Mark Twain. Curious facts from the biography

On this day in 1863 Englishman Frederick Walton received a patent for the production of linoleum. The name comes from the Latin words linum - linen, linen and oleum - oil. The ancestor of linoleum was the “oiled canvas”, the production process of which looked like this: a hot mass was applied to the fabric from a mixture of resin, resin, brown Spanish dye, beeswax and linseed oil. Then ground cork was added to this mixture.

Further improvement of the process and the desire to reduce the cost of components led to the replacement of expensive components with linseed oil, then linseed oil, and finally linoxin. In 1863, Frederick Walton, an English industrialist and inventor, patents an improved technology for the production of linoxin and a floor covering based on it - linoleum. Three years later, its industrial production began, which quickly spread throughout the world.

It should be noted that since the time of Frederick Walton, the production process of linoleum has not changed much: linseed oil is oxidized, and a special mixture called linoleum cement is formed, then the mixture is cooled and mixed with pine resin and wood chips, and then sheets of linoleum are formed.

Mark Twain and his invention - suspenders

On this day in 1871, American Samuel Clemens, better known to us as Mark Twain, received a patent for "Improved Adjustable Removable Clothing Straps" - a kind of suspenders. The invention consisted of an adjustable strap that was fastened to the buttons of trousers, shirts or women's corsets and pulled them together at the waist.

Mark Twain was always very interested in the achievements of science and technology. He was a close friend of the famous inventor Nikola Tesla and spent a lot of time in his laboratory. Twain also spoke with Thomas Edison. In 1909, during a visit to the Twain estate in Connecticut, Edison captured his companion in a silent video, which is currently the only recording of the famous writer that has survived to this day.

A brilliant humorist and prankster, Twain remains true to himself even in death. The last book he wrote was his autobiography. According to the wishes of the writer, the first volume of his autobiography was published only a hundred years after his death, in November 2010 (and instantly became a bestseller). The second volume is due to be published twenty-five years after the first (that is, in 2035), and the third another twenty-five years later (in 2060).

Samuel Clemens, known throughout the world as a writer and journalist Mark Twain, was also a talented inventor. He invented and patented, for example, the technique of scrapbooking, which is very popular in our time. His love for ladies was also manifested in the invention of an elastic strap that allows you to fasten a bra so that it does not hinder movement. In addition to women's underwear, this strap was used in vests, trousers and other fashionable clothes of that time. Regarding his invention, Twain spoke very succinctly: "The advantages of an elastic strap are so obvious that they do not need explanation at all."

Roborats, hunter drones, talking trash cans: 10 gadgets and inventions that are changing cities

25 best inventions of 2014

These incredible gloves can climb walls

Soviet "Setun" - the only computer in the world based on the ternary code

Belgian designers come up with edible dishes

Frozen feces pills can cure intestinal infection

New battery charges up to 70% in two minutes

At the Amsterdam airport, every urinal has a replica of a fly.

A 16-year-old schoolgirl has created a flashlight that works solely due to body heat

10 New Technologies Invading Your Personal Space

10 facts about Nikola Tesla.

Nikola Tesla was an outstanding, brilliant inventor with a slight madness, who was far ahead of his time with his inventions. His innovations, which are still used to this day, were: an alternating current motor, a high voltage transformer (Tesla coil). He patented hundreds of inventions, but thousands of his ideas remained unrealized and exist only on paper. His projects were ahead of their time by decades, and some by centuries. His life, talent, inventions are shrouded in mystery, only rumors, conjectures and only a little truth reach our times. Therefore, we have collected for you 10 interesting facts about the life and creations of the great inventor, which will be able to reveal to us, at least a little, the veil of secrecy about the mysterious inventor Nikola Tesla.

Nikola Tesla was an adherent of the ether theory - he believed that all the space around us is filled with a substance invisible to the human eye - ether. Tesla owes many of his inventions to the theory of the ether.

Nikola Tesla reads a book during an experiment

In his student days, Tesla was a gambling gambler and lost almost all his money, but if he won, he gave all his winnings to the losers, which is why he was considered strange. In the end, Tesla lost so much that his mother had to pay for it. After that, Tesla never got involved in gambling again.

In 1882, Tesla got a job at the electrical company of Thomas Edison. But he was not paid $ 25,000 for the work done, and Tesla quit. Arriving in America, Tesla, despite his sad experience with Edison, again gets a job in his office. Edison, seeing a huge talent in Tesla, offers him to improve all the equipment in the enterprise for a modest fee of $500,000. After Tesla successfully does his job and turns to Edison for a fee, Edison laughs and says that it was an American joke and Tesla will not receive money. Terribly offended, Tesla quits and since then they have started a tacit war with Edison.

The conflict between Tesla and Edison was called the "war of the currents". Tesla's company worked with alternating current, while Edison worked with direct current. Edison constantly tried in every possible way to denigrate Tesla and his developments: he demonstrated to the public how animals die from alternating current, designed the world's first electric chair that worked on alternating current. Despite Edison's best efforts, Tesla's alternating current prevailed. But Edison did not rest on this and did everything possible to erase Tesla from the history books. He partially achieved his goal, Tesla spent his last years in solitude, and many of his ideas were attributed to other people.

In 1897, Nikola Tesla invented a small radio-controlled ship and demonstrated it to those who wished in a nearby pond. But the observers did not believe that it was possible to create such a toy and decided that all this was witchcraft. Similar toys appeared in our stores after 100 years.

Tesla said about himself that he sleeps no more than 2 hours in a row. During the day he fell asleep several times, but never more than a couple of hours.

In the laboratory, Tesla could reproduce complex energy patterns, which he called "fireballs." To date, no one can repeat Tesla's similar experiments, except for the Corum brothers from America. They are trying to reproduce Tesla's experiments with some success. The brothers manage to get "fireballs" when extinguishing the transformer, but they are three millimeters in size and last for literally seconds. Tesla, on the other hand, produced "balls" the size of a soccer ball and they kept their shape for minutes, because they had a more stable structure. Tesla held the “fireballs” in his hand, put them in a box, closed it with a lid, and then took out the “ball” from there. Nikola Tesla, more than a hundred years ago, knew much more about the phenomenon than modern science does now; he knew the secret of cold plasma fusion in free space.

The Tesla coil (which I now use only for fun, but it has a huge potential that is either not revealed, or is deliberately diminished and not used.) at the output gave a current with a frequency of 150 kHz with a voltage measured in megavolts. When Tesla was experimenting with a huge coil, thunder from electrical discharges was heard 25 km from the laboratory. People walking near his laboratory saw sparks jump between their legs and the ground. Tesla had to end the experiment after a generator burned out from a load at a nearby power plant.

Today is Friday, March 10, 2017, and the next issue of the capital show "Field of Miracles" and a review of the Sprint-Answer website with questions and answers in this game are on the air. Today we will dedicate the program to great writers, about whom almost everything is known. We will fill this “almost” a little, and we will fill it in.

The first three players: Daria Dmitrievna Bulgakova (St. Petersburg), Oleg Sergeevich Sukhodolsky (Tula) and Anastasia Vyacheslavovna (Moldova, Balti). The question is for the first round, and the Sprint-Answer site below will give an answer to it.

Answers in the game "Field of Miracles" for 03/10/2017

1. In 1871, Leo Tolstoy wrote a letter to his friend, the poet Fet. Fet read this letter and suddenly discovered with surprise that Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy called his novel "War and Peace" ... what did Tolstoy call his novel in correspondence with Fet? (Word of 9 letters).

