Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  118.5–7 Charles H. Webb; also Prentice Mulford . . . Charles Warren Stoddard] For Webb see the Autobiographical Dictation of 21 May, note at 46.23–25; for Mulford and Stoddard see AutoMT1, 509–10 n. 150.2–4, 516 n. 161.27–30. Hastings has not been identified.

  118.7–9 Ambrose Bierce, who is still writing acceptably for the magazines . . . Golden Era, perhaps] In 1905–6 Bierce wrote primarily for the New York American and Cosmopolitan magazine, to which he contributed a column called “The Passing Show.” He was not in San Francisco in 1864 (he was fighting in the Union army), nor did he publish anything in the Golden Era until July 1868. Clemens is probably recalling his own last visit to the West Coast, in the spring and early summer of 1868: in March of that year, Bierce began contributing articles regularly to the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser, and he later stated that he first met Clemens in the offices of that newspaper (Morris 1995, 117, 238–40; Joshi and Schultz 1999, 75–76, 238–51; AutoMT1, 509–10 n. 150.2–4).

  118.13–20 Harte had arrived in California . . . campers were satisfied with it and adopted it] Harte arrived in California in 1854—when he was seventeen—to join his mother, who had recently remarried. He is not known to have been in Yreka, which is in Siskiyou County. It is likely that Clemens confused “Yreka” with “Eureka” (see the note at 118.21–23). He makes the same error in the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907. “Yreka” is thought to derive from a Native American name for Mount Shasta (George R. Stewart 1931, 29–30; Gudde 1962, 353).

  118.21–23 Harte taught school . . . Jackass Gulch (where I tarried, some years later, during three months)] In the summer of 1857 Harte left San Francisco to join his married sister in Union (or Uniontown, now Arcata), on the coast near Eureka in Humboldt County. He taught school, and then in December 1858 was hired as a printer’s assistant on the town’s newspaper, the Northern Californian. His sojourn at Jackass Hill, near the mining town of Jackass Gulch in Tuolumne County, predated his time in Uniontown: according to Jim Gillis, Harte stayed with him briefly in December 1855 in his cabin there. Clemens visited the area several years later, in the winter of 1864–65. He describes some of his experiences in the Autobiographical Dictations of 23 January and 4 February 1907 (George R. Stewart 1931, 52–53, 75–88; Gudde 1962, 13; O’Connor 1966, 32; Gillis 1930, 178–81; AutoMT1, 552–53 n. 261.21–24).

  118.30–31 quaint dialect of the miner . . . until Harte invented it] Clemens also criticized Harte’s unauthentic dialect in chapter 7 of Is Shakespeare Dead?

  I know the argot of the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing by listening—like Shakespeare—I mean the Stratford one—not by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse. (SLC 1909c, 74–75)

  Clemens had been sharply dismissive of Harte’s use of dialect since at least 1873 (see N&J1, 553). He repeated his criticism in various (undated) marginalia on Harte’s works. For example, in his own copy of The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches he wrote, “Miggles is an excellent sketch. The girl’s ‘dialect’ is not good, but it has at least one saving feature—it is difficult to explain why it isn’t good, or point out the precise errors. It has a grand general badness” (Harte 1870a, 55; Clemens’s marginalia in this volume are published in Booth 1954).

  118.32–33 By and by he . . . got work in the Golden Era office] In February 1860, while substituting for the absent editor of the Northern Californian, Harte published an article condemning a local massacre of Native American women and children. He was allegedly forced to leave Uniontown, and returned to San Francisco. He had previously published some writings—both verse and prose—in the Golden Era in 1857–58, and he soon joined the staff as a compositor (O’Connor 1966, 42–47; Scharnhorst 1995, 3–4).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 14 June 1906

  118.36–37 Joe Lawrence] See AutoMT1, 509–10 n. 150.2–4.

