The first outdoor shower I bypassed was right off Kihei Drive along Maui’s southern coastline. Even though it was a little after 6:00 in the morning and traffic was sparse, I kept driving, scouting the perfect shower location. The next one I bypassed had a man sitting at a picnic table no more than six feet away. Two grannies dressed in their one-piece swimsuits sat in their car evaluating the surf next to the third shower. The fourth was hidden from the road by a public restroom—good--and in full view of two young men--bad--staking an area for a party at the park later in the day—a first baby luau, no doubt. And that’s when I spied a shower head standing sentry in the middle of a grassy patch, in full view of everything—the road, the beach, the picnic tables—and yet far enough in the distance that, perhaps, my spaghetti strap T-shirt and striped underwear could be mistaken for a swimsuit—not that unusual for the beach. Perfect. So, I showered in my T-shirt and underwear and dried off with a mustard-colored beach towel splashed with the word “Maui” which I’d just purchased at Foodland, open 24 hours, where I’d also picked up travel size containers of shampoo, conditioner and body wash.
Some opportunities in life come with a few discomforts.
The shower, for instance, and last night. I spent last night in my rented Mercury Rendezvous SUV sleeping on a foam pad and covered with a fleece blanket, both purchased from Kmart at the last minute. It wasn’t my intention to sleep in the car, but it’s a holiday weekend and not a single hotel room is available on the island under $300. I'm not prepared to spend $300 a night for three nights, not when I’m facing a new laptop purchase soon.
It’s not like I had much time to plan this trip, anyway. The PR representative from the Maui Writers Conference only confirmed my interview with Mark Twain biographer Ron Powers yesterday morning at 8:45. Thirty minutes later, I was on a plane for Maui.
I packed a knit skirt, top and one pair of underwear—rolled and wedged in my backpack carryon alongside the more important items, Powers’ Mark Twain: A Life, Walter Francis Frear’s Mark Twain and Hawaii, Twain’s Letter’s from Hawaii and Roughing It, my 35mm digital SLR camera, laptop and digital voice recorder, plus a handful of files. As for toiletries, I tossed my tooth brush and tooth paste in my purse, but officials at the security check-point at the airport confiscated the toothpaste. I didn’t care. I was soon to be on Maui with a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer born in Hannibal, Missouri. If I closed my eyes, he might even morph into the old geezer himself, and then answer all my questions about the invention of Mr. Brown.
In the end, he didn’t, but he gave a pretty good impersonation of Mark Twain—or Sam, as Ron refers to him—and, more than questions answered, he offered me friendship. By the way, Ron did agree that Hawaii was a turning point in Sam's career which was a nice confirmation, making me feel that I'm not out on a limb flailing in the wind entirely alone now. As for the Brown business, I guess that’s up to me; he is my fascination, after all, and so that exploration continues--discomforts, like a kink in my neck, and opportunities, like meeting Ron Powers, and all.
An Inconvenient Truth
So, I go to see the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth last night, and we're not five minutes into it, and Gore puts up this quote:
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so."
The "ain't" is a dead give away. It's a Twain quote, of course. See what I mean.
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so."
The "ain't" is a dead give away. It's a Twain quote, of course. See what I mean.
He turns up everywhere--just like Elvis
I’ve heard it said Twain is the most-oft quoted person in the world next to Shakespeare, but I find that hard to believe. You mean the wisdom and philosophy of Twain beats that of Jesus? Buddha? Confucius?
Even when I’m not researching Twain, I can’t seem to shake him, and you know, sometimes I just want a break. Sometimes, I don’t want to take work home with me. Sometimes the last name I want to hear--or read--is Twain. And, then, I receive an email or open a magazine or crack open the work of a contemporary author and there it is--yet another Mark Twain quote. It's like I'm getting a glimpse of the old geezer’s backside—white hair flying, laughter trailing and a hint of that stinky cigar--as he wobbles around a corner. And I want to yell, “Just leave me alone, will you?”
Then, I remember he was the first American to give American letters its own voice. Until Twain arrived on the scene with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1875—which has never once gone out of print since—America played second fiddle to those blokes across the pond. James Fennimore Cooper. Herman Melville. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Just Englishmen in disguise. Twain himself was less than impressed with one—James Fennimore Cooper—penning these words, “Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.”
