by Mark Twain
130.33 Immaculate Conception] The Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary herself was conceived and born free of original sin. Clemens, however, refers to the doctrine that she conceived Jesus by divine intervention and not by natural procreation.
130.35–37 Hindoos prized it … Buddhists were happy when they acquired Gautama by the same process] In Hindu tradition, Krishna, the most important avatar of the god Vishnu, was miraculously conceived and saved from murder at birth through divine intervention. In one Buddhist tradition, a virgin conceived Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) after dreaming that a white elephant entered into her side. Both these miraculous conceptions are discussed by Doane (see the note at 130.25–29); Clemens’s copy is heavily marked in the chapter on “The Miraculous Birth of Christ Jesus” (Doane 1882, 114–17, 280; Gribben 1980, 1:195).
131.5–7 Episcopal clergyman in Rochester . . . did not believe that the Savior was miraculously conceived] On 9 May 1906, Algernon Sidney Crapsey (1847–1927), minister of St. Andrew’s church in Rochester since 1879, was convicted of heresy by an ecclesiastical court for views he had expressed in his sermons and published in Religion and Politics (1905). He denied “doctrines that Jesus Christ is God, the Saviour of the world; that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost; of His virgin birth, of His resurrection, and of the Blessed Trinity” (New York Times: “Dr. Crapsey a Heretic,” 16 May 1906, 9; “Crapsey Verdict Reached,” 10 May 1906, 1; “Crapsey Files an Appeal,” 7 June 1906, 6). Having appealed the verdict without success, Crapsey renounced his ministry in November 1906. In his autobiography, The Last of the Heretics, he described himself as a “Pantheistic Humanist” (Crapsey 1924, 232, 272, 276, 292).
131.7–17 Rev. Dr. Briggs, who is perhaps the most daringly broad-minded . . . in a position to know] Charles Augustus Briggs (1841–1913) was a prominent clergyman, biblical and Hebrew scholar, and professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1874 until his death. He was suspended from the Presbyterian ministry in 1893 after being convicted of heresy by an ecclesiastical court. Despite his continued espousal of radical views he was later ordained an Episcopal minister. A prolific author, he published at least two hundred books and articles and remained one of the most influential theologians of his day. The article on the virgin birth that Clemens cites, “Criticism and Dogma,” appeared in the North American Review for June 1906 (Briggs 1906). Part of Briggs’s argument is that the angels who announced the coming birth must have been “reliable witnesses,” and that Joseph and Mary could not have given false testimony because it would be “inconsistent with their character.” Furthermore, the story “had the sanction of James and Jude of the family of Jesus” and was therefore “too near the birth of Jesus, in temporal, geographical and personal relations, to go astray in so important a matter” (865–66).
132.3–4 some addled Christian Scientist . . . Mother Eddy] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 22 June 1906, note at 136.10–12.
Autobiographical Dictation, 22 June 1906
132.35–133.3 For two years, now . . . the ultra-Christian Government of Russia has been officially ordering and conducting massacres of its Jewish subjects] In the early years of the century, the government of Tsar Nicholas II (who ruled from 1894 to 1918) promoted vicious anti-Semitism. In April 1903, at the instigation of both high-level and local officials, violence erupted in Kishinev at Passover. A Christian mob with the backing of the police and the army murdered about fifty Jews and injured five hundred. Thereafter the government participated in numerous pogroms, one of which occurred in Kishinev in October 1905, when rioters killed about twenty Jews.
133.11–12 Horrible details have been sent out by the correspondent of the Bourse Gazette, who arrived in Bialystok] Clemens had a clipping of this portion of the article, from the New York Times of 19 June, pasted into the typescript of this dictation. The pogroms of June 1906 in Bialystok (now in northeastern Poland), abetted both by local police and by higher authorities, resulted in the murder of as many as two hundred Jews.