The second three players: Yana Aleksandrovna Luneva (Arkhangelsk region, city of Konosha), Daniil Yurievich Balakhtin (city of Krasnodar) and Elena Viktorovna Midina (city of Moscow) The question for the second round is as follows:

2. They say that the writer Alexandre Dumas opened the first ... what? What was Alexandre Dumas the first to discover in Paris? (Word of 9 letters).

The third three players: Irina Evgenievna Shevchenko (Moscow city), Yuri Nikolayevich Pavlov (Ryazan city) and Karina Hakobyan (Yerevan city). The task for the third round, and the Sprint-Answer website at the bottom of the article will give all the correct answers in the game "Field of Miracles" for March 10, 2017.

3. Mark Twain's friendship with the famous inventor Nikola Tesla had a great influence on the writer. In 1871, Twain also invented and patented adjustable ... what? What did Mark Twain invent in 1871? (Word of 8 letters).

Task for the final round: the writer Arthur Conan Doyle turned out to be the author of some methods for finding criminals that the police had not yet used at that time. Among them are the identification of typewriters, looking at traces through a magnifying glass and collecting ... what? What did Conan Doyle come up with that hadn't been used by the police before? (Word of 6 letters)

2. They say that these 4 friends constantly followed Byron endlessly, and accompanied him even at public meetings. Who are we talking about? What 4 friends always accompanied Byron? (Word of 4 letters).

3. The writers Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov claimed that if some thought came to their mind at the same time as that other, they immediately discarded it, because they wanted to avoid ... what? What did Ilf and Petrov want to avoid if the same thought came to them? (Word of 5 letters).

• 1. Rubbish
• 2. Barbecue.
• 3. Suspenders.
• 4. Cigarette butt.
• 1. Non-existent.
• 2. Geese.
• 3. Stamp.

And here is the winner herself singing, I found it on YouTube - Yana Luneva

That's all for today, the review of the game turned out to be interesting, like the game itself.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known to us as Mark Twain, was born exactly 180 years ago, on November 30, 1835, two weeks after the perihelion of Halley's comet. In 1909, he wrote: "I came into this world with a comet, and I will also leave with it when it arrives next year." And so it happened: Twain died on April 21, 1910, the day after the next perihelion of the comet. And his whole life, like a comet, lit up the literary (and not only) firmament, leaving behind a bright trace. William Faulkner wrote that Mark Twain was "the first truly American writer, and since then we have all been his heirs", and Ernest Hemingway believed that all modern American literature came out of one book by Mark Twain, called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ". His work covers many genres - humor, satire, philosophical fiction, journalism and others, and in all these genres he invariably takes the position of a humanist and democrat. His talent was fabulously generous. And he just said about himself: "For all the ease and frivolity, my writings have one serious goal: to ridicule from life pretense, hypocrisy and stupid prejudices." It is often asked which modern writer can be compared with him. Nobody. He has no equal.

Sam was born in the small town of Florida (Missouri, USA) prematurely, everyone was expecting his imminent death. But it passed. He later joked that by being born, he increased its population by one percent. In the family of a provincial lawyer and shopkeeper John Marshal Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens, he was the sixth child in a family of seven children, of whom only four survived. His mother, red-haired Jane Lampton, according to all who knew her in her youth, was one of the first beauties of Kentucky. Witty, quick, bright, she retained her extraordinary cheerfulness until old age. "She had a fragile little body, but a big heart - so big that someone else's grief and other people's joys found in it both a response and shelter," Twain says in his memoirs. Jane Clemens was also a talented storyteller. In all likelihood, it was she who Twain had in mind when he wrote in the essays "Helfire Hotchkiss" (these essays have not yet been published in full, of which only a few dozen lines are known): "I now know that she had an extraordinary gift of speech; none of the people I have ever met could compare with her. Then (that is, in childhood) I did not understand this. I suppose that no one in our entire village had the slightest idea that she was a miracle from miracles, no one even guessed that she was any different from the circle of ordinary people.It took twenty years, during which I happened to meet many excellent storytellers, before I began to understand that none of them was any comparison in about the ability to speak eloquently and movingly with this artless and unlearned storyteller from a western village, with this inconspicuous little woman who had a beautiful soul, a big heart and a magical tongue.

John Marshall Clemens was a different type of man - stern and somewhat pedantic. His marriage to the unrestrainedly cheerful and even frivolous Jane Lampton was not a happy one. Among Twain's autobiographical notes are the following lines: "As a child, I saw that my father and mother ... were always attentive to each other, but there was nothing warmer in their relationship; there were no external and noticeable manifestations of love. This did not surprise me , for in all the appearance of my father and in his speech dignity was felt, his manners were severe ... My mother, by nature, was a cordial person. It seemed natural to me that her spiritual warmth did not find an outlet in the atmosphere that was created around her father. " A typical southerner, Twain's father considered slavery to be something indisputable. However, he was close to some elements of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, perceived through articles, speeches and pamphlets of leading figures during the American Revolutionary War. John Clemens was a sincere republican, deified reason and despised religious dogmas. Samuel Clemens owes to his father, to a certain extent, his characteristic faith in reason and his negative attitude towards the church.

Until the age of 4, Sam was bedridden, and until the age of 7 he was stunted. In her old age, with her usual willingness to joke, Jane Clemens, when asked by her son if she was worried that he would die as a baby, slyly replied: "No, I was afraid that you would survive." Sam grew up a nervous child. But, fortunately, Uncle Quarles had a farm near Florida. There was wonderful air; in addition, the children were excellently fed (“fried chickens, piglets, wild and domestic turkeys, ducks and geese, fresh venison, squirrels, rabbits, pheasants, partridges, quails; crackers, hot drachen, hot buckwheat, hot buns, hot tortillas; boiled cobs of young corn, beans, beans, tomatoes, peas ... "- so begins a long list of dishes that, Twain recalled, were treated to Uncle Quarles's farm). The sickly boy began to turn into a strong man.

When Mark Twain was 4 years old, his family, in search of a better life, moved to the town of Hannibal (ibid., in Missouri) - a river port on the Mississippi River, but he never learned to swim, although he was drawn to the river, where he repeatedly fell by negligence, and even drowned 9 times in Mississippi. Subsequently, this city will serve as the prototypes of the town of St. Petersburg in the famous novels "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". At this time, Missouri was a slave state, therefore already at that time Mark Twain was faced with slavery, which he would later describe and condemn in his works.

In March 1847, when Mark Twain was 11 years old, his father died of pneumonia, leaving a lot of debt. The eldest son, Orion, soon began publishing the Hannibal Journal, and Sam began to contribute as much as he could as a typesetter and occasionally as a writer. Some of the liveliest and most controversial articles in the paper came from the little brother's pen, usually when Orion was away. The Orion newspaper soon closed, the brothers' paths diverged for many years, only to cross again by the end of the Civil War in Nevada. At the age of 18, he left Hannibal and worked at a print shop in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati and other cities. Studying in the evenings In New York, he studies in the evenings, spending a lot of time in the library, where he reads and notes a lot: Thackeray, Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare, Cervantes ... in this way he received as much knowledge as he would have received by graduating from a regular school.

