by Mark Twain
106.23–24 I went on footing the bills . . . instead of the original $30,000] Clemens’s total investment, which he elsewhere estimated to be as much as $170,000, was equivalent to over $3 million in today’s dollars (SLC 1899a; AD, 28 Mar 1906). He finally stopped financing the machine in late February 1891, having failed to raise the necessary $250,000 to buy out Paige. Clemens traded his stock for royalties on future sales, hoping to eventually recover much of his loss. The following year, Paige contracted with the Webster Manufacturing Company in Chicago (Towner K. Webster, principal) to build a new machine, and the Pratt and Whitney prototype was dismantled and moved to that city. The invention continued to attract backers, among them a group of New York brokers who formed the Connecticut Company in 1892 and bought an interest in the Webster Manufacturing Company. In 1893 Henry Huttleston Rogers (the Standard Oil executive who took charge of Clemens’s financial affairs) organized the Paige Compositor Manufacturing Company—later superseded by the Regius Manufacturing Company—which negotiated with Paige, seeking to resolve the claims of the numerous investors and secure Clemens’s interest. The rebuilt machine continued to show promise, and in the fall of 1894 was tested by the Chicago Herald. According to one account, the machine performed well despite delays for repairs, and “delivered more corrected live matter” of the highest “artistic merit” than “any one of the thirty-two Linotype machines which were in operation in the same composing department” (Legros and Grant 1916, 381). But by then the 1890 model of the Linotype machine, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler and based on a simpler and more practical concept, had captured the market. Clemens’s hopes were finally shattered. One of Paige’s patent attorneys later called the machine an “intellectual miracle,” the “greatest thing of the kind that has been accomplished in all of the ages”—but it was too impractical to be a commercial success: with eighteen thousand parts, it was impossible to manufacture in quantity, and too complicated to run long without repairs (Legros and Grant 1916, 381, 391). Rogers persuaded the Linotype Company to buy Paige’s patents, in order to eliminate any possible competition. Paige himself died in poverty in 1917 (25 Feb 1891 to OC, CU-MARK; HHR, 12–20, 25–26, 148 n. 2; Lee 1987, 59–60; N&J3, 546 n. 190; 11 Nov 1894 and 28 Nov 1894 to Rogers, Salm, and 2 Jan 1895 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in HHR, 94–95, 98–100, 115; Scientific American 1901).
106.25–29 Ward tells me . . . Mr. North . . . is to get a royalty until the aggregate is $2,000,000] Henry S. Ward was a New York broker who owned an interest in the typesetter through the Connecticut Company. Charles R. North was a Pratt and Whitney machinist; Paige agreed to pay him “$200 a month out of his salary & $400 to $500 per machine until he shall have received $2,000,000” (HHR, 12, 31–34; Notebook 33, TS p. 8, CU-MARK).
106.31 had his nuts in a steel-trap] This remark alludes to an incident that Clemens actually witnessed, in which an acquaintance “got his Nüsse caught in the steel trap” of a sitz-bath (Fischer 1983, 47–48 n. 85; N&J3, 132, 135–36, 234, 356).
Travel–Scraps I (Source: MS in CU-MARK, written in 1897)
108.26 trunnions] Clemens evidently uses “trunnions” to mean trulls, trollops. A trunnion is a pin or pivot.
110 DIAGRAM OF LONDON] The diagram illustrates Clemens’s remark that London “is fifty villages massed solidly together” (108.40–41). It is reproduced from a London newspaper article that Clemens clipped out and altered in his own hand. For some unexplained reason, he relocated Bow, in East London, to the West End, placing it (absurdly) in the region of Hanover Square.
112.19 Liverpool] No period of time during which Clemens and Osgood (see the note at 112.20) were both in Liverpool has been identified. Possibly Clemens was thinking of 10 September 1872, which they spent “driving about Warwickshire in an open barouche,” but the reference to the Kinsmen club suggests a later date (11 Sept 1872 to OLC, L5, 155; see the note at 113.10).
