Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  170.26 I here append his flap-jack episode] The “episode” is an extract from the original typescript of Higbie’s essay, on which Clemens made one spelling correction and added several paragraph breaks (Higbie 1906, TS pp. 11–12).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 11 August 1906

  172.7–8 in this morning’s paper is a note which I wrote to Andrew Carnegie some years ago] Clemens wrote this letter to Carnegie on 6 February 1901 (DLC), and it was soon widely printed in the newspapers. Carnegie replied two days later, “Nothing less than a two dollar & a half hymn book gilt will do for you. Your place in the Choir (celestial) demands that & you shall have it” (CU-MARK). If Hobby did indeed transcribe a clipping “from this morning’s newspaper,” it has not been found, but the present text corresponds closely to the one published in Everyday Housekeeping for August 1906 (23:1005). Whatever the exact source, its textual history must have included a British reprinting, for Clemens’s “dollar & a half” has been turned into “six shillings.”

  172.26–34 Peace Palace . . . eighty million dollars’ worth of free libraries] The Palace of Peace, in The Hague, was funded by Carnegie to house the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the first global court for the settlement of international disputes; the building was completed in 1913, at a cost of $1.5 million. The Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, founded in 1896, comprised a group of cultural and educational departments, including a museum, a music hall, and several technical schools that ultimately developed into Carnegie Mellon University. By 1906 Carnegie’s gifts to the institute totaled more than $8 million. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded in 1905 as a pension fund for American and Canadian teachers aged sixty-five or over with at least twenty-five years of service; to his original $10 million gift Carnegie added $5 million in 1906. His expenditure on free public library buildings, by the end of his life, is estimated at over $60 million (Carnegie Endowment 1922, 3–8, 127–35, 274–77, 311; “Comment,” Harper’s Weekly 50 [11 Aug 1906]: 