But the call of the Mississippi River attracted Clemens. At the age of 22, Twain took a steamboat to New Orleans. Then he had a dream to drive steamboats. Starting as a helmsman on the steamer "Pennsylvania", and having perfectly studied all the intricacies of a difficult craft and more than three thousand kilometers of a changeable riverbed, Sam Clemens received a pilot's license two years later. Samuel got his younger brother to work with him. But Henry died on June 21, 1858 due to the explosion of a boiler on the steamer on which he worked. Mark Twain said later that he foresaw the death of his brother Henry - he dreamed of the tragedy a month before. This incident, combined with a sense of guilt over the death of his brother, which did not leave him until his death, laid Mark Twain's interest in parapsychology. After this incident, he became interested in parapsychology. Subsequently, he became a member of the Society for Psychical Research (Society for Psychical Research), engaged in the study of the phenomena of mesmerism, telepathy and other paranormal phenomena. But that would be later, but for now he continued to work on the river and worked until the Civil War broke out, putting an end to private shipping on the Mississippi. The war forced him to change his profession, which, according to Clemens himself, he would have been doing all his life, and he regretted it for the rest of his life. Shortly before the war (May 22, 1861), Twain entered into Freemasonry at Polar Star Lodge No. 79 in St. Louis.

After a short acquaintance with the people's militia of the Confederation (he vividly described this experience in 1885), where he was even given the rank of lieutenant, Clemens, after the disintegration of the detachment, in July 1861 deserts from the ranks of the army of the inhabitants of the South and directs his way west, to his brother Orion who was offered the position of secretary to the newly created Nevada Territory Governor James Nye. Traveling in a stagecoach through the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City and other impressions of the trip later served as material for the autobiographical book "Forged" (1872), in Russian translation - "Light". Theodore Dreiser regarded this book as "a vivid picture of a fantastic and yet completely real era of American history." Indeed, at that time a new era began for America. Mark Twain wrote that during his stay in the town of Hannibal, wealth was not the main meaning of life for Americans, and only the discovery of gold in California "gave rise to the passion for money that has come to dominate today." The same theme - about how money spoils entire cities - is also devoted to his later story "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1899).

It was only then that word got around that silver had been found on the wild prairies of that state. Here, hoping to get rich, Samuel worked for a whole year at a silver mine, living for a long time in a camp with other prospectors, where he passed "his universities" among harsh miners, arrogant nouveau riches, corrupt women, inveterate rogues and cunning rogues, while honing the skills of a young writer. Signing as Josh or the Tramp, he wrote humorous stories and essays about the lives of prospectors for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in the Virginia City mining community, perched forlornly on the side of Mount Devison, in the "fastest growing city" in the West, which even had its own opera house built by German immigrant John Piper. In August 1862, Clemens received an invitation from the newspaper to become its permanent collaborator. Sam could not become a successful prospector, but he did not lose his silver mining and got a job in a newspaper. However, to be effective, it was necessary to change the pseudonym: there was some kind of gambling farce in the faceless name Josh, but his articles and sketches, which the miners and ladies of Virginia City reveled in, should be associated with the name, if not mysterious, but not very understandable. It was then that he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain", which was used to sign the story "Letter from Carson" [the capital of Nevada, named after the legendary frontier general Kit Carson], published on February 3, 1863. Clemens claimed that the pseudonym "Mark Twain" was taken by him in his youth from the terms of river navigation, when he was a pilot's mate on the Mississippi, and the cry "mark twain" (English mark twain, literally - "mark deuce") meant that according to at the mark on the lotlin, the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels was reached - 2 fathoms (≈ 3.7 m). However, there is a version about the literary origin of this pseudonym: in 1861, Artemus Ward's humorous story "The North Star" about three sailors, one of whom was named Mark Twain, was published in Vanity Fair magazine. Samuel was very fond of the comic section of this magazine and read Ward's works in his first stand-up performances. In addition to "Mark Twain", Clemens signed once in 1896 as "Sieur Louis de Conte" (fr. Sieur Louis de Conte) - under this name he published his novel "Personal Memoirs of Joan of Arc by Sieur Louis de Comte, her page and secretary. Twain also had other pseudonyms: Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Sergeant Fathom, and W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blub. This is how the writer Mark Twain appeared in the spaces of America, who in the future managed to win world recognition with his work.

Mark Twain's glorious path from Virginia City to world literature ran through San Francisco (which grew rich during the "gold rush" and made a hefty sum during the "silver rush"), where he moved in 1864. He wrote: “For several months I was in an unusual state for myself - I was free as a moth: I did nothing, I did not report to anyone and did not experience any financial worries. The most hospitable and sociable city in our country captured my heart. After the salt marshes and sagebrush of the Nevada expanse, San Francisco seemed like paradise to me. I lived in the best hotel in the city, flaunted my outfits, intensively attended the opera. He became a gold digger, but did not leave the reporter's work, immediately paving the way for California newspaper publications, starting to write for several newspapers at the same time. In 1865, Twain's first literary success came - on November 18, in the New York literary weekly The Saturday Press, his humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" was published, which was liked by both readers and critics, and subsequently reprinted by many publications throughout the country and called "the finest piece of humorous literature produced in America to this point." In the spring of 1866, Twain was sent by the Sacramento Union newspaper to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). Traveling in the Sandwich Islands, he rode a lot, and eventually developed painful boils on his skin. While he was in bed in a hotel in Honolulu, the surviving passengers from the wrecked ship "Hornet" were brought there. Mark Twain managed to organize a press conference with them - and sensational information under his name hit the front pages of all the newspapers in the world. During the journey, he had to write letters to the editor of the newspaper about his adventures. Upon their return to San Francisco, these letters were a resounding success. Colonel John McComb, publisher of the Alta California newspaper, suggested that Twain go on a tour of the state, giving fascinating lectures. The lectures immediately became wildly popular, and Twain not only traveled the entire state, but also earned a solid income by entertaining the audience and collecting a dollar from each listener.

By the way. About speaking to the public, the famous writer-humorist was worried only twice in his life. He, like all speakers, was very worried before the very first exit to the public. He was haunted by the question of how the public would perceive his words. At that time, Mark Twain was worried absolutely in vain! As soon as he uttered the first words: “Julius Caesar is dead. Shakespeare is dead. Napoleon died, and I don’t feel quite healthy either ... ”- the audience was delighted and gave the writer a storm of applause. The second time Mark Twain had to worry after the performance. One young man living in a small American town decided to play the popular prankster Mark Twain. Before the evening lecture, the writer took a walk through the streets of the town. A young man approached him and said that he would be happy to attend the lecture and bring his uncle with him. But the fact is that no one could ever make an elderly person laugh or even just make him smile. Maybe the great joker Mark Twain will be able to cheer up an unsmiling person? Naturally, Mark Twain accepted the challenge and cordially invited his uncle to an evening performance. In the evening, the young man and his uncle sat in the front row. The writer was at his best during the lecture, he joked and told funny stories. As they say, he just climbed out of his skin to make his unsmiling uncle laugh. The hall just sobbed, and the old man still sat, not showing any emotions, and did not even try to smile. Mark Twain suffered a complete fiasco and left the stage completely exhausted. He never succeeded in entertaining the audience. He was very upset, this incident just unsettled the writer. A few days later, Mark Twain told a good friend about the failed performance. After listening to the writer, the acquaintance said: “Oh, don't worry. I know this old man. He has been completely deaf for many years now.”

Mark Twain, 1867

Twain's first success as a writer was on another journey. In 1867, he begged Colonel McComb to sponsor his five-month trip to Europe and the Middle East. In June, as a correspondent for the Alta California and the New York Tribune, Twain traveled to Europe on the Quaker City; “Among the 75 passengers of Quaker City, there were 26 ladies who looked sexless and average. During the three months of the voyage, they all got fed up with their morning services under the harmonium and the evening magic lantern with the same transparencies.”