112.20 James R. Osgood] Clemens’s sometime publisher James Ripley Osgood (1836–92) started out as a clerk with Boston publishers Ticknor and Fields in 1855, later becoming a partner. After Fields retired in 1870, the firm was reorganized as James R. Osgood and Company. Setbacks and mismanagement drove Osgood and Company out of business, but it was reorganized under the same name in 1880, publishing works by William Dean Howells, George Washington Cable, and Walt Whitman, among others. Osgood published three of Clemens’s books: The Prince and the Pauper (1881), The Stolen White Elephant, Etc. (1882), and Life on the Mississippi (1883). The sales of these books disappointed Clemens, but his affection for the man himself was undiminished. Osgood spent his last years in London (Edgar 1986, 341–47; for details of Osgood’s role as Clemens’s publisher, see AD, 21 Feb 1906, note at 372.25–27).
113.10 Kinsmen Club together in London] The Kinsmen, a private social club for artists and performers, was founded in New York in April 1882. It was an informal society; a founding member, drama critic Laurence Hutton, wrote that “there were to be no dues, no fees, no club-house, no constitution, no by-laws, no officers, ’no nothing’ but good fellowship and good times.” At the second meeting, in March 1883, Hutton invited Clemens to join, while Osgood, though he was a businessman and no artist, ebulliently forced his way into membership. A London “chapter” was established in 1883. On both shores the Kinsmen included many of Clemens’s other friends and associates, among them Howells, Warner, Twichell, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Francis D. Millet, Brander Matthews, and Richard Watson Gilder (Hutton 1909, 325–29; Matthews 1917, 232–33).
115.29 the Queen’s approaching Jubilee] On 23 September 1896 Queen Victoria noted in her journal: “To-day is the day on which I have reigned longer, by a day, than any English sovereign.” She requested that celebrations be postponed until her “Diamond Jubilee,” or sixtieth year on the throne, which was celebrated across the British Empire in 1897 (Harlow and Carter 1999, 392; see “A Viennese Procession,” note at 126.9 [2nd of 2]).
116.15 Prince of Wales’s powerful name] Albert Edward, who became King Edward VII in 1901.
116.36 George Müller and his orphanages] George Friedrich Müller (1805–98), a Prussian-born evangelical preacher, settled in Bristol in 1832 and founded the Ashley Down Orphanage. It was remarkable both for the sheer number of orphans housed and educated, and for Müller’s literal interpretation of “the Lord will provide”—the orphanage never solicited donations.
FOUR SKETCHES ABOUT VIENNA (Source: MS in CU-MARK, written in 1898)
[Beauties of the German Language]
118.1 February 3, Vienna. Lectured . . . last night] Clemens lectured in Vienna on 1 February, as he recorded in his notebook: “Tuesday, Feb. 1, ’98. Lectured in Vienna for a public charity. Several rows of seats were $4 apiece. Still, there was far from room enough in the hall for all that applied for tickets” (Notebook 40, TS p. 8, CU-MARK). The lecture was favorably reviewed the following day in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse (“Mark Twain als Erzähler,” 2 Feb 1898, 7).
[Comment on Tautology and Grammar]
119.22 May 6. * * *] A series of asterisks was Clemens’s typical signal that he had omitted some portion of text (see “Special Sorts” in the “Guide to Editorial Practice,” L6, 703–4).
119.29–30 Mr. Gladstone] The English statesman William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98) served four times as prime minister of the United Kingdom.
120.29–30 no death before the case of Cornelius Lean . . . special rules] Cornelius Lean, an employee of the London firm of Bryant and May, manufacturers of matches, died in late April 1898 of necrosis of the jaw, the result of exposure to white phosphorus. As a result of investigations into the deaths of Lean and others, the firm was found to be in violation of special rules passed between 1891 and 1895 requiring that all cases of the disease be reported (Satre 1982, 8–9, 19–24).
[A Group of Servants]
120.33 June 4, Kaltenleutgeben] The Clemens family spent the summer of 1898, from late May to mid-October, in Kaltenleutgeben, staying in “a furnished villa at the end of a water-cure village,
& Mrs. Clemens & Jean will try the treatment. It is ½ to ¾ of an hour from Vienna by train. The villa is most pleasantly situated, with a dense pine wood bordering immediately on its back-garden, & with wooded hills all about” (13 May 1898 to Rogers, Salm, in HHR, 345–46; Notebook 40, TS p. 48, CU-MARK).
121.21 Wuthering Heights] It is not clear why Clemens appropriated the name of Emily Brontë’s classic novel (1847) for the garrulous older maid; he may have had in mind the narrator of the story, Ellen (Nelly) Dean, a household servant. According to one scholar, the maid’s “actual name sounded something like” the sobriquet (Dolmetsch 1992, 220; Dolmetsch provides no evidence to support his assertion).