On one hand, it seems Mark Twain is a household name, and, yet, I’m learning, not as well-known as I might think.
When I spoke with the PR agent for the Oahu Visitors Bureau a couple months ago and explained the purpose for my research trip to her island, she was ecstatic and wanted to house me in an historical Honolulu hotel that borders lands once owned by the family of Princess Kaiulani, good friends, she said, with Twain who entertained the young, 13-year-old princess with tall tales.
Now, I’m all for trying to re-enact Twain’s journey—walking in his footsteps, laying my head close to where he may have slept, conjuring up the mana of his Hawaii friends—however, I was fully aware Twain did not talk story with Princess Kaiulani, did not visit her palatial estate, and was, most certainly, not even an acquaintance of her, because Mark Twain visited Hawaii in 1866, and Princess Kaiulani was born in 1875. It doesn’t take much research to get to the bottom of that one. Another American writer of distinction—Robert Louis Stevenson—did visit Kaiulani, did entertain her with stories and did stay at a nearby residence. Some 22 years after Twain’s visit.
By the time the PR representative caught her mistake, I was already granted and graciously accepted—as I’m sure Twain would have—a two-night stay at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel in Waikiki.
Even when I’m not researching Twain, I can’t seem to shake him, and you know, sometimes I just want a break. Sometimes, I don’t want to take work home with me. Sometimes the last name I want to hear--or read--is Twain. And, then, I receive an email or open a magazine or crack open the work of a contemporary author and there it is--yet another Mark Twain quote. It's like I'm getting a glimpse of the old geezer’s backside—white hair flying, laughter trailing and a hint of that stinky cigar--as he wobbles around a corner. And I want to yell, “Just leave me alone, will you?”
Then, I remember he was the first American to give American letters its own voice. Until Twain arrived on the scene with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1875—which has never once gone out of print since—America played second fiddle to those blokes across the pond. James Fennimore Cooper. Herman Melville. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Just Englishmen in disguise. Twain himself was less than impressed with one—James Fennimore Cooper—penning these words, “Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.”
On one hand, it seems Mark Twain is a household name, and, yet, I’m learning, not as well-known as I might think.
When I spoke with the PR agent for the Oahu Visitors Bureau a couple months ago and explained the purpose for my research trip to her island, she was ecstatic and wanted to house me in an historical Honolulu hotel that borders lands once owned by the family of Princess Kaiulani, good friends, she said, with Twain who entertained the young, 13-year-old princess with tall tales.
Now, I’m all for trying to re-enact Twain’s journey—walking in his footsteps, laying my head close to where he may have slept, conjuring up the mana of his Hawaii friends—however, I was fully aware Twain did not talk story with Princess Kaiulani, did not visit her palatial estate, and was, most certainly, not even an acquaintance of her, because Mark Twain visited Hawaii in 1866, and Princess Kaiulani was born in 1875. It doesn’t take much research to get to the bottom of that one. Another American writer of distinction—Robert Louis Stevenson—did visit Kaiulani, did entertain her with stories and did stay at a nearby residence. Some 22 years after Twain’s visit.
By the time the PR representative caught her mistake, I was already granted and graciously accepted—as I’m sure Twain would have—a two-night stay at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel in Waikiki.
The Legend Twain
Twain’s style of reporting from 1866 isn't what I was taught at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. There's seems to be a little invention in his journalistic writing, however, the intervening 140 years haven’t helped, either. In that time, the man that was Samuel Clemens morphed into a legend called Mark Twain, and I find legends—like fish stories—tend to grow with age. With Twain, it seems the fish are words. Any clever remark or witticism sticks to Twain. Take, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” There is no record of Twain’s saying or writing this, although he did write something similar about Paris.In Hawaii, Twain is credited with dubbing the Waimea Canyon on Kauai as “The Grand Canyon of the Pacific.” It isn’t nearly as inventive as the San Francisco one, but it sticks. I’ve read it in dozens of travel essays, on websites and in promotional brochures. I’ve heard it from tour guides, flight attendants and even my Hawaii neighbors. The irony is I can’t find a thing he writes about the Waimea Canyon. In fact, he doesn’t write word one about Kauai in any of his dispatches published in the Sacramento Union. Not a single simile about the island’s superlative garden beauty, its verdant valleys, its vertical cliffs of Na Pali Coast, nor its great gash in the ground. Did he ever visit Kauai? If not, how could he have made the comparison? And, if he didn’t, who did?
