Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  And the chambermaid said, “I don’t.”

  It reminds me of Bill Nye, poor fellow,—that real humorist, that gentle good soul. Well, he is dead. Peace to his ashes. He was the baldest human being I ever saw. His whole skull was brilliantly shining. It was like a dome with the sun flashing upon it. He had hardly even a fringe of hair. Once somebody admitted astonishment at his extraordinary baldness.

  “Oh” he said “it is nothing. You ought to see my brother. One day he fell overboard from a ferry-boat and when he came up a woman’s voice broke high over the tumult of frightened and anxious exclamations and said, ‘You shameless thing! And ladies present! Go down and come up the other way.’”

  About twenty-five years ago—along there somewhere—I suggested to Orion that he write an autobiography. I asked him to try to tell the straight truth in it; to refrain from exhibiting himself in creditable attitudes exclusively, and to honorably set down all the incidents of his life which he had found interesting to him, including those which were burned into his memory because he was ashamed of them. I said that this had never been done, and that if he could do it his autobiography would be a most valuable piece of literature. I said I was offering him a job which I could not duplicate in my own case, but I would cherish the hope that he might succeed with it. I recognize now that I was trying to saddle upon him an impossibility. I have been dictating this autobiography of mine daily for three months; I have thought of fifteen hundred or two thousand incidents in my life which I am ashamed of, but I have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet. I think that that stock will still be complete and unimpaired when I finish these memoirs, if I ever finish them. I believe that if I should put in all or any of those incidents I should be sure to strike them out when I came to revise this book.

  Orion wrote his autobiography and sent it to me. But great was my disappointment; and my vexation, too. In it he was constantly making a hero of himself, exactly as I should have done and am doing now, and he was constantly forgetting to put in the episodes which placed him in an unheroic light. I knew several incidents of his life which were distinctly and painfully unheroic, but when I came across them in his autobiography they had changed color. They had turned themselves inside out, and were things to be intemperately proud of. In my dissatisfaction I destroyed a considerable part of that autobiography. But in what remains Miss Lyon has discovered passages which she finds interesting, and I shall quote from them here and there and now and then, as I go along.

  While we were living in Vienna in 1898 a cablegram came from Keokuk announcing Orion’s death. He was seventy-two years old. He had gone down to the kitchen in the early hours of a bitter December morning; he had built the fire, and had then sat down at a table to write something, and there he died, with the pencil in his hand and resting against the paper in the middle of an unfinished word—an indication that his release from the captivity of a long and troubled and pathetic and unprofitable life was mercifully swift and painless.

  Monday, April 9, 1906

  Letter from French girl enclosing cable about “Huck Finn”—The Juggernaut Club—Letter from Librarian of Brooklyn Public Library in regard to “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”—Mr. Clemens’s reply—The deluge of reporters trying to discover contents of that letter.

  This morning’s mail brings me from France a letter from a French friend of mine, enclosing this New York cablegram.

  MARK TWAIN INTERDIT

  NEW-YORK, 27 mars. (Par dépêche de notre correspondant particulier.)—Les directeurs de la bibliothèque de Brooklyn ont mis les deux derniers livres de Mark Twain à l’index pour les enfants au-dessous de quinze ans, les considérant comme malsains.

  Le célèbre humoriste a écrit à des fonctionnaires une lettre pleine d’esprit et de sarcasme. Ces messieurs se refusent à la publier, sous le prétexte qu’ils n’ont pas l’autorisation de l’auteur de le faire.

  The letter is from a French girl who lives at St. Dié, in Joan of Arc’s region. I have never seen this French girl, but she wrote me about five years ago and since then we have exchanged friendly letters three or four times a year. She signs herself Hélène Picard, French Member. “French Member” will be better understood after I shall have explained it. The reference is to the Juggernaut Club. I invented the Juggernaut Club. I am the only male member of it. No other person of my sex is eligible to membership. My humble title is Chief Servant of the Juggernaut Club—but it is a good deal of a deception. I am the real boss. I am the power behind the throne, on the throne, and in front of it, and no combination of votes is worth anything against mine. The ballot is secret, anyway. Nobody knows who votes for who, except myself. It is great fun. I have the constitution and by-laws somewhere, but I cannot put my hand on that document just now. There are several members, and I make these several members think there are a couple of dozen in the club. One of the strictest of the rules is that there shall be but one member in a country, never two. That member represents that country until she dies. She cannot resign, and she cannot be turned out. This French girl highly values her great and exclusive position as representative of France, and usually she does not sign herself Member for France, but simply signs no name at all, but just signs “France.” Among the membership is a reigning queen, a queen who is in very good standing, too, or she couldn’t stay in this club. I am the only person connected with the club who knows the name or residence of any other member of the club. My wife knew the names and countries of the membership, but that was because she and I were really one person and there were no secrets. Sometimes I was that person, sometimes she was that person. Sometimes it took both of us together to constitute that person. When I was going to appoint the American member I consulted her, and although she was not a member and had not the slightest authority in the club, she arbitrarily vetoed that girl and appointed another one in her stead. This was mutiny. This was insubordination. This was usurpation, but it had to stand, and it did.

