BOOK REVIEW

_Mark Twain and the Colonel. Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the
Arrival of a New Century_. Philip McFarland. Rowan & Littlefield Publishers,
2012. Pp. 499. Hardcover. ISBN 978-1-4422-1226-8. $28.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin Mac Donnell.

Copyright © 2012 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

Some of the most useful and frequently cited books from the vast literature
on Mark Twain are those that pair him with a family member, friend, or
fellow author. Among many examples, those pairing Twain with his wife Livy,
his brother Orion Clemens, Joseph Twichell, William Dean Howells, Henry H.
Rogers, Bret Harte, George Washington Cable, Elisha Bliss, and Charles
Webster are most familiar. These studies flesh out the relationship with
correspondence, details of their interactions and conversations, and nearly
all have relied upon previously unpublished sources. Twain studies have also
paired him with a seemingly endless series of themes--women, religion,
imperialism, race and the places he traveled and lived. Unlike the books
that pair him with people, the books that study Twain's relationship with
places and themes tend to rely less on unpublished sources and eye-witness
testimony, and more on convincing arguments that connect the dots between
Twain and particular places or events. Philip McFarland's _Mark Twain and
the Colonel_, belongs in this latter group rather than the former, and
examines the often conflicting reactions Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt
had to the events, people, and places that shaped their times.

This study focuses on the last decade of the nineteenth century and the
first decade of the twentieth century, during which time Twain and Roosevelt
established themselves as heroic American figures--Colonel Roosevelt for his
charge up San Juan Hill, and Mark Twain for his successful lecture trip
around the world to pay off his debts. Roosevelt was so proud of his
accomplishment that he preferred the title of "Colonel" to all others and
Twain was equally proud to have paid off his creditors in full. Both men
were loved by the public as distinct exemplars of the American character,
but they shared very different backgrounds (with more in common than either
might have imagined) and often viewed the same events in very different
ways. Their personal encounters were infrequent. They met shortly after
Roosevelt's election as governor of New York, visited once in the White
House, crossed paths at a Yale graduation ceremony, and they sometimes
attended the same Lotos Club dinners. Each was well aware of their own and
the other's public esteem and was careful about what they said in public
about each other, versus what they said in private. Twain was keenly aware
that his income depended upon the readers who bought his books. Roosevelt,
the consummate posturing politician, was always thinking of the next
election. But Roosevelt once privately remarked that he wanted to skin Mark
Twain alive, and Twain jotted down his private opinion that Roosevelt was
"the worst President we have ever had."

Because the two men rarely crossed paths, a chronological dual biography
would not have worked here. McFarland instead organizes his account by
grouping his forty-eight chapters into six thematic sections: war, the west,
race, oil, children, and peace. Along the way he generally alternates one
chapter on Twain, then the next on Roosevelt, and sometimes goes for pages
without any mention of the other man, sometimes connecting the dots later on
in his text, and sometimes leaving it to the reader to connect whatever dots
might seem to connect. This thematic approach works well, although at times
one section will overlap chronologically with another, with the result that
people and events will suddenly pop up, then disappear, and suddenly
reappear without warning. McFarland defends this feature of his narrative,
saying that his thematic arrangement "lets us come to know the protagonists
as we do our friends, not step-by-step from birth to death, but by entering
lives at an all but arbitrary point, from which incrementally, through
succeeding days, in succeeding pages, we gain insights and revelations as we
watch Clemens and Roosevelt respond to concerns of their age" (p. xiv).

"War" is the theme that begins the story. Roosevelt glorified warfare.
Although his exploits in Cuba led the Spanish to sue for peace after the
Battle of San Juan Hill, the actual story is far less glorious. Both
Roosevelt and Mark Twain saw the United States' claims on Cuba and the
Philippines as mutually beneficial and a natural extension of Manifest
Destiny but Twain's views on imperialism changed after the Boxer Rebellion
in China and he declared himself an anti-imperialist as he learned more
about the behavior of American soldiers in the Philippines. On the other
hand, Roosevelt campaigned as an "expansionist" preferring that term over
the negative connotations of "imperialist" but at the same time called
anti-imperialists "traitors" (p. 70-1)--without singling out Mark Twain
personally. Roosevelt embraced war as a man’s duty, and declared that women
fulfilled their duties in the home. After a brief taste of soldiering Twain
had headed west during the Civil War, while Roosevelt late in life
unsuccessfully begged President Woodrow Wilson to let him lead a regiment in
World War I. On war Twain and Teddy would never agree.