122.10 gnädige Frau] “Madam.”
122.29 Heilige Mutter Gottes!] “Holy mother of God!”
122.31 Zu befehl] “At your command”—that is, an emphatic assent.
123.36 Ruhig!] “Silence!”
123.40 dienstman] Anglicized form of dienstmann: a man who performs miscellaneous tasks for a small fee (Hawthorne 1876, 290–93).
[A Viennese Procession]
124.17 Minister] Charlemagne Tower (1848–1923), the U.S. minister at Vienna from 1897–99, was an acquaintance of Clemens’s (see AD, 22 Aug 1907).
125.27 Kaiser Rudolph] Either Rudolf I (1218–91), founder of the house of Hapsburg, who brought Austria under his rule as king of Germany; or Rudolf II of Austria (1552–1612), an educated and intelligent ruler who suffered from mental illness.
126.9 Andreas Hofer’s] Hofer (1767–1810), a Tyrolean innkeeper, led a rebellion against Napoleon in 1809. Ultimately captured and executed, he was considered an Austrian martyr.
126.11 Directory] The Executive Directory, a body of five men, held power in France from 1795 to 1799. During this regime, the next-to-last period of the French Revolution, Napoleon defeated the Austrians and their allies.
126.19 India in ’96] Clemens saw a religious procession in Jaipur in March 1896 and described it in chapter 60 of Following the Equator (1897): “For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness, and sustained interest and fascination, it was the most satisfying show I had ever seen.”
126.19 Queen’s Record procession] Queen Victoria’s Record Reign and Diamond Jubilee were celebrated in 1897 by numerous events, including a procession to St. Paul’s Cathedral on 22 June. A short service of thanksgiving was held there before the queen returned to Buckingham Palace. She later noted in her journal, “No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given me, passing through those six miles of streets.” Clemens cabled three reports of the occasion to the Hearst newspapers (Hibbert 2001, 457–59; SLC 1897d, 1897e, 1897f).
My Debut as a Literary Person (Sources: MS in CtY-BR, written in 1898; Century Magazine, November 1899 [SLC 1899d])
127.2–3 I had already published one little thing (“The Jumping Frog,”) in an eastern paper] “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” appeared in the New York Saturday Press of 18 November 1865. Clemens, who was living in San Francisco at that time, soon learned that his story was being praised and widely reprinted in the eastern press. In early 1867 he included it in his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches, published in May (ET&S2, 262–72; 20 Jan 1866 to JLC and PAM, LI, 327–28, 330 n. 3).
128.5 I selected Harper’s Monthly] Founded in 1850, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine had built its reputation by serializing the novels of famous British writers such as Dickens and Thackeray, later adding American contributions in fiction, travel, current events, and poetry. By 1866 it was “so very successful that we may well consider it an index to the literary culture and general character of the nation” (Mott 1938, 383–405).
128.5–12 I signed it “MARK TWAIN,” . . . they put it Mike Swain or MacSwain] In Nevada Territory Clemens began signing his work “Mark Twain” in early February 1863, and his pseudonym gained wider recognition with the publication and frequent reprinting of the “Jumping Frog” tale (16 Feb 1863 to JLC and PAM, L1, 245–46 n. 1). “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat” appeared unsigned, however, in the December 1866 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (SLC 1866c), as did most of the articles by other contributors. The table of contents for volume 34 (which the December issue was part of) did not appear until May 1867; it attributed Clemens’s article to “Mark Swain.”
128.15 burning ofthe clipper ship Hornet on the line, May 3d, 1866] The Hornet left New York, bound for San Francisco, on 15 January 1866. It burned and sank in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, about fifteen hundred miles off the coast of South America (MTH, 102).
128.20–21 New Englander of the best sea-going stock . . . Captain Josiah Mitchell] Josiah Angier Mitchell (1812?–76) of Freeport, Maine, was the first in his family to “make the sea his profession—as the result of a pleasant trip to Havana for his health when a boy” (MTH, 107–8 n. 5).
128.22–24 was in the Islands to write letters for the “weekly edition” . . . well-beloved men] The owners of the Sacramento Union—James Anthony, Paul Morrill, and Henry W. Larkin—engaged Clemens to write a series of letters from the Sandwich Islands. He left San Francisco on 7 March 1866 in the steamer Ajax, arriving in Honolulu eleven days later. Some details of Clemens’s arrangement with the Union are unclear. He told his mother and sister he would remain in the islands “a month” and write “twenty or thirty letters” for the paper; in the event he remained four months and wrote twenty-five letters, which appeared in both the daily and weekly editions (RI 1993, 706–7; 5 Mar 1866 to JLC and PAM, L1, 333–34; MTH, 93, 256).
