The Life of Mark Twain

by Gary Scharnhorst

  55. AMT, 1:459; “Fire! Fire!,” Hannibal Journal, 29 January 1852, 2; “Fire!,” Hannibal Journal, 4 March 1852, 2; “Be Ye Ready!,” Hannibal Journal, 17 June 1852, 2; “The New Receiver,” Hannibal Journal, 28 April 1853, 4.

  56. “The Fate of a Drunkard,” Hannibal Journal, 16 September 1852, 1; “Spreading the Gospel,” Hannibal Journal, 27 January 1853, 1; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 1350; “Spiritual Rappings,” Hannibal Western Union, 22 January 1852, 2; “The Governor’s Vision,” Hannibal Journal, 16 April 1853, 2; “Singular Method for Finding Drowned Persons,” Hannibal Journal, 11 November 1852, 1; Tom Sawyer, 126; Huckleberry Finn, 62; “The Turning-Point of My Life,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 72; Bainton, The Art of Authorship, 67.

  57. Sloane, Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian, 60; ET&S, 1:67.

  58. LM, 503; “The — — — Troupe,” 2.

  59. Huckleberry Finn, 177.

  60. LM, 548–49; Rasmussen, Mark Twain A to Z, 189.

  61. “A Lecture on Temperance,” Hannibal Journal, 27 January 1853, 2; MTL, 4:51; Tom Sawyer, 183.

  62. “Mob at Syracuse,” Hannibal Journal and Western Union, 16 October 1851, 2; “The Syracuse Outrage,” Hannibal Journal and Western Union, 23 October 1851, 2; “Abolition Sympathies,” Hannibal Journal, 24 February 1853, 1.

  63. AMT, 1:451, 1:461; MTL, 3:145.

  64. Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 103, 183–84, 310; Powers, Dangerous Waters, 82; “Huck Finn in Tears Revives Days of Old,” St. Louis Republican, 22 April 1910, 1, 3; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 51; “Married,” Hannibal Journal, 16 March 1853, 3; AMT, 1:418.

  65. Hannibal Journal, 28 April 1853, 3; “Terrible Accident!,” Hannibal Journal, 6 May 1853, 2.

  66. ET&S, 1:70–71, 1:74, 1:86–87; Brashear, Mark Twain: Son of Missouri, 130.

  67. “Blabbing Government Secrets,” Hannibal Journal, 16 September 1852, 2.

  68. ET&S, 1:72–74; “My First Literary Venture,” 615–16; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 90.

  69. “My First Literary Venture,” 616; AMT, 3:652; “The Dog Controversy,” 2; [“Blab’s Tour”], Hannibal Journal, 23 September 1852, 2; ET&S, 1:84. Renamed Jackson’s Island in Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Glasscock’s Island was technically located in Illinois; see Holcombe, History of Marion County, 940. That is, when Jim escapes to Jackson’s Island in Huck Finn he is in free territory—not that he is safe.

  70. AMT, 2:230.

  71. Hannibal Journal, 12 May 1853, 1; Rambler, “Love Concealed,” 2. SLC had signed the pen name Rambler to a couple of news items that appeared in the Hannibal Journal for 29 April 1853.

  72. “Oh, She Has a Red Head,” Hannibal Journal, 13 May 1853, 2; Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal, 259; ET&S, 1:104–5, 1:376–77.

  73. ET&S, 1:106; “My First Literary Venture,” 615.

  74. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 85; “Assistant’s Column,” 3; Life on the Mississippi, 34. See also “New York Crystal Palace,” Hannibal Journal, 4 November 1852, 2.

  Chapter 4

  1. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 92–93; “Mark Twain’s Boyhood: An Interview with Mrs. Jane Clemens,” 17; Jane Lampton Clemens to Orion Clemens, 23 November 1873, UCLC 47097; Branch, Literary Apprenticeship, 272.

  2. Michelson, Printer’s Devil, 4; N&J, 1:12; Kennedy, “Mark Twain, a Poor Typo,” 560; “A General Reply,” 732; Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 2.

  3. AMT, 3:144–45; MTL, 1:3, 2:134; Kennedy, “Mark Twain, a Poor Typo,” 560.

  4. MTL, 1:4, 1:9, 1:10, 1:13, 1:16; AMT, 1:358; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 96; “‘Mark Twain’ in New York,” SFAC, 2 February 1867, 1, and SFAC, 28 March 1867, 1; Alger, Life of Edwin Forrest, 249; AMT, 3:645.

