10/09/2010

Mark Twain Weighs in on Seasons

Mark Twain, Feb 7, 1871

Mark Twain is celebrated as our first true American humorist, drawing on local color and speech and weaving stories which embody a unique American viewpoint. Among his early works was Roughing It, a rambling narrative about his directionless early years wandering the American West.

As we head into another fall and winter in Maine it is useful to hear from Twain’s impressions of New England as it relates to the changing seasons. After several years in Nevada and California he had this to say (chapter 56):

One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from “the States” go into ecstasies over the loveliness of “ever-blooming California.” And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. But perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with the memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer greens of Californian “verdure,” stand astonished, and filled with worshiping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, the brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of form and species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of Paradise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and sombre California, when that man has seen New England’s meadow-expanses and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes very near being funny–would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic.

Although a tropical landscape seems especially inviting to New Englanders in about February, it’s nice to hear Twain’s warning:

No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The tropics are not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony. Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminating graces–and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.

Right now in the Acadia area of Maine we have one of those seasons. A nip of frost, rapidly reddening leaves, low autumn sun and sudden weather changes awaken new (old) instincts as our human animal prepares for the coming challenges. It’s a great time to visit as lodgings are cheaper and restaurants and other attractions are still open. It is an especially great time for Californians to visit if they want to see the “opaline splendors of autumn”.

"Opaline Splendors of Autumn"

Read the full book as well as many others of Twain’s at http://www.mtwain.com

Here is a page which features my distant cousin, actor William Hooker Gillette, giving his (audio) impression of his friend and neighbor Mark Twain. This is the closest thing we have to Twain’s voice.