In August, he also visited Odessa, Yalta and Sevastopol (in the "Odessa Bulletin" dated August 24, 1867, the "Address" of American tourists written by Twain is placed). It’s hard to say jokingly or admiringly, Mark Twain later wrote in his book “Simples Abroad”: “Odessa looks exactly like an American city: beautiful wide streets, our black locust along the sidewalks, business fuss on the streets and in shops. I did not notice anything that would tell us that we are in Russia. Wherever you look, to the right, to the left, America is everywhere in front of us! As part of the ship's delegation, Mark Twain visited the residence of the Russian emperor in Livadia, where they were all invited to breakfast. “They call it breakfast,” Twain says ironically. “These were dryers with tea, into which they squeezed a lemon or poured ice-cold milk - as you like.” Mark Twain liked tea with lemon, moreover, he liked it no less than the palace in Livadia: “They are both incomparable!” From Palestine, he sent a “hammer” to his lodge, to which was attached a letter sustained in a humorous spirit, in which Twain informed his brothers that “The handle of the hammer was carved by Brother Clemens from the trunk of a Lebanese cedar, planted in a timely manner by Brother Goffred of Bouillon near the walls Jerusalem". Letters written by Twain during his travels in Europe and Asia were sent to his editor and published in the newspaper, and later formed the basis of the book "Simples Abroad". The book was published in 1869, distributed by subscription and was a huge success from the reading public because of the combination of good southern humor and satire, rare for those years. By the way, the first licensed game of the Parker Brothers company (1883), later famous for the board game Monopoly, was based on the plot of Twain's early book, Simpletons Abroad. Thus, the literary debut of Mark Twain took place.

In February 1870, at the peak of his success with the "Simps Abroad", he married the sister of his friend Charles Langdon, whom he had met on an 1867 cruise, Olivia. Upon seeing a photograph of his sister, Olivia, Twain, in his own words, fell in love at first sight. Mark and Olivia met in 1868 and announced their engagement a year later. When Twain wooed Olivia, her father, a large coal merchant, "wealthy but liberal," asked him for recommendations, as was then customary. Twain gave the names of three acquaintances in Nevada and California. At Langdon's request, one of them wrote: "Talent, but dissolute", another replied: "May become an alcoholic and allow the family to become impoverished", and the third said: "Cum on the gallows." "Don't you have any friends who would say good things about you?" Langdon asked. “There are no decent ones,” Twain replied. Then Langdon smiled and said, "Consider that there is one - me." Olivia soon became Twain's wife. This union, which united the aristocratic North and the disorderly South, turned out to be happy both in family and creative terms. Among the relatives of his wife, as well as her friends who became friends of Mark Twain, were abolitionists, socialists, atheists, women's rights activists, and Mark Twain found targets for his "poisonous" arrows. So, the hero of the satire "Letter of the Guardian Angel" was the coal merchant Andrew Langdon, a black businessman hiding behind hypocritical charity, to whom such far from related lines are addressed: "What is the readiness ... of ten thousand noble souls to give their lives for another - in comparison with a gift of fifteen dollars from the meanest and meanest vermin who ever burdened the earth with his presence!" The story was published long after his death, in 1946.

However, on their wedding night, the newlyweds suffered a lot. Livey imagined that her husband would be experienced in a delicate matter, and he himself turned out to be a virgin! So she had to lead the process! But what did she then charge for it! All intimate relationships from the very first moment were "sharpened" under Laivy! Only her desire or unwillingness determined whether they would be together today or not. In general, Mark Twain was on a leash, and a very short one at that. Pious Olivia called her husband "boy" and was quite strict with him. She made his militant atheist pray before meals; did not allow him, a heavy smoker, to smoke at home. But the most unusual thing for such families is that almost everything written by Twain's hand was subjected to strict editing by his wife. Did your husband like it? Hardly! However, he did not grumble: his wife owned a style no worse than him, and sometimes her remarks seemed to him very sensible. In addition, he believed that his wife was a perfect woman and obeyed her in everything. But here in bed ... Here she was very stingy, stingy. And although she gave birth to three daughters to Mark Twain, she let him get to the “body” less and less. And he, instead of “strengthening the family,” dejectedly calculated that a man is able to perform 100 sexual acts annually for 50 years, and a woman is able to perform 3,000 acts annually (an average of 8–9 acts per day) for throughout his life. In a lifetime, therefore, a man is capable of 5,000 acts, and a woman of 150,000. From all these arithmetic calculations, Mark Twain made the following conclusion: every woman should have a harem of a large number of men ... And he also wrote erotic essays, and secretly from wife, because after her "editing" his sexual "post" would probably drag on. His most significant work on this subject is 1601: Conversations by the Fireside. The Queen of England and her courtiers appear before readers, who, sitting by the fireplace, exchange stories about their sexual adventures and victories. Or how do you like the interesting theory of Mark Twain about the candle? “For 23 days every month (unless she is pregnant) from the age of 7 until her death from old age, a woman is ready for action. She is like a candlestick who is always ready to receive her candle. A man is ready for action only for a limited period of time. This activity appears in him somewhere at the age of 16, and older man's actions are no longer of such high quality, and the intervals between them are becoming longer, unlike, say, his great-grandmother, who still knows how to do it like a young girl. The candlestick is still ready to accept its candle, but over the years the candle becomes softer and weaker, and then it can’t hold straight at all, and in deep sorrow they lay it in eternal rest in the hope of the next Sunday, which, however, is so never comes."

Samuel and Olivia Clemens were married for 34 years, until Olivia's death in 1904. The young family lived in Buffalo, New York, where Twain worked for the Buffalo Express, and in 1871 moved to Hartford, Connecticut. In Hartford, Twain arranged for the construction of a house in which the Clemens lived until 1891.

It was here that Samuel and Olivia's daughters, Susan (1872-1896), Clara (1874-1962) and Jane (1880-1909) were born (another child, Langdon, born in November 1870, was premature and very weak and after a year and a half died of diphtheria). During this period, he lectured frequently in the United States and England. Then he began to write sharp satire, sharply criticizing American society and politics, this is especially noticeable in the collection Life on the Mississippi, written in 1883. However, until the very end of his life, many knew Twain precisely as the author of "Simples Abroad". During his writing career, Twain traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. He made twenty-nine separate transatlantic crossings; around the world through the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian; cruised along the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Black, Caspian, and Aegean seas; crossed India from Bombay to Darjeeling; conquered the Alps and the Tyrolean Black Forest. He sailed along the rivers Neckar and Rhone on a raft; lived and worked for long periods of time in London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna, as well as in various smaller European cities and resorts. All this was part of his lifelong need to see and experience new things, a need that in itself was characteristic of the American. "I was moving towards the entrance with the look of a wild man!" - Twain wrote to his mother in 1867, - "My mind gives me peace only in excitement and anxiety when I move from place to place. I would like never to stop in order to settle in any one place." He rarely did it.

Mark Twain's next successful book, co-authored with Charles Warner, was The Gilded Age. The work, on the one hand, is not very successful, because the styles of the co-authors were seriously different, but on the other hand, it became to the taste of readers so much that the time of the reign of President Grant was dubbed its name.

And in 1876, a new book by Mark Twain saw the world, which not only cemented him as the greatest American writer, but forever made his name in the history of world literature. It was the famous "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". In fact, the writer did not have to invent anything. He remembered his childhood in Hannibal and his life during those years. And now on the pages of the book appeared the place of St. Petersburg, in which one can easily distinguish the features of Hannibal, as well as the features of many other small settlements scattered along the banks of the Mississippi. And in Tom Sawyer, you can easily recognize the young Samuel Clemens, who really did not like school and was already smoking at the age of 9.