  5. According to Tom Glynn, “The Mercantile Library Association of New York City was the largest of its kind in the country and loaned out more volumes than any other library in the United States in 1859” (“Books for a Reformed Republic,” 360).

  6. Knoper, Acting Naturally, 198.

  7. MTL, 1:10. SLC would describe the beggars in Jerusalem in similar terms: “They crowd you—infest you—swarm about you, and sweat and stink, and lie, and look sneaking, and mean, and obsequious—the concentrated essences of the soulless, dust-licking scum of the earth the lower classes of the whole nation are!” (“The Holy Land Excursion,” SFAC, 12 April 1868, 1). He chastened his classist rhetoric slightly in revising this passage for publication in The Innocents Abroad: “They crowd you—infest you—swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look sneaking and mean, and obsequious” (IA, 309). Ann Ryan suggests that SLC recasts such scenes in The Prince and the Pauper when Prince Edward is followed by a “noisy swarm of human vermin”; see Ryan, “Mark Twain and the Mean (and Magical) Streets,” 32; and The Prince and the Pauper, 53.

  8. MTL, 1:16, 1:29.

  9. MTL, 1:4; “‘Mark Twain’ in New York,” SFAC, 9 April, 1867, 1; N&J, 1:492; Sketches New and Old, 209–12; RI, 384, 386; Collected Tales, 1:645; Huckleberry Finn, 221; Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, 170–73; AMT, 1:355.

  10. MTL, 1:19, 1:20, 1:29.

  11. MTL, 1:23; Lorch, “Mark Twain’s Philadelphia Letters,” 348–52.

  12. MTL, 1:16, 1:20, 1:28–29, 1:31.

  13. MTL, 1:29, 1:40–41; AMT, 1:460; The Gilded Age, 220–22; IA, 305; A Connecticut Yankee, 64.

  14. “Post-Mortem Poetry,” Galaxy 9 (June 1870): 864; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 98; “The Swiss Girl’s Home,” 52; Rambler, “The Heart’s Lament,” 2; Tom Sawyer, 242.

  15. AMT, 3:656, 1:460; Mark Twain’s Letters, ed. Paine, 714.

  16. Orion Clemens to SLC, 7 January 1861, UCLC 46943.

  17. N&J, 2:489; LM, 563.

  18. Budd, Mark Twain: Social Philosopher, 4; LM, 507; MTL, 1:47.

  19. “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (January 1875): 69; “How to Remove Warts and Tattoo Marks,” 4. SLC removed the tattoo years later by burning the ink with a hot needle, leaving only a “faint bluish tinge” that was “hardly detectable.”

  20. LM, 69; James J. Clemens Jr. to Orion Clemens, 6 August 1855, UCLC 46940.

  21. N&J, 1:37; The American Claimant, 150; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 103; Gribben, Mark Twain’s Library, 628; MTL, 1:48.

  22. Branch, “Three New Letters,” 4; “Mark Twain among Scenes of Early Life,” 28.

  23. AMT, 1:460; Lorch, “Lecture Trips,” 418.

  24. Mark Twain–Howells Letters, 256; AMT, 1:460.

  25. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 28; MTL, 1:62; Branch, “A New Clemens Footprint,” 505; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 106, 129; ET&S, 2:63.

  26. LM, 556; Keokuk City Directory for 1856–7, 21–22, 157; N&J, 1:14; “About Mark Twain,” New York Sun, 14 May 1882, 2; Mac Donnell, “Mark Twain’s Lost Sweetheart,” 42; Ross, Justice of Shattered Dreams, 45; “Letter from ‘Mark Twain,’” SFAC, 26 May 1867, 1; Branch, “Did Samuel Clemens Write ‘Learning Grammar’?”

  27. AMT, 2:335; N&J, 1:28; MTL, 1:157; RI, 230; Gribben, “Mark Twain, Phrenology, and the ‘Temperaments,’” 46. See also Stern, “Mark Twain Had His Head Examined.”

