Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians

by Twain, Mark

  Two other figures prominent in “Hellfire Hotchkiss” had their genesis in “Villagers.” James Carpenter, Oscar’s intolerant, irascible father, obviously is a version of Judge Carpenter (John Marshall Clemens). His wife, Sarah, parallels Joanna Carpenter (Jane Lampton Clemens) in her devotion to Oscar, although Sarah’s conventional personality and uncomplicated piety do not comport with Clemens’s characterizations of his mother either in “Villagers” or in “Jane Lampton Clemens.” The Carpenters’ conversation in the opening chapter of “Hellfire Hotchkiss”—humorous, but embittered by James’s sarcasm and his contempt for both wife and son—leaves one wondering how closely Clemens modeled their relationship on actual relations within his family.

  The title character, Rachel “Hellfire” Hotchkiss, may have been inspired by Mary Nash, the older sister of a boyhood friend of Clemens’s. In 1897–98 working notes for “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” and “Schoolhouse Hill,” Clemens characterized Mary Nash as “wild” and “bad” (HH&T, 383; MSM, 431). In his autobiography—momentarily confusing her with Mary Lacy, another schoolmate—he described her as “pretty wild and determined and independent” (AD, 16 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:213). Rachel, just as independent, and a paragon of beauty and intelligence as well, is a unique figure in Mark Twain’s fiction: an emancipated woman. And “Hellfire Hotchkiss” touches, although tentatively, on the subject of sexual identity. As Rachel notes, she and Oscar (ironically nicknamed “Thug”) are hampered by their “misplaced sexes” (133.14). Or, as Pudd’nhead Wilson is reported to have put it, “Hellfire Hotchkiss is the only genuwyne male man in this town and Thug Carpenter’s the only genuwyne female girl, if you leave out sex and just consider the business facts” (121.3–5).

  But Mark Twain clearly was uncomfortable with unconventional female behavior of any sort. In recalling Mary Nash, he reported approvingly that, far from being “incorrigible,” as all Hannibal believed, “she married, and at once settled down and became in all ways a model matron and was as highly respected as any matron in the town” (AD, 16 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:213). Rachel Hotchkiss likewise resolves to reform and become a respectable member of her community, but her story breaks off at just that point. Mark Twain had reached an impasse. His impulse was to champion Rachel’s independence of thought and feeling, thereby criticizing society’s narrow-minded efforts to “sivilize”—much as he had done in writing about Huck Finn. But he could not wholeheartedly endorse rebelliousness in a heroine. Nor, on the other hand, could he produce a tame domestic novel about a “purified” Rachel. Consequently, only three chapters into “Hellfire Hotchkiss,” he set the story aside. There is no evidence that he ever returned to it. Nevertheless, late in 1898 he did plan a further appearance for Hellfire herself. His working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” show that he considered having Forty-four fall in love with her (MSM, 438).

  109.9 Mr. Rucker] Evidently JOSHUA THOMAS TUCKER.

  111.24 Cadets of Temperance] See the note at 102.8–9.

  112.3 Campbellite Sunday school] The Campbellites, more properly known as the Disciples of Christ, originated in early nineteenth-century America under the leadership of Thomas Campbell (1763–1854) and his son Alexander (1788–1866). Advocating individual interpretation of the Bible as the basis of faith, the Disciples drew adherents from several Protestant denominations. PAMELA ANN CLEMENS was a Campbellite in her early teens, and JOHN MARSHALL CLEMENS, although never a church member, “inclined to the Campbellites” (Holcombe, 915).

  113.15–16 Underwood. . . . The printer] Presumably THOMAS WATT USTICK.

  115.9 the peerage] An allusion to the frustrated ambitions of some members of Jane Lampton Clemens’s family. See the notes at 86.7–10 and 87.2–14.

  127.4 Shad Stover] Shad and Hal (introduced at 130.7) were modeled after the HYDE brothers.

  129.10–16 The firemen conferred an honorary membership upon her. . . . Whenever there was a fire she and her official belt and helmet were a part of the spectacle] The characterization of Rachel Hotchkiss as an enthusiastic fire buff probably reflects Mark Twain’s acquaintance with Lillie Hitchcock (1843–1929), who was devoted to San Francisco’s volunteer fire companies, regularly appeared at city fires, and in 1863 was made an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company, No. 5. Mark Twain met her in 1864 when he stayed at San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel, where Lillie resided with her mother. Lillie Hitchcock’s spirited and unconventional behavior led to her being regarded as an eccentric, but Mark Twain thought her “lovely” and “a splendid girl” (SLC to Frank Fuller, 7 Aug 67, transcript in CtY-BR†; Floride Green, 1, 18–19; LLMT, 50–52).