Now I’m starting to question that monkeypod tree on Big Island. The one he supposedly planted 160 years ago. It’s awfully small, considering, yet there’s a Hawaii Visitors Bureau sign identifying it as the “Mark Twain Monkeypod Tree.” I’ve yet to read any mention of it in his writing, either. Sounds like another Twainism to me.
It’s a bit elastic, this truth thing, especially when it comes to the Legend Twain. I’m particularly interested in learning where I end up with it—truth. The truth in Twain’s journalism. The truth of Twain’s Hawaii. As for Twain, will my feelings of him or his writing change? Will my idea of writing or journalism change? And what about my relationship with Hawaii? How will that change as a result of this journey?
My Predecessor Walter Francis Frear
It seems I'm not the only one interested in separating fact from fiction surrounding Twain's visit to Hawaii. Just like Twain beat me to Hawaii, Walter Francis Frear beat me to writing about Twain's visit to Hawaii--by almost 70 years.
I first discovered Frear's book Mark Twain and Hawaii at the Hawaiian Historical Society two or three years ago. Now, I hold in one hand my very own copy; the other hand is empty after parting with $105.50 to retrieve the rare and fine book. It's signed by the author and numbered 37 out of a mere 1,000 printed in 1947, and it's taken a journey similar to Twain's. From Hawaii, it's traveled east, after a stop in California.
Tucked inside the book's front cover is a personal note dated Nov. 14, 1947 from the author to one Miss Marion O. Mitchell--address Alameda, California. It was a gift. That gift-giving tradition did not last; I parted with my $100 on June 15th of this year. By then the book had traveled to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and the shelves of Thomas Macaluso Rare & Fine Books. Of course, I was curious as to how the book ended up in Pennsylvania, but, alas, Thomas does not retain any information about exactly where their books come from.
There is, however, an interesting curiosity to pursue. The author's note was written on personalized letterhead--with a Punahou Street address in Honolulu. Hmm, I feel a visit coming on.
The book is a dream. Big. Heavy. Thick pages. Musty, dusty smell. All I have to do is close my eyes, and I'm in the library of my youth, an old Victorian home with wide staircases, window seats, and hidden alcoves. Thomas Macaluso's website listed the book as such: Brown cloth boards have a black label with gilt lettering on the spine. Extremities are a little rubbed, rear cover has minimal soiling. Spine is a little sunned and cocked, bumped and rubbed at head and foot. #37 of 1000 copies, signed. Signed letter and signed presentation card laid in. Also signed on the limitation p. Much of Twain's work on Hawaii is published for the first time in this book. [Oops. That's not true; a collection of his letters on Hawaii was published about 10 years previous to this.] A very clean, tight copy.
And, so, instead of dog-earing, underlining and writing in this book, I put little Post-It notes on pages and transcribe my comments in a separate journal. Maybe it's the librarian from that old Victorian speaking to me. Instead, there are quite a few yellow tags sticking out of the book. I'd like to share just one sentence I would have underlined, highlighted and starred had this been a newer, more available, less expensive book--one not so rare and not so fine. It reads: "Mark Twain was not given much to factual details; what he cared for most was the picture, the story, the humor, the philosophy."
Even when it comes to his days as a journalist.
I first discovered Frear's book Mark Twain and Hawaii at the Hawaiian Historical Society two or three years ago. Now, I hold in one hand my very own copy; the other hand is empty after parting with $105.50 to retrieve the rare and fine book. It's signed by the author and numbered 37 out of a mere 1,000 printed in 1947, and it's taken a journey similar to Twain's. From Hawaii, it's traveled east, after a stop in California.
Tucked inside the book's front cover is a personal note dated Nov. 14, 1947 from the author to one Miss Marion O. Mitchell--address Alameda, California. It was a gift. That gift-giving tradition did not last; I parted with my $100 on June 15th of this year. By then the book had traveled to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and the shelves of Thomas Macaluso Rare & Fine Books. Of course, I was curious as to how the book ended up in Pennsylvania, but, alas, Thomas does not retain any information about exactly where their books come from.
There is, however, an interesting curiosity to pursue. The author's note was written on personalized letterhead--with a Punahou Street address in Honolulu. Hmm, I feel a visit coming on.
