Editing Mark Twain (section)

==Legacy and depictions==

{{Main|Mark Twain in popular culture}}

While Twain is often depicted wearing a white suit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. Evidence suggests that Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, after the death of his wife in 1904. However, there is also evidence showing Twain wearing a white suit before 1904. In 1882, he sent a photograph of himself in a white suit to 18-year-old [[Edward W. Bok]], later publisher of the ''Ladies Home Journal'', with a handwritten dated note. The white suit did eventually become Twain's trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter).<ref name="c-a-kirk" /> McMasters' ''The Mark Twain Encyclopedia'' states that Twain did not wear a white suit in his last three years, except at one banquet speech.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zW1k-XS6XLEC&pg=PA390 |title=The Mark Twain encyclopedia|page=390|publisher=Garland Publishing |access-date=October 16, 2009 |isbn=978-0-8240-7212-4 |author1=Lemaster, J. R |author2=Wilson, James Darrell |author3=Hamric, Christie Graves |year=1993}}</ref>
{| style="margin:auto"
| [[File:Samuel L Clemens4 1940 Issue-10c.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1|The U.S. post Office issued a commemorative stamp in 1940 honoring Mark Twain]]
|[[File:Mark Twain Vanity Fair 1908-05-13.jpeg|thumb|upright=1|Caricature of Twain by [[Leslie Ward|Spy]] in the London magazine ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', May 1908]]
|}
In his autobiography, Twain writes of his early experiments with wearing white out-of-season:<ref name=TwainSuit>Next after fine colors, I like plain white. One of my sorrows, when the summer ends, is that I must put off my cheery and comfortable white clothes and enter for the winter into the depressing captivity of the shapeless and degrading black ones. It is mid-October now, and the weather is growing cold up here in the New Hampshire hills, but it will not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid. I made a brave experiment, the other night, to see how it would feel to shock a crowd with these unseasonable clothes, and also to see how long it might take the crowd to reconcile itself to them and stop looking astonished and outraged. On a stormy evening I made a talk before a full house, in the village, clothed like a ghost, and looking as conspicuous, all solitary and alone on that platform, as any ghost could have looked; and I found, to my gratification, that it took the house less than ten minutes to forget about the ghost and give its attention to the tidings I had brought.<br />I am nearly seventy-one, and I recognize that my age has given me a good many privileges; valuable privileges; privileges which are not granted to younger persons. Little by little I hope to get together courage enough to wear white clothes all through the winter, in New York. It will be a great satisfaction to me to show off in this way; and perhaps the largest of all the satisfactions will be the knowledge that every scoffer, of my sex, will secretly envy me and wish he dared to follow my lead. "[http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works/MTDP10363.xml;style=work;brand=mtp;chunk.id=dv0055#pa001821 Autobiography of Mark Twain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016211319/http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works%2FMTDP10363.xml%3Bstyle%3Dwork%3Bbrand%3Dmtp%3Bchunk.id%3Ddv0055#pa001821 |date=October 16, 2015 }}", ''Volume 2'', October 8, 1906 (2013, 2008), Paragraph 14</ref>
{{blockquote|Next after fine colors, I like plain white. One of my sorrows, when the summer ends, is that I must put off my cheery and comfortable white clothes and enter for the winter into the depressing captivity of the shapeless and degrading black ones. It is mid-October now, and the weather is growing cold up here in the New Hampshire hills, but it will not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid.<ref name=TwainSuit/>}}