by Mark Twain
144.32–39 Publishers’ Weekly of April 11th, 1903 . . . a Pittsburgh bookseller sent it to me] Remarkably, Clemens remembered the exact date of the announcement. On 24 June 1906 he had asked Isabel Lyon to find the 1903 Publishers’ Weekly for “some time in April, about the 11th an insulting advertisement signed by the Harpers” (Lyon Stenographic Notebook #1, CU-MARK). The announcement read: “Neither Harper & Brothers nor the North American Review will publish in book form Mark Twain’s papers on ‘Christian Science.’ All orders for the book now on file will be cancelled” (Publishers’ Weekly, 11 Apr 1903, 984). No letter from a “Pittsburgh bookseller” has been found.
145.9–10 Duneka . . . would make that book volume XXIV of my Collected Works] In April 1905 Duneka wrote to Clemens (in a letter no longer extant) outlining his plan to add Christian Science to Harpers’ collected editions of Mark Twain’s works. This was not done, however, and in 1906, believing that Harpers had no plans to publish Christian Science, Clemens demanded the return of the manuscript; Harpers did not publish the book until 1907 (11 Apr 1905 to Morel, Wuliger 1953, 235–36; 13 June 1906 to Rogers, CtHMTH, in HHR, 610; WIM, 22–23).
145.17–19 I wrote an unfriendly article about the Butcher, King Leopold . . . publish it as soon as possible] In late 1904 Clemens promised Edmund Dene Morel, the secretary of the British Congo Reform Association, a magazine article exposing the depredations of King Leopold II in the Congo Free State. He finished “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” in February 1905. The North American Review rejected it as too controversial, so Clemens published it the following September as a pamphlet, with the profits going to the association (Hawkins 1978, 153–56; 11 Apr 1905 to Morel, Wuliger 1953, 235–36; SLC 1905a; for Clemens’s other comments on King Leopold see AD, 3 Apr 1906).
145.19–24 he had employed Mr. Nevinson . . . Mr. Nevinson’s first article appeared] Harvey sent British journalist Henry Woodd Nevinson (1856–1941) to Portuguese West Africa (now Angola) in late 1904 to report on the practice of plantation slavery there. Nevinson’s findings were published in a series of seven articles in Harper’s Monthly between August 1905 and February 1906 (Satre 2005, 2–12; Exman 1967, 251).
145.36–146.2 short story called “A Horse’s Tale,” . . . he did not explain what the trouble was] Clemens wrote “A Horse’s Tale” in late 1905, and it was published in Harper’s Monthly in August and September 1906. He describes the impetus for writing it in the Autobiographical Dictation of 29 August 1906. In a letter of 8 May 1906, Duneka told him that “A Horse’s Tale” was a “greater story” than his essay about Howells (scheduled for the July issue), and no evidence has been found that he objected to anything in it (CU-MARK; SLC 1906g, 1906h). The manuscript of the story (now at NN-BGC) does not contain any passage about priests hurrying to “see the butcheries” in the bullring; but there is a passage omitted from the final version, almost wholly anticlerical, which survives in the Mark Twain Papers. In this fragment of six sheets, a horse relates that the bullring’s “principal boxes are reserved for the clergy,” with other remarks about the participation of priests in the bullfight (MS in CU-MARK, 114D-E-F).
146.6–9 Last summer, Mr. Duneka wanted . . . that priest reformed or left out] In July 1905 Duneka visited Clemens at his summer retreat in Dublin, New Hampshire. Lyon recorded his reaction to “No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger,” the fourth and last version of the story: “Mr. Duneka shrivelled up over the first part of Forty Four because there is that evil priest Father Adolph in it” (Lyon 1905a, entry for 12 July; MSM, 221–405). After Clemens’s death Duneka and Paine undertook to publish The Mysterious Stranger: A Romance (1916), using as the basis of their text the earliest version, “The Chronicle of Young Satan,” in which the profane priest Father Adolf also appears; Duneka and Paine eliminated him, replacing him with an astrologer of their own invention (SLC 1916; Tuckey 1963, 19–20; see also AD, 30 Aug 1906, note at 196.39–42).
146.18–21 My contract with the Harpers of three years ago puts all my books permanently in their possession . . . “Mark Twain’s Library of Humor.”] The 1903 contract is described in the Autobiographical Dictation of 7 August 1906, note at 160.32–36. For the Library of Humor, published by Charles L. Webster and Company in 1888, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 2 June 1906, note at 77.20–22.