Clues to how these two men came to embrace such different values can be
found in their childhoods, which are compared in the second section, "The
West." Roosevelt adored his mother and father and later said he never made a
decision in life without first considering what his father would have done.
Twain adored his mother, but not his father. Roosevelt was a sickly child
with asthma and poor vision, and was taught to value discipline and duty;
Twain's robust childhood reflected his Huck Finn taste for freedom and
escape. For both men their early married life was shadowed by death. Just
six years after marrying, Roosevelt's first wife and his mother died of
unrelated causes on the very same day. He spent nearly a year hunting in the
wilds of North Dakota to deal with his grief. In the first years of Twain's
marriage, Livy's father died, a close friend who came to help Livy died in
their home, Livy became deathly ill, and their son Langdon died in infancy.
Twain was effusive in his grief and poured himself into his work.
Roosevelt's hunting trip resulted in a book, _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_,
and Twain's writing resulted in _Roughing It_. Both books reflect some
aspects of Manifest Destiny and both books can be said to designate the
western frontier as the "gravitational center" of the American character.
McFarland then traces Roosevelt's rise to power, advancing from New York
Police commissioner, to assistant secretary of the Navy, to war hero, to
Governor of New York, to McKinley's Vice-President, and then President after
McKinley's assassination. At the same time he traces Twain's evolution
toward anti-imperialism, first supporting war with Spain over Cuba, but
opposing American actions in China and the Philippines, where Twain saw
America as an oppressor rather than a protector, resulting in "To the Person
Sitting in Darkness."

The third section, "Race," begins with one of Twain and Roosevelt's few
encounters, and what Twain said during that conversation may surprise
scholars who don't already know the story. The two men met at a Yale
graduation and Roosevelt asked Twain if he had been right to invite Booker
T. Washington to dine at the White House. Twain's response was a carefully
measured reply, saying that while a private individual may invite anyone he
wishes to his home, a public figure should be mindful of causing offense to
many people while at the same time reaping no benefit to the country. While
Twain's timid response sounds far less progressive than might be expected,
Twain's evolution away from racism had followed a long arc from the nasty
comments in his letter from New York in 1853. Roosevelt was not quite so
evolved. He accused his black Rough Riders of cowardice, a charge that was
disputed by his white officers and envisioned a "new race" in America would
rise up as less civilized races like Indians, Chinese, and African-Americans
became extinct. He urged foreigners coming to America to Americanize their
names, learn English, and shed their culture or face the same extinction. He
boasted that American democracy had been vindicated because it "kept for the
white race the best portions of the new world's surface" and that the white
race had been "right in wresting from barbarism… these beautiful states" (p.
200). McFarland amply documents that the crude state of science of the day
supported such racist thinking. Roosevelt considered Booker T. Washington
one of the "occasionally good, well-educated, intelligent and honest colored
men."  As for Mark Twain, he viewed Washington as "worth a hundred
Roosevelts, a man whose shoe-latchets Mr. Roosevelt is not worthy to untie"
(p. 209).

In the section on "Oil," McFarland follows both men through the Gilded Age
as they react to emerging corporate America. Twain befriends Standard Oil
tycoon Henry Huddleston Rogers even as his sympathies deepen for the working
man and labor, while Roosevelt continues to worship wealth even as he
becomes the nation's great trust-buster. Although Roosevelt detested
ill-gotten gains and fought to protect women and children from sweat-shops,
he could not bring himself to support a minimum wage, or abolish forced
convict labor, or enforce an eight hour work day. Roosevelt, who embraced
Herbert Spencer's notion of "social Darwinisn," also wanted to change
immigration laws to exclude anarchists, the uneducated, and the poor,
because he believed they could not assimilate and survive in Anglo-Saxon Ame
rica. In the meantime, Twain was chasing wealth through a series of bad
investments in the Paige typesetter and the Webster Publishing Company, and
relying on Rogers to reorganize and restore his finances. Both men were
regularly featured in rather similar cartoons--big-headed mustachioed
figures, Roosevelt with his toothy grin and Twain with his wild head of
hair. By the time Roosevelt was President, Twain's opinion of his fellow
cartooned celebrity had soured. Twain deplored Roosevelt's habit of "showing
off" and his unending bragging about San Juan Hill and his hunting exploits.
All the while Twain cherished his friend and savior Henry H. Rogers, just as
Roosevelt cherished the thought of busting up Standard Oil and other trusts
like it.

