The Life of Mark Twain

by Gary Scharnhorst

  7. HF&TS, 104, 350; Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 7; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 69–70; “Execution of Ira Stout,” Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 26 October 1858, 2.

  8. John Marshall Clemens to Jane Lampton Clemens, 5 January 1842, UCLC 46928. Marshall was writing on the steamboat James Woods below Memphis, not far from where the Pennsylvania would explode and sink some sixteen years later.

  9. Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 7.

  10. Pettit, Mark Twain and the South, 17–18; LM, 408.

  11. Huckleberry Finn, 3; Wieck, Refiguring Huckleberry Finn, 93–101; Gribben, Mark Twain’s Library, 26.

  12. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 75; Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 8; John Marshall Clemens to Messrs. Coleman and Johnson, 2 November 1844, UCLC 46930.

  13. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 8; HF&TS, 104; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 80.

  14. HF&TS, 311; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 112.

  15. HF&TS, 89. According to Marion S. Goldman, “chambermaid” was a common Victorian euphemism for a prostitute; see Goldman, Gold Diggers and Silver Miners, 29.

  16. AMT, 3:655.

  17. Howell, “Mark Twain and the Civil War,” 55; Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 9, 60, 78, 83, 93; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 42, 48; Brashear, Mark Twain: Son of Missouri, 130; AMT, 1:212; Holcombe, History of Marion County, 293; Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 113, 250.

  18. “A Scrap of Curious History,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 93; “The Abolitionists in Palmyra Jail,” Liberator, 27 August 1841, 137; HF&TS, 146; Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 189.

  19. HF&TS, 310; LM, 66; Welsh, “Sam Clemens’ Hannibal,” 38; Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 54; “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” 193; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 74.

  20. Holcombe, History of Marion County, 914; Orion Clemens to Mollie Clemens, 31 October 1973, UCLC 47084; “A Memory,” 286; MTCI, 470–71.

  21. Following the Equator, 351–52.

  22. Carter, “Olivia Clemens Edits Following the Equator,” 202; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, iv; Pettit, “Mark Twain, Unreconstructed Southerner,” 22; Pettit, Mark Twain and the South, 15.

  23. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 50; Huckleberry Finn, 278; AMT, 1:210.

  24. Oliver Howard and Goldena Howard, “Quarles, John Adams,” in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, 602; AMT, 1:212; Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 4; AMT, 1:211; IA, 596; Mark Twain’s Letters, ed. Paine, 402.

  25. AMT, 1:217. In November 1855, John Quarles manumitted his “old and faithful servant Dann who is now in the fiftieth year of his age”; HF&TS, 316.

  26. MTCI, 134.

  27. AMT, 1:212, 1:216.

  28. IA, 177.

  29. “Mark Twain’s Boyhood,” New York Times, 11 November 1899, 5; IA, 201; The Prince and the Pauper, 67; Pudd’nhead Wilson, 277; AMT, 1:159.

  30. AMT, 1:158; HF&TS, 348; Collected Tales, 2:483; Lauber, The Making of Mark Twain, 29.

  31. HF&TS, 101; “Life Insurance,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 25 October 1849, 4; Hannibal Journal, 1 April 1852, 4; “Trustees’ Sale of Real Estate in Hannibal,” Hannibal Journal, 25 March 1852, 3; “A Negro Woman and Child for Sale,” Hannibal Journal, 21 April 1853, 2.

  32. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 47; Ferguson, Mark Twain: Man and Legend, 23; Following the Equator, 352; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 148; Pettit, “Mark Twain: Unreconstructed Southerner,” 20–21.

  33. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 71, 102.

  34. Holcombe, History of Marion County, 900; “The Turning-Point of My Life,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 70; MTCI, 447; AMT, 1:421.

