Introduction

To begin with, the most precious requirements for Mark Twain's private communication were sincerity, intelligence and amusement during his later years. From this point of view, the source of these virtues became the “Aquarium Club”; it became his “life’s chief delight”

(Cooley 186). Young girls, aged from 10 to 16, combined Twain's private pen-society named the “Aquarium Club”. Various researches defined differently the major role of this friendship with young girls. Hamlin Hill (1973), for instance, considered the “Aquarium” to be

“unhealthy obsession” (Hill 181). On the other hand, it can be suggested that the “Angelfish”

served “a compensatory function” (Lystra 132). Once Twain admitted that “As for me, I collect pets: young girls – girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent – dear young creatures to whom life is perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears. My collection consists of germs of the first water” (qtd. In Cooley xvii). It can be admitted that there was something wrong in the wishes of the old man to “collect” naive and young girls to keep him company. Karen Lystra supposed that they were “his toys, if you will and trophies of his ego” (Lystra133). On the contrary, different studies may support the point that Twain's wish was to have a big company of grandchildren around him, the house full of children and the joy, games and happiness they bring with themselves. He was longing for “surrogate” children; the circle of his own children was almost ruined by the end of his life. When he was younger and had his three daughters by his side, he got inspiration for writing and comfort, had fun playing games with them. He worshiped their talents, certain traits of character and the emotional side of their personalities.

And then, when he entered the age of a grandfather he felt the vital necessity for children again. By means of this friendship with the “Angelfish” he constructed himself “a small court of happiness, innocence, and youthfulness, which he set against the ever painful reality of his life” (Cooley xix). More than that, this statement can be regarded as a humorous one when the writer called the girls ironically “his pets” and then continued to a more serious and philosophic idea when he concluded that all he needed for happiness in his age was a company of sincere, unspoiled young people who did not meet with sorrows, injustice and corruption of the adult’s world yet. The “Aquarium Club” served to be the place of a positive emotional compensation during the writer’s final years. Making friends with the young girls and initiating constant private correspondence with them was his personal effort to fill the

emotional hole in his inner world. In the letters to the girls he often mentioned his loneliness and wished they could write him or visit him more frequently. In his letter to Dorothy Quick Twain reported (9 August 1907):

I went to bed as soon as you departed, there being nothing to live for […] the sunshine all gone. How do you suppose I am going to get along without you? For five hours this has been a dreary place [...] solemn place, a hushed & brooding & lifeless place, for the Kissed Spirit of Youth has gone out of it, & and left nothing that’s worth […] I thought this was my home. It was a superstition. What is the home without the child? It isn’t a home at all, it’s merely a wreck [...]. (Cooley 49).

The chain of epithets solemn, hushed, brooding proves the idea that Twain often felt lonely. The children together with their youth brought the “sunshine” and temporary salvation and escape from the reality for Twain. “Fictive” grandchildren reminded him of his own youth, the most precious time in one’s life, as Twain truly believed in. In one of his speeches on 3 October 1895 he stated that “One of the very advantages of youth- you don't own any stock in anything. You have a good time, and all the grief and trouble is with the other fellows” (Fatout 294). The young campaigners were a beneficial cure to treat the writer’s aging with some moments of joy and playfulness, to forget for few minutes about the aging adulthood full of hard moments. What is more important, it seemed that Twain wanted to pretend young as long as possible. In fact, he managed to do it till the late 1909 when the problems with his health and heart attacks replaced and ruined his last optimistic ideas. On September 10, 1909 he wrote to Margaret Blackmer that he admitted his old age as it should be by saying - “I am still a prisoner in the house these past 3 months, with no prospect of getting out for a long time to come. But I guess it’d all right. Infirmities and disabilities are quite proper to old age” (Cooley 264).

The role of humor was mainly ignored when scholars mentioned about the role of the

“Aquarium Club” in Mark Twain's later life. John Cooley (2009), the editor of nearly complete collection of Twain's correspondence with the “Angelfish”, remarked that these letters “contain explosions of wit, wisdom and humor. Patient readers will be amply rewarded with humorous and imaginative passages reminiscent of Mark Twain at best” (Cooley ix).

Cooley suggested that this communication inspired Twain's sentimentality and moments of his best humor.

John Cooley (2009) also suggests the idea of “a platonic sweetheart” as the explanation of Twain's desire to make more pen-friends among young girls. In Twain's essay “My Platonic Sweetheart” the writer recollects his first real-life platonic sweetheart, Laura Wright, whom he met 40 years before he wrote about this experience in 1898. The publishing of this piece of

work was postponed and, finally, appeared in Harper’s magazine, December 1912. The story sounds like a fairy love tale in the introductory lines where the narrator recollected that “It was in a dream [...] in the next one I was at her side - without either stepping or gliding; it merely happened; the transfer ignored space [...]’’( Ketterer 117).

Then the narrator describes his affection to the girl by considering that “it was not the love of sweethearts, for there was no fire in it. It was somewhere between the two, and was finer than either, and more exquisite, more profoundly contenting” (Ketterer 118). This affection is not the love of man and woman; it is on a different level. It is on the level of a dream, a very pleasant, amusing and fairy. Moreover, the narrator implies the idea of no physical or sexual affection in this relationship. The narrator goes on developing the idea of platonic affinity when he states that “We often experience this strange and gracious thing in our dream-loves:

and we remember it as a feature of our childhood-loves, too” (118).

Eventually, Mark Twain transferred the affection he could have experienced at the age of fifteen to the level of a dream that is one of the most estimable for him. This dream was so essential for the writer due to its nature of innocence, ideality and blessedness. Getting in touch with “a platonic sweetheart” serves to be the medium to the world of childhood and the first platonic affection. Being in the company of this young girl, the writer felt like they were

“a couple of ignorant and contented children” (Ketterer 119). This friendship seemed to be a perfect and ideal escape from the reality for the writer.

The story of “My Platonic Sweetheart” (1898) is a subtle psychological flashback of a naive and wonderful childhood in the frame of a dream-telling. To sum up, Twain idealized the purity, finest and overwhelming happiness in the relationships between himself and a sweetheart from his memory. The ideas of a dream and magic flashback to the place and time of his own childhood had strong impact during many years of his career. It can be suggested that these ideas could have been fulfilled at some extent in the author’s correspondence with the young girls during the time period from 1905-1910. Albert Stone determined Twain’s interest in making friends with female children as nothing more than the following: “These Americans tended to look back upon their village boyhoods and girlhoods as simpler times of idyllic happiness. They recollected in present turmoil the tranquil past” (Stone 265). Twain could find and enjoy these moments of “idyllic happiness” in the company of children.

Moreover, these were the moments when his voice of the humorist appeared at its full potential. In my study, I introduce the connection between Twain’s attempts to set close relationships with the circle of young friends and his voice of the humorist in his correspondence with the members of the “Aquarium Club”. Interpretation of this connection

aims to suggest existence of positive moments in Twain’s later life and career when his potential of the humorist contrasted to his dark thoughts ideas and thoughts. The analysis of Twain’s humorous voice and comic style in his private correspondence with the “Aquarium Club” will be presented in the following sub-chapter 4.3.2.