Mark Twain, Karl Gerhardt, and the Huckleberry Finn Frontispiece

When readers opened the first edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, they were greeted by a heliotype of a bust of Mark Twain, a stately reproduction of a piece of art paired on the facing page with an illustration of Huck Finn holding a rifle in one hand and a dead rabbit in the other. The incongruous pairing is visually interesting and suggestive of a distancing between the author and his vernacular narrator, the familiar cordon sanitaire or frame structure of Old Southwestern humor that Twain knew so well and had exploited in early tales and sketches. But the inclusion of that bust in Huckleberry Finn raises questions: Why did Mark Twain include such a disruptive addition to the first book he published with his own company? Why a reproduction of a bust, reducing a three-dimensional image to a two-dimensional one? What did Twain think he gained as an artist and for his novel by using this image?

In the most extensive analysis of the bust, Louis J. Budd suggests that the subscription agents were able to advertise “A Fine Heliotype of the Author” in the sales prospectus. But Budd is not satisfied with that obvious answer, seeing psychological reasons connected to the upcoming publication of this ground-breaking novel: “the heliotype represents deep anxieties about the novel ready to appear, not just about its sales and those of previous books and any to come but also about his future as a personality conducting a range of enterprises—from authorship to lecturing to hard-sell merchandising.”¹ Budd poses a series of questions, perhaps rhetorical: “Why did he insert the heliotype? Because, realizing that his novel was fundamentally serious, he wanted to post a warning for the public? If so, what about that almost silly ‘Notice’ to readers also added very late? Or did the bust say: Don’t confuse me totally with the ragged, naive, barely literate narrator?” (34). Budd goes on to tie the inclusion of the bust to Twain’s ongoing reluctance to discuss humor: “First, Twain was anxiously aware that the workings of laughter, in both its creator and its respondent, are subliminal” (37). And then he goes even deeper: “Nevertheless, the second, much more important reason for Twain’s refusal to spin theories about humor was his perception that none he could invent or borrow covered him fully, that they were neat and—foolishly often—unitary” (38). Budd concludes: “Giving the book its true unity, Twain’s daring earned that bust of himself. Whatever tragedy, classical or bourgeois, touched his private life, in Huckleberry Finn he reigns, nobler than a Roman, as the American god of the comic gift” (40).

I fully agree, but while Budd raises provocative questions and suggests several plausible answers, I don’t think he fully answers the question of “why the bust?” He gives excellent answers about Huckleberry Finn, both its humor and seriousness, but several questions remain. I propose they can be more fully answered by looking not at Mark Twain and his novel, but at Twain and his protégé Karl Gerhardt. A closer look at their relationship will provide a fuller explanation of the reasons for including the bust, reasons that reveal Twain’s conception of the role of the artist in society, but that also reveal aspects of Twain’s personality and even his psychology.

The year 1884 was of course pivotal in the publication of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but it was also pivotal in the relationship between Twain and Gerhardt. Mark Twain had been supporting Gerhardt as an aspiring young sculptor since 1881, but in 1884 he seems to have come to a crisis point in his ongoing patronage. He and his wife Olivia had sponsored Gerhardt’s move to Paris for an artistic apprenticeship soon after meeting the young sculptor, but the investment so far had not paid off as quickly or as fully as he had hoped. Karl and his beautiful young wife (and frequent model) Hattie Gerhardt left for Paris in February 1881, supported financially...