146.37–147.9 Mr. Duneka said that he had heard that a “pirate” out West . . . I wrote him and consented to that] In October 1905 Duneka proposed to Clemens that Harpers reissue the book to foil some “more or less obscure publishers in the West” who were “threatening” to publish an unauthorized edition: “This we would do not only for the purpose of selling it but with a view to preventing any other person from using the title or issuing a similar book. . . . What we are looking for chiefly is protection of your name in the first place, rather than profits which are of secondary importance in this matter.” Clemens replied three days later, “Go ahead . . . issue the Library & pay me what you think is fair in the way of a royalty” (Duneka to SLC, 6 Oct 1905, CU-MARK; 9 Oct 1905 to Duneka, NN-C; for the pirate “out West” see AD, 31 July 1906, and the note at 152.28). Duneka wrote that because the Library was “not matter which you have written yourself” there was not “much money in it in the way of royalty”; he offered 3 percent, which Clemens accepted (Duneka to SLC, 11 Oct 1905, CU-MARK; contract in CU-MARK).
147.17–18 That detail privileges Mr. Duneka to . . . “bring it up to date.”] Duneka assigned the task of creating a revised and expanded edition to a young Harper subeditor, Burges Johnson, who later recalled that he was charged with “keeping all of the old contents, but adding enough new matter to bring it up to date and spread it out into several volumes” (Burges Johnson 1952, 65). Each of the new volumes was roughly one-quarter material from the old Library, the balance being new matter chosen by Johnson.
147.24–35 About the end of last April, Mr. Duneka began to vomit . . . nor have I ever edited a line of it] Three volumes of the Harper Library of Humor were published in February, April, and May 1906; a fourth was in preparation—and already advertised—when Clemens at last examined the new series. On 4 June 1906 he dictated an indignant letter to Duneka: “I find that this ‘Library of Humor’ is not the one which was compiled by me, but is a new book, in whose compilation I have had no part.” In addition, it was a real publication, not the “ostensible” one he had agreed to, and—at $1.50 per volume—was overpriced as well. Clemens demanded a halt to sales of the volumes already published and the destruction of the plates. He did not send the letter, however, but forwarded it to Henry Rogers for his review (4 June 1906 to Duneka per Lyon, MFai; 6 June 1906 to Rogers [1st], MFai, in HHR, 609–10). Clemens had, in fact, agreed to an editorial revision and expansion of the original Library of Humor; the “detail” he did not notice in his 19 October 1905 contract with Harpers was a clause that gave the publishers “the right to omit portions therefrom, and to add any new material thereto” (BAL, 2:3666–69; SLC 1906b, 1906c, 1906d, 1906e; “Notes among the Publishers,” Springfield [Mass.] Republican, 12 July 1906, 11; contract in CU-MARK).
147.36–37 When an author is wholly unknown . . . 20 per cent] This estimate of royalty entitlements recapitulates Clemens’s long-standing opinion—as given, for example, in “About General Grant’s Memoirs” (1885)—and conforms to early twentieth-century American practice (AutoMT1, 78; Maurice 1908, 338; “Literary Chat,” Munsey’s Magazine 18 [Oct 1897]: 151–56).
148.14 my legal counsel] Edward Lauterbach (see AD, 30 July 1906, note at 149.11–17).
Autobiographical Dictation, 30 July 1906
149.11–17 Edward Lauterbach . . . the Harper lawyer, Larkin] Lauterbach (1844–1923) was a prominent New York corporate lawyer specializing in railroad cases; he was also active in the Republican party. Clemens retained him in 1904–6 and was impressed: “If I had had him 30 yrs ago I shd not have been swindled so often” (Notebook 46, TS p. 24, CU-MARK; “Edw. Lauterbach, Lawyer, Dies at 78,” New York Times, 5 Mar 1923, 15). John Larkin (1862?–1935) was a New Y
ork lawyer specializing in copyright law. He was general counsel for Harper and Brothers for much of his professional life, serving also on the board of directors. During 1906–7 he represented Clemens in copyright, tax, and real estate affairs (“John Larkin Dead; Noted Lawyer, 73,” New York Times, 19 Sept 1935, 25).
149.38–150.1 an early sweetheart of mine . . . New Orleans as guest of a relative of hers who was a pilot] Clemens met and courted Laura Mary Wright (25 December 1844–23 February 1932) between 16 and 18 May 1858, when he spent several days in New Orleans while serving as a cub pilot on the Pennsylvania; she was aboard the John J. Roe as a guest of her uncle, pilot William C. Youngblood, a friend of his (see the notes at 150.1–17 and 150.26–28). Clemens was twenty-two and she was fourteen. Despite the impression Clemens gives here that he knew Laura for only these few days, it is clear that the two corresponded for some time, and probably saw each other at least once again (see the note at 151.12–13). Evidently, at some point Laura ceased to reply to his letters; Clemens thought their correspondence had been intercepted, but in later years Laura intimated that she had broken it off: “I understand why Mr. C. thought his letters were intercepted” (Laura M. Dake to Paine, 26 Jan 1917, photocopy in CU-MARK; see AD, 29 Jan 1907). In 1862 she married lawyer Charles T. Dake (1839–96). She held several educational positions in Dallas before moving to California, where in the early twentieth century she wrote historical and mystical fiction and taught school (Edgar M. Branch, personal communication, 23 Jan 1986, CU-MARK; 6 Feb 1861 to OC and MEC, L1, 114 n. 7; Dallas Census 1880, 1299:105C; “My Sutherland-Wright Ancestry” 2011, entries for Laura Mary Wright and Charles T. S. Dake; Missouri Marriage Records 2011; Payne 2007, 40–43; see also the note at 151.14–20).