  130.36 Aunt Betsy Davis] ELIZABETH W. SMITH.

  131.16–17 the town drunkard’s girls] THE BLANKENSHIP sisters.

  Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy

  (1897–?1902)

  Mark Twain here tried to write another sequel to Huckleberry Finn (1885). Tom, Huck, Jim, Aunt Polly, Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and Judge Thatcher all appear in this story, and the plot turns on the machinations of those scoundrels, the king and the duke of Bilgewater.

  As early as 1883 Mark Twain had planned to include, in a Hannibal story, an antebellum Missouri phenomenon that was to figure significantly in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy.” “Pater-rollers & slavery,” he jotted in his notebook then, recalling the vigilante patrols that endeavored to prevent abolitionists from helping slaves escape (N&J 3, 30). Not until 1896, however, did he make the notebook entry that is the true germ of “Conspiracy”: “Have Huck tell how one white brother shaved his head, put on a wool wig & was blackened & sold as a negro. Escaped that night, washed himself, & helped hunt for himself under pay” (NB 39, CU-MARK†, TS p. 22). The following year he noted “Tom sells Huck for a slave” and, among ideas for a “New Huck Finn” book, sketched this scenario: “Tom is disguised as a negro & sold in Ark[ansas] for $10, then he & Huck help hunt for him after the disguise is removed” (NB 41, CU-MARK†, TS pp. 34, 57, 58). In Weggis, Switzerland, during the summer and early fall of 1897, Mark Twain developed the story on the “Tom is disguised” plan.

  Although primarily a sequel to Huckleberry Finn, “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” derives some of its energy from Mark Twain’s long-time fascination with detectives and detective fiction. In San Francisco in the mid-1860s he had genuinely admired the exploits of police detective George Rose, who, he nevertheless joked, followed suspects “by the foot-prints they make on the brick pavements” (CofC, 178). By the late 1870s he had read the sensational stories by renowned detective Allan Pinkerton, whose accounts of his agency’s activities often strained credulity. (In “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” the insignia of the Sons of Freedom is based on the Pinkerton emblem: a vigilant eye over the motto “We Never Sleep.”) And by the mid-1890s he was familiar with some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures.

  For years Mark Twain had attempted to capitalize on the popularity of such tales. In 1877 he wrote his “light tragedy,” “Cap’n Simon Wheeler; The Amateur Detective,” which the following year he tried to turn into a comic novel, “Simon Wheeler, Detective” (for texts of both the play and the unfinished novel, see S&B, 220–89, 312–444). He burlesqued detective work in “The Stolen White Elephant” (1882), treated it more seriously in Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), and satirized it again in “Tom Sawyer, Detective” (1896).

  As these works indicate, Mark Twain’s predominant impulse was to poke fun at the improbable and pretentious behavior of fictional sleuths—even as he devised a plot that depended on the application of their techniques. “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” is another such contradictory work. Detective Jake Flacker bears the brunt of Mark Twain’s scorn, while Tom Sawyer’s application, and misapplication, of the detective arts advances the story. Mark Twain was not, however, satisfied with the result. After working on “Conspiracy” intermittently over several years, possibly until 1902, he abandoned it, just a few pages short of completion.

  134.1–2 we was back home and I was at
the Widow Douglas’s] “Tom Sawyer, Detective” (1896) had been set in Arkansas, where Tom solved a mysterious murder. In “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy,” the boys are “back home” in St. Petersburg. The Widow Douglas was modeled after MELICENT S. HOLLIDAY.

  134.3–4 Miss Watson . . . Jim] The death of Miss Watson, whose will freed Jim, was announced in chapter 42 of Huckleberry Finn. Nevertheless, she anachronistically appears throughout the present story. Miss Watson was modeled after MARY ANN NEWCOMB and Jim was based on DANIEL.

  135.1 Jackson’s island] Glasscock’s Island, about three miles downriver from Hannibal and close to the Illinois shore (HF, 365–66, 384).

  136.18 old Jimmy Grimes] Possibly based on JIMMY FINN. The character, who receives only passing mention in this story, is referred to as “Admiral Grimes Keelboatman” in Mark Twain’s working notes (HH&T, 383).