  28. The Adventures of Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, 12–13; ET&S, 1:120; Mac Donnell, “Mark Twain’s Sweetheart”; Bellamy, Mark Twain as a Literary Artist, 71; Lorch, “Lecture Trips,” 428; “Died,” EB, 11 September 1863, 3.

  29. Lorch, “Lecture Trips,” 420–21; Lorch, The Trouble Begins at Eight, 8; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 55; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 107; Brashear, Mark Twain: Son of Missouri, 131–32.

  30. MTL, 1:66; Herndon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, 88–89; AMT, 3:645; “The Turning-Point,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 71. Some of SLC’s biographers intimate that he meant the cocoa plant, not the coca plant, which would suggest that he hoped to make a fortune by exporting chocolate, not a narcotic, to the United States. See Clemens, Young Sam Clemens, 86; Branch, Literary Apprenticeship, 25; Lorch, “Lecture Trips,” 433; and Henderson, Mark
Twain, 26.

  31. Lorch, “Lecture Trips,” 433–34; Henry Clemens to SLC, 23 January 1857, UCLC 46941.

  32. Sattelmeyer, “Steamboats, Cocaine, and Paper Money,” 87–100. As Sattelmeyer explains (97–98), if SLC found a banknote, it was likely not a government note or even a greenback, but a bank bill worth no more than about twenty-five dollars in gold.

  33. ET&S, 1:378–81; Rees, Sixty Days in Europe, 400; “Now Reese Says He ‘Discovered’ Twain,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 23 April 1910, 2; AMT, 2:232; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 91. Ten letters printed in the New Orleans Crescent in early 1861 under the signature Quintus Curtius Snodgrass were once attributed to SLC, though I have omitted them from the discussion given the doubts raised about this attribution over the past half century. See Bates, “The Quintus Curtius Snodgrass Letters.”

  34. The Adventures of Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, 19–33; Branch, “Bixby vs. Carroll,” 2; Baker, “Mark Twain in Cincinnati,” 301, 306, 307; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 114.

  35. Baker, “Mark Twain in Cincinnati,” 302–3; The Adventures of Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, 37–48; “Macfarlane,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, 78.

  36. “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (January 1875): 72; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 116; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 67; Baker, “Mark Twain in Cincinnati,” 307.

  37. LM, 79–80; MTL, 1:70; “The Turning-Point,” 72; Mark Twain’s Hannibal, Huck, and Tom, 346; “Old Time River Men”; Loges, “Horace Ezra Bixby,” 20; “About Mark Twain,” New York Sun, 14 May 1882, 2; Bassford, “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot,” 515; MTCI, 434; Branch, “Bixby vs. Carroll,” 8.

  38. MTL, 1:71–73; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 33; “Mark Twain’s Boyhood: An Interview with Mrs. Jane Clemens,” 17.

  Chapter 5

  1. Bassford, “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot,” 515; LM, 80, 154; MTCI, 161; N&J, 2:448; Branch, “‘Old Times on the Mississippi,’” 79.

  2. Sattelmeyer, “Steamboats, Cocaine, and Paper Money,” 92; Powers, Dangerous Waters, 260; LM, 278; DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, 109, 110; AMT, 3:656.

  3. MTL, 1:358; “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (June 1875): 721; Mark Twain–Howells Letters, 50; MTCI, 215; AMT, 3:245; Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 1368.

  4. “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (February 1875): 220; IA, 627; MTL, 1:72.

  5. Branch, “Bixby vs. Carroll,” 2; AMT, 2:150, 2:250; LM, 200.

  6. MTL, 2:56, 3:134; LM, 363.

  7. AMT, 1:207; Lampton, “Hero in a Fool’s Paradise,” 7, 10; Watterson, “Mark Twain: An Intimate Memory,” 373; Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 23; IA, 645; Ketterer, “Mark Twain’s Overlooked ‘Second Speech’ in Montreal,” 21–23; SLC to Pamela A. Moffett, 15 July 1886, UCCL 10893.

  8. Ganzel, “Samuel Clemens’s Correspondence,” 396–97; “Big Tows—Mulberry Sellers,” Cincinnati Commercial, 29 January 1880, 7; “Mark Twain,” Memphis Public Ledger, 24 April 1882, 1.