  35. HF&TS, 5; Mark Twain Speaking, 386–87; Tom Sawyer, 108; “The Turning-Point,” 73.

  36. Tom Sawyer, 179–80; MTCI, 457; IA, 416.

  37. Hannibal Journal, 28 April 1853, 3; Following the Equator, 351; HF&TS, 112; The American Claimant, 42; Mark Twain–Howells Letters, 253.

  38. LM, 537; AMT, 1:303; “Is Shakespeare Dead?,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 157; TIA, 248; Mark Twain’s San Francisco, 236; Mark Twain–Howells Letters, 128; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 88; SLC to C. W. Stoddard, 1 June 1885, UCCL 03234; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 1280–81.

  39. Fatout, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit, 18; MTL, 1:322, 1:367, 1:368; MTCI, 412–13, 436.

  40. Bush, Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis, 39–40; Campbell, The Christian System, 3, 83, 291; Branch, Literary Apprenticeship, 37; Holcombe, History of Marion County, 983. See also Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 230.

  41. IA, 599. See also Cardwell, The Man Who Was Mark Twain, 204; and Lundy, “Mark Twain and Italy,” 145.

  42. MTL, 1:47; A Connecticut Yankee, 60.

  43. HF&TS, 313. Another of Barton Stone’s daughters was named Polly—that is, the Bowen brothers had an Aunt Polly.

  44. Holcombe, History of Marion County, 915; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 24. According to Webster, Jane Lampton Clemens also had a cousin named Paxton who was a Campbellite preacher, but a search of the Campbellite magazine Millennial Harbinger for the period 1830–51 failed to turn up a reference to anyone by that name.

  45. “News from the Churches,” Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 1 (May 1844): 239, and Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 5 (March 1848): 168, 171.

  46. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 88; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Facsimile, 2:572; HF&TS, 280; MTCI, 532; Stone, The Biography of Eld. Barton Warren Stone, 100, 105; Oliver Howard and Goldena Howard, “St. Louis, Missouri,” in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, 647.

  47. Alexander Campbell, “Our Tour of the West,” Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 3 (February 1846), 71–72; AMT, 1:457; “Huck Finn in Tears Revives Days of Old,” St. Louis Republican, 22 April 1910, 1, 3; Tom Sawyer, 179.

  48. “Religious Notice,” Hannibal Journal, 11 November 1852, 2; Campbell, “Notes of Incidents,” Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 3 (January 1853): 6, and Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 3 (February 1853): 64, 66; Hannibal Journal, 18 November 1852, 3; Satires and Burlesques, 160–61.

  49. MTL, 1:117; Tom Sawyer Abroad, 16; Mark Twain’s San Francisco, 231; N&J, 2:416.

  50. N&J, 3:305, brackets and punctuation in the original; AMT, 1:457–58.

  51. Ferguson, Mark Twain: Man and Legend, 34; Hoffman, Inventing Mark Twain, 26; Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, 284; Powers, Dangerous Waters, 172; Powers, Mark Twain: A Life, 49; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 205; Mark Twain’s San Francisco, 231–32; Scharnhorst, “Clemens and the Campbellites”; Caples, Justification. See also “News from the Churches,” Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 1 (July 1851): 417–18; and Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, 217.

  52. John Marshall Clemens to Pamela Clemens, 5 May 1845, UCLC 46931; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 109, 112; Powers, Mark Twain: A Life, 41.

  53. Brashear, Mark Twain: Son of Missouri, 91; Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 37, 239.

  54. Budd, Mark Twain: Social Philosopher, 2. In “Villagers of 1840–3” SLC asserted that “Judge C[arpenter] was elected County Judge by a great majority”; see HF&TS, 104. Paine also claims John Marshall Clemens “was elected by a heavy majority” (Mark Twain: A Biography, 72). It was wishful thinking, however; Marshall died before the election.

  55. AMT, 1:206, 1:274, 1:454; HF&TS, 105; The Gilded Age, 98; SLC to Clara Gabrilowitch, 24 March 1910, UCCL 08574.

  56. Mark Twain–Howells Letters, 315; MTL, 1:116.

  Chapter 3

  1. Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 18; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 75; Sanborn, Mark Twain: The Bachelor Years, 66.

