Traveling with Twain

In 1857-1861, his years as a Mississippi steamboat pilot, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) regularly visited Arkansas, a slave state that joined the Confederacy upon the Civil War’s start. He also made the state a regular target of his humor. He portrayed Arkansas as raucous and raw—“where ignorance, sloth and drowsiness prevail.” But he also suggested in Life on the Mississippi that such Arkansas towns as Helena, Arkansas City and Napoleon (“tore all to rags” by the Arkansas River in 15 minutes and emptied into the Mississippi, according to Twain), were home to decent, accomplished people. Bricksville, Arkansas, a fictional Mississippi River town in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that was based on Napoleon, also represented the regular rural and village folks that Twain respected. He wrote in his notes for Huckleberry Finn that Huck will “hear some Arkansas women over their pipes & knitting…swap reminiscences of Sister this and Brother that, & what become of so & so – what was his fust wife’s name?”

November 18