“The Turning Point of My Life”: First Version
MARK TWAIN wrote this version late in 1909, apparently after his seventy-fourth birthday on 30 November. The manuscript and most of a typescript with author's revisions are in the Mark Twain Papers; a copy of another typescript fragment is at the University of Wisconsin. The copy was made in 1944 by the owner, Mr. Kenneth Gamet of Los Angeles, California, who represented Mark Twain's inscribed revisions and all other features of the original, including line lengths and revised pagination. The manuscript consists of “Pratt's” or similar tablet leaves. A Paine note is on the first page of the typescript in the Papers: “Read it aloud to Jean and me. We did not approve and it brought on one of his heart attacks” (see also Paine's less explicit account in MTB, p. 1528). A reference to Howells' The Landlord at Lion's Head (1897) as his “latest book” may indicate the seriousness of Mark Twain's physical decline, for Howells published several novels and other books between 1897 and 1909. It may rather indicate that Mark Twain wrote the passage in 1897 or 1898 (possibly designed for What Is Man?), because it occurs in three missing leaves labeled A, B, C which he asked to be inserted following a paragraph on the back of manuscript p. 15. The text is that of the manuscript, with the missing passage (526–527, the three paragraphs beginning “Temperament is the source. . . .”) taken from the MTP typescript, which breaks off at the end of that passage, and with inscribed revisions taken from both typescript fragments. Part of the text (from 527, “I know the various,” through 527, “settled it: my”) is only in the manuscript; the Wisconsin typescript covers only the remainder. Contrary to his normal usage [begin page 522] Mark Twain put the title in quotes, evidently to characterize it as a familiar expression.
If I understand the idea, it is this: the Bazar invites several of us to write upon this subject, “The Turning Point of My Life.”
I have no fault to find with the title, except the word “The.” There is a plenty of turning-points in every person's life, and . . . but let me try to get at the thing I have in my mind by the help of a parable.
Once upon a time there were two apples hanging upon neighboring trees on the sharp apex of a mountain. Thomas Crab, and William Greening. Those were their names. Their ages were about the same. But not their circumstances. The Crabs were poor, ignorant, obscure, and not in society; it was just the other way with the Greenings. Nobody tried to improve the minds or bodies or morals of the Crabs, or endeavored to improve their condition in any way; but it was different with the Greenings. They were of old blood and established respectability; they were well to do; they were high up in society; their bodies and minds and characters were under painstaking cultivation all the time. Thomas Crab was undersized, pale, pinched, not quite round, and of a shrinking and timid disposition; whereas William Greening was large, perfect in sphericity and health, and bold and enterprising thereto.
It was by the accident of circumstance that Thomas was born on the crabtree instead of on the greening tree. It was by the accident of circumstance that William was born on the greening tree instead of on the crab.
Curiously enough, Thomas was ashamed of his birth, although he was in no way responsible for it; and William was just as absurdly proud of his birth, although he had had nothing to do with choosing his parentage.
Every day William and Thomas looked out admiringly over the vast landscape spread out below them, and longed for the time when [begin page 523] they should be released from parental tutelage; for then they meant to travel and see the world.
The happy day came at last. The same wind blew both of them free at the same moment. But they struck the ground fifty feet apart. By just that small (yet all-determining) accident William fell upon a smooth slope and Thomas upon a slope that was less smooth. As a consequence William rolled easily and made good time, whereas Thomas didn't. William said to himself, complacently, “I chose well; this is the best road.” Thomas said to himself, “I made a mistake; if it was to do over again, I would descend further to the left.”
The conceit of those fate-fettered little Slaves of Circumstance! they had nothing to do with when they would fall, nor where they would fall, nor what road they would take.
William said to himself, “I fell in the right place; it is the turning-point of my life; much will come of it.” Thomas said to himself, “I fell in the wrong place; it is the turning-point of my life; much will come of it.”
By and by William saw an obstructive rock ahead, and was electing to go to the right of it, when he brushed against a small pebble which shied him to port and he passed down to the left of the rock. He congratulated himself, saying, “I chose well again; if I had gone down to the right I'd have passed under the very nose of that cow yonder, and straightway down her throat the next moment. This is the turning-point of my life.”
By and by when Thomas came along he went down to the right of the rock. The cow was gone. But there was a bird there, and the bird nipped a piece out of him. The bird was disappointed, and used expurgative language, and spat out the piece. Thomas said, “I was going to take the other side, but was shied out of my course by a pebble which I didn't see till it was too late—and lo, the disastrous result! a wound which will never heal, and will disable me some day. My career is damaged; this is the turning-point of my life.”
Such is life! You never could have convinced those apples that they had nothing to do with choosing their careers, nor with shaping them after the all-puissant Magician of Circumstance should choose them. And no one could have convinced them that the turning-point in a life is a thing that can't knowably happen; that it is never ascertainably a the, but only an a; that the a turning-points occur with great [begin page 524] frequency; that you can't tell an important one from an unimportant one, because each does its own share in its own appointed place, toward bringing about a future more or less grand result, and it couldn't be left out of the chain without bringing about a totally different result—good? or bad?—there's no guessing which it would be.
