Greetings, Twain scholars!

I’ve been lurking for several years, and the discussions here inspired me to return to school to do a thesis on Mark Twain.

From my interested but undisciplined research, it seems Sam Clemens wasn’t much more concerned with the morality of slavery and forms of social injustice until a certain point. His letter to his mother sharing his first impressions of immigrants he called “human vermin” and contempt for blacks seemingly being treated better than whites...not the Twain we know and love! And there’s evidence a “Samuel Clemens from Hannibal” accepted money from an abolitionist organization to travel somewhere to advance their cause, but really just used the money to go where he needed to go. He actually chose to fight for the confederacy, albeit only for a short time before deserting (his later recollections of this experience made him younger by a couple years, an audacious revisionism to whitewash his pre-fame reputation).

I’ve yet to get my hands on Philip Ashley Fanning’s book about Sam’s complicated relationship with his brother Orion, but I have read his article on The Mysterious Stranger manuscripts being an attempt at coming to terms with his dealings with Orion. I had my own theory that he started it because he needed to escape his pain at losing Susy, similar to Levy and Csicsila’s respective books that suggest Clemens’ inciting impulse for writing Tom Sawyer was the death of his infant son Langdon, his firstborn.

I suspect in mourning a favorite daughter, with whom he had a relationship of over two decades, his must have reread Susy’s writings and felt enough remorse over the Golden Arm incident at her college that made her run out in tears, and committed himself to being more than just a humorist who tells funny stories. I believed he later told people The Recollections of Joan of Arc was his best novel because Susy reminded him of that Catholic saint. He had confessed people don’t speak out against injustice because they have families to protect, so perhaps, in his soul searching, he decided to unequivocally speak out on serious issues? Was his speaking out against American imperialism upon returning to the US at least partially motivated by Susy’s wish for him to be more than a humorist?

Was there an earlier incident that had incited Clemens to take a moral stand? I’ve read the page on Twainquotes by Ms. Schmidt about the origins of his quarrel with undertakers. He was living in the Nevada Territories with Orion and his family, sharing a room with their daughter Jennie. When she got sick, she refused medicine until it was too late, firm in her Presbyterian faith. Tragically, she succumbed to her illness and Sam saw her devastated parents forced to pay an outrageous amount to a local undertaker. He wrote a news article lambasting not only the greedy undertaker, but the newspaper that ran his advertisement.

So my questions are: is it possible living with Orion’s family cause him to start caring about social issues, at least enough to write about them in newspapers, and did Jennie’s death move Sam to use his writing talents to speak out against injustice? Did  it also further harden his heart against religion?

Sorry for the long post and not linking to Ms. Schmidt’s great article about Jennie.
Wait here it is http://www.twainquotes.com/jennie.html

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to any comments you wish to share.

Robert