  2. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 227, 241; Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 18.

  3. AMT, 2:294; Lott, Love and Theft, 30; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 78–79; Tom Sawyer, 178; “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (January 1875): 69; Scharnhorst, “The ‘Lorio’ Letters,” 278.

  4. AMT, 2:298; Scharnhorst, “The ‘Lorio’ Letters,” 280–8
1; “Human Magnetism,” 2.

  5. AMT, 2:298, 2:302–3; Tom Sawyer, 178; Huckleberry Finn, 162; Huckleberry Finn (2010), 428.

  6. Welsh, “Sam Clemens’ Hannibal,” 35; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 192; Tom Sawyer, 194; “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (January 1875): 69; Satires and Burlesques, 194.

  7. HF&TS, 229; Brashear, Mark Twain: Son of Missouri, 106; AMT, 1:453.

  8. Satires and Burlesques, 166; Mark Twain–Howells Letters, 269; James O’Donnell Bennett, quoted in Gibson, “Introduction,” in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 12; Gross, “Mark Twain and Catholicism,” 12; Wecter, “Mark Twain and the West,” 361; Lorch, “Orion Clemens,” 382.

  9. Satires and Burlesques, 165–71; Wright, “Franklin’s Legacy,” 279; HF&TS, 107; Orion Clemens to SLC, 7 January 1861, UCLC 46943; Hannibal Journal, 25 March 1852, 2; “Orion Clemens,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10 July 1892, 9.

  10. “Orion Clemens,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9; SLC to Thomas S. Barbour, 8 January 1906, UCCL 08674; AMT, 2:299; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 140–41, 144.

  11. Berkove, Insider Stories, 1035–36; Budd, “Hiding Out in Public,” 137.

  12. Satires and Burlesques, 140, 163; HF&TS, 95; Huckleberry Finn, 29; AMT, 2:178. SLC indicated that he was given this advice by Elizabeth Horr, but in context it seems clear he meant the pious Calvinist Newcomb who, like Frau Stein, professed “more religion than was good for her, considering the quality of it” (Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 196).

  13. AMT, 1:400; MTCI, 436; “Mark Twain’s Childhood Sweetheart,” 70, 73–75; Abbott, “Tom’s Sawyer’s Town,” 17; Tom Sawyer, 44.

  14. HF&TS, 338; Mark Twain Speaking, 432; The Gilded Age, 60; MTCI, 436–37.

  15. HF&TS, 12–13; Tom Sawyer, 60; “Mark Twain’s Childhood Sweetheart,” 70, 73–75; Abbott, “Tom’s Sawyer’s Town,” 17; “Mark Twain’s Boyhood: An Interview with Mrs. Jane Clemens,” 17. Bernard DeVoto, Laura Skandera-Trombley, and others have asserted that the “coffin-side” scene that ostensibly led to SLC’s apprenticeship in a print shop likely never occurred. See DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, 80–85; and Skandera-Trombley, Mark Twain in the Company of Women, 6. That Jane Clemens mentions it in this interview, however, increases its plausibility.

  16. RI, 293; MTL, 3:371; AMT, 3:245.

  17. MTL, 1:374, 3:645; Watterson, “Mark Twain: An Intimate Memory,” 375; HF&TS, 99; Clemens, Young Sam Clemens, 37; Baker, “Mark Twain in Cincinnati,” 306; Sloane, Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian, 61; Hannibal Journal and Western Union, 6 November 1851, 3.

  18. LM, 468–69; MTCI, 212; Harmon, “Mark Twain’s Interviews,” 272; HF&TS, 99–100.

  19. HF&TS, 314; AMT, 1:399; LM, 538–39; RI, 292.

  20. Holcombe, History of Marion County, 988; Gregory, “Joseph P. Ament,” 1; “Mark Twain’s Boyhood: An Interview with Mrs. Jane Clemens,” 17.