The book is a dream. Big. Heavy. Thick pages. Musty, dusty smell. All I have to do is close my eyes, and I'm in the library of my youth, an old Victorian home with wide staircases, window seats, and hidden alcoves. Thomas Macaluso's website listed the book as such: Brown cloth boards have a black label with gilt lettering on the spine. Extremities are a little rubbed, rear cover has minimal soiling. Spine is a little sunned and cocked, bumped and rubbed at head and foot. #37 of 1000 copies, signed. Signed letter and signed presentation card laid in. Also signed on the limitation p. Much of Twain's work on Hawaii is published for the first time in this book. [Oops. That's not true; a collection of his letters on Hawaii was published about 10 years previous to this.] A very clean, tight copy.
And, so, instead of dog-earing, underlining and writing in this book, I put little Post-It notes on pages and transcribe my comments in a separate journal. Maybe it's the librarian from that old Victorian speaking to me. Instead, there are quite a few yellow tags sticking out of the book. I'd like to share just one sentence I would have underlined, highlighted and starred had this been a newer, more available, less expensive book--one not so rare and not so fine. It reads: "Mark Twain was not given much to factual details; what he cared for most was the picture, the story, the humor, the philosophy."
Even when it comes to his days as a journalist.
You say Leahi. They say Diamond Head
When Mark Twain climbed Diamond Head atop a horse, he discovered the trail littered with bones--ankle, shin, knee, arm, hand, and finger bones. 140 years later, so did I. However, the ones I found were attached to tendons, muscles and skin and still very much in use. Twain figures the ones he discovered were Hawaiian warriors defeated in a magnificent battle. The ones I passed were, quite simply, tourists. American tourists. German tourists. Chinese tourists--lots of Chinese tourists. It seems many of us are walking in Twain's trail--whether we know it or not--and I would go so far as to suggest that I was the only one in the know that fine Wednesday morning.
Diamond Head is a popular hiking trail. It rises 560 feet over .8 miles to the summit lookout following switchbacks and climbing exactly 227 stairs. It was originally built in 1908 as part of the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery defense system; however, not a single round was ever fired in actual defense of the island, at least by the U.S. government. If Twain's discovery is any proof of combat, Hawaiian warriors wielded their own weapons here.
Of course, the name "Diamond Head" is a Western invention. The story goes that explorers and traders visited the crater and mistook its calcite crystals for diamonds. This was the early 1800s--about the same time Fools' Gold was discovered in the American West.
The Hawaiian name for Diamond Head is Leahi and with all things Hawaiian, there seems to be more than one explanation for it. This reminds me a bit of Twain, because you could never seem to get a straight answer from him, either.
The first goes that the fire goddess Pele's sister Hiiaka named it Leahi, because the summit resembles the forehead (lae) of the ahi (tuna). I buy that. It does. And that's also consistent with other explanations I've heard of various landmarks around Hawaii. It seems to me those ancient Hawaiians identifed headlands, mountain peaks, and rock formations like I identify clouds in the sky. Hey, that looks like a fish's forehead; let's name it Leahi.
The second translation of the name Leahi makes sense, too, though. Maybe it's the literal translation: Fire headland. It refers to navigational fires at the summit that once lit the way for canoes traveling along the shoreline. Indeed, its elevated location on the southeast corner of the island is a natural spot for a lighthouse, of sorts. A modern-day version does the same today.
When I crawled through the one-time army bunker to emerge on the summit of Diamond Head, I saw something Twain could never have imagined. Sure, he supported commerce with Honolulu; sure, he encouraged more American business involvement with the islands; however, he also predicted the demise of Honolulu with the demise of the whaling industry, so I'm sure he never could have pictured what I did at the observation deck atop Diamond Head Crater. Skyrise hotels and office buildings dot the landscape of Waikiki and Honolulu. I admit, it's a pretty landscape, yet a far cry from what Twain saw. Here's what he saw: A thousand-strong coconut grove, streams striating the mountains to the ocean, a half-dozen homes along the beach at Waikiki, maybe even a lake after heavy rains at the basin of Diamond Head (it was already called that when he arrived), in the far distance, a grid of buildings and homes no taller than the tallest palm tree forming the city of Honolulu.
Times change.
A Connection?