By the way, according to the writer, "Tom Sawyer" was printed on a semi-experimental sample of "Remington No. 1" under the brand Sholes & Glidden in 1874, but the publishers recalled that, in fact, the first printed text received from Twain was "Life on the Mississippi", written in 1883. However, this contradiction did not prevent Remington from using fragments of the "Biography" in its advertising. Later, in his biography, Twain boasted, "I was the first person to use a typewriter in literature." Telling such a funny story. While in Boston, the writer discovered an interesting unit in a store window. When he went inside, the salesman showed how the typewriter worked and assured him that it was capable of typing 57 words per minute. To prove this, he called the girl, and Mark Twain timed it. The girl really typed 57 words in 60 seconds! They repeated the experiment over and over again, but she was able to replicate this result. Twain bought a $125 typewriter and rushed to the hotel impatiently. He took with him the pages on which the girl was typing. When he unfolded them in the room, he realized: the girl always typed the same sentence in order to save time. And since the typewriter typed "blindly" - the letters hit the roller with paper from below - the dexterous seller managed to swindle Mark Twain himself. However, this only amused the writer. With enthusiasm, he began to practice on his first typewriter.

The success of the book exceeded all expectations. The book, filled with simple humor and written in accessible language, appealed to a wide mass of ordinary Americans. Indeed, in Tom, many recognized themselves in a distant and carefree childhood. This recognition of readers Twain secured the next book, also not designed for the refined minds of literary critics. The story "The Prince and the Pauper", which was published in 1882, takes readers to England during the Tudor era. Exciting adventures are combined in this story with the dream of a simple American to get rich. The casual reader liked it.

The historical theme interested the writer. In the preface to his new novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain wrote: "If anyone is inclined to condemn our modern civilization, well, it cannot be prevented, but it is good sometimes to draw a comparison between it and what was done in the world earlier, and this should reassure and inspire hope.

Twain was fond of science and scientific problems. He was very friendly with Nikola Tesla, they spent a lot of time together in Tesla's laboratory. In his work A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain describes a time travel that brought many modern technologies to Arthurian England.

In addition, Mark Twain met with Thomas Edison. The writer even received several patents, including "Improved Adjustable Removable Garment Belts" (a kind of suspenders). The nature of the invention, according to the writer himself, was "an adjustable and removable elastic strap for vests, trousers and other products requiring belts." But the ingenious invention, invented by the most brilliant creator, is used today in slightly different clothes ... in the manufacture of bras, and even today! Neither buttons nor ties are so perfect for holding a woman's breasts so correctly. Also, back in the middle of the 19th century, Twain discovered that the usual glue with which he attached the clippings to the pages of the album had many drawbacks - it stained his hands, the clippings and the pages themselves. The writer came up with the idea to make a thin adhesive strip on each page of the album to make it easier to add and replace elements. He received a patent for his "self-adhesive" album in 1872, and his idea immediately became popular. A well-known American newspaper claimed that this discovery brought Mark Twain $50,000, which was a huge amount compared to his royalties for all the books he wrote - $200,000. It was the only invention of Mark Twain that brought him a monetary reward. Even today, self-adhesive inserts are used on the pages of photo albums and scrapbooking albums. However, we can thank Mark Twain for another very useful invention - it was the young journalist Clemens who invented and made the world's first notebook with tear-off pages. There was also a wardrobe with sliding shelves, as well as the most ingenious of his inventions - a machine for tying ties. On August 18, 1885, Mark Twain patented his memory training game with various facts and figures. Unfortunately, the game turned out to be too difficult for ordinary people, and Twain's instructions were too generalized, and the game did not gain much popularity. Twain truly believed in the value of the patent system. In his book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Hank Morgan, one of the Yankees, said, “The very first thing I did in my administration—and that was on the very first day—I set up a patent office. Because I knew that a country without a patent office and strong patent laws is not a country, but a complete annoyance.”

Until 1884, Mark Twain was already a well-known writer, and also became a successful businessman. He set up a publishing firm nominally headed by C. L. Webster, the husband of his niece. One of the first books published by his own publishing house was his Adventures of Huckleberry Fin. The work, which, according to critics, was the best in the work of Mark Twain, was conceived as a continuation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. However, it turned out to be much more complex and multi-layered. It was reflected that the writer had been creating it for almost 10 years. And these years were filled with a constant search for the best literary form, polishing the language and deep reflections. In this book, for the first time in American literature, Twain used the spoken language of the American hinterland. Once it was allowed to be used only in farce and satire on the customs of the common people. Among other books published by the Mark Twain publishing house can be called "Memoirs" of the eighteenth President of the United States, V.S. Grant. They became a bestseller and brought the desired material well-being to the Samuel Clemens family.

The publishing firm of Mark Twain successfully existed until the well-known economic crisis of 1893-1894. The writer's business could not withstand the severe blow and went bankrupt. Back in 1891, Mark Twain was forced to move to Europe in order to save money: "The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." Mark Twain came to the conclusion that you should refrain from trading in securities in two cases - if you do not have funds and if you have them. He closed the house in Hartford and first went with his family to Europe, and then went on a world lecture tour. It turned out to be surprisingly successful, which allowed him to pay off creditors in full by January 1898, which, by the way, he was not obliged to do when he declared himself bankrupt. From time to time he comes to the United States, trying to improve his financial situation. After the ruin, he does not recognize himself as bankrupt for a long time. In the end, he manages to negotiate with creditors to defer the payment of debts.

Mark Twain and Henry Rogers. 1908

In 1893, Twain was introduced to the oil tycoon Henry Rogers, one of the directors of the Standard Oil Company. Rogers helped Twain to profitably reorganize his financial affairs by transferring Twain's debts to himself, giving him the opportunity to pay them off gradually. Soon they became close friends, it turned out that in some ways they are very close: a similar childhood, upbringing, the same greed for life and love for word games. At the same time, each admired in the other what he himself did not have. Journalists pestered Twain with the question of what he was talking about with Rogers, and the writer replied: "He gives me advice on how to write better, and I tell him how to better manage financial affairs. But we both turned out to be bad students." Twain wrote to Rogers: "You and I are a team. You are the most useful person I know, and I am the most ornamental." When Twain occasionally entered the stern office of Standard Oil, the most desiccated officials showed signs of life, even the secretary, nicknamed "the sphinx." Twain often visited Rogers, they drank and played poker. We can say that Twain even became a family member for the Rogers. Rogers took Twain on his yacht to Bermuda, rode in a car, settled in his house when the writer was overcome by despondency. Mark Twain said: "Yes, he is a pirate. And I only dreamed of becoming a pirate." They loved each other in a brotherly way - like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, only already rich and famous. "The sudden death of Rogers in 1909 deeply shocked Twain. Although Mark Twain repeatedly publicly thanked Rogers for saving him from financial ruin, it became clear that their the friendship was mutually beneficial. Apparently, Twain significantly influenced the mitigation of the tough temper of the oil magnate, who had the nickname "Cerberus Rogers." After the death of Rogers, his papers showed that friendship with the famous writer turned a ruthless miser into a real philanthropist and patron of the arts. During his friendship with Twain Rogers began to actively support education, organizing educational programs, especially for African Americans and talented people with disabilities.During this time, Mark Twain wrote several works, among which his most serious historical prose - "Personal Memoirs of Joan of Arc by Sieur Louis de Comte , her page and secretary ”(1896), which he called his most beloved bimy work, as well as "Coot Wilson" (1894), "Tom Sawyer Abroad" (1894) and "Tom Sawyer the Detective" (1896). But none of them could achieve the success that accompanied Twain's previous books.