  21. Mark Twain Speaking, 200–201; SLC to W. H. Powell, 3 December 1907, UCCL 07881.

  22. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 76; AMT, 1:456; “Editorial Agility,” Hannibal Journal, 16 September 1852, 2; Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 268; HF&TS, 334.

  23. Reade, Study and Stimulants, 120–21; AMT, 1:354; Mark Twain Speaking, 371; Satires and Burlesques, 150; Mark Twain’s Speeches, 120; “Letter from ‘Mark Twain,’” SFAC, 26 May 1867, 1; Tom Sawyer, 176.

  24. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 57, 184; “Mammoth Packing House,” 2; Scharnhorst, “The ‘Lorio’ Letters,” 278; Welsh, “Sam Clemens’ Hannibal,” 292–30; “Hogs! Hogs! Hogs!!!,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 13 December 1849, 2.

  25. Oliver Howard and Goldena Howard, “Hannibal, Missouri,” in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, 346; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 184; Welsh, “Sam Clemens’ Hannibal,” 3.

  26. ET&S, 1:79–82; LM, 546, 548; HF&TS, 143; AMT, 1:397; “Letter from ‘Mark Twain,’” SFAC, 26 May 1867, 1; A Tramp Abroad, 228.

  27. “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (January 1875): 69; Tom Sawyer, 13.

  28. HF&TS, 85, 96; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 147.

  29. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 146; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 54; AMT, 1:397, 1:608–9; Abbott, “Tom’s Sawyer’s Town,” 17; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 299; Lorch, “A Note on Tom Blankenship,” 352; HF&TS, 96, 303. SLC apparently confuses Tom Blankenship with A. C. Tonkray (or Toncray), who had recently died in Idaho. See also MTCI, 537–39; and Wecter, Sam Clemens in Hannibal, 150.

  30. HF&TS, 96, 100.

  31. Welsh, “Sam Clemens’ Hannibal,” 38; “Is Shakespeare Dead?,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 187; Wecter, Sam Clemens in Hannibal, 299. SLC may have gleaned the first names of Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher from Tom and Rebecca Blankenship. If so, a pair of provocative questions: Why did SLC name the “respectable” Tom Sawyer after the “disrespectable” Tom Blankenship? And why did he name the pillar of adolescent virtue, the vestal virgin Becky Thatcher, after Tom Blankenship’s twin sister Rebecca? It seems he was attempting to complicate the distinction between “good” and “bad” children.

  32. HF&TS, 96.

  33. AMT, 1:402, 1:613, 3:213, 3:652; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 49; HF&TS, 101; MTL, 4:50–51; MTCI, 456–57; Huckleberry Finn, 38.

  34. LM, 530; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 169; HF&TS, 101; Tom Sawyer, 125. SLC elsewhere mentions the comparable drowning of a German boy named Dutchy who “was exasperatingly good” and had committed three thousand Bible verses to memory (LM, 534). The account is almost certainly apocryphal. SLC apparently invented the episode to satirize the contemporary custom of memorizing parts of the Bible; e.g., “A little girl in Missouri has received a premium for committing to memory 18,657 verses of the Bible” (“Gleanings and Gossip,” Springfield Republican, 29 July 1869, 1); and “Little Katie Pitt, of Platte County, received a premium for committing to memory 13,657 verses of the Bible in the last two months” (“State News,” Lincoln [Mo.] County Herald, 22 July 1869, 2).

  35. Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 15 May 1856, 3; Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 118.

  36. MTCI, 456–57; IA, 628; HF&TS, 97.

  37. “A Curious Scrap of History,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 95. SLC recycled the joke in Following the Equator to condemn the colonialism of Cecil Rhodes, for whom the African nation of Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) was named: “I admire [Rhodes], I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake” (Following the Equator, 405).