134.4–5 massacre of the Albigenses] The Albigenses were members of a medieval religious sect in southern France, concentrated in the area of Albi. They were ascetics who practiced chastity and vegetarianism. Their exact creed is unclear, since it is described primarily by their enemies, but some of their doctrines were apparently of non-Christian origin, and they were persecuted by the Catholic Church as heretics. In 1208 Pope Innocent III ordered a crusade against them, in which many people were slaughtered, regardless of age, sex, or creed. The crusade led to an official Inquisition, and the sect became extinct.
134.7 Bartholomew’s Day] On 24 August 1572, the feast of Saint Bartholomew, a group of Huguenot (Calvinist Protestant) leaders were assassinated in Paris at the instigation of Catherine de’ Medici, mother of King Charles IX. These assassinations triggered a growing massacre, which during the following week spread to the provinces, where over the next two months Catholic mobs murdered thousands of Huguenots.
134.11 The Gospel of Peace] Romans 10:15 (paraphrasing Isaiah 52:7): “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace.”
134.13–16 George III reigned sixty years … public rejoicing in England] George III (1738–1820) reigned from 1760 until his death. Clemens witnessed Queen Victoria’s celebration of her Record Reign and Diamond Jubilee in London in June 1897, and wrote three newspaper reports about it (AutoMT1, 501 n. 126.19).
134.17–18 for each year of the sixty of her reign . . . a separate and distinct war] The London Standard noted that during Victoria’s sixty years on the throne “it would be possible to name sixty nations or races over whom the Queen’s arms have triumphed; they have varied from civilised and powerful States to the naked savages of Africa and the Southern Seas, and these wars have been rewarded with an immense addition of territory and influence” (“The Queen’s Wars,” 22 June 1897, 2). Another news item, started by the radical Reynolds’s Newspaper and widely reprinted in America, enumerated forty-two wars, from the Afghan War (1838–40) to the Bombardment of the Cretan Christians (1897) (“Always at War,” 28 Feb 1897, 1).
134.28 Alexander VI] Pope Alexander VI (born Rodrigo Borgia, 1431–1503) was infamous for his corruption and moral turpitude. He imprisoned and murdered his enemies to confiscate their wealth, and gave away the church’s assets to the children he fathered with several mistresses.
134.38–135.1 each Christian Government has played with its neighbors . . . We are in it, ourselves, now] In the late 1880s the major European powers began to build up their navies, increasing their production of battleships in an effort to intimidate the enemy and deter aggression. By the fall of 1905 Britain had in service, or under construction, sixty-six battleships; France had forty; and Germany had thirty-seven. The Russian fleet, however, had been reduced from twenty-seven to ten by what Clemens calls the “untaught stranger” (Japan) in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. In 1906 Britain commissioned the Dreadnought, an innovative warship whose size, speed, and gun power made earlier models obsolete. The United States adopted the new design, immediately undertaking the construction of two battleships. This naval arms race significantly increased the tensions that led to the First World War (Sondhaus 2002, 102–8, 127, 131–35; Spears 1908, 305).
136.10–12 “Science and Health” . . . Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy] The Church of Christ, Scientist, is a denomination based on the theories set forth in Science and Health (1875) by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). According to its tenets, material life is illusory, and only the spiritual realm is real; therefore disease is imaginary, and through Christian faith people can be healed. Clemens both praised and criticized Eddy. He believed to some extent in the curative power of the mind and acknowledged her organizational ability, but he found her writings ludicrous and largely incoherent, and possibly authored by someone else. Furthermore, he denounced her as a hypocritical and power-hungry fraud and deplored the growing popularity of her theology. Clemens owned (or at least consulted) as many as six different editions of Science
and Health, ranging in date from 1881 to 1902; volume 2 of the 1884 edition, with his sparse marginalia, survives in the Mark Twain Papers (Eddy 1884; WIM, 271, 293, 339, 554–55, 575). He first attacked Christian Science in an article in Cosmopolitan in 1899, and again in the North American Review in 1902–3. These articles were expanded and published as Christian Science in 1907 (SLC 1899c, 1902c, 1903b, 1903c, 1903d, 1907a). His views did not, however, deter his only surviving daughter, Clara, from becoming a Christian Scientist after experiencing more than one “miraculous” cure. In 1956 she described her conversion, and explained her father’s views on Eddy, in Awake to a Perfect Day (CC 1956). Clemens returns to the subject in the Autobiographical Dictations of 5 October and 27 December 1906. For comprehensive discussions of the matter see: WIM, 20–28, 553–77; Stoneley 1992, 116–45; Wills’s “Introduction: Twain and Eddy” and Hill’s “Afterword” in SLC 1996a; see also Gribben 1980, 1:212–13.