The star of the writer inexorably rolled into decline. At the end of the 19th century, a collection of works by Mark Twain began to be published in the United States, thereby elevating him to the category of classics of bygone days. However, the fierce boy who sat inside the elderly, already completely gray-haired, Samuel Clemens did not think to give up. Mark Twain entered the twentieth century with a sharp satire on the powers that be. The writer marked the stormy revolutionary beginning of the century with works designed to expose untruth and injustice: “To the Man Walking in Darkness”, “The United Lynching States”, “To My Missionary Critics”, “In Defense of General Funston”, in which he opposed American imperialist policy and Then came The Tsar's Monologue (a caustic satire on the Russian autocracy; 1905), King Leopold's Monologue in defense of his domination in the Congo (indignation at the Belgian colonial regime in the Congo), etc. A period began in the work of Mark Twain, which can be called change of milestones. He became disillusioned with bourgeois democracy, noting in his notebook: "The majority is always wrong", rejected American patriotism, which, in his opinion, poisoned the minds of many of his compatriots ("... the merchant spirit replaced morality, everyone became only a patriot of his pocket", - wrote Mark Twain), lost faith in American progress and its special mission: "Sixty years ago, "optimist" and "fool" were not synonymous. Here is the greatest revolution, more than science and technology have made. Big changes in sixty years has not happened since the creation of the world." Subjecting his "mercenary, cowardly and hypocritical" contemporaries to fierce criticism, he admired the "thorny path" of the Russian revolutionaries, about which he reported in a letter to the populist revolutionary Stepnyak-Kravchinsky. But in the minds of Americans, Twain remained a classic of "light" literature.

In 1901, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University. The following year, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Missouri. In 1907, the 72-year-old writer was invited to Oxford to receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. He was very proud of these titles. For a man who had left school at age 12, the recognition of his talent by the pundits of famous universities flattered him.

Twain was a prominent figure in the American Anti-Imperial League which protested the American annexation of the Philippines. In response to these events, in which about 600 people died, Twain wrote the pamphlet The Incident in the Philippines, but the work was not published until 1924, 14 years after his death. From time to time, some of Twain's works were banned by American censors for various reasons. This was mainly due to the active civic and social position of the writer. Some works that could offend the religious feelings of people, Twain did not print at the request of his family. One of Twain's most controversial works was a humorous lecture at a Parisian club published under the title Reflections on the Science of Onanism. The central idea of ​​the lecture was: "If you have to risk your life on the sexual front, don't masturbate too much." The essay was published only in 1943 in a limited edition of 50 copies. A few more anti-religious writings remained unpublished until the 1940s. In the 2000s, attempts were again made in the United States to ban The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of naturalistic descriptions and verbal expressions that were offensive to blacks. Although Twain was an opponent of racism and imperialism and went much further than his contemporaries in his rejection of racism, many of the words that were in common use during the time of Mark Twain and used by him in the novel do indeed sound like racial slurs now. В феврале 2011 года в США вышло первое издание книг Марка Твена «Приключения Гекльберри Финна» и «Приключения Тома Сойера», в котором подобные слова и выражения заменены на политкорректные (например, слово «nigger» (негр) заменено по тексту на «slave» (slave)). Twain himself treated censorship with irony. When the Massachusetts Public Library decided to withdraw The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its collection in 1885, Twain wrote to his publisher: "They have removed Huck from the library as 'slum-only rubbish,' because of which we will no doubt sell 25,000 more copies. ."

At this time, he is already seriously ill, and most of his family members die one after another - he survived the loss of three of his four children, his beloved wife Olivia also died. When Olivia became hopelessly ill, he posted notes with comic prescriptions around the house just to cheer up his wife. Even on the trees, opposite the window of her bedroom, he hung an order for the birds so that they did not sing too loudly ... Twain missed his wife and grandchildren very much, feeling abandoned. But even though he was in a deep depression, he could still joke. In response to an erroneous obituary in the New York Journal, he famously said: "The rumors of my death are somewhat exaggerated."

The only remaining daughter of Twain, Clara, often toured the world and created many problems for her father. Until some point, she, who firmly believed in her talent, harassed her father with demands to pay for her tour, the best teachers, and invited soloists. All this cost a lot of money! And Clara was no pianist. Her personal life was also clumsy: Twain's daughter often changed lovers, squandering her father's money on them. Stories with suitors were actively procrastinated by the press, and Twain was ready to write any check, if only to prevent another scandal. And suddenly, pianist Osip Gabrilovich, a native of Russia, appeared on Clara's horizon. Twain himself acted as the matchmaker. He personally led their wedding - almost underground, secretly from onlookers. Twain also wrote a press release entitled "A happy wedding is a tragedy", explaining that marriage always poisons life. In a letter to a friend, he said: “Gabrilovich did me a huge favor - he destroyed Clara's career. I pray that this is forever." Clara really left the stage. Perhaps she felt the insignificance of her talent next to the ingenious game of her husband ...

with Dorothy Quick aboard the Minnetonka. July 1907 from the Library of Congress. Department of prints and photographs

With young poet Dorothy Quick

With Irene Gerken. New York Times, April 19, 1908.

Irene Gerken and Clemens in the wagons, donkey-drawn, Bermuda 1908. Photo from the collection of Kevin McDonnell.

Samuel Clemens, Henry H. Rogers and Irene Gerken at the Princess Hotel in Bermuda

with Dorothy Harvey and her father George Harvey

With Louise Payne and Dorothy Harvey. 1908

M. Twain and "angel fish" at the opening of the library named after him in 1908.

with Helen Allen. Bermuda, 1908.

with Margaret Gray Blackmer. Bermuda, 1908

with Paddy Madden. Photo from the archives of Mark Twain, University of California at Berkeley

with Frances Nunnally. This picture was later on the dressing table in his bedroom

After the death of his wife, which followed in 1904, Mark Twain began to show a painful interest in little girls. And this despite the fact that his “candle”, due to too rare use, was “laid to eternal rest” at the age of 50, or in the seventeenth year of his married life. “I guess we are all collectors… As for me, I collect favorites: young girls – 10 to 16 years old; sweet and glorious, cheerful - dear creatures for whom life consists entirely of pleasure, and to whom it has not brought any wounds, bitterness, or tears. He even organized a club, which he called "Aquarium". The members of the club were the daughters of his friends and acquaintances, whom he called the name of tropical fish - Angel Fish - because "these are the most beautiful fish that swim." So what exactly was the writer doing at 70 with the little girls who made up his collection? All those ordinary, sweet things that grandfathers do with their granddaughters. Clemens took them to theaters, to concerts, brought them to his home and played cards with them, taught them to play billiards, read books with them. Several times, passers-by noticed the elderly writer with a bunch of little girls who followed him with a train. Clemens never stopped communicating with his angelfish, writing letters to them when they could not visit him in person, and always kept a special room for them in his house where they could be "for as long as Thrift would allow" (referring to parents girls). This was said for a reason, since the girls were always visiting the writer with accompanying persons (parents, guardians, nannies). The angelfish room always had an even number of beds so that the girls could sleep next to their nannies or guardians.

In 1991, based on the autobiographical novel The Rapture by Dorothy Quick, Daniel Petrie made the film Mark Twain and Me.

Twain even named his mansion "Innocence" in honor of his "fish" and each of them had a permanent invitation to visit his house. In addition to all this, he also rebuilt his billiard room into a special room of the Aquarium Club, where a dressing table with photographs of all members of the community stood honorably. Mark Twain explained this relationship by saying that he had reached the age of a grandfather without grandchildren and had only "an unhappy sea of ​​banquets and ranting" to replenish his "dry and dusty" heart. He was their ideal grandfather. Once he was dressing in the hallway at someone's house and said, looking in the mirror: "How I wish I had such a grandfather!" Despite the innocence of the famous writer's hobby, if any of today's celebrities tried to start their own "Aquarium Club", this case would be a tasty morsel for the press, and that celebrity would immediately be accused of a ton of disgusting and immoral acts, and no matter is it true or not. In the days of Clemens, no one resented his actions, and more and more parents appeared who wanted to introduce their young daughters to a kind and sympathetic writer grandfather.