Further down the mountain William came fearfully near rolling over a precipice when he was day-dreaming instead of watching, but a chance whiff of wind canted him to starboard and saved him. He said, “It was clever of me to take advantage of that wind; in another minute I'd have been mush in the bottom of the canyon. This is the turning-point of my life.”
When Thomas came along he was brooding over his wound, and would have gone over the precipice, but he was not round, not perfectly spherical, and that defect saved him, for it made him wallow out of his course at the critical moment. Also it made him wallow over an ant-camp, and the ants swarmed to his wound and sucked it and gave thanks. He reproached himself, saying, “I ought to have steered to the left of that camp, it was foolish to run over it. Those creatures are digging into my vitals, a fateful future is before me. This is the turning-point of my life.”
It was not just, it was not fair, to reproach himself: he had had no choice in the matter. It was Circumstance that chose his road and did his steering for him: the circumstance of his defective shape and the contour of the ground; it was not for him to choose whither he would go; and not for him to accomplish it after choosing—with Circumstance opposing, and in command of the situation. Circumstance being in sole command of all situations, without exception.
The apples continued their journey down the mountain. As often as once every hour they had an adventure apiece—invented, controlled and achieved by blind Circumstance: lucky ones for William, unlucky ones for Thomas. In each case, each remarked “This is the turning-point of my life.”
They finally arrived in the valley. The King and his court came gorgeously processioning along. The King saw the apples, and sprang at them, and took them up in his hands, and broke into paeans of admiration over William, calling him beautiful, and wonderful, and all that; and handed him to the Lord High Admiral of the Bedchamber, saying, “Do him the highest honor: Place him in the view of all, at the [begin page 525] royal banquet to-night!” Which made William purr with pride and contentment, and he said “This is the turning-point of my life,—at last and for sure!”
Then the King, examining Thomas, said, “Pah! this one's rotten!” and tossed him away. Thomas, lamenting, said, “Alas, this is the real turning-point of my life, the others were delusions. My life is a failure; I would that I were dead!”
Circumstance intruded again. The chief butler's pet monkey got into the banquet hall a little ahead of the dinner hour, and ate William, who said, thick-voiced and mushily, down in that dark stomach, “And so, all those apparently lucky and high-promising turning-points were painstakingly planned-out and hitched together to lead up to this result! I see the whole scheme, now. Those were only temporary turning-points, nothing permanent in any of them; no one of them of superior importance to the others, but all of them important to the grand end in view—the landing of me in the medulla-oblongata-major-maxillary of a monkey!” He added, coldly, “It may be humorous, but I fail to see the point.”
Next morning Mr. Burbank of California came along and saw Thomas lying there neglected, forsaken, putrescent, heart-broken, envying William's splendidly-climaxed career and grieving over the shameful close of his own; and the wizard picked up the mourner and broke into sesquipedalian adjectives of delight over him, saying, “It is the priceless thing I have been searching the world for—found at last!”
And he took him home and planted him in a golden vase set with diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and watched over him night and day to dulcet measures of soft music, nourishing him the while with the juice of dissolved pearls and opals; until at last he saw Thomas rise up and burst into a giant spray of thitherto-unimaginable roses, the glory of the world, the wonder of the nations!
Thomas, oozing intoxicating fragrances, said, with feeling, “Heaven be praised, I see what those trifling and meaningless turning-points were for, now!”
When I look back over my seventy-four years and try to find the turning point of my life I am not able to succeed to my satisfaction. I [begin page 526] find a great many incidents that were turning points. Each in its turn quite definitely—and always unexpectedly, I believe—changed my course, but there is no supreme “the” among them. Except that each in its turn was a “the;” a passing “the,” a temporary “the,” which soon accomplishes accomplished its small mission and went out of service, for good and all. These turning points begin with a person's birth; and the very first one is father to all the rest, I think—every one of them. If Napoleon's first act was to put his finger in the candle, that incident produced the next one, whatever it was, and the said next one produced the next one; and the procession of resulting events was now under way, to go on without a break to the end of his life. With no candle present there could be no burnt finger, and some other episode would take its place, and change Napoleon's entire career.
Temperament is the governing mechanism of a man's machinery and chief servant to the Magician of Circumstance, (and it is born in him and is unchangeable.) It determines what any given set of circumstances may and shall compel the man to do. Given the Circumstance of the battle of the Wilderness, General Grant's temperament required him to say “I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” And it made him do that desperate work. Whereas my temperament would not have required me to say it, and sixteen temperaments like mine couldn't have made me do it. They would have made me go away and get behind something.
