Drama on the Erie Canal

As I work on the first draft of my Erie Canal book, Muddy Waters, I have been looking for circumstances and events to bring tension to the story. There are plenty of opportunities for drama, but they are created by humans rather than by nature. The canal was shallow, the current was sluggish or nonexistent, and boats were always close to the banks, so realism eliminates icebergs and hurricanes on the high seas.

Realism does, but humor doesn’t. Many songs of the day made fun of the sedentary waterway, and the then popular “The Raging Canal” was one of them.  Mark Twain added his own voice by paroding “The Raging Canal” in Roughing It. He was no poet but was the consummate humorist, as you can tell from “The Aged Pilot Man.”

“The Aged Pilot Man”

On the Erie Canal, it was,

     All on a summer’s day,

I sailed forth with my parents

     Far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day

     There came a dreadful storm,

That piled the billows high about,

     And filled us with alarm.

A man came rushing from a house,

     Saying, “Snub up your boat, I pray

Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,

     Snub up while yet you may.”

Our captain cast one glance astern,

     Then forward glancéd he,

And said, “My wife and little ones

     I never more shall see.”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

     In noble words but few,—

“Fear not, but lean on Dollinger,

     And he will fetch you through.”

The boat drove on, the frightened mules

     Tore through the rain and wind,

And bravely still, in danger’s post,

     The whip-boy strode behind.

“Come ‘board, come ‘board,” the captain cried,

     “Nor tempt so wild a storm;”

But still the raging mules advanced,

     And still the boy strode on.

Then said the captain to us all,

     “Alas, ‘tis plain to me,

The greater danger is not there,

     But here upon the sea.

“So let us strive, while life remains,

     To save all souls on board,

And then if die at last we must,

     Let . . . I cannot speak the word!”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

     Tow’ring above the crew,

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

     And he will fetch you through.”

“Low bridge! low bridge! all heads went down,

     The laborimg bark sped on;

A mill we passed, we passed a church,

     Hamlets, and fields of corn;

And all the world come out to see,

     And chased along the shore.

Crying, “Alas, alas, the sheeted rain,

     The wind, the tempest’s roar!

Alas, the gallant ship and crew,

     Can nothing help them more?”

And from our deck sad eyes looked out

     Across the stormy scene;

The tossing wake of billows aft,

     The bending forests green,

The chickens sheltered under carts,

     In lee of barn the cows,

The skurrying swine with staw in mouth,

     The wind spray from our bows!

She balances!

She wavers!

Now let her go about!

     If she misses stays and broaches to,

We’re all”—[then with a shout]

“huray! huray!

Avast! belay!

Take in more sail!

Lord, what a gale!

Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule’s tail!”

“Ho! lighten ship! Ho! man the pump!

     Ho, hostler, heave the lead!

And count ye all, both great and small,

     As numbered with the dead!

For mariner for forty years

     On Erie, boy and man,

I never yet saw such a storm,

     Or one ‘t with it began!”

So overboard a keg of nails

     And anvils three we threw,

Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,

     Two hundred pounds of glue,

Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,

     A box of books, a cow,

A violin, Lord Byron’s works,

     A rip-saw and a sow.

A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!

“Labbord!—stabbord!—s-t-e-a-d-y!—so!—

Hard-a-port, Dol!—hellum-a-lee!

Haw the head mule!—the aft one gee!

Luft!—bring her to the wind!”

“A quarter-three!—‘tis shoaling fast!

     Three feet large—t-h-r-e-e feet!—

Three feet scant!” I cried in fright

     “Oh, is there no retreat?”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

     As on the vessel flew,

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

     And he will fetch you through.”

A panic struck the bravest hearts,

     The boldest cheek turned pale;

For plain to all, this shoaling said

A leak had burst the ditch’s bed!

And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,

Our ship swept on with shoaling lead,

     Before the fearful gale!

“Sever the tow line! Cripple the mules!”

     Too late! . . . There comes a shock!

Another length, and the fated craft

     Would have swum in the saving lock!

Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew

     And took one last embrace,

While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes

     Rain down each hopeless face;

And some did think of their little ones

     Whom they never more might see,

And others of waiting wives at home,

     And mothers that grieved would be.

But of all the children of misery there

     On that poor sinking frame,

But one spoke words of hope and faith,

     And I worshipped as they came;

Said Dollinger the pilot man,—

     (O brave heart, strong and true!)—

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

     For he will fetch you through.”

Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips

     The dauntless prophet say’th,

When every soul about him seeth

     A wonder crown his faith!

For straight a farmer brought a plank,—

     (Mysteriously inspired)—

And laying it unto the ship,

     In silent awe retired.

Then every sufferer stood amazed

     That pilot man before;

A moment stood. Then wondering turned,

     And speechless walked ashore.

__________

NOTE: It took me forever to get the poem’s formatting correct. I hope it shows up that way on your computer.

Sir Walter Scott: Friend or Foe?

The lighthouse museum at Hynish includes a short biography of Sir Walter Scott. As a Commissioner of Northern Lights, Scott had visited the site of the future Skerryvore Lighthouse many years before it was built. Here is how he described it in his diary.

Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination, on the part of Mr. Stevenson, that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor, where he thought it would be essential to have a Lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the Commissioners, who, one and all, declare they will subscribe to his opinion, whatever it may be, rather than continue the infernal buffeting. Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr. S., and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the yacht, who seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the Commissioners. At length by dint of exertion, come in sight of this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water) on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style.*

My brother Gordon and I were standing on the pier at Hynish (shown in the photo) when Gordon told me more about Sir Walter Scott’s history. I had to laugh because it sounded just like Mark Twain’s history. And that’s funny because Twain was Scott’s nemesis. The two men would not have known each other (Scott died three years before Twain was born), but Twain hated Scott with a passion. In Chapter 46 of Life on the Mississippi, Twain blames Scott for giving people romantic notions that kept them living in the past.

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinessses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual who ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South, they flourish pretty forcefully still.

And yet, the two men seemed to have the same faults and the same moral code. Both were easy prey for swindlers, or at least for people promoting bad business deals; each ended up bankrupt because of it; and each vowed to pay every last one of his debts—and did.

So maybe Twain should have respected Scott rather than despising him.

__________

*  Quoted from Chapter 3 of Outer Isles by A. Goodrich-Freer (1902), as reprinted at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/outer/chapter03.htm.

Sell Your Books but Not Your Soul

I’m currently reading Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi as research for my next book. Although I’m enjoying it, I was finding the structure confusing.

There are many places in Life on the Mississippi where Twain appears to have thrown in material that doesn’t belong. In one instance he even admits it, stating at the end of Chapter 35 (as a lead-in to Chapter 36), that:

Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat that night. I insert it in this place merely because it is a good story, not because it belongs here—for it doesn’t.

At least he was right about it being a good story. But in Chapter 52, he tells a story that I didn’t even find interesting. Although he tried to connect it to the Mississippi River by placing some of it in St. Louis, the story itself had nothing to do with life on the Mississippi. As that example shows, Twain always manages to find a way to transition to the extra material, but the insertion is still jarring. This is especially disconcerting because Twain is contemptuous of writers who use what he sees as unnecessary words.

Almost by coincidence, I’m also listening to a Great Courses lecture series on Mark Twain with Dr. Stephen Railton from the University of Virginia as lecturer. My confusion cleared up when I listened to Lecture 4 on “Marketing Twain.” Now I know that he sacrificed creativity to make money.

According to Dr. Railton (and to other sources I’ve read in the past), Mark Twain loved making money more than he loved writing. Unfortunately, he was a terrible business man. But the one business decision that did bring in an extra profit was selling his books by subscription—using direct door-to-door sales to customers rather than selling through bookstores. He liked subscription sales because they brought in more money, but those customers also demanded longer books and lots of illustrations. The illustrations may have added lasting value, but I believe the padded material in the text detracts from it.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Mark Twain’s humor, and he deserves to be called the greatest American humorist. But imagine how much greater he could have been if he hadn’t sacrificed creativity for money.

I don’t have a problem with writing for a popular audience, and I’m glad Mark Twain’s writing was a commercial success. I wish my books would do a tenth as well.

But I won’t sell my soul for it.

__________

The photograph at the head of this post was taken by A.F. Bradley in 1907. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Keep on Learning

"The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done." Mark Twain (from "Taming the Bicycle")

I believe in education. I must, since I have THREE post-graduate degrees. But although I mostly agree with the Mark Twain quote, I also respect the self-taught person. (I bet Samuel Clemens did, too.)

Recently, I purchased Mark Twain's entire collection for my Kindle, and last week I started reading his compiled letters. The compilation includes a biography and running commentary written by his friend Albert Bigelow Paine. While reading the biography, I learned that Samuel Clemens was forced to leave school at age 13, when his father died, to become a printer's apprentice. This icon of wit and wisdom had little formal education. And as noted in last week's post, the same is true of Abraham Lincoln.

I come from a well-educated family, and by the time I met my husband through a dating service I already had a Master of Science in psychology and was working on my law degree. (My third post-graduate degree, an LLM in Financial Services Law, came later on.) When I found out that I had been matched with a man who had dropped out of college, I was skeptical.

We've been married for 31 years. If Roland had been satisfied with what he knew, our relationship would have ended after a few dates. But he was well-read and eager to keep learning, and I discovered that is more important than a formal education.

Still, I'm glad Roland went back to school several years into our marriage and got his college degree. Followed by a Master of Arts in history. Followed by 31 hours beyond that. The college degree enabled him to become a high school teacher, and the MA and Plus 30 increase his paycheck, but I'd like to think he enjoyed the learning, too.

The point is that a formal education is a good thing, but if something deflects you from that path, don't stop learning. Because even the self-taught individual can do great things.

By the way, when Albert Bigelow Paine wrote about his friend in 1917, he predicted that Mark Twain's greatest success--the book that would survive the longest--would be Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc. So much for predictions.

But Paine was right about one thing--Mark Twain lives. If Samuel Clemens had been content with his printer's training, "mark twain" would be no more than a nautical term for marking depth.

So keep on learning.