However, he probably did not have sex with any other woman than his wife. After her death, he was attacked by Isabelle Lyon, who had been his secretary for many years. As a woman, Isabelle disgusted him. In a letter to a friend, Twain wrote: "I just can't go to bed with Miss Lyon. I'd rather do it with some mannequin made of wax." At the same time, Isabelle Lyon managed to irritate everyone she came across. The artist who painted a portrait of Twain complained that she "constantly turns around and behaves with strangers with lackey arrogance." Twain's daughter Clara caught her wearing the late Olivia's jewelry. The writer's lawyer watched anxiously as Miss Lyon and the second secretary, Ralph Ashcroft, gradually took over the writer's finances, having obtained from him a power of attorney for access to his money. "The boundaries of their relationship have never been clarified and seem to have changed - depending on the mood of Twain. A woman with an attractive, sensitive face; a woman of passionate feelings hidden behind careful manners, she treated the old writer with the tenderness and patience of his wife. She consoled, played cards with him, looked after his clothes, served drinks, dried his hair after a bath. Many were sure that she was aiming for the place of Mrs. Clemens.

Another passion of Twain is billiards. Over the years, the passion for your favorite game only increased. Once, having arrived at twelve at night from the celebration of his seventy-threeth birthday, he invited his friend to play a short game, and they played so much that they came to their senses only from the roar of the milkman's cans, when they saw that it was already about five in the morning. But even then, Twain did not really want to let his friend go. In addition to billiards, Twain was very fond of the wet chicken card game. There was an unwritten law in his house: all guests must play either cards or billiards. If someone openly expressed contempt for such a pleasant and pious pastime, he had no chance of a second visit to Twain's house. However, sometimes the classic also worked at the billiard table - the biographer of the writer Albert Bigelow recalled that he had repeatedly seen the billiard table strewn with manuscripts in Mark Twain's house. The writer also loved to tell anecdotal life stories related to billiards: “When I worked as a freelance reporter for a pittance, I often replenished my pocket by ripping off naive visiting newcomers. Until I ran into a worthy opponent who taught me a lesson - witty and lightning fast. To a bar a guy comes in, freckled, red-haired and cross-eyed - I immediately disliked him, comes up to the table and offers a bet: they say he will beat me with one left. I never refuse easy money, the game begins, he scores from the first blow, lays out all the balls on pockets, and all that remains for me is to rub the cue with chalk. I give him the jackpot and say: If you can play like that with your left hand, then what does your right hand do? And he answered: Virtually nothing. I'm left-handed."

In 1906, Twain acquired a personal secretary, who became A. B. Payne. The young man expressed his desire to write a book about the writer's life. However, Mark Twain has already sat down to write his autobiography several times. As a result, the writer begins to dictate the story of his life to Payne.

In 1906, Twain had four years to live. During this time, he built a mansion in Connecticut; helped organize a children's theater, wrote many essays and stories (including the piercing "Dog's Tale," which begins: "My father is a St. Bernard, my mother is a Collie, and I myself am a Presbyterian). Twain traveled, was friends with Willa Cather and Woodrow Wilson; flirted with the most beautiful actresses of Broadway, thundered in public disputes about female sexuality, was deceived in love, survived a scandal, and found a brother in the person of his principal enemy. "Autobiography". On New Year's Eve from 1906 to 1907, at the premises of the New York Electric Music Company, the crowd listened to how a new instrument - the electric Telharmonium played a New Year's song on the verses of Burns Auld Lang Syne. There was a first session of music transmission over telephone wires. Mark Twain was the first subscriber to the new service, and on New Year's Eve he hosted 30 guests and reporters for a musical evening. inventions have one drawback - they interfere with our plans. For example, having learned about a new technical miracle, I postponed my death. I cannot leave this world until I have mastered all its wonders."

James Page's typesetting machine

Twain's financial situation also shook: his publishing company went bankrupt; he invested a lot of money in a new model of a printing press (or rather, a typesetting machine), which was never put into production (in 11 years he spent $ 150,000 on Page's typesetting machine - $ 4 million in the current equivalent); plagiarists stole the rights to several of his books.

Twain was a heavy smoker (it is he who owns the authorship of the phrase, which is now attributed to everyone in a row: “There is nothing easier than quitting smoking. I already know, I did it a thousand times”). He started smoking at the age of eight and smoked between 20 and 40 cigars daily until his death. The writer chose the stinkiest and cheapest cigars. There were always 20-30 pipes filled with tobacco in his room so that he could smoke them one after another without interrupting his work. Most likely, this is why the writer was tormented by severe attacks of angina pectoris, because of which, in the end, the heart could not stand it and on April 24, 1910, at the age of 74, Mark Twain died. His last trip was to Bermuda, where he lived with the family of his angelfish, Helen Allen. There he became ill: his nose bled. Everyone rushed for a towel, some for water, some for a doctor, and Twain said to Helen: "And you run and bring paper and a pencil to write down my last words." He urgently left, so that his death would not cause trouble to the hospitable hosts. And one of his last three photographs is with a girl who laughs with her head thrown back. The next one is in an armchair, on the gangway of the ship. The next one is in a white suit, in a coffin.

Upon learning of Twain's death, US President William Taft said: "Mark Twain gave pleasure - real intellectual pleasure - to millions. His writings will continue to give such pleasure to millions ... His humor was American, but he was also appreciated by the British and representatives of other countries ... He became a part of American literature forever." On Mark Twain's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York, there is a monument two fathoms high, a tribute to the famous pseudonym. But perhaps the best monument is his books, which remain with us forever. His last work, the satirical novella The Mysterious Stranger, was published posthumously in 1916 from an unfinished manuscript. This story can be considered Mark Twain's manifesto, completing his creative life. In fact, three versions of it have survived. Back in 1899, he wrote to his friend, the American writer W.D. Gowells that he intends to stop literary work for a living and take up his main book: "... in which I will not limit myself in anything, I will not be afraid that I will hurt the feelings of others, or reckon with their prejudices ... in which I will express everything what I think ... frankly, without looking back ... "In the mouth of the protagonist of the story - Satan - the writer put his evil satirical laughter with superhuman seductions and his thoughts.

One letter from Twain to an unknown correspondent states:
"... When I try to portray life, I limit myself to those areas with which I am familiar. But I limited myself only to the life of a boy on the Mississippi because it holds a special charm for me, and not because I do not know the life of adults. At the beginning of the war I was a soldier for two weeks, and all this time they hunted me like a rat. Do I know the life of a soldier?...
And besides, I turned silver ore at the processing plant for several weeks and learned all the latest cultural achievements in this area ...
And besides, I was a gold digger and I can distinguish a rich breed from a poor one simply by tasting it on the tongue.
And besides, I was a miner in silver mines and I know how to beat rock, rake it, drill wells and put dynamite in them ...
And besides, I was a reporter for four years and saw the behind-the-scenes side of many events ...
And besides, I served for several years as a pilot on the Mississippi and was intimately acquainted with all varieties of rivermen - a tribe peculiar and unlike any others.
And besides, for several years I was a traveling printer and moved from one city to another ...
And besides, for many years I gave public lectures and gave speeches at all kinds of banquets ...
And besides, for many years I followed the development of an invention dear to my heart, spent a fortune on it, without being able to bring it to the end ...
And besides, I'm a publisher...
And besides, I've been a writer for twenty years, and an ass for fifty-five years.
Well, since the most valuable capital, culture and erudition necessary for writing novels is personal experience, I am therefore well equipped for this craft.
Twain's letter, excerpted above, is from 1891. The writer lived for almost another twenty years. And over the years he had a chance to experience a lot. If Twain had decided at the end of his days to supplement the letter sent in the early 1990s with new facts, he would also have had the right to write the following:
And besides, I was a rich man and bankrupt.
And besides, the last years of my life were devoted to a fierce struggle against American imperialism.
And besides, I continued to fight with religious superstitions, with God and with all those who do evil, hiding behind the name of God ...
Yes, the life of the American writer was full of many events, extraordinarily rich in contrasts!