Leafing through some journal at the Hawaiian Historical Society last week, I discoverd the mantel gifted to Twain by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee was crafted by F.N. Otremba. In addition to the fireplace mantel, Otremba also carved a koa armchair for Twain's new home, "Stormfield," in Connecticut.
But that's not all. Otremba is more famous for carving a statue of King Kamehameha I, the first Hawaiian monarch much regaled to this day for uniting the Hawaiian Islands--through force, I might add. A statue of the King fronts the Ali'iolani Hale, the judiciary building that my Fodor's guidebook says once served as the parliament hall during the kingship era. (Hmm, I wonder if it was where Twain sat, bored as dirt, reporting on legislative proceedings, where he came to admire the enlightened president of the assembly--the King's father--His Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa, and where he came to abhor the traitorious Charles Coffin Harris, an American serving as the King's Minister of Finance.) The statue was dedicated in 1893 as part of King Kalakaua's coronation ceremony.
Conveniently, the statue resides just one block from where I sat in the quiet library of the Hawaiian Historical Society. I ambled over for a look, a few pics.
Upon further research, I have unearthed information that claims this statue--the one before my eyes--is one of three cast in Paris from a model made by American artist Thomas R. Gould, not Otremba. Gould modeled the figure in his studio in Rome in 1879. A year later, it was cast in bronze in Paris and shipped from Germany. During its voyage to the Islands, the ship caught fire and sank, so a second statue was cast from the original mold. This source of mine says King Kalakaua dedicated it in 1883, so we have a discrepancy of dates that will require more research. Standing eight and a half feet tall, the statue depicts Kamehameha in his royal garb, including a helmet and cloak of rare feathers. He holds a spear in his left hand, symbolizing the kingdom’s ability to defend itself from hostile nations. (In the end, it didn't.) His right hand, however, is extended in a welcoming gesture of aloha. (Perhaps too much of this resulted in what turned out to be a defenseless takeover.) The original statue was eventually recovered and regales on the Big Island.
So, what happened to Otremba's statue? Alas, this is how things go. A little research leads to more research. More research unearths more questions--questions that keep me in the library. Before you know it, with all this digging, I'll wind up in China.
"...the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean..."
March 18th fell on a Saturday this year. At 4:30 a.m., a chicken serenaded us outside our bedroom window. A crack of thunder woke our dog Penny who crawled on our bed and snuggled in the curl of my belly. Sunrise brought a few rays of color; however, morning quickly turned to rain. Bass thunder returned, reverberating over the mountains. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but we were only half-way through 40 days and nights of rain. I felt soggy, puny and, so, carried my laptop to the sofa. Under a stack of blankets, I reached for the TV remote control. I watched the movie Winn-Dixie. I transferred Eric’s clothes from the washer to the dryer. Back on the sofa, I watched Space Cowboys. I emptied the dishwasher. I read one of my favorite magazines, thinking it would inspire me to write. It didn’t. I watched The Patriot. All the while, it continued to rain. It was not your typical winter day in Hawaii.
If Mark Twain had arrived in Hawaii on March 18 of this year and not March 18 of 1866, he would not have written about the cute, little bungalows of Honolulu surrounded by blossoms. He would not have written about Kanakas or cats or mosquitoes or Diamond Head or the Pali. He would not have written about a sunny Saturday at the market. Indeed, he would have written about the rain.
The kui-‘ilima rain of Honolulu, the ililani unexpected rain, the kili fine light rain, the kili hau chilly rain, the lelehune fine windblown rain, the lu-lau-ko scattering cane leaves rain of Kaua’i, the pakaku rain with large drops, the ua hikik’i slanting rain, the ua lani pili rain downpour, and, of course, the the pipinoke continuous rain. He would have learned the over 100 words for different kinds of rain in the Hawaiian language. Rains of a certain place, angle, volume, intensity.
It’s a good thing for the Hawaiian Promotion Committee that he did not. Then, he probably never would have written that just-right combination of 10 words that delighted one Mr. Wood of said committee--recipient of a letter containing those precious 10 words--so much that he shared them. With whom, I don’t know, but obviously he passed them on, because they have appeared over and over in travel brochures, travel essays, and travel spiels over the 140 years since Twain’s visit. I still run across those 10 words today.
Twain wrote them in a letter of thanks after the Committee sent him a mantel made of the native hardwood Koa for his 73rd birthday in 1908. (One cannot help but note the irony of the Hawaii Promotion Committee's last name.)
