Sam Clemens as shown in LIFE article. Original photographer unkown
Toronto. Mark Twain is a pseudonym used by American Sam Clemens in writing his books. As Mark Twain, he wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, books commonly read last century by children everywhere including me. The stories were also turned in to movies. When I was a bit older, I bought and read a couple of other books by Mark Twain – Innocents Abroad, and, Puddin’head Wilson as well as a short story about “The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County”. Puddin’head Wilson was a mystery that revolved around fingerprints.
Clemens felt free to give his opinion on many subject. On July, 1, 1866 in a letter to the Sacramento Daily Union, he said (about portraits),”No photograph ever was good, yet, of anybody–hunger and thirst and utter wretchedness overtake the outlaw who invented it! It transforms into desperadoes the meekest of men; depicts sinless innocence upon the pictured faces of ruffians; gives the wise man the stupid leer of a fool, and a fool an expression of more than earthly wisdom. If a man tries to look serious when he sits for his picture the photograph makes him look as solemn as an owl; if he smiles, the photograph smirks repulsively; if he tries to look pleasant, the photograph looks silly; if he makes the fatal mistake of attempting to seem pensive, the camera will surely write him down as an ass. The sun never looks through the photographic instrument that it does not print a lie. The piece of glass it prints it on is well named a “negative”–a contradiction–a misrepresentation–a falsehood. I speak feeling of this matter, because by turns the instrument has represented me to be a lunatic, a Soloman, a missionary, a burglar and an abject idiot, and I am neither.”
And in her 1913 book, Mark Twain and the Happy Island, Elizabeth Wallace quoted the late Twain as commenting, “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.”
A big thank you to George Dunbar for discovering and sharing these quotes by Mark Twain.