Autobiographical Dictation, 23 June 1906
137.31–38 Mr. Garfield lay near to death . . . died, just the same] President James A. Garfield (b. 1831) was shot on 2 July 1881 by Charles J. Guiteau (b. 1841). Destitute and unemployed, Guiteau had written a campaign speech that he claimed entitled him to a diplomatic post. While Garfield lingered with a bullet lodged near his pancreas, reports of prayers offered for his recovery appeared in the newspapers (see, for example, Washington Post: “The People’s Prayers,” 4 July 1881, 4; “Invoking Divine Aid,” 22 Aug 1881, 4). He suffered from repeated infections before dying of a heart attack on 19 September. Guiteau was hanged in June 1882.
137.40–138.21 Boer population was a hundred and fifty thousand . . . confidence in the righteousness and intelligence of God impaired] The Second Boer War (1899–1902) was fought between Britain and the Dutch (Boer) colonies in southern Africa. Hostilities began when British gold miners in Boer territories protested being denied equal rights. British troops were sent to defend them, and the Boers declared war. At first the Boers were victorious, but began to lose ground when additional British forces arrived. The Boers continued to wage guerrilla warfare, but were ultimately overcome by the British, who prevailed by imprisoning (and thereby often killing) thousands of Boer civilians in concentration camps. By the time a peace treaty was signed in May 1902, British troops numbered three hundred and fifty thousand, while the Boers had only sixty thousand. The ideas that Clemens expresses here echo those in “The War-Prayer,” written in March 1905. Clemens submitted this brief tale to Harper’s Bazar, but the editor, Elizabeth Jordan, returned it on 22 March 1905 “with regret,” explaining that it was “admirable, but not quite suited to a woman’s magazine, in my opinion” (CU-MARK). On 30 March Clemens told Dan Beard, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth” (DLC). It was not published in full until 1923, when Paine included it in Europe and Elsewhere (SLC 1923a, 394–98).
138.42–139.6 spider was so contrived . . . chew her legs off at their leisure] Clemens had previously discussed his view of “Nature’s infernal inventions for the infliction of needless suffering” in his 1895 notebook: “Nature’s attitude toward all life is profoundly vicious, treacherous & malignant” (Notebook 34, TS p. 31, CU-MARK). He probably learned about the cruel behavior of the parasitic wasp in Darwin’s Origin of Species, and was no doubt aware that Darwin mentioned it when describing his own struggle to believe in a beneficent Deity. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (which, according to Isabel Lyon, Clemens borrowed from the library in late 1905) includes a letter of 22 May 1860 from Darwin to Asa Gray, which reads in part:
With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. (Darwin 1887, 2:105)
Clemens reiterates this idea, again citing the example of the wasp, in the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907 (5th section) (Darwin 1884, 234, 415; Gribben 1980, 1:176; Lyon 1905b, entry for 17 Oct).
Autobiographical Dictation, 25 June 1906
142.14 Man is not to blame for what he is] Many of Clemens’s remarks in this Autobiographical Dictation reprise his philosophy in What Is Man?—an essay in dialog format that he printed anonymously, for private distribution, in 1906. At the time of this dictation, he was revising and proofreading the text, which was printed by the De Vinne Press. Clemens discusses the work further in the Autobiographical Dictations of 4 September 1907 and 2 November 1908 (WIM, 11–20).
Autobiographical Dictation, 17 July 1906
143.8–10 Five or six weeks ago . . . third publisher] See the Autobiographical Dictations of 21 May through 2 June 1906.
