'A Difficult Case': W.D. Howells's impression of Mark Twain

Studies in Short Fiction, Fall, 1994 by Lawrence I. Berkove

The more Ewbert is frustrated by Hilbrook's refutations of his various arguments, the more his Christian compassion for the old man is shown to be a professional front - and the more he strains not so much to tell the truth as to win.

Some new thoughts had occurred to him [Ewbert] in corroboration of the notions they had agreed upon in their last meeting. But in response Ewbert found himself beset by a strange temptation - by the wish to take up these notions and expose their fallacy. They were indeed mere toys of their common fancy which they had constructed together in mutual supposition, but Ewbert felt a sacredness in them, while he longed so strangely to break them one by one and cast them in the old man's face. (196)

The most insidious of these notions is his disingenuous imputation to Hilbrook of a desire to have enough consciousness in an afterlife to enjoy his unconsciousness (179).(6) It tricks the old man at first, but he finally sees through it. "There ain't anything in that. I got to thinking it over, when you was gone, and the whole thing went to pieces. That idea don't prove anything at all, and all that we worked out of it had to go with it" (211). When Ewbert offers to put the notion together again, the old man says, dryly: "You can, if you want to . . . I got no interest in it any more; 'twa'n't nothing but a metaphysical toy, anyway" (212). The original magazine version of the story uses the much sharper "casuistical" instead of "metaphysical," thereby unmistakably denigrating Ewbert (Atlantic Monthly 215). It is the last straw for Hilbrook; after he figures out the fallacy of Ewbert's notion, he decides to die.

To give Ewbert his due, it was not his intention to push Hilbrook to this radical step. On the other hand, he entered into a debate on a tremendous subject with the old man without ever compassionately gauging how much the topic meant to him and without matching him in understanding or commitment, let alone honesty. Ewbert never appears to be quite as unChristian as his wife does when she rejects Hilbrook, "What did it matter whether such a man believed that there was another world or not?" (217), but his real motivation in carrying on the contest was not so much Christian as it was pride. He either does not realize or care to recognize his responsibility for the doctrine that he preaches: his last sermon reaffirms the this-worldly activism that contradicts the main tenet of the Rixonism to which he was supposedly dedicated. The final irony is that whatever success he has as a Rixonite minister with the university people who attend the funeral is owing to a non-Rixonite notion, and one whose fatal casuistry has been demonstrated.

It is now possible to link "A Difficult Case" more closely to Twain and his works. The biographical similarities that earlier critics have noticed can be specified. Hilbrook and Twain share a number of important qualities besides their denial of a belief in the soul's immortality and an afterlife: they are both self-taught vernacular philosophers, plain-spoken and direct, experiential rather than theoretical, and "realistic" rather than romantic. They have both known suffering and bereavement. They see life as hard, painful, and probably not worth the candle. And God does not appear to either of them as merciful and benevolent. They also both have a gritty integrity that consists of describing things exactly as they see them and of not being awed by authority or intimidated by sacrosanctity. They both penetrate to the essence of things and stick to their positions.