MARK
TWAIN – COMET HALLEY
AEROGRAMME
ISSUED BY
U.S. POSTAL SERVICE
Despite our personal dissatisfaction that the U.S. Postal
Service did not issue a Halley’s Comet Christmas stamp commemorating the 1301
appearance of Halley’s Comet as depicted in Giotto’s “Adoration of the Magi”,
we are happy to report that on December 4, a commemorative aerogramme was
issued in Hannibal, Missouri. Back in
July in Elmira, New York, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled the design of the
unusual 36-cent aerogramme which commemorates both Halley’s Comet and Mark
Twain on his 150th birthday during the 100th anniversary
year of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN’S publication.
Twain’s
year of birth, which coincided with the 1835 appearance of Halley’s Comet, and
his accurate prediction that he would die in the year of its next appearance,
are behind the decision to assign a dual theme to the aerogramme. Twain is quoted by biographer Albert Bigelow
Paine as saying “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835”. It is coming again next year, and I expect
to go out with it. It is coming again
next year, and I expect to go out with it.
It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with
Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said,
no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together,
the must go out together.’” Twain
died on April 21, 1910, the day after Comet Halley reached perihelion (point
closest to the Sun).
The design was unveiled in Elmira, New York, in
conjunction with the opening of the Chemung County Fair last July. Clemens and his wife, an Elmira native, are
buried there.
Drawing almost exclusively from his many personal
experiences, Mark Twain used them ingeniously to become one of America’s
greatest writers. As a young man, he
worked for a printer, was a riverboat pilot, a gold miner during the Civil War
years, a reporter on the western frontier and a world traveler.
Hannibal, Missouri, where he was born and spent his early
years, provided background for HUCLELBERY FINN, published on February 18,
1885. Through colorful use of dialects,
Twain provides a vivid description of late 19th century life on the
Mississippi River. An adventure story
as well as an historic novel, the book deals with profound moral issues such as
slavery and racism. William Faulkner
and many other writers have said that it is one of our best literary
works. Ernest Hemingway once wrote that
“all modern American literature comes from this one book…”
Dennis Luzak of Redding Ridge, Connecticut, designed the
multicolor aerogramme. Its front, when
folded for mailing, features Luzak’s representation of Halley’s Comet with “USA
36” below it as the indicium in the upper right corner and, at lower
left, his portrait of Mark Twain is coupled with the quotation predicting Twain
would die in the year of the comet’s next appearance. Folding instructions and the words “Aerogramme. Via Airmail. Par Avion” are
printed along the lower left edge of the front side.
Artwork on the reverse side of the aerogramme depicts
Huckleberry Finn in front of a
steamboat, a second portrait of Twain, and Halley’s Comet against a background
of stars and sky. (Photographs of the
comet in 1910 show it with differently shaped tails, including the flared and
tapered ones depicted by Luzak, at various stages of its life.) Appearing below this panel of illustrations
is the legend “1835 . Mark Twain . 1910 . Halley’s Comet . 1985.”