Chinese” man out front advertising their wares.
[One of those moments when I become aware, yet again at a conference, that I’m one of a very few individuals in the room who doesn’t look white. This time, we are four, and I went to grad school with one of them.]
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Q&A
Q for Fishkin: do you know of anyone doing work on SLC’s reading of these authors? [Missed the name, someone possibly French.]
Fishkin: hard to document some things.
Q for Shelden: [missed part of this, too] You suggest that the white suit [book cover] implies a joie de vivre; could you talk about SLC as complicit in some of what goes on around him? “Complicit” might be the wrong word, but to what extent does he participate in celebrity?
Shelden: pic of SLC and Clara on ship bringing back OLC’s corpse—wearing black, of course. “When I put on black, it reminds me of my funeral. I could wear white all the year around.” [perhaps not exact quotation.] If Death is coming, it’ll have a hard time; I won’t be ready. Anyway—those around him couldn’t resist his charm and the celebrity that others accrued to him.
follow-up Q for Shelden or Fishkin: do you undertake biographical work as a corrective or did it emerge organically?
Shelden: has spent some time as journalist—interviewed Christopher Reeve 3–4 years before his death, with alarming news of NYC on the monitors; one would want to walk into SLC’s life and have a moment of conversational intimacy: biography as re-creation of the life.
Fishkin: more a journey of discovery. 40% of contributors to the book aren’t American; sought writers more than critics, re: reactions.
Q for Fishkin or Zehr: SLC as iconic author, and interest that SLC published that editorial shortly before becoming more recognized, and later began other anti-imperialist writings that he didn’t finish. Why then wait till 1890s?
Zehr: until Sp-Am War 1898, SLC wasn’t really hit so hard by U.S. imperialism. There are little pieces (Yung Wing, e.g.) but they don’t coalesce. Don’t really know why it took that long.
Fishkin: SLC doesn’t fully make connections between racism and imperialism in that editorial, not till turn of century. Going to India also factors in—seeing how racism works in different contexts.
Zehr: 1900 speech: “I am a Boxer”—like Jane Fonda on the tank, aroused reactions that he was a traitor. 10 yuan coin minted in 1991, with MT on reverse.
Q for Fishkin: generalize where SLC is in European educational agenda.
Fishkin: not central but there are some scholars; Japan much more of a center, outside the U.S., but Continental European interest is increasing.
Q: Kiskis said it’s not really possible to do SLC’s biography in a single volume. Remarks?
Shelden: deterred him at first, and not much interest in cradle-to-grave standard approach. (Next project is Winston Churchill’s early years.) Way to get close to a person’s life is to choose a four- to five-year period and really dig in, rather than attempt full coverage.
Zehr: can’t go wrong by reading Powers and Shelden.