  9. Branch, “Mark Twain: The Pilot and the Writer,” 42; Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 17, 22–23, 59; MTL, 1:358; LM, 176. SLC subsequently chronicled the history of the WBBA in a chapter in “Old Times on the Mississippi” that he subsequently folded into Life on the Mississippi.

  10. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 62; Bassford, “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot,” 515; N&J, 2:470; “Is Shakespeare Dead?,” in What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings,” 153.

  11. AMT, 3:173; Gribben, Mark Twain’s Library, 37, 71, 188–91, 221, 421, 612, 617, 678; Mark Twain Speaking, 323; Branch, Literary Apprenticeship, 25; Sloane, Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian, 63; Gardner, “Mark Twain and Dickens,” 90–101; MTL, 1:171; ET&S, 2:76.

  12. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 1445; “Christmas Day,” SFDC, 23 December 1865, 2; Harte, The Crusade of the Excelsior, 161; Cummings, Mark Twain and Science, 20; Brashear, Mark Twain: Son of Missouri, 163; Gribben, Mark Twain’s Library, 524.

  13. Marleau, “The Crash of Timbers Continued,” 6, 17, 19, 22.

  14. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 62; MTL, 1:76–77.

  15. AMT, 2:151, 2:532–33; MTL, 1:99.

  16. Cardwell, The Man Who Was Mark Twain, 141, 157; MTL, 1:123, 3:1, 4:8, 4:31; ET&S, 2:137; N&J, 1:120, 1:219, 1:444; “‘Mark Twain’ in New York,” SFAC, 28 March 1867, 1; AMT, 1:320, 3:202; A Tramp Abroad, 129; MTCI, 455, 682, 687; Hill, Mark Twain: God’s Fool, 195, 296.

  17. AMT, 2:150, 2:211; Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 51.

  18. SLC consistently misremembered the date; he sometimes recalled it was 26 May (N&J, 2:153), sometimes 3 June (AMT, 1:151).

  19. AMT, 2:151; MTL, 1:112.

  20. N&J, 1:89–90; “Letter from ‘Mark Twain,’” SFAC, 19 May 1867, 1; Laura M. Dake, “Education and Health in Dallas, Texas,” Dallas Herald, 2 July 1885, 3; Covici, “‘Dear Master Wattie,’”; AMT, 2:151, 2:532; Collected Tales, 1:284–96; “The Teachers’ Institute,” 5; SLC to Susan Crane, 30 July 1906, UCCL 11451.

  21. LM, 235; MTL, 1:81–82; Wager, “A Critical Edition,” 143; Kruse, Mark Twain and Life on the Mississippi, 17; AMT, 1:274; “Is Shakespeare Dead?,” 153.

  22. Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 31; MTL, 1:81.

  23. Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 13, 14, 24, 31; “The Pennsylvania Disaster,” Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, 26 June 1858, 1; Branch, Men Call Me Lucky, 44; “The Explosion of the Pennsylvania,” New York Times, 16 June 1858, 5; MTL, 1:80–81; “The Steamer Pennsylvania,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 18 July 1858, 2.

  24. HF&TS, 97; LM, 243; Lorch, “Mark Twain and the Pennsylvania Disaster,” 2; “‘Mark Twain’: A Sad Incident of His Early Life Recalled,” 4; MTL, 1:80, 1:82.

  25. LM, 243, 245; Branch, Men Call Me Lucky, 31; MTL, 1:82, 1:84; LM, 243; Clemens of the “Call,” 122; The Gilded Age, 51; SLC to unidentified, 25 October 1876, UCCL 01379. In A Connecticut Yankee, written some thirty years later, Hank Morgan is scheduled to be burned at the stake on 21 June. SLC seems to have associated the day with martyrdom. See Powers, Mark Twain: A Life, 90.

  26. MTL, 1:80.

  27. “Funeral,” Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 26 June 1858, 3; Orion Clemens to Miss Wood, 3 October 1858, UCLC 46942.

  28. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 96; The Gilded Age, 50; A Connecticut Yankee, 262; Huckleberry Finn, 280.

  29. AMT, 1:350; Kruse, Mark Twain and Life on the Mississippi, 17; LM, 236.

  30. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 37; N&J, 2:454; AMT, 1:115. Blake Allmendinger details the differences between Sam’s two accounts of Henry’s death—in Life on the Mississippi and in his autobiography—and their significance (“Murder in Retrospect,” 13–24).