  119.32–36 he came East five years later, in 1870, to take the editorship . . . lamented absence] Harte had edited the highly successful Overland Monthly since 1868, and his publications in that journal had brought him instant celebrity (see the note at 120.6–17). Eager to establish his reputation in the East, he left San Francisco for Boston on 2 February 1871. In Chicago he was offered a position as editor and part owner of the newly conceived Lakeside Monthly. (The magazine was a relaunch of the Western Monthly, founded in 1869; it was fairly successful until the financial panic of 1873.) But he snubbed the backers of the new enterprise by failing to show up at a banquet in his honor and continued east. At the time, Clemens described Harte’s journey as “a perfect torchlight procession of eclat & homage. All the cities are fussing about which shall secure him for a citizen” (3 Mar 1871 to Riley, L4, 338, 339 n. 6; Mott 1938b, 404–6, 413–16).

  119.37–38 crossed the ocean to be Consul, first at Crefeld, in Germany, and afterwards in Glasgow] In mid-1877 Clemens heard that President Hayes was likely to award Harte a diplomatic post. He wrote to Howells:

  Three or four times lately I have read items to the effect that Bret Harte is trying to get a Consulship. To-day’s item says he is to have one.

  Now if I knew the President, I would venture to write him, for he has said that in the matter of information about applicants for office he values the testimony of private citizens as well as that of Members of Congress.

  You do know him; & I think your citizenship lays the duty upon you of doing what you can to prevent the disgrace of literature & the country which would be the infallible result of the appointment of Bret Harte to any responsible post. Wherever he goes his wake is tumultuous with swindled grocers, & with defrauded innocents who have loaned him money. He never pays a debt but by the squeezing of the law. He borrows from all new acquaintances, & repays none. His oath is worth little, his promise nothing at all. He can lie faster than he can drivel false pathos. He is always steeped in whisky & brandy; he gets up in the night to drink it cold. No man who has ever known him, respects him. Harte is a viler character than Geo. Butler, for he lacks Butler’s pluck & spirit.

  You know that I have befriended this creature for seven years. I am even capable of doing it still—while he stays at home. But I don’t want to see him sent to foreign parts to carry on his depredations. He told me many months ago that he was to have a consulship under Mr. Tilden, but I gave myself no concern about the matter, taking it as a mere after-breakfast lie to whet up his talent for the day’s villainies; & besides, I judged that his character was so well known that he would not be able to succeed in his nefarious design. But these newspaper items have an alarming look. Come, now, Howells, do a stroke for the honor of the guild. Put me under oath if you will. (21 June 1877 to Howells [1st], Letters 1876–1880)

  Later the same day he withdrew his request, explaining that he had needed to “have an outlet” for his feelings. He knew Howells would find his request “disagreeable,” because his wife was President Hayes’s cousin. Howells nevertheless forwarded the letters to Hayes (21 June 1877 to Howells [2nd], Letters 1876–1880; MTHL, 1:186). In April 1878 Howells wrote an extremely candid letter about Harte to the president:

  I am reluctant to say anything about the matter you refer to me, but I will do so at your request. Personally, I have a great affection for the man, and personally I know nothing to his disadvantage. He spent a week with us at Cambridge when he first came East, and we all liked him. He was lax about appointments, but that is a common fault. After he went away, he began to contract debts, and was arrested for debt in Boston. (I saw this.) He is notorious for borrowing and was notorious for drinking. This is report. He never borrowed of me, nor drank more than I, (in my presence) and yesterday I saw his doctor who says his habits are good, now; I have heard the same thing from others. From what I hear he is really making an effort to reform. It wou
ld be a godsend to him, if he could get such a place; for he is poor, and he writes with difficulty and very little. He has had the worst reputation as regards punctuality, solvency and sobriety; but he has had a terrible lesson in falling from the highest prosperity to the lowest adversity in literature, and—you are good enough judge of men to know whether he will profit by it or not.

  Personally, I should be glad of his appointment, and I should have great hopes of him—and fears. It would be easy to recall him, if he misbehaved, and a hint of such a fate would be useful to him.