  138.4–5 Harriet Beacher Stow . . . gets all the credit of starting that war] Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, serialized in 1851–52 and a bestseller, won countless adherents to the antislavery cause. When Stowe visited President Lincoln in the White House, he reportedly said “So this is the little woman who wrote the book that made this big war!” (Stowe, 205).

  139.27 Miss Mary en de Hair-lip] In Huckleberry Finn, chapters 24–29, the King and the Duke attempt to rob the Wilks girls, Mary Jane and her harelipped sister, Joanna.

  141.14–15 Georges Cadoudal got up a conspiracy] Cadoudal (1771–1804), a leader in a royalist uprising against the French revolutionary government, was guillotined for conspiring to assassinate Napoleon.

  141.19 Bartholomew’s Day] In 1572, a massacre of French Protestants, or Huguenots, began in Paris on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August, and spread throughout France, touching off civil war.

  142.22–23 get the people in a sweat about the ablitionists] In the early 1840s abolitionist “liberators” from Illinois sharply increased their activity in eastern Missouri and sometimes helped slaves escape to freedom. According to the History of Marion County, Missouri, “there was a constant state of apprehension and uneasiness among most slave owners—a fear not alone of an exodus, but of an insurrection on the part of the negroes” (Holcombe, 263).

  143.7 paterollers] Patrollers: bands of vigilantes organized to prevent abolitionist activity and the escape of slaves. In Hannibal and surrounding Marion County, they were authorized to question all strangers and banish anyone who could not satisfactorily account for his presence (Mathews, 2:1208; Holcombe, 262–64).

  143.21–26 our old hanted house . . . mine and Jim’s little cave . . . Injun Joe’s cave] Allusions to Tom Sawyer (chapters 25–26, 29, 31–33) and Huckleberry Finn (chapters 9–11).

  144.3 Guy Fawkes] Fawkes (1570–1606) was a principal conspirator in England’s “Gunpowder Plot” to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605. The conspirators increased their number until secrecy became impossible; Fawkes was caught redhanded in the cellar under the Parliament houses and was later hanged.

  144.4 Titus Oates] An English conspirator (1649–1705) who fabricated a plot in which Catholics were supposedly pledged to massacre Protestants, assassinate the king, and burn London. Oates “exposed” the plot to authorities in June 1678 and many Catholics were imprisoned or executed on his testimony. In 1685 he was imprisoned for his perjury.

  144.13 a Council of Ten and a Council of Three] Councils established in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Venice to guard the state against conspiracies. Mark Twain learned about them when visiting Venice in 1867 and described them in chapter 22 of The Innocents Abroad (1869).

  144.24–25 a resolution of oblivion] That is, a decree granting a general pardon for political offenses.

  146.6 old Bradish] Modeled in part after WILLIAM B. BEEBE.

  148.17 Tom’s aunt Polly’s] Aunt Polly was based on JANE LAMPTON CLEMENS.

  150.2 Sid and Mary] Tom Sawyer’s half-brother and his cousin, modeled after HENRY and PAMELA ANN CLEMENS.

  151.6 Hookerville] Mark Twain’s working notes identify Hookerville as Saverton, Missouri, a river town seven miles below Hannibal (HH&T, 383, 384).

  154.9 uncle Fletcher’s farm] The farm owned by JOHN ADAMS QUARLES.

  156.2–5 to Captain Harper’s . . . where Joe was laying sick] Captain SAMUEL ADAMS BOWEN, SR., and his son WILLIAM.

  161.22 Guttingburg and Fowst] German printer Johann Gutenberg (c. 1397–1468), believed to have been the first European to print with movable type, and his partner Johann Fust or Faust (1400?–?1466).

  165.26–27 the little Webster spelling book] Either The American Spelling Book (1783) or its successor, The Elementary Spelling Book (1829). Editions of these works by Noah Webster continued to be used into the twentieth century.

  166.4–5 Oliver Benton . . . and Plunket] ABNER O. NASH and ORION CLEMENS.

  166.29 Colonel Elder] Colonel WILLIAM C. ELGIN.

  167.31 Captain Haskins and Captain Sam Rumford] BENJAMIN M. HAWKINS and SAMUEL R. RAYMOND.

  168.10–11 I’ve got a ruputation, on account of beating the Dunlaps] Tom is referring to his exploits on his Uncle Silas’s Arkansas farm in “Tom Sawyer, Detective” (1896).

  173.9 down the banks] A scolding or reprimand (Lex, 14).