  The reason I named the club after Juggernaut, was, because I held that god in most sincere admiration and reverence, and I wanted to do him honor. He has always been misrepresented in Christian countries. When I was a Sunday-school boy we were taught to abhor him as being a sort of malignant and bloody monster, whereas if there is a better god anywhere than Juggernaut I have not heard of him. All the movements of his spirit are kind, gentle, merciful, beautiful, lovable. His temple is visited by pilgrims of all ranks, from one end of India to the other, and when they step their feet over the threshold of his temple, all caste, all nobility, all royalty, all inequalities, all rank, station, wealth, cease to exist for the time being—utterly cease, and have no existence. The street-sweeper and the sovereign prince, the outcast, the mendicant, and the millionaire all stand upon the one level, and may touch each other and may eat from the same dish and drink from the same cup without defilement. For the time being, those pilgrims constitute a perfect democracy, the only perfect democracy that has ever existed in the earth or ever will exist in it. It would improve the other gods to go to school to Juggernaut. I have never seen any subordinate member of the club except the American one.

  “France” writes good English. She closes her letter with this paragraph:

  Something in a newspaper that I read this morning has surprised me very much. I have cut it out because, often, these informations are forged and, if this is the case, the slip of paper will be my excuse. Please, allow me to smile, my dear unseen Friend! I cannot imagine for a minute that you have been very sorry about it.—In France, such a measure would have for immediate result to make every one in the country buy these books, and I—for one,—am going to get them as soon as I go through Paris, perfectly sure that I’ll find them as wholesome as all you have written. I know your pen well. I know it has never been dipped in anything but clean, clear ink.

  I must go back now to that French cablegram. Its information is not exactly correct, but it is near enough. “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” are not recent b
ooks. “Tom” is more than thirty years old. The other book has been in existence twenty-one years. When “Huck” appeared, twenty-one years ago, the public library of Concord, Massachusetts, flung him out indignantly, partly because he was a liar and partly because after deep meditation and careful deliberation he made up his mind on a difficult point, and said that if he’d got to betray Jim or go to hell, he would go to hell—which was profanity, and those Concord purists couldn’t stand it.

  After this disaster, “Huck” was left in peace for sixteen or seventeen years. Then the public library of Denver flung him out. He had no similar trouble until four or five months ago—that is to say, last November. At that time I received the following letter.

  SHEEPSHEAD BAY BRANCH

  BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY

  1657 SHORE ROAD

  BROOKLYN-NEW YORK, Nov. 19th, ’05.

  Dear Sir,

  I happened to be present the other day at a meeting of the children’s librarians of the Brooklyn Public Library. In the course of the meeting it was stated that copies of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” were to be found in some of the children’s rooms of the system. The Sup’t of the Children’s Dep’t—a conscientious and enthusiastic young woman—was greatly shocked to hear this, and at once ordered that they be transferred to the adults’ department. Upon this I shamefacedly confessed to having read Huckleberry Finn aloud to my defenceless blind people, without regard to their age, color, or previous condition of servitude. I also reminded them of Brander Matthews’s opinion of the book, and stated the fact that I knew it almost by heart, having got more pleasure from it than from any book I have ever read, and reading is the greatest pleasure I have in life. My warm defence elicited some further discussion and criticism, from which I gathered that the prevailing opinion of Huck was that he was a deceitful boy who said “sweat” when he should have said “perspiration.” The upshot of the matter was that there is to be further consideration of these books at a meeting early in January which I am especially invited to attend. Seeing you the other night at the performance of “Peter Pan” the thought came to me that you (who know Huck as well as I—you can’t know him better or love him more—) might be willing to give me a word or two to say in witness of his good character tho he “warn’t no more quality than a mud cat.”

  I would ask as a favor that you regard this communication as confidential, whether you find time to reply to it or not; for I am loath for obvious reasons to bring the institution from which I draw my salary into ridicule, contempt or reproach.

  Yours very respectfully,

  Asa Don Dickinson.

  (In charge Department for the Blind

  and Sheepshead Bay Branch, Brooklyn Public Library.)

  That was a very private letter. I didn’t know the author of it, but I thought I perceived that he was a safe man, and that I could venture to write a pretty private letter in return and trust that he would not allow its dreadful contents to leak out and get into the newspapers. I wrote him on the 21st.

  21 Fifth Ave.

  Nov. 21, 1905.

  Dear Sir:

  I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave. Ask that young lady—she will tell you so.

