“I think these hundreds of princely costumes are changed every fifteen minutes during half the night; splendid pageants are filing about the stage constantly, yet one seems never to see the same dress twice. The final grand transformation scene is a vision of magnificence such as no man could imagine unless he had eaten a barrel of hasheesh.”
– Mark Twain, in his review in Alta California (March 3, 1868) of the play “The White Fawn”
Mark Twain, 1867
The Intoxicating Twain of Hasheesh
Mark Twain will forever be remembered for his beloved American classics such as ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, but what inspired such stories that would tug at the Worlds emotions?
In a 1865 article in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, we get a hint into what inspired one of America’s great writers…
Hasheesh…
“It appears that a ‘Hasheesh’ mania has broken out among our Bohemians. Yesterday, Mark Twain and the ‘Mouse-Trap’ man were seen walking up Clay street under the influence of the drug, followed by a ‘star,’ who was evidently laboring under a misapprehension as to what was the matter with them.”
-The San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, Sept. 18, 1865
150 years later and stoners still can’t walk down the street without getting hassled by a ‘Star’…
Pamphlet for which Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) sought a copyright from the Library of Congress. c.1874
“Now, I don’t approve of dissipation, and I don’t indulge in it either; but I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.”
– Mark Twain, from the Moral Statisticia, 1893
By 1893 Twain had just about enough from the moral majority he encountered on a daily basis.
In a piece he titled ‘The Moral Statistician’ Twain layed a smack down leaving none to guess his stance.
The Moral Statistician
Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893
I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. Etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. Etc. You never see more than one side of the question.
You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?
It won’t do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your ears buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income.
Now you know all these things yourself, don’t you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?
Now, I don’t approve of dissipation, and I don’t indulge in it either; but I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices. And so I don’t want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove.
– Mark Twain
Mark Twain portrait from THE IDLER MAGAZINE February 1892
In a 1892 interview while crossing the Atlantic by boat, Twain shows his hasheesh wit with a young reporter…
The solid repast of nicotine is taken by means of a corn-cob pipe. The bowl of this pipe is made from the hollowed-out cob of an ear of Indian corn. It is a very light pipe, and it colours brown as you use it, and ultimately black, so they call it in America “The Missouri Meerschaum.” I was much impressed by the ingenuity with which Mark Twain fills his corn-cob pipe. The humorist is an inspired Idler. He is a lazy man, and likes to do things with the least trouble to himself. He smokes a granulated tobacco which he keeps in a long check bag made of silk and rubber. When he has finished smoking, he knocks the residue from the bowl of the pipe, takes out the stem, places it in his vest pocket, like a pencil or a stylographic pen, and throws the bowl into the bag containing the granulated tobacco. When he wishes to smoke again (this is usually five minutes later) he fishes out the bowl, which is now filled with tobacco, inserts the stern, and strikes a light. Noticing that his pipe was very-aged and black, and knowing that he was about to enter a country where corn-cob pipes are not, I asked him if he had brought a supply of pipes with him.
“Oh, no,” he answered, “I never smoke a new corn-cob pipe. A new pipe irritates the throat. No corn-cob pipe is fit for anything until it has been used at least a fortnight.”
“How do you manage then?” I asked. “Do you follow the example of the man with the tight boots;–wear them a couple of weeks before they can be put on?”
“No,” said Mark Twain, “I always hire a cheap man–a man who doesn’t amount to much, anyhow–who would be as well–or better–dead, and let him break in the pipe for me. I get him to smoke the pipe for a couple of weeks, then put in a new stem, and continue operations as long as the pipe holds together.”
– Mark Twain interview from THE IDLER MAGAZINE, An Illustrated Monthly February 1892
Was Twain pulling a young interviewers leg, or did he in fact have bum’s break in his pipe’s?… We may never know…
Mark Twain photo at the Redding Library named after him
Years later, his friend Nikola Tesla would find that Twain had a softer side. While talking of younger days, Tesla tells Twain his writing had gotten him through a threatening illness when he was younger, thanking him…
Twain’s response to Tesla is a priceless view into his character…
“I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears.”
– Nikola Tesla on how Mark Twain “cured” him of an illness through his writing
Mark Twain participating in an experiment in Tesla’s 5th Ave. Lab as Tesla watches from behind. c.1894
“I cannot describe it. In my memory its courts & gardens will always be a hasheesh delusion, its Hall of Ambassadors a marvelous dream.”
– Mark Twain, describing his morning visit to Alcazar, palace of the Moorish kings, in Seville after a late night party c.1867
Mark Twain’s – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Chapter 16
In a letter from 1891, Twain thinks about revisiting Huckleberry Finn at the end of the story…
His idea for the ending would never be realized…
“Huck comes back 60 years old, from nobody knows where & crazy. Thinks he is a boy again, & scans always every face for Tom & Becky &c.
Tom comes, at last, 60 from wandering the world & tends Huck, & together they talk of old times; both are desolate, life has been a failure, all that was lovable, all that was beautiful is under the mould.
They die together.”
– Mark Twain, in a 1891 letter on his Idea to end his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry story.
