Mark Twain, Huck Finn and Cape Girardeau

This is the 21st in a series of articles with Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation board chairman Frank Nickell, an emeritus faculty member of Southeast Missouri State University, commenting on Show Me State history on the 200th anniversary of Missouri being received as America's 24th state in 1821.

Mark Twain's name will forever be associated with Missouri, the home state of the celebrated writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer, who died in 1910.

The Hannibal, Missouri, native -- born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 -- has his pen name attached to the more than 3-million-acre Mark Twain National Forest, covering 29 southern Show Me State counties -- including Bollinger, Butler, Carter, Madison and Wayne. The MTNF represents 11% of all forested land in Missouri.

The Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church names one of its nine administrative districts after Twain -- the only district designation in memory of a specific individual.

Historian Nickell recalled the one-time riverboat pilot's fascination with the celestial landscape and how late in life, Clemens was known to have spoken about how his life was bookended by Halley's Comet.

Clemens was born two weeks after the comet made its closest approach to earth in 1835 and died one day after Halley's came closest to the Earth in 1910.

As an aside, Halley's, visible to the naked eye, is the only known comet that may be seen twice in a human lifespan. It is next due to appear in the sky in 2061.

In 1909, just prior to his death, Clemens was said to have made the following remarks on the subject:

"I came in with Halley's in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet."

Clemens died April 21, 1910.

One book above all

Nickell called Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," published in 1885, "the first masterpiece of American literature," noting Twain's novel shows readers about what life was like in America "both good and bad" in the 1840s and 1850s.

"[Twain] captured so much of what America thought it was in 19th century," he added.

Nickell's opinion is echoed by the literary giant Ernest Hemingway, who wrote the following exactly 100 years after Twain's birth: "All modern American literature comes from one book -- Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Nickell said "Finn" revealed American superstitions of the time, including, "Bees won't sting idiots."

The retired SEMO historian also suggested the novel can be a difficult read in our more enlightened times.

"Twain used the 'n-word' 219 times in Huckleberry Finn," Nickell said. "The book was the first manuscript ever produced by a typewriter."

Pen name origin

Clemens, who trained as a licensed riverboat pilot, became well versed with riparian terminology, including one often-used term that he claimed as his literary nom de guerre.

"The term 'mark twain' was used on the river to designate a waterway's depth with 'twain,' a reference to two fathoms or 12 feet, considered deep enough to safely navigate a river," informed Nickell.

Cape Girardeau

Clemens, acquainted with the Mississippi River from his Hannibal roots, went past Cape Girardeau several times in his lifetime, said Nickell, who added the author of 48 books mentioned Missouri's 16th-largest city in the 25th chapter of his memoir, "Life on the Mississippi."

The relevant excerpt from Twain's 1883 book reads:

"Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside and makes a handsome appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri. There was another college higher up on an airy summit--a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters, with the cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri and contained several colleges besides those already mentioned: and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another. He directed my attention to what he called the 'strong and pervasive religious look of the town,' but I could not see that it looked more religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the same kind of bricks. Partialities often make people see more than really exists."

Twain's mention of "a great Jesuit school" is a reference to St. Vincent's College, now a part of SEMO's River Campus, and "[the] college higher up on an airy summit" was the old Normal School, now part of Southeast Missouri State University, founded in 1873 -- 10 years before "Life on the Mississippi" was published.