  31. Branch, “Samuel Clemens: Steersman,” 197, 199, 201; Branch, Mark Twain and Starchy Boys, 24; “Our Special River Correspondence,” St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 1 September 1858, 4; “Memphis,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 22 October 1858, 2; “Illinois Correspondence,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 22 October 1858, 2.

  32. LM, 87; Branch, “A Proposed Calendar,” 4; MTL, 1:87–90.

  33. “Is Shakespeare Dead?,” 166; “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly 35 (January 1875): 71; Bassford, “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot,” 515; “Horace E. Bixby—Mark Twain’s Boss,” Hampton’s Broadway Magazine 22 (January 1909): 116.

  34. LM, 214; MTL, 1:98, 2:59; Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 28; Alexander E. Jones, “Mark Twain and Freemasonry,” 364.

  35. MTCI, 421; AMT, 3:645–46; LM, 497.

  36. Leisy, “Mark Twain and Isaiah Sellers,” 402.

  37. “River Intelligence,” New Orleans Crescent, 19 May 1859, 7.

  38. Leisy, “Mark Twain and Isaiah Sellers,” 402–5; AMT, 3:646; “About ‘Mark Twain,’” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 1 September 1870, 4; Chicago Tribune, 4 March 1872, 4; Branch, “A New Clemens Footprint,” 508.

  39. LM, 498; Branch, “A New Clemens Footprint,” 508; Branch, Mark Twain and t
he Starchy Boys, 58; MTCI, 180.

  40. “Piloted with Mark Twain,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 12 September 1909, sec. 3, p. 2; Dempsey, Searching for Jim, 253–54.

  41. SLC to Reginald Cholmondeley, 28 March 1885, UCCL 03198; Branch and Hirst, The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud, passim; Pettit, “Mark Twain, the Blood-Feud, and the South,” 27; Branch, “Mark Twain: The Pilot and the Writer,” 37.

  42. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 76; Marsh, “Mark Twain,” 7; Mark Twain’s Letters, ed. Paine, 496.

  43. RI, 293; N&J, 1:54–55.

  44. AMT, 2:230; MTL, 1:77; “About ‘Mark Twain,’” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 1 September 1870, 4.

  45. MTL, 1:97; LM, 487–88; N&J, 2:536. SLC misidentifies the ship as the Crescent City.

  46. MTL, 1:100–101, 1:358; “Pilot’s Memoranda,” 4; Bates, “Samuel Clemens, Pilot Humorist,” 102–9.

  47. Turner, “Notes on Mark Twain in New Orleans,” 19; MTL, 1:102.

  48. Bassford, “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot,” 515; Baskerville, “Man Who Taught Mark Twain,” 1; “Story of a Pilot of Old,” Trenton Times, 4 May 1909, 2.

  49. Webster, Mark Twain: Business Man, 83; N&J, 1:53–54; MTL, 1:103; Branch, “Mark Twain: The Pilot and the Writer,” 30; Marleau, “‘Cooling Our Bottom.’”

  50. MTL, 1:108, 1:111–12; AMT, 2:405; “Astounding Truth,” 3; Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 2 November 1858, 2; “Madame Caprell,” Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, 4 November 1858, 3.

  51. MTL, 1:118; “Mark Twain’s Childhood Sweetheart,” 70, 73–75.

  52. AMT, 2:297.

  53. “Amusements,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 8 March 1861, 4; MTL, 1:117.

  54. Jane Lampton Clemens to “All in the Territory,” 12 and 14 October 1862, UCLC 46956; MTL, 1:120, 1:357.

  55. Pettit, “Mark Twain, Unreconstructed Southerner,” 26; Pettit, Mark Twain and the South, 24; Marleau, “Sam Clemens: Steamboat Pilot for the Confederacy,” 69, 78; LM, 246.

  56. Branch, Mark Twain and the Starchy Boys, 36; Bassford, “Mark Twain as a Cub Pilot,” 515; N&J, 2:474; Grimes, Absalom Grimes, 3.

  Chapter 6

  1. Gerber, “Mark Twain’s ‘Private Campaign,’”46. According to Grimes (Absalom Grimes, 4), they traveled aboard the Harry Johnson, but this packet was not launched until 1863.