America’s great humourist not so successful at life

Several years ago, my daughter and I went to the Kelowna Community Theatre to see American movie actor Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain.

Holbrook looked and spoke like Mark Twain and the show was quite entertaining. Until the sprinkler system went off and, sitting in the front row, we got soaked.

It was a cold November night. Everyone stood around outside, freezing, until we were notified the show would not continue.

A few weeks ago, PBS ran an interesting documentary on Twain’s life. He was a conflicted man.

Twain was very successful. Samuel Clemens was not. Twain became enormously rich through his novels, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often referred to as the Great American Novel.

Samuel Clemens, using the money he made as Mark Twain, bought and sold stocks and invested tens of thousand dollars in various inventions.

He lost $300,000 (Eight million in today’s money) in a typesetting machine that never saw the light of day. He threw $25,000 at each of five inventions and lost it all. The other major mistake he made was saying no to the telephone. He didn’t see a future in it.

By the time he was 60 in 1892, Clemens was $200,000 in debt.

Henry Rogers of Standard Oil, whose net worth was a hundred million, was a big fan of Twain and offered to take over his finances.

Rogers also convinced him to return to the lecture circuit. Twain performed for sold-out audiences around the world; 150 appearances over a two-year period. He sent money back to the States which Rogers paid to Twain’s creditors.

Samuel Clemens had a wife and three daughters. His wife died during his world tour, one of the daughters died shortly after, another was committed to an asylum and the third daughter moved abroad.

He smoked 40 cigars a day and died in 1910 at age 74, from a heart attack. He paid back his creditors and, because of his copyrights, left an estate of $471,000 (Twelve million today). Three thousand mourners attended his funeral. I like Mark Twain, but I like Shania better. Fred Trainor lives in Okanagan Falls. Email: fredtrainor@shaw.ca