The section entitled "Children" could just as easily be called "Family" or
"The Domestic Scene." Twain and Roosevelt, according to McFarland,
experienced rather different domestic lives. When Twain returned from Italy
with Livy's body, he and Clara were escorted swiftly through customs without
the bother of delays or inspections thanks to Roosevelt's interceding on
Twain's behalf, and after losing his wife, Twain was left with two of his
three daughters. His domestic life had always been decidedly feminine,
surrounded by a wife and daughters. After losing his first wife, Roosevelt
had remarried and had four sons and two daughters, and most of his attention
seems to have been focused on his sons and on manly pursuits, a decidedly
masculine domestic scene. Alice Roosevelt is compared to Susy Clemens but
Alice's frequent disdain for her father and constant attempts to become
independent more closely resemble Clara Clemens's relationship with her
father. Both men enjoyed very close strong marriages, and while Roosevelt
pursued his obsession with the concept of "manliness" Twain remained in his
feminine household, according to McFarland. However, he overlooks Twain's
own admiration of manly pursuits. McFarland quotes Roosevelt's comment "I
believe in rough manly sports." (p. 350) but nowhere mentions Twain's
meeting with World Champion boxer Jim Corbett after a boxing match or his
vivid letter to Livy describing the exciting violence of that sport. Nor
does he mention Twain attending a Yale-Princeton football game and his
enthusiastic comment that would have liked to play football himself. Twain
concluded that "the country is safe when its young men show such pluck and
determination as were in evidence today," sounding just as bully as
Roosevelt himself. The two men had more in common on the home front than
McFarland admits.

In the final section headed "Peace," both men experience personal and
professional losses and physical decline. For Twain the loss of Livy, Jean,
and Henry Rogers loom large, and he begins to feel his age in his last
years. McFarland cites Michael Shelden's biography _Mark Twain: Man in
White_, but still focuses on the bleakness of Twain's final years despite
Shelden's convincing argument that Twain's last years were evenly balanced
between disappointments and pleasures. Twain’s relationship with pacifist
and anti-imperialist Andrew Carnegie is also examined--a sharp contrast to
the bombastic Roosevelt. After Twain's death, Roosevelt's last decade
included political disappointments and the loss of one of his sons in war.
In this section McFarland also recaps and catalogs Twain's criticisms of
Roosevelt and believes Twain's criticism about Roosevelt was wrong.
McFarland admits and then excuses Roosevelt's racism, saying it was based on
the "brightest scientific light of the time ..." (p. 390). He claims that
Roosevelt's widow and daughter were hurt to read Twain's criticism when
_Mark Twain in Eruption_ appeared in 1940, but he does not cite a source for
this. The book ends with an account of Twain's and Roosevelt's children and
their lives and there is no shortage of unhappiness, with stories of
alcohol, drugs, suicide, and adultery playing major roles.

McFarland has gathered a mass of information, although none of it appears to
have come from previously unpublished sources, even though he used a number
of images from both the Mark Twain Papers at University of California, and
the Roosevelt Papers at Harvard, so the reader is left to wonder if a search
through Mark Twain's unpublished letters and notebooks at Berkeley and a
similar digging into the Roosevelt archives at Harvard might have yielded
even more insights. Both men attended dinners at the Lotos Club, and
although the club is mentioned in the text, there is no evidence the club’s
archives were searched for further evidence of personal encounters. The
reliance on published sources in a work of this length makes it less useful
to Twain or Roosevelt scholars, but even well-read students of either man
are certain to gain new insights about the other. The organization of the
material is confusing at times, despite the author's reasoning behind his
thematic arrangement. His habit of not always connecting the dots between
the two men and the events they witnessed, and revisiting themes from other
sections at unexpected moments doesn't help clarify matters. Despite these
modest flaws, the author does a masterful job of evoking the times, the
mood, the tensions of that era, and the sometimes pungent personalities of
both men, and that makes reading this book a pleasure.