  —I must beg that you will not show this letter to anyone whatever, but will kindly return it to me at Cambridge. (Howells 1979, 194–95)

  Harte was appointed in May as “commercial agent” (consul) at Crefeld (near Düsseldorf), and he departed for his post on 27 June (“Departures for Europe,” New York Times, 27 June 1878, 3). Upon hearing the news, Clemens wrote Howells that Harte was “a sot, a sponge, a coward,” and opined that the president had “simply pocketed his own ball” (27 June 1878 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880). Harte disliked Germany, and remained in Crefeld only two years before receiving a transfer to Glasgow, where he served as consul from 1880 to 1885.

  119.39–40 When he died, in London . . . twenty-six years] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907, notes at 417.24–27 and 422.4–7.

  120.6–17 he had written “The Heathen Chinee” for amusement . . . finer glory of “The Luck of Roaring Camp,”] The Overland Monthly was founded in 1868 by Anton Roman, a San Francisco bookseller and publisher, to replace the defunct Californian. Harte, its chief editor and a major contributor, published his “Luck of Roaring Camp” in the second issue, in August (Harte 1868). This tale of California miners was received without enthusiasm in the West, but its startling popularity in the East ensured the journal’s success. In his own copy of The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches Clemens noted, “This is Bret’s very best sketch, & most finished—is nearly blemishless” (Harte 1870a, 18). Clemens misremembers the publication dates of the two sketches: Harte’s best-known dialect poem, “Plain Language from Truthful James” (better known as “The Heathen Chinee”), followed “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” appearing in the Overland Monthly in September 1870 (Harte 1870c; he made the same error in a letter to Harper’s Weekly dated 5 Oct 1905, RPB-JH). Although Harte himself allegedly considered it “trash” and “the worst poem I ever wrote,” it brought him immediate fame and was republished in countless journals and anthologies. Clemens later consented, reluctantly, to include it in Mark Twain’s Library of Humor (1888). In March 1882 he wrote to Howells:

  I am at work upon Bret Harte, but am not enjoying it. He is the worst literary shoe-maker, I know. He is as blind as a bat. He never sees anything correctly, except Californian scenery. He is as slovenly as Thackeray, and as dull as Charles Lamb. The things which you and Clark have marked, are plenty good enough in their way, but to my jaundiced eye, they do seem to be lamentably barren of humor. Still I think we want some funereal rot in the book as a foil. (23 Mar 1882 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL, 1:396)

  The Library of Humor included three additional Harte selections: “A Jersey Centenarian,” “A Sleeping-Car Experience,” and “The Society on the Stanislaus” (SLC 1888, 89–92, 352–58, 642–48, 679–80; Scharnhorst 2000a, 36–43; for Mark Twain’s Library of Humor see AD, 2 June 1906, note at 77.20–22).

  120.17–22 “Tennessee’s Partner,” . . . “Gabriel Conroy,”] “Tennessee’s Partner” was published in the Overland Monthly in October 1869 and collected in The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches. In his copy of the book Clemens commented, “In this sketch the ‘dialect’ is much better done than is usual with Harte; but the gambling slang introduces ‘bowers’ into poker, where they do not belong.” In addition, he noted that it was “much more suggestive of Dickens & an English atmosphere than ‘Pike County’” (Harte 1869b, 1870a, 62, 71). For Gabriel Conroy see the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907 and the notes at 421.16–22 and 421.35–40.

  120.38–41 undertook to give all the product of its brain . . . spent the money before the year was out] Harte wrote to James Osgood, publisher (with James T. Fields) of the Atlantic Monthly and Every Saturday, on 6 March 1871: “I accept your offer of $10,000 for the exclusive publication of my poems and sketches (not to be less than 12 in no.) in your periodicals for the space of one year commencing Mar. 1st 1871” (CU-BANC, in Harte 1997, 48). This generous fee was said to be the largest in the history of any American magazine. It took Harte a year and a half to fulfill his contract, but he had contributed twelve tales and poems to both publications by September 1872. They were not up to the standard of his earlier work, however, and even he acknowledged that at least one was “poor stuff” (Harte 1997, 61–62; O’Connor 1966, 145–46; Scharnhorst 2000a, 77–87; Scharnhorst 1995, 48–51, 132–34).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 18 June 1906

