- Editor’s Re: Marks
Like some of you, I have had the great pleasure of speaking personally with Hal Holbrook at various Twain conferences, where we treat him as a colleague. I remember telling him at one of these conferences how much he matters as a teacher of Twain, a comment he slyly smiled at before signing for me a copy of his Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain.
At the 2009 Elmira quadrennial State of Mark Twain Studies conference some of us gathered with him at dusk on the former site of Twain’s famous octagonal study to smoke cigars and to listen to his stories of meeting Clara (for pictures and video of Elmira 2009, visit Tracy Wuster’s blog at http://quarryfarm2009.blogspot.com/). Whether it was the billowing cigar smoke or the lull of his voice that night, I remember thinking that was a powerfully made circle, a literal configuration of the collegiality we share as Twain scholars. It seems fitting, in fact, that our society’s leading organization is named “The Mark Twain Circle.”
I make it a point to attend “Mark Twain Tonight” whenever the show comes within striking distance of my ZIP code. I have seen the show many times. Once, I was fortunate to be invited to give the preshow lecture at a local college, where I was joined by my oldest daughter, who was my assistant for the night. That was a memorable evening.
This past spring, “Mark Twain Tonight” was being performed a couple of hours from my home, so I bought two tickets and convinced my sixteen-year-old middle daughter to go along. The concert hall was packed that night, and my daughter was easily the youngest person in attendance. Despite having a cold, the now ninety-one-year-old actor gave it his all. Not surprisingly, given the political season we are in, he hit on many of Twain’s commentaries on and condemnations of politics and politicians, and each one, not surprisingly, hit home—a testament to Twain’s enduring relevance and range. His set comprised the usual sparse arrangement of carefully selected artifacts: ornate rug, wooden table with chunky legs, multicolored [End Page v] books piled high on the table, crystal water pitcher and drinking glass, stick matches, unlit cigar, white suit, podium, and high-backed chair. But I was amazed at how little he sat in that chair; he barely stopped moving during the entire two-hour show.
My daughter was a good sport and cheerful companion that evening. She told me she recognized the ageless actor playing Mark Twain from the movie Into the Wild and promised me she would watch All the President’s Men soon. But as the show proceeded, I found myself fascinated by watching both “Mark Twain” and my daughter: his ageless enthusiasm for the material was matched by her unwavering interest in the whole enterprise, especially his mannerisms and machinations—and by how often the audience was laughing. She was particularly taken in by the (not-always) funny Jim Blaine piece about his grandfather’s old ram and “Twain’s” constant pretending to fall asleep throughout the telling of this rambling shaggy-dog tale. It was during this piece that he finally used that high-back chair. By intermission, we both felt fully rewarded for making the trip downstate.
Puffing his way back onto stage in Act II, “Twain” once again gave it his all and gave me what I had secretly wished for: a long set piece from Huck Finn. Now I was entirely enthralled, as he performed the various voices of Huck among the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons: now Huck, now Buck, now narration of the action, culminating with these well-known lines from Chapter 18, when Buck is killed:
All of sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, “Kill them, kill them!” It made...