Dear Mr. Wood,
The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, and its friendly “Aloha” was the first uttered greeting my 73rd birthday received. It is rich in color, rich in quality, and rich in decoration, therefore it exactly harmonises [sic] with the taste for such things which was born in me and which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content. It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye this lovely reminder of [get ready: here come the 10 words] the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, and I beg you to thank the Committee for providing me that pleasure.
Somewhere along the way, the Hawaiian Promotion Committee morphed into the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and its island-specific cohorts. At the courtesy of the Oahu Visitors Bureau, I depart Monday for Oahu and some Twain sleuthing. I'll tramp around Diamond Head, Waikiki, Honolulu. I'll stick my nose in some dusty, old papers at the Hawaiian Historical Society. I'll try to channel the young Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. I may even try to land an agent.
Thankfully, it’s not raining. Yet.
(Thanks to Kimo Perry for his help with the rainy list.)
If Mark Twain had arrived in Hawaii on March 18 of this year and not March 18 of 1866, he would not have written about the cute, little bungalows of Honolulu surrounded by blossoms. He would not have written about Kanakas or cats or mosquitoes or Diamond Head or the Pali. He would not have written about a sunny Saturday at the market. Indeed, he would have written about the rain.
The kui-‘ilima rain of Honolulu, the ililani unexpected rain, the kili fine light rain, the kili hau chilly rain, the lelehune fine windblown rain, the lu-lau-ko scattering cane leaves rain of Kaua’i, the pakaku rain with large drops, the ua hikik’i slanting rain, the ua lani pili rain downpour, and, of course, the the pipinoke continuous rain. He would have learned the over 100 words for different kinds of rain in the Hawaiian language. Rains of a certain place, angle, volume, intensity.
It’s a good thing for the Hawaiian Promotion Committee that he did not. Then, he probably never would have written that just-right combination of 10 words that delighted one Mr. Wood of said committee--recipient of a letter containing those precious 10 words--so much that he shared them. With whom, I don’t know, but obviously he passed them on, because they have appeared over and over in travel brochures, travel essays, and travel spiels over the 140 years since Twain’s visit. I still run across those 10 words today.
Twain wrote them in a letter of thanks after the Committee sent him a mantel made of the native hardwood Koa for his 73rd birthday in 1908. (One cannot help but note the irony of the Hawaii Promotion Committee's last name.)
Dear Mr. Wood,
The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, and its friendly “Aloha” was the first uttered greeting my 73rd birthday received. It is rich in color, rich in quality, and rich in decoration, therefore it exactly harmonises [sic] with the taste for such things which was born in me and which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content. It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye this lovely reminder of [get ready: here come the 10 words] the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, and I beg you to thank the Committee for providing me that pleasure.
Somewhere along the way, the Hawaiian Promotion Committee morphed into the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and its island-specific cohorts. At the courtesy of the Oahu Visitors Bureau, I depart Monday for Oahu and some Twain sleuthing. I'll tramp around Diamond Head, Waikiki, Honolulu. I'll stick my nose in some dusty, old papers at the Hawaiian Historical Society. I'll try to channel the young Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. I may even try to land an agent.
Thankfully, it’s not raining. Yet.
(Thanks to Kimo Perry for his help with the rainy list.)
One Up on Twain
There’s one thing I did that Mr. Twain never got around to doing. I actually moved to Hawaii. Sure, it took 11 years of dreaming about it, thinking about it and talking about it, but eventually my husband Eric and I did move.
In a letter dated October 26, 1881, Twain wrote his friend Charles Warren Stoddard in Hawaii,
"If the house would only burn down, we would pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of Haleakala and get a good rest; for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for those privileges, and never house-keep any more…. What I have always longed for was the privilege of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich Islands overlooking the sea."
The house never burned. Twain never did move to Hawaii.
And it’s still true the “isles of the blest” are a place for rest and healing. They are still a place for eating poi and even for eating dirt, if you choose, and which explains why Twain’s idea of never keeping house anymore in Hawaii was way off. It’s the very things Twain and I love about Hawaii—the ever-present trade winds, the smell of the salt air, the open-air living—that makes it one heckuva place to keep a clean house. Trade winds carry dirt and salt—they also keep the mosquitoes on the fly—through our open windows and into our living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, even closets creating a sticky substance that sticks to everything and even rusts the paper clips and staples filed in my desk drawers. After a time, the pillows on the couch feel sticky—dog hairs swirling in the air attach like glue and a sprinkling of our iron-rich dirt stains a wash of red. Counters require daily cleaning and windows that stand in the face of the northeast trade winds, alas, do not defy a salty buildup. The need to clean never goes on vacation in Hawaii.