  122.6–10 and not to strangers, but to personal friends of mine … Mrs Williams] On the day of this dictation Isabel Lyon noted in her journal: “In an old sack of letters sent to SLC from Keokuk about 5 years ago he unearthed a batch of 5 letters this morning which are a romance & a tragedy. Today he dictated in the house & his topic was the 5 letters and their tragedy, a dictation to be published 500 years hence” (Lyon 1906, entry for 18 June). Two of the characters figuring in the drama that unfolds in the correspondence below were not “strangers,” as Clemens claims: “Mrs Williams” is a pseudonym for Mollie Clemens, the wife of Clemens’s brother Orion, who is referred to here as “Mr. W.” Orion and Mollie were both dead, but even so, the opinion of her that Clemens admits to here is clearly too scornful for public expression. For example, at one point he says, “I feel disrespectfully toward that machine-made Christian who writes the second one. I think that in her heart she turned the friendless refugee and the baby into the street in the raw March weather” (126.37–40). (Clemens was momentarily confused. Although Mollie was the second in his cast of characters—“No. 2 is evidently elderly, and apparently has some education” [121.36–37]—she actually wrote the fourth letter. The first two were written by the same woman, Mrs. Griffiths.) Clemens usually carried out his self-censorship when revising the typescripts of his dictations. In this instance, however, he asked Lyon to alter the letter manuscripts even before they were transcribed, substituting “Williams” and “Detroit” for every mention of “Clemens” and “Keokuk.” When he planned to publish the dictation in the North American Review (it never appeared there), he disguised the other names and cities. In the present text, the suppression of “Clemens” and “Keokuk” is accepted, but the other names are left as in the original manuscripts, since the second round of revision was carried out strictly for contemporary publication (for details see the Textual Commentary at MTPO). The letter manuscripts have been transcribed verbatim, with no correction of spelling or punctuation.

  127.27–28 I shall finish with Bret Harte by and by] Clemens does not return to the subject of Harte until the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907.

  127.29–40 he reminds me of God . . . only really important thing in it] On the typescript of the present dictation, Clemens noted that his remarks about God on the “last 2 pages must be postponed to the edition of A.D. 2406.”

  Autobiographical Dictation, 19 June 1906

  128.3–4 Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactness] On 17 June Clemens wrote to Howells,

  To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs & assigns burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D.—which I judge they won’t. There’ll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4 years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead pals. You are invited. (NN-BGC, in MTHL, 2:810–12)

  On 18 June he began to dictate the ideas about God and the Bible that he thought would get him “ostracized” if published before his deat
h, but after only two paragraphs his interest was diverted, and he postponed his potentially offensive ideas until the following day. He continues to talk about religion in four more dictations, concluding with the Autobiographical Dictation of 25 June 1906.

  129.25–26 seventy times seven times] Matthew 18:22.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 20 June 1906

  130.24 We borrow the Golden Rule from Confucius] In the nineteenth century Western commentators began to note that Confucius had given the equivalent of the “Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12) five hundred years before Christ. Analects 15:23 reads, in part: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

  130.25–29 When we want a Deluge we go away back to hoary Babylon and borrow it . . . The flood is a favorite with Bible-makers] The story of a universal flood is present in a great number of the world’s mythologies. A Babylonian myth of the flood was discovered in 1872, when George Smith, an assistant at the British Museum, deciphered a cuneiform tablet, later identified as part of the epic of Gilgamesh. On account of its parallels to Genesis, the Babylonian version caused a sensation, and its relevance for the dating and reliability of the biblical account became a subject of widespread debate. The Babylonian text is discussed from an atheist standpoint in Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions by T. W. Doane, a book that Clemens is likely to have read by the time of this dictation (Budge 1925, 267–68; Doane 1882, 19–32; Gribben 1980, 1:195).