Temperament is the source of Character. Temperament is the instrument, character is the music. Temperament inflexibly determines certain things; for instance, that the jewsharp temperament cannot be taught, nor persuaded, nor forced to produce piano-music—the jewsharp has its limitations, likewise the violin; and the bugle; and the flute; and the guitar; and the church organ, and so on. The instrument is permanent, the music produced is variable. Circumstance is the performer. There is a million of him; some bad, some good. The bad ones get bad music out of the instrument, better ones get better music, the best get the best the instrument is capable of. That particular instrument. But, as remarked before, no environment, no set of circumstances, can get organ-music out of a jewsharp. And no Circumstances can get anything more than a modified magnanimity out of a mean temperament, nor anything more than a modified warmth out of a cold one. Temperament is a tree, character is the fruit. Good soil, bad [begin page 527] soil, wet weather, dry weather, cold weather, hot weather—these and a hundred other outside circumstances modify the character of the fruit for better or for worse, but they have to stop there: they can't ennoble crab apples into oranges.
Mr. Howells, in his latest book—his masterpiece, as I think*— makes Westover say to Durgin, “You were not responsible for your temperament, but only for your character.”
Necessarily Durgin was not responsible for his temperament, which was born to him—like the color of his eyes and as unchangeable —but as Durgin's temperament, and his situation and circumstances determined his character for him in spite of him, perhaps he wasn't very largely responsible for that, either. However, Westover tacitly admits this, five lines lower down, and so I have no fault to find with him except for not admitting it earlier: “I always believed that if you had experienced greater kindness socially during your first year in college you would have been a better man.” Without doubt. By born temperament Durgin was a dog, and a bad one; good treatment could not have made a canary out of him, but it would have made him a better dog.
I know the various turning points in my life, and how they came to happen, but if you should ask me how I came to be a literary person, I should in honor be obliged to say I became a literary person because I had the measles when I was twelve years old. And it would be true. I could go back of that, and tell you how I (most unnecessarily) came to get the measles. Also I could go back of that and . . .
But never mind, let us begin with the measles. I got the measles by getting into bed with a playmate who had them; I did it twice—surreptitiously and in disobedience to command. I did it because I had a terror of the measles, and wanted to get them and have it over, one way or the other. I had been a difficult boy, and that performance settled it: my mother put me in a printing office to keep me out of foolish and troublesome mischief.
That explains how I came to be in Keokuk, Iowa, ten years later; I went there on a job as printer.
Being there is how I came to find a fifty-dollar bill in the street one bitter morning in winter.
Finding that money explains how I came to start to Brazil—a [begin page 528] dream of mine which I had been obliged to put off and put off and put off, for lack of money. A person with a sane temperament would have invested the find in some sane way, but I had to do as my temperament commanded. Very well, I went down to New Orleans, proposing to sail from there—which I didn't, there being no ship bound for Brazil, and there never had been one.
Going down to New Orleans was another turning point. It made me acquainted with a pilot—Horace Bixby. Being stranded in New Orleans, I got Bixby to take me as an apprentice. Thus I became a pilot—the profession that stands out in my life as the pleasantest and the most desirable of all the occupations I have tried.
Being a pilot is how I came to be occupationless when the war broke out and the boats stopped running.
Being occupationless is how I came to enter the military service and do what I could to avoid danger during two fearful weeks. Then I resigned.
This brought me into contact with my brother, who had just been appointed Secretary of the new Territory of Nevada, and I eagerly crossed the plains with him to be his secretary.
That is how I came to be bitten with the silver fever. I went down to Esmeralda to make my fortune in the mines. Every man down there wrote large accounts of the prospects of his mining-claims, for publication in the Territorial Enterprise, and so I did the same. Then a principal officer of the Territorial government came down there to do an oration. Oratory was his specialty—his disease, I may say. It was of the superlatively flowery sort. I burlesqued his oration, and the Enterprise was pleased with my effort.
That is how I came to be a journalist. The Enterprise sent for me, and I served on the staff of that paper until I got into the preliminaries of a duel with the editor of the other paper. I got private word from the governor that I must vacate the Territory immediately or the utmost severities of the new law against dueling would be my portion.
That is how I came to go to California. And in such a hurry.
Being in California is how I came to get acquainted with the Sacramento Union editors.
Being acquainted with them is how I came to ask them to send me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six months as correspondent. Which they did. To write up the sugar interest. Which I did—and put [begin page 529] in lots of entertaining stuff that wasn't strictly sugar. But it gave me a valuable notoriety.
And that is how I came to be a lecturer. San Francisco invited me to talk, and I did it. I became rich in a single night, but the doorkeeper got it. However, I got the next intake myself and was rich again. I had upwards of twelve hundred dollars.
That is why I was able to fructify an old dream of mine and become a traveler. I came to New York, attracted by an exciting advertisement mapping out a grand European excursion—the “Quaker City Excursion.” I joined it, and sent some letters home to the Tribune, and one to the Herald. They attracted the attention of a publisher, and he asked me to write a book. Which I did. “The Innocents Abroad.”
That is how I came to be a literary person.
I mean, that is the last link in the chain of apparently accidental circumstances which had been appointed and commissioned at the dawn of Creation to make me a literary person. But that is all it is— merely the last link. It hadn't any more to do with the result than its predecessors had. Not one link in the chain could have been left out and that result accomplished. If one single link had been left out I should not be a literary person to-day, but a burglar. I know it quite well.
I repeat: I am a literary person because I had the measles when I was twelve years old. It was The Turning Point of my Life wasn't it?
It was, if there ever was a the turning point of my life.