128.28–29 I was laid up in my room] Clemens was suffering from saddle boils (mentioned in “Notes on ‘Innocents Abroad’ ”).
128.30–32 his Excellency Anson Burlingame . . . good work for the United States] Anson Burlingame (1820–70) was a founder of the Republican Party and a Republican congressman from Massachusetts (1855–61). In 1861 he was appointed U.S. minister resident to China, and until the end of his term in 1867 he promoted diplomacy between China and the Western powers. In June 1866 he was en route to China after a leave of absence in the United States. When he died in 1870, Clemens praised him as a man who acted “in the broad interest of the world, instead of selfishly seeking to acquire advantages for his own country alone” (SLC 1870a; 21 June 1866 to JLC and PAM, L1, 345–46 n. 5; see also AD, 20 Feb 1906).
129.3–4 my complete report ... telegraphed to the New York papers. By Mr. Cash] Clemens mentioned the Hornet survivors briefly in a letter to the Sacramento Union dated 22 June, before they had traveled to Honolulu from their landing site on the island of Hawaii. His full report, datelined 25 June, was written after he had interviewed the survivors—primarily the third mate, John S. Thomas. It was carried to San Francisco on the schooner Milton Badger and appeared on the front page of the Sacramento Daily Union on 19 July 1866, under the headline “Burning of the Clipper Ship Hornet at Sea.” No information has been found about republication of the article in New York newspapers, or about “Mr. Cash” (SLC 1866b; SLC 1866c; MTH, 109–10; 27 June 1866 to JLC and PAM, L1, 348 n. 1).
129.17–18 Within a fortnight the most of them took ship ... I went in the same ship] The Hornet’s longboat landed on 15 June 1866; Clemens and the survivors departed Honolulu on the clipper Smyrniote on 19 July, more than a month later (MTH, 107 n. 5; 19 July 1866 to Damon, L1, 349 n. 2).
129.20–22 Samuel Ferguson ... Henry Ferguson ... a professor there] Samuel Ferguson (1837–66) and Henry Ferguson (1848–1917) were the sons of a New York businessman and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. Henry resumed his studies at Trinity College, Hartford, graduated in 1868, and was ordained an Episcopal priest. From 1883 to 1906 he held a professorship in history and political science at the college. Although Clemens and Henry Ferguson both lived in Hartford in the 1880s they seem not to have been in contact until Clemens published “My Debut as a Literary Person” in 1899 (Hartford Courant: “Death of a Trinity College Graduate,” 4 Oct 1866, 8; “Prof. Ferguson Dies at His Home,” 31 Ma
r 1917, 9). Clemens’s use of the Fergusons’ diaries proved somewhat troublesome. In early October 1899, shortly before the article appeared, Clemens wrote to Gilder, “Can’t you send to Professor Henry Ferguson, Trinity College, Hartford, & get him to photograph a page or two of Samuel Ferguson’s Diary for reproduction?” (Oct 1899 to Gilder, TxU-Hu). Ferguson declined. When the article was published Ferguson wrote to Clemens, objecting to the use of the diaries, and Clemens offered to withdraw the piece from his forthcoming collection, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (SLC 1900b). Ferguson, somewhat mollified, asked that future reprintings disguise the real names of the crewmen, that he himself be less “distinctly identified,” and that his brother Samuel’s ailment be called “lung fever” (pneumonia) instead of “consumption” (tuberculosis) (Ferguson to SLC, 10 Nov 1899, CtY-BR, and 8 Dec 1899, CU-MARK; 20 Nov 1899 to Ferguson and 21 Dec 1899 to Ferguson, CtY-BR). Clemens honored these requests; he also softened the language about mutiny, insanity, and cannibalism. His revisions were reflected in the texts published in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and in a later reprinting, My Début as a Literary Person with Other Essays and Stories (SLC 1903a).
129.39 There was a cry of fire ... the vessel’s hours were numbered] The Hornet’s cargo was highly inflammable: it included 2,400 cases of kerosene and 6,200 boxes of candles (“Burning of the Ship Hornet,” New York Times, 22 Aug 1866, 2).