150.1–17 the John J. Roe, a steamboat whose officers I knew . . . I saw him four years ago] Clemens was a cub pilot (“steersman”) on the John J. Roe from 5 August to 24 September 1857, plying the river between St. Louis and New Orleans. Zebulon Leavenworth (1830–77) was still an active pilot as late as 1867; his brother Mark (1827?–66), the boat’s captain, became a banker in 1864 (link note following 1 June 1857 to Taylor, L1, 74; Missouri Death Records 2011; 23 Apr 1867 to Stoddard, L2, 31 n. 2). Sobieski (Beck) Jolly (1831–1905) piloted steamboats from 1846 to 1885; during the Civil War he steered Union steamboats on the Mississippi and its tributaries. Clemens’s last meeting with him was in May 1902, on the St. Louis stop of his final trip to Missouri (28 Mar 1874 to Thompson, L6, 100 n. 3; Ferris 1965, 14–16; “Mark Twain’s Visit,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 30 May 1902, 9). Clemens mentions three pilots working on the John J. Roe in May 1858 (Youngblood, Zeb Leavenworth, and Jolly); the typical crew included only two (see also AD, 31 Aug 1906, where Youngblood is again mentioned as one of the pilots).
150.26–28 steering for Brown, on the swift passenger packet . . . presently blew up and killed my brother Henry] Clemens began his service as steersman under pilot William Brown on the Pennsylvania in November 1857; the disaster that killed Henry Clemens occurred in June 1858: see Clemens’s full account in the Autobiographical Dictation of 13 January 1906 (AutoMT1, 274–76 and notes on 560–61).
151.12–13 “I never saw her afterward. It is now forty-eight years . . . no word has ever passed between us since.”] Clemens evidently did make at least one trip to Laura’s home town of Warsaw, Missouri. And he also had news of her in the spring of 1880, when he received a letter from Wattie Bowser, a Dallas schoolboy. Bowser wrote to request information for his school newspaper, and he mentioned that his teacher, Mrs. Dake, had known Clemens when he was “a little boy” (Murray to SLC, 8 May 1880, CU-MARK; Bowser to SLC, 16 Mar 1880, CU-MARK). Clemens replied:
No indeed, I have not forgotten your principal at all. She was a very little girl, with a very large spirit, a long memory, a wise head, a great appetite for books, a good mental digestion, with grave ways, & inclined to introspection—an unusual girl. How long ago it was! Another flight backward like this, & I shall begin to realize that I am cheating the cemetery. (20 Mar 1880 to Bowser, TxU-Hu)
Time and distance did not diminish Laura’s importance to Clemens. He dreamed about her throughout his life; as recently as January 1906 he had described her as “that unspoiled little maid, that fresh flower of the woods & the prairies” (24 Jan 1906 to the Gordons, photocopy in CU-MARK). His memory of Laura is also reflected in several of his literary works. She contributed to his characterization of the young Laura Hawkins in The Gilded Age (1873–74), and was the “sweetheart” Clemens says he dreamed about in “My Platonic Sweetheart,” a sketch he wrote in 1898 which was not published until after his death, and then only in Paine’s heavily censored version (SLC 1898; see Baetzhold 1972 for a discussion of Laura’s presence in Clemens’s works).
151.14–20 I reached home from Fairhaven last Wednesday and found a letter from Laura Wright . . . in need of a thousand dollars, and I sent it] This passage is the only known evidence that Laura sought help for her “disabled son.” Her first 1906 letter to Clemens has been lost or destroyed, but his account of it here is supported by what he wrote to Susan Crane on the day he received it: “She is poor, is a widow, in debt, & is in desperate need of a thousand dollars. I sent it” (27 July 1906 to Crane, photocopy in CU-MARK). On 12 August, however, Laura wrote again, stating that she had received no reply and feared her earlier letter had been lost. This time she identified the object of charity as “a young friend of mine who is making an effort for higher things” (CU-MARK). None of the obituaries or other records found so far indicates that she had any offspring. Laura later refused to exploit her relationship with Clemens, despite her need for money, because she chose not to have their correspondence made public. According to C. O. Byrd, who knew her at the end of her life, she turned down offers “from several magazines” who wanted to buy Clemens’s letters. She asked Byrd to destroy them after her death, because they had been written “to her and for her” and “were not to be published.” Byrd evidently complied: none of them is known to survive (Byrd to Charles H. Gold, 25 Feb 1964, CU-MARK). Clemens reminisces about Laura again in the Autobiographical Dictations of 31 August 1906 and 29 January 1907.