  38. “Trial at Palmyra,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 6 December 1849, 1–2; “Execution of Palmyra,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 17 January 1850, 2; Tom Sawyer, 223; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Facsimile of the Author’s Holograph Manuscript, 714; HF&TS, 101; Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 140; Church, “The Slave Glascock’s Ben,” 78–83.

  39. “Benton’s Speech,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 1 November 1849, 2; Tom Sawyer, 178.

  40. Mark Twain Speaking, 465; Ober, Mark Twain and Medicine, 58, 59, 66, 305; Jane Lampton Clemens to Orion Clemens, 29–30 January 1850, UCLC 46936; MTL, 3:146; Simon Wheeler, Detective, 24.

  41. LM, 252; MTCI, 323; Dickens, American Notes, 65. See also Twyman, “The Clay Eater.”

  42. LM, 528; Will Bowen to SLC, 25 August 1876, UCLC 32410; DeVoto, Mark Twain at Work, 48; Mark Twain’s Hannibal, Huck, and Tom, 37–38; Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 203; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 198–99.

  43. “Huck Finn in Tears Revives Days of Old,” St. Louis Republican, 22 April 1910, 1, 3; “Is Shakespeare Dead?,” 187. SLC may also have been familiar with “Indian Joe” Haggin in California in the mid-1860s. Haggin was a habitual criminal, convicted in Sacramento in July 1864 of assault and battery by a judge who deemed him a “bad injin” and sentenced him to six months in the county jail (“Sentenced,” 3).

  44. Cox, “Life on the Mississippi Revisited,” 102; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 141, 157,
163, 217–18; Welsh, “Sam Clemens’ Hannibal,” 29; HF&TS, 100, 284; “News from California,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 27 September 1849, 2; “Returned Californians,” Hannibal Western Union, 9 January 1851, 2; Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 6 September 1855, 2; Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 9 August 1856, 3; Holcombe, History of Marion County, 991–92; AMT, 1:401; Jane Lampton Clemens to Orion Clemens, 29–30 January 1850, UCLC 46936.

  45. Sloane and Farley, “My Uncle B. C. M. Farthing,” 39; AMT, 1:388; “Stabbed,” 2; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 159; MTCI, 502–3; AMT, 1:418.

  46. Scharnhorst, “The ‘Lorio’ Letters,” 280; LM, 547.

  47. “Mark Twain’s Childhood Sweetheart,” 70, 73–75; Scharnhorst, “The ‘Lorio’ Letters,” 282–83; ET&S, 1:68; Tom Sawyer, 220; “Clemens of Missouri,” 3; Sloane and Farley, “My Uncle B. C. M. Farthing,” 40.

  48. Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 125; Jane Lampton Clemens to Orion Clemens, 29–30 January 1850, UCLC 46936; Henry Clemens to Orion Clemens, 28 February 1850, UCLC 46937; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 225; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 17; Oliver Howard and Goldena Howard, “Johnson, John Moorman,” in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, 422; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 91.

  49. “Prospectus of the Western Union,” Hannibal Western Union, 10 October 1850, 3; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 86; AMT, 1:135, 2:263; A Tramp Abroad, 224.

  50. Fanning, Mark Twain and Orion Clemens, 22; Hannibal Journal, 11 March 1852, 2.

  51. AMT, 1:459.

  52. Branch, “Introduction,” in ET&S, 1:5–6; “A Gallant Fireman,” Hannibal Western Union, 16 January 1851, 3, rpt. ET&S, 1:62.

  53. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 243; “To Advertisers,” Hannibal Journal and Western Union, 6 November 1851, 3; AMT, 2:234.

  54. Orion Clemens repeated the experiment eighteen months later by publishing a three-part serialization of “The Pearl of Rouen,” translated from the French by Anne T. Wilbur on the front pages of the Journal for 1, 8, and 15 April 1852.