  Most honestly do I wish I could say a softening word or two in defence of Huck’s character, since you wish it, but really in my opinion it is no better than those of Solomon, David, Satan, and the rest of the sacred brotherhood.

  If there is an Unexpurgated in the Children’s Department, won’t you please help that young woman remove Huck and Tom from that questionable companionship?

  Sincerely yours—

  (Signed) S. L. Clemens.

  I shall not show your letter to any one—it is safe with me.

  A couple of days later I received this handsome rejoinder in return.

  SHEEPSHEAD BAY BRANCH

  BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY

  1657 SHORE ROAD

  BROOKLYN-NEW YORK, Nov. 23rd, ’05.

  Dear Sir,

  Your letter rec’d. I am surprised to hear that you think Huck and Tom would have an unwholesome effect on boys and girls. But relieved to hear that you would not place them in the same category with many of the scriptural reprobates. I know of one boy who made the acquaintance of Huck in 1884, at the age of eight, and who has known him intimately ever since, and I can assure you he is not an atom the worse for the 20 years’ companionship. On the contrary he will always feel grateful to Huck’s father—I don’t mean Pap—for the many hours spent with him and Jim, when sickness and sorrow were forgotten.

  Huckleberry Finn was the first book I selected to read to my blind (for selfish reasons I am afraid), and the amount of innocent enjoyment it gave them, has never been equalled by anything I have since read.

  Thanking you for the almost unhoped for courtesy of your reply, I am

  Yours very respectfully,

  Asa Don Dickinson.

  Four months drifted tranquilly by. Then there was music! There came a freshet of newspaper reporters and they besieged poor Miss Lyon all day. Of course I was in bed. I am always in bed. She barred the stairs against them. They were bound to see me, if only for a moment, but none of them got by her guard. They said a report had sprung up that I had written a letter some months before to the Brooklyn Public Library; that according to that report the letter was pungent and valuable, and they wanted a copy of it. They said the head officials of the Brooklyn Library declared that they had never seen the letter and that they had never heard of it until the reporters came and asked for it. I judged by this that my man—who was not in the head library, but in a branch of it—was keeping his secret all right, and I believed he could be trusted to continue to keep that secret, for his own sake as well as mine. That letter would be a bombshell for me if it got out—but it would hoist him, too. So I felt pretty confident that for his own sake, if for no other, he would protect me.

  Miss Lyon had a hard day of it, but I had a most enjoyable one. She never allowed any reporter to get an idea of the nature of the letter; she smoothed all those young fellows down, in her tactful and fascinating and diplomatic way, and sent them away mightily pleased with her, but empty. Each time that she repulsed an enemy she came up stairs, told me all about it and what the enemy had said, and how ingeniously he had pleaded, and we had very good times together. Once she had three of these persuasive envoys on her hands at once—but no matter. She beat the whole battery and they got nothing.

  They renewed the assault next day, but I told her to never mind—human nature would win the victory for us. There would be an earthquake somewhere, or a municipal upheaval here, or a threat of war in Europe—something would be sure to happen in the way of a big excitement that would call the boys away from No. 21 Fifth Avenue for twenty-four hours, and that would answer every purpose; they wouldn’t think of that letter again, and we should have peace.

  I knew the reporters would get on the right track very soon, so I wrote Mr. Dickinson and warned him to keep his mouth hermetically sealed. I told him to be wise and wary. His answer bears date March 28th.

  BAY RIDGE BRANCH

  BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY

  73D STREET AND SECOND AVENUE

  TELEPHONE No. 338 BAY RIDGE

  BROOKLYN-NEW YORK, Mar. 28, ’06.

  Dear Mr. Clemens,

  Your letter of the 26th inst. rec’d this moment. As I have now been transferred to the above address, it has been a long time reaching me.

  I have tried to be wary and wise and am very grateful to you
for your reticence. The poor old B.P.L. has achieved some very undesirable notoriety. I thought my head was coming off when I heard from my chief on the telephone night before last. But yesterday he began to be amused, I think, at the tea pot tempest.

  Last night I reached home at 11.30 and found a Herald man sitting on the steps, leaning his head against the door post. He had been there since 7.30 and said he would cheerfully sit there till morning if I would give him the least hint of the letter’s contents. But I was wise and wary.

  At the January meeting it was decided not to place Huck and Tom in the Children’s rooms along with “Little Nellie’s Silver Mine” and “Dotty Dimple at Home.” But the books have not been “restricted” in any sense whatever. They are placed on open shelves among the adult fiction, and any child is free to read adult fiction if he chooses.

  I am looking forward with great eagerness to seeing and hearing you tomorrow night at the Waldorf. As I have a wild scheme for a national library for the blind, they have been generous enough to place a couple of boxes at my disposal. The “young lady” whom you mentioned in your letter—the Sup’t of the Children’s Dep’t—and several other B.P.L.’s, I hope will be present.