Alias Macfarlane: A Revision of Mark Twain Biography

ARK TWAIN has perhaps received more causal analysis than any other American writer. Regional and economic factors, guilts and frustrations imposed by his family life, several kinds of sexual motives-all these have served to explain the man and his works; and far from any abatement of the genetic approach, recent years have produced in it a considerable sophistication and expertise. It is therefore surprising that a certain supposition of influence has never been challenged. This is the belief that while working in Cincinnati in I856-I857, young Sam Clemens was so impressed with the pessimistic doctrine of a man named Macfarlane as to adopt it for his own in later years. There are two sources for this notion. The first to become public was Albert Bigelow Paine's discussion *of the Clemens-Macfarlane relationship in his biography (I912). After describing their conversational evenings in the Cincinnati boarding house, and after a summary of Macfarlane's pessimism, Paine reflects: "They were long, fermenting discourses that young Samuel Clemens listened to that winter in Macfarlane's room, and those who knew the real Mark Twain and his philosophies will recognize that those evenings left their impress upon him for life."1 The other source is a brief manuscript which Paine included in his edition of Twain's autobiography (I924) *2 It was the basis of Paine's account in the biography, with one important exception: Twain says nothing whatever about Macfarlane's influence on him.