  180.22 Cap. Haines’s] “General” GAINES.

  184.18 Higgins’s Bill] Modeled after HIGGINS, a Hannibal slave. In calling him “Higgins’s Bill,” Mark Twain was following the prevailing usage, as he had explained it in chapter 10 of Tom Sawyer: “If Mr. Harbison had owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of him as ‘Harbison’s Bull;’ but a son or a dog of that name was ‘Bull Harbison.’ ”

  189.9–11 He wanted to get the men into the court . . . and then make the grand pow-wow, the way he done in Arkansaw] An allusion to Tom Sawyer’s spectacular courtroom revelations in the concluding chapter of “Tom Sawyer, Detective” (1896).

  191.25 Burrell’s Gang] A veiled reference to the infamous gang headed by John A. Murrell (1806–44). Nearly one thousand strong and operating in eight states, the gang included horsethieves, counterfeiters, and robbers who specialized in stealing slaves for sale to new owners. Mark Twain included a history of the gang in chapter 29 of Life on the Mississippi (1883).

  193.8–10 The time I let Jim get away . . . it took a pile of money out of him and the King’s pocket] This reference to chapter 31 of Huckleberry Finn contains two errors: Huck did not allow Jim to escape, and the king and duke made forty dollars by turning Jim over to Silas Phelps.

  197.33–35 The time Tom saw them down in Arkansaw . . . they was tarred and feathered] The allusion is to chapter 33 of Huckleberry Finn.

  198.23 the Queen] Victoria (1819–1901) succeeded to the English throne in 1837 and reigned until her death.

  203.18 it would a been hark from the tomb for them] That is, the consequences would have been distressing, or even fatal. The phrase “hark from the tomb” probably derives from Isaac Watts’s “A Funeral Thought”:

  Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound;

  My ears, attend the cry—

  “Ye living men, come, view the ground

  Where you must shortly lie.”

  (Watts, 145)

  In chapter 26 of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain had used this phrase to mean a sharp reproof (HF, 428).

  204.5–6 when we get to Cairo we’re in a free state] Cairo, Illinois, was situated at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Although the state prohibited slavery, it would not have provided a safe haven for Jim. In compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, Illinois authorities arrested blacks who were unable to produce a certificate of freedom, holding them as indentured laborers for up to a year. Even free or “unattached” blacks faced the threat of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. In communities bordering on the southern states, it was a “common practice . . . to arrest a man on some false pretence, and then, when he appeared in court without opportunity to secure papers or witnesses, to claim him as a fugitive slav
e” (McDougall, 36, 105–6; Hurd, 2:135; Gara, 50–52). Jim’s surest route to safety was to travel (as Huck plans at 204.20–25) down the Mississippi to Cairo, then northeast, up the Ohio River.

  204.16–17 “How did I come to hog half of the robber’s money and get so rotten flush?] In Tom Sawyer Huck had received half of the twelve thousand dollars he and Tom recovered from thieves. Widow Douglas invested Huck’s half “at six per cent., and Judge Thatcher did the same with Tom’s” (chapters 34 and 35).

  205.20 the Burning Shame] The King’s nude stage performance before the townspeople of Bricksville in chapter 23 of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain had called the caper “The Burning Shame” in his manuscript, but changed it before publication to the “Thrilling Tragedy of the King’s Camelopard or The Royal Nonesuch.”

  205.21–22 a nigger breakdown] A “boisterous, rapid, shuffling dance” done on wide wooden planks, often performed competitively by dancers in succession. It had been observed among slaves as early as 1700 (HF, 395–96).

  206.30–31 some said it had sixty thousand people in it, prob’ly a lie] The population of St. Louis, which grew from about 10,000 in 1836 to about 40,000 in 1846, did not reach the level reported by Huck’s informants until early in 1849 (Scharf, 2:1015–19). As Mark Twain repeatedly indicates, “Conspiracy” takes place about a year after Huckleberry Finn, that is, sometime between 1836 and 1846.

  Schoolhouse Hill

  (1898)

  In the fall of 1897, Mark Twain began work on a tale about a mysterious stranger’s visit to earth. The story was to occupy him for nearly eleven years, during which he attempted at least four versions of it: two set in nineteenth-century Missouri (the “St. Petersburg Fragment,” 1897, and “Schoolhouse Hill,” 1898), one in eighteenth-century Austria (“The Chronicle of Young Satan,” 1897–1900), and one in medieval Austria (“No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger,” 1902–8). For texts of all three surviving versions (what survives of the “St. Petersburg Fragment” was incorporated into “The Chronicle of Young Satan”), see Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (MSM, 4–11, 35–405, 487–92).