143.22 Mr. Duneka] Frederick A. Duneka (1859–1919), a native of Kentucky, was a colleague of George Harvey’s on the New York World, serving as its city editor. When Harvey became president of Harper and Brothers in 1900, he installed Duneka as secretary of the board of directors and general manager. Duneka had editorial dealings with Clemens, Howells, Henry James, and Theodore Dreiser, among many others. He was named vice-president of Harpers in 1915, but illness soon forced him into retirement (Colby 1920, 461; “Frederick A. Duneka Dead,” New York Times, 25 Jan 1919, 11; Curtis 1890; Exman 1967, 187–88, 209, 211; see also the note at 146.6–9).
143.30–31 Bliss captured my thirty thousand dollars, but I made it cost him a quarter of a million thirteen years afterward] Clemens describes negotiating the Roughing It contract with Elisha Bliss in the Autobiographical Dictation of 23 May 1906. His conviction that Bliss had cheated him of $30,000 is based on his conjectural estimate of “half profits” on a sale of 150,000 copies—a figure he claimed came from Bliss himself. Clemens’s remark “I made it cost him a quarter of a million” refers to Francis E. Bliss (1843–1915), who had succeeded his father in 1880 as president of the American Publishing Company. The estimated profits are those Frank could have had, hypothetically, from Huckleberry Finn, published in 1885 by Clemens’s own firm of Charles L. Webster and Company (AutoMT1, 370–71; SLC 1903a).
143.34–144.5 Harpers had half of them, and the American Publishing Company . . . had changed his mind] By the terms of a contract made in 1895, the American Publishing Company retained the rights to the seven books it had originally published, while Harpers had the rights to eight books and Mark Twain’s Library of Humor—works originally published by James R. Osgood or by Charles L. Webster and Company. In 1896 the two companies reached an agreement allowing the American Publishing Company to publish uniform sets of Clemens’s collected works—the Autograph, Royal, and Riverdale editions, among others—which included the books owned by Harpers. Over the course of 1903, the purchase of the rights to Clemens’s American Publishing Company books—amounting in effect to the purchase of the entire company—was considered first by Clemens himself, then by P. F. Collier and Son, and finally by Harpers. Clemens’s summary of these negotiations is generally accurate so far as it can be verified. It is unclear why Harpers should have been deterred, as Clemens says they were, by Collier’s offer to publish a subscription set, but by August it had become clear that Harpers intended to be Mark Twain’s exclusive publisher: as Frank Bliss wrote in his diary, they “wanted to get the whole business & had blood in their eyes” (Schmidt 2010, chapter 6). Harpers realized that ambition by the terms of contracts signed in October 1903 (HHR, 534 n. 3, 671–77, 678–81, 691–99, 700–708; AutoMT1, 596–97 n. 371.35–372.2; Bliss to SLC, 27 June 1903, ViU; Harper and Brothers [London] to Chatto and Windus, 2 Nov 1903, UkReU).
144.7–10 I wrote some Christian Science articles . . . that announcement was made] Clemens published four articles on Chri
stian Science in the North American Review, in December 1902, January and February 1903, and April 1903. Harpers announced the volume Christian Science in Publishers’ Weekly on 21 March 1903 (772) (SLC 1902c, 1903b, 1903c, 1903d; see also AD, 22 June 1906, note at 136.10–12).
144.24–27 Mr. Duneka said . . . publication had been postponed until the fall] In a letter drafted at the time of these events, Clemens said this ruse was his own idea:
The form agreed upon with Mr. Duneka was carefully chosen—& of course departed from. It was, “too late, now, for a spring book, therefore postponed until autumn.” This was to save my face, & was my suggestion: I did not want the fact exposed that a book of mine had been (in effect) declined.
The situation is not barren of humor: I had been doing my very best to show in print that the X-Scientist cult was become a power in the land—well, here was proof: it had scared the biggest publisher in the Union! (On or after 20 Apr 1903 to Anderson, CU-MARK)