151.21–22 her father was an honored Judge of a high court in the middle of Missouri] Foster P. Wright (1809–87) was appointed a circuit court judge in 1837 and was on the bench of a series of Missouri courts for the rest of his career (“My Sutherland-Wright Ancestry” 2011, entry for Foster Pellatier Wright).
Autobiographical Dictation, 31 July 1906
152.8–9 I shall insert Clara’s compliment here, where it can’t get lost] The balance of Clara’s letter did in fact “get lost”; the extract transcribed here—presumably from the original—is the only portion of it known to survive.
152.18–24 your Howells article which I have just this minute read . . . extract from “Venetian Days”] In his appreciation of Howells, published in the July 1906 issue of Harper’s Monthly, Clemens wrote: “For forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities—clearness, compression, verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing—he is, in my belief, without peer in the English-writing world.” Citing Howells’s description of winter in Venice from chapter 3 of his Venetian Life, a travel memoir first published in 1866, Clemens concluded that his “pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs; they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs taken in a dream, one might say.” He concluded the article with a humorous description of other authors’ “stale and overworked stage directions,” contrasting them with Howells’s “fresh ones” (SLC 1906g).
152.28 The western pirate . . . has really published his book] The pirated book was not, as Duneka and Clemens had feared, the Webster and Company Library of Humor (see AD, 17 July 1906, note at 146.37–147.9). It may have been Hot Stuff by Famous Funny Men. This volume, with its illustrated cloth boards depicting Mark Twain lecturing to a theater audien
ce, was a reprint of an anthology originally published in 1883, edited by Eli Perkins (Melville D. Landon). In 1900 this was reissued under the title Library of Wit and Humor by Mark Twain and Others, with Clemens’s portrait on the cover; he sued the book’s distributor for infringement of trademark, and planned to sue the publisher as well as “every large store in New York” (21 Dec 1900 to Gurlitz, photocopy in CU-MARK; Landon n.d.; Landon 1898; “Mark Twain, Plaintiff,” New York Times, 27 Mar 1901, 6; BAL, 5:11220).
152.29 my copyright lawyer] John Larkin.
152.37 George Ade and Dooley] George Ade (1866–1944) became famous for his “Fables in Slang,” originally written for the Chicago Record and published, starting in 1899, in a series of books; he went on to write successful works of fiction, plays, and musicals. One of his last works is a memoir of his 1902 meeting with Mark Twain (Gribben 1980, 1:10–11; Ade 1939). For “Dooley” (humorist Finley Peter Dunne) see the Autobiographical Dictation of 22 January 1907 and the note at 377.3. Howells hailed both Ade and Dunne as leading figures in the “Chicago School of Fiction” (Howells 1903, 739–46).
152.40–41 my visit to the cemetery in Hannibal, Missouri, four years ago] Clemens visited Hannibal, and its cemetery, in 1902, when he made his final trip to Missouri: see AutoMT1, 613 n. 401.30–34.
153.3–17 Nasby, Artemus Ward . . . the “Disbanded Volunteer,”] For Artemus Ward and “the Pfaff crowd” see the Autobiographical Dictation of 21 May 1906 and the notes at 46.33–34 and 47.3–5; see AutoMT1 for Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke, 506 n. 146.1–5), George Derby (476 n. 71.9–18), and Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 508 n. 148.21). “Yawcob Strauss” is a figure in several poems in Pennsylvania Dutch dialect by Charles Follen Adams (1842–1918). The most popular work of Robert J. Burdette (1844–1914) was his lecture “The Rise and Fall of the Moustache,” which he is said to have delivered more than five thousand times. “Eli Perkins” was the pseudonym of humorist Melville D. Landon (1839–1910). The “Danbury News Man,” so called from his column in the Danbury (Conn.) News, was James Montgomery Bailey (1841–94). “Orpheus C. Kerr” (i.e., office-seeker) was journalist Robert Henry Newell (1836–1901). There was no American humorist named “Smith O’Brien”; Clemens may have meant the Irish-born writer Fitz-James O’Brien (1828–62), confusing his name with that of Irish patriot William Smith O’Brien (1803–64). “Ike Partington” is a character in the stories of B. P. Shillaber (1814–90). “Q. K. Philander Doesticks” was the pen name of journalist Mortimer Thomson (1831–75). The “Disbanded Volunteer” was the fictive persona of Joseph Barber (1808?–74) in a series of Civil War letters (“Suburban News,” New York Times, 15 Apr 1874, 8).