One other thing, Mr Twain, there are now cell-phone-toting and chatting visitors on the summit of your once-secluded Haleakala. I’m sure you’d agree—a travesty.
In a letter dated October 26, 1881, Twain wrote his friend Charles Warren Stoddard in Hawaii,
"If the house would only burn down, we would pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of Haleakala and get a good rest; for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for those privileges, and never house-keep any more…. What I have always longed for was the privilege of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich Islands overlooking the sea."
The house never burned. Twain never did move to Hawaii.
And it’s still true the “isles of the blest” are a place for rest and healing. They are still a place for eating poi and even for eating dirt, if you choose, and which explains why Twain’s idea of never keeping house anymore in Hawaii was way off. It’s the very things Twain and I love about Hawaii—the ever-present trade winds, the smell of the salt air, the open-air living—that makes it one heckuva place to keep a clean house. Trade winds carry dirt and salt—they also keep the mosquitoes on the fly—through our open windows and into our living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, even closets creating a sticky substance that sticks to everything and even rusts the paper clips and staples filed in my desk drawers. After a time, the pillows on the couch feel sticky—dog hairs swirling in the air attach like glue and a sprinkling of our iron-rich dirt stains a wash of red. Counters require daily cleaning and windows that stand in the face of the northeast trade winds, alas, do not defy a salty buildup. The need to clean never goes on vacation in Hawaii.
One other thing, Mr Twain, there are now cell-phone-toting and chatting visitors on the summit of your once-secluded Haleakala. I’m sure you’d agree—a travesty.
An Introduction to the Journey
It started with the trip to Maui, but, in all likelihood, it began long before that. For now, that’s a little more metaphysical than I want to get, so let’s just say the trip to Maui was the puncture that opened up the can of worms, because that’s what it feels like to me right now. Like I’m writhing in a mass of information that’s taking forever to untangle.
“It” is this book I’ve decided I just have to write: In Search of Mark Twain in Hawaii.
You see, it’s on the trip to Maui that I discovered Mark Twain beat me to the punch. He visited and wrote about Maui in 1866—almost 140 years ago. It wasn’t a six-hour plane ride from the West Coast then. It was a journey aboard the newly-minted passenger steam ship, Ajax—and you’d a thought they’d discovered electricity. Instead of 21 days under sail, it now took 10 powered by steam. Twain was ecstatic. He prophesied great riches for trade with the “Orient.” Still, 10 days? That was a commitment. It’s obvious the standard vacation of the day wasn’t one week.
Before I left for Maui, I picked up a tattered and yellowed copy of Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii at my local, used bookstore (Tin Can Mailman) and fell in love with—not Twain but his sidekick—Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown was always saying and doing the wrong thing. He was cad to Twain’s gentleman—as if Twain could ever be considered a gentleman. That last thought should have tipped me off.
Imagine my sick heart then when after reading Twain’s 25 letters, I went back and read the introduction by A. Grove Day and discovered Mr. Brown was an invention—an artifice of the author’s.
Not only was I disappointed that the irascible but likeable Mr. Brown didn’t exist, but I was mad at Twain. Mad because this Mark Twain of 1866 was a journalist. He hadn’t published a single book of any kind and was a good 10 years away from the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. When he disembarked the Ajax in Honolulu Harbor on March 18, 1866, Mark Twain was a writer of nonfiction, although I now understand that Twain’s nonfiction was always fiction from the start. At the time, the journalist in me was aghast.
And so that’s how it all started, this journey of writing a book about Mark Twain. There’s more to it, of course, and we’ll get to it. For now, I shake my head and question, who’d have thought 20 years ago when I posed outside the same academic building as Mark Twain had 75 years before in acceptance of his honorary diploma from my alma mater, the University of Missouri (he beat me to this, too), that I’d write a book about such an overwritten man?
I invite you to check back periodically and see how I sort and align my worms end to end in one coherent storyline. (Let's hope.)
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