A brilliant humorist and prankster, Twain remains true to himself even in death. The last book he wrote was his autobiography. According to the writer's wishes, the first volume of his autobiography was published only 100 years after his death, in November 2010 (and instantly became a bestseller). The second volume is due to be published 25 years after the first (that is, in 2035), and the third - another 25 years later (in 2060).

In the city of Hannibal, Missouri, the house in which Twain played as a boy, and the caves that he explored as a child and which were later described in the famous Adventures of Tom Sawyer, have been preserved, tourists now come there. Mark Twain's home in Hartford has been turned into his personal museum and declared a National Historic Site in the United States.

Since 1998, the Kennedy Center (Washington) has been awarded the annual Mark Twain Award for achievements in the industry of American humor, which has received Oscar status during this time. The first recipient was Richard Pryor. It was followed by Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, George Carlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Will Ferrell, Steve Martin, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett and Tina Fey. Krystal (2007), flattered by the confession, could not resist joking in his response: "As my grandfather used to say, if you push around in the shop for a long time, then sooner or later you will get something." In 2015, the actor Eddie Murphy became the winner of the award, who arranged a small comedy show during the awards ceremony on October 18. As he received the award, he asked, "Is this a prize or an award? If it's a prize, there's usually some money associated with it. For future recipients: if you don't want to call it an award, you can call it a surprise - a surprise in the sense that you don't get any money."

Mark Twain Masonic Awareness Award

There is also the Mark Twain Readers' Award, or simply the Mark Twain Award, which, since 1972, has been awarded to one book each year, voted by Missouri students from a list prepared by volunteer readers and librarians.

Portrait of Mark Twain by James Beckwith

Image of Mark Twain in popular culture

The childhood of Samuel Clemens is described in Miriam Mason's biographical stories The Boy from the Great Mississippi and The Young Writer.

As a literary hero, Mark Twain (under his real name Samuel Clemens) appears in the second and third parts of Philip José Farmer's science fiction pentalogy Riverworld. In the second book, entitled "Fairytale Ship", Samuel Clemens, reborn in the mysterious World of the River, along with all the people who died at different times on Earth, becomes an explorer and adventurer. He dreams of building a large wheeled river steamer to sail down the River to its very source. Over time, he succeeds, but after the construction of the ship, the writer is stolen by his partner, King John the Landless. In the third book, entitled "Dark Designs", Clemens, overcoming numerous difficulties, completes the construction of the second steamship, which they also try to steal from him.

In two film adaptations of the cycle, filmed in 2003 and 2010, the role of Samuel Clemens was played by actors Cameron Deidu and Mark Deklin.

In the novel "Sail Beyond the Sunset" (1987) by Robert Heinlein, the main character mentions several times her meetings with a friend of the Lazarus Long family (the main character) - Samuel Clemens, including his words about Halley's comet.

The 2005 novel The Miracle of the World by Sesha Heri tells how Twain went with Harry Houdini and Nikola Tesla in 1893 on a journey to Mars.

The main character in The Fires of Eden (1994) by Dan Simmons, Eleanor, retraces her Aunt Kidder and her traveling companion Clemens' journey to the Sandwich Islands. The book alternates between the contemporary events of Eleanor and the events described in the diary of Samuel Clemens.

V. P. Krapivin’s story “The siege has long ended…” describes the meeting of the protagonist with Samuel Clemens during a visit to Sevastopol in 1867.

Twain is mentioned in the Tom Petty song "Down South" from his album Highway Companion (2006).

Fredric March as Mark Twain "The Adventures of Mark Twain", 1944

Hal Holbrook at "Mark Twain Today!" (1967)

Oleg Tabakov in k / f. Mikhail Grigoriev "Mark Twain against ..." (1975)

Evgeny Steblov as Mark Twain. TV play "Stories of Mark Twain" (1976)

Val Kilmer as Mark Twain k / f. "Mark Twain and Mary Baker Eddy", 2013

As for film adaptations and theatrical productions based on the works of Mark Twain, it is very difficult to count them (there is even a Japanese anime and a video from Barbie "The Princess and the Pauper"). There were also lifetime adaptations, the scripts for which Mark Twain himself co-wrote: "Tom Sawyer" (1907, with Jane Gontier) and "The Prince and the Pauper" (1909, with J. Searle Dawley), in which he played himself .

A crater on Mercury and asteroid 2362, discovered on September 24, 1976, are named after Twain. And at the same time, the Washoe Indians opposed the Nevada Board of Geographic Names to name the bay on the northeast shore of Lake Tahoe after Mark Twain, where he worked in a mine as a young man, as it is believed that the writer had racist views on Native Americans, which he expressed in his work. In particular, the head of the Washoe Cultural Heritage Department, Darrel Cruz, pointed out that Twain was opposed to naming the lake with the word Tahoe, which is derived from the expression "da ow" from the Washoe dictionary, quoting from Twain: "They say that the word" Tahoe " means "Silver Lake", "Crystal Water", "Autumn Leaf". Nonsense! This word means "Grasshopper Soup" - a favorite dish of the "Digger" tribe, and the Paiutes too. According to Cruise, the Washoe Indians don't like being compared to a "digging tribe," a pejorative term applied to some tribes in the West who ate dug roots, other tribes ate grasshoppers. Thomas Quirk, professor emeritus of English at the University of Missouri and a leading authority on Mark Twain, noted that the writer eventually got over his racism against blacks. At the same time, Quirk said that he did not find evidence that Twain had significantly changed his views on American Indians. “As far as African Americans are concerned, he was way ahead of his time. As far as Native Americans are concerned, his records are not very good,” Quirk said. the name of Mark Twain.

But, the only street in Russia named after Mark Twain is located in Volgograd.

If you decide to sit next to the great writer and "talk" with him, then you can do this in:

"Good friends, good books and a sleeping conscience - this is the ideal life." Monrovia (California), USA.

"Thousands of geniuses live and die unknown - either unrecognized by others, or unrecognized by ourselves." Fort Worth (Texas), USA

"The right to be stupid is one of the guarantees of the free development of the individual." San Diego (California), USA

"The worst loneliness is when a person is uncomfortable with himself." Newark (Ohio), USA

"Once in a lifetime fortune knocks on every man's door, but a person at this time often sits in the nearest pub and doesn't hear any noise. Dubuque (Iowa), USA

"A man of fifty can be an ass without being an optimist, but can no longer be an optimist without being an ass." Fairfield (Connecticut), USA

"We like people who boldly tell us what they think, provided they think the same as we do." Santa Fe (New Mexico), USA

"There is no more pathetic sight than a man explaining his joke." Rifle (Colorado), USA

"Often the surest way to mislead a person is to tell him the truth." Houston (Texas), USA

"It's better to be silent and look like a fool, than to speak and dispel all doubts." in a city park, near the Kansas Public Library