"‘Twixt Twain and Twichell at Asylum Hill"

By The Rev. James Kidd

I Samuel 18:1 “...the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”

Great friendships are always an inspiration. One of the most famous and beloved examples of friendship is that between David and Jonathan. As it was said of David and Jonathan, so also it might be said of Twain and Twichell, “The soul of Twichell was knit to the soul of Twain, and Twichell loved him as his own soul.” Such was the friendship between the Rev. Joseph Twichell, founding pastor of Asylum Hill Congregational Church and Mark Twain, probably the most beloved of all American novelists.

They met during the winter of 1867-68 when Mark Twain first came to the city of Hartford to work with his publisher, Elisha Bliss, who lived at 821 Asylum Avenue, across the street from the Asylum Hill Congregational Church. At that time there was no steeple on the church and Mark Twain referred to it as the “stump-tailed church.” Not long after his arrival, he was at a social gathering at the home of one of the wealthy, prominent members and he disapprovingly referred to it as “the church of the holy speculators.” Standing behind him when he made his remark was the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell. It is not recorded that he found Twain’s comment amusing. They were introduced to one another and Mark Twain, Joseph Twichell, their wives and children became the very closest of friends. Mark Twain was to say regarding his friendship with Joseph Twichell, it was “first after Livy,” his beloved wife.

This celebrated friendship was a curious phenomenon in many ways. They came from very different backgrounds. Joe Twichell came from a relatively prosperous old Connecticut Yankee family. His parents were God-fearing, church-going people. He attended Lewis Academy, Yale College, Union and Andover Theological Seminaries and he served as a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War. In 1867, at the tender age of 29, he had already served for two years as the pastor of this church.

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) came from a far more humble origin. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, along the banks of the Mississippi. His family was poor. His father was a free thinker who never darkened the door of the church. Mark Twain attended a small Calvinist Presbyterian Church that preached predestination, hell-fire and damnation. At the age of 12, when his father died, he went to work as a printer and then a miner, a pilot on a Mississippi river boat, a newspaper man and finally as a novelist. He served briefly in the Confederate Army. In 1867 when Joe and Mark first met one another, Mark Twain was 32 years old, a promising but unknown young author.

They also had much in common. They both shared a tremendous sense of humor. They were both able to contribute a good belly laugh to any social gathering. They appreciated life’s ironies, identified with the exciting times in which they lived. They shared a contempt for sham and hypocrisy and loved the truth. They loved walking. Saturdays they would walk to Talcott Mountain; from Asylum Hill, round trip, it is about 20 miles. One time they set out to walk to the city of Boston, got out about 15 miles and thought better of that project. On another occasion, celebrated in Mark Twain’s book, A Tramp Abroad, they walked all over Europe. Mr. Harris in that novel is none other than the Rev. Joseph Twichell of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church. They both loved their families, their wives, their children. They loved to tell and to hear good stories, and they both enjoyed a good cigar!

They also shared a common sense of Victorian morality. On one occasion Mark Twain, having been absent from his famous home on Farmington Avenue for a time, received word that a suspicious character had been seen entering and leaving the house in his absence. Upon investigation, he discovered there had been a male caller upon the young maid who had been left in charge of the home. When Mark Twain confronted his employee with this information, she confessed that, indeed, she had been seeing this young man and, with tears in her eyes, confessed that she was in a family way and about to be utterly disgraced. Mark Twain discussed this problem with his friend and pastor Joe Twichell and they decided upon a course of virtue. Joe Twichell and a policeman were secreted in a closet just off Mark Twain’s room. The young man and woman were brought in. Mark Twain told the young man he had to marry the young woman and save her from shame. It took quite a while, but finally the young man agreed that on some occasion, someday, he would marry the young woman. Whereupon Joe Twichell and the policeman came out of the closet and immediately the young man had the opportunity to transform the young lady into a woman of virtue. Mark Twain gave both the maid and her lover $100 apiece and he dismissed her from his service. About a year later he ran into the young woman on the street and inquired as to the health and well-being of their child, only to learn there was no child. The young man, Mark Twain, and Joseph Twichell had all been fooled by the young woman.

Since it is widely known that Mark Twain was not an orthodox Christian and often treated the church and its traditional beliefs with ridicule, what was the nature of Mark Twain’s relationship to the Asylum Hill Congregational Church? Mark and Livy never became official members of the church but they did rent a pew, the third one, right here in front of the pulpit, for 19 years, from 1872 until 1891. And almost every Sunday Mark Twain was here to listen to the preaching of his good friend Joe Twichell. Mark Twain one time made the observation, “I have never heard a sermon from which I have not derived some good, but there have been some near misses.” He supported the church with his presence, his talent, and generously with his finances. One time he said to a reporter concerning his relationship with Joe Twichell, “I keep a clergyman to remonstrate against my drinking. It gives zest and increase of appetite.” However, it does seem clear that his best friend Joe Twichell played a far more important role in his life than remonstrating against his drinking.

Twain lived in a century of Nietzche, Marx and Darwin. The rising science and technology gave him a vision of an impersonal, mechanistic universe. And both Twain and his pastor, Twichell, struggled with the question of what it meant to be a person of faith in such a time. Twain came down on the side of doubt and Twichell came down on the side of belief. A twentieth century theologian, Paul Tillich, has said in a book entitled The Dynamics of Faith that faith consists of the tension between belief and doubt. Never is a person only with doubt and no belief, or only with belief and no doubt, but that faith is always the tension between belief and doubt. And if Tillich’s definition can be believed and accepted, then both Twichell and Twain were persons of faith. Twain embodied Twichell’s doubt and Twichell embodied Twain’s belief. They were together persons of faith.

Mark Twain was also clear that Joe Twichell was not only his friend but his pastor. Joe Twichell married Mark Twain to his bride Livy. He performed the funeral services for their children and the wedding for their daughter Clara. Finally he performed the funeral services for Livy and Mark Twain himself. Shortly after he had performed the funeral service for Mark Twain’s beloved daughter Susie, Mark Twain wrote a letter to his friend Joe Twichell which illustrates the importance of that relationship to Mark Twain:

“Through Livy and Kate I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood
poor Susie’s friend, mine and Livy’s; how you came all the way down, twice,
from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the peace and
comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child and again to the broken
heart of her poor desolate mother. It was like you: like your good great heart,
like your matchless and unmatchable self. It was no surprise to me to learn
that you stayed by Susie long hours, careless of fatigue and heat. It was no
surprise to me to learn that you could still the storms that swept her spirit when
no other could, for she loved you, revered you, trusted you, and ‘Uncle Joe’ was
no empty phrase upon her lips. I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful from the bottom
of my heart which has always been filled with love for you and respect and
admiration. And I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my place
at Susie’s side and Livy’s in those black hours. God bless you, Joe, and all your
house.”

What was Twichell’s contribution to the great soul and work of Mark Twain? First, he helped Mark Twain believe and understand that man did have some measure of freedom in the way in which he lived his life. It is a most significant contribution because there can be no great fiction without the element of freedom. The Calvinist predestinationism of Twain’s youth had been transformed into the mechanistic determinism of his adult years. And he found it most difficult to believe that human beings had any freedom at all in shaping their destiny. But week after week he sat in that third pew and listened to Joe Twichell insist that God had given us freedom. God had given us freedom, at least to the extent that we could always decide how we would respond to the destiny that God gives us. We could always choose, in the words of Joe Twichell, “to play the man.” This is illustrated in a great many of Mark Twain’s novels that were written during his years here in Hartford.

I won’t bore you by listing all of them and all of the illustrations. I had so many things I wanted to share with you this morning after having read these books about these men and after they had become good friends of mine. I could stand here and talk to you about their relationship for three hours. But I don’t think you want to hear me do that.

But in novel after novel the idea of “being a man” was illustrated by Mark Twain. We have the freedom to choose to do the courageous thing in response to the things which happen to us. One of the most humorous illustrations of that is Huckleberry Finn when he is challenged to return the escaped slave Jim who had been floating down the Mississippi with him. Huck Finn had to decide whether he would betray his friend, which, he thought, was the right thing; to return stolen property, or to be faithful to his instincts and to his friendship. Huck Finn decided not to betray his friend Jim even though to do so was to choose to go to hell. He “played the man.”

Secondly, Joe Twichell was the embodiment of grace and love in the anguished, guilt-ridden soul of Mark Twain. Twain had a fatal psychological flaw. He blamed himself for everything, although his philosophy reassured him that he was not responsible for anything. In terms of his own feelings, he assumed responsibility for everything. Upon the recommendation of his physician, he took his small son out for fresh air. The little boy got sick and died. And Mark Twain blamed himself for his death. He recommended his brother for a job on a Mississippi River boat. The boat exploded, his brother was killed, and Mark Twain blamed himself. He was on an extended lecture tour in Europe when his daughter Susie became sick and died. And he blamed her death upon his absence as though had he been there, he could have saved her. He was continually apologizing to those closest to him for imaginary affronts especially in letters to Joe Twichell. Joe can’t imagine what it is to which Mark Twain is referring. And finally when he made bad investments upon the recommendation of his wisest financial friends and lost all of his money, again he blamed himself. Into the midst of this angry, anguished, personal hell, came the loving, patient, affirming presence of Joe Twichell of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church. In Joe Twichell, Mark Twain experienced the love, the grace and the forgiveness of God. And it was the only place in his whole life he could experience that. And so, in that relationship, Mark Twain was given some measure of stability and permission to release the genius that was within him.

In short, I want to suggest that it is very likely that without Joe Twichell and the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, the world might never have received the gift of Mark Twain’s genius. Perhaps it is no mere coincidence that before Mark Twain came to Hartford and developed his relationship with Joe Twichell he never wrote or published a single work of significance. And after he left Hartford and the Asylum Hill Church he never wrote or published another work of significance. After 1900 he wrote 14 books and you would probably not recognize the names of any of them. And yet in these books it is clear that he still has his old skill in writing and expression. In these books it is clear that he has lost none of his intellectual power. But the spirit has changed. Without the graceful influence of his friend Joe Twichell, Mark Twain has lost his power.

Great tragedy beset Mark Twain in the loss of his children, his fortune, his separation from his beloved home here on Farmington Avenue and all of his friends in Hartford. But Joe and Mark continued their correspondence. Twain poured out his bitterness; Twichell poured out his love and his faith. Such a curious correspondence it was! In response to Twain’s sad memoriam to Susie, Twichell wrote, “It sets all those cords of memory and of love atremble. It renews the pain of life’s inscrutable mystery and of the mystery of human experience. It renews also, may I say, a deep and solemn gladness of the faith that God, in Whose awful hand we are held, at the end of things, is Love.” Twichell added that he understood Twain’s anger and he said, “‘Tis an old saying that some men’s oaths are more worshipful than other men’s prayers.’”

The foremost American humorist, Mark Twain, replied, “Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow! There is no humor in heaven.” In response to his sorrowful, angry, anguished friend, Twichell wrote, “‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,’ says the Old Book. God send you the dawn of that fulfillment soon. I love you, old fellow, in spite of all your bad behavior, very very much.”

Mark Twain died in 1910. The funeral was conducted by “Old Joe” Twichell. Joe was to follow him eight years later and, my friends, I am happy to announce that on that day in 1918 when Joe Twichell walked through those Pearly Gates into that heavenly Kingdom, he was greeted by hearty laughter--and there he was--Mark Twain and all the friends from Nook Farm and the church and the family, but it was Mark who got to Old Joe first, embraced him warmly, and, with a smile on his lips and a tear in his eye, exclaimed, “Old Joe, you were right all the time! Joy does--it really does come in the morning.”

Rev. James Kidd is Pastor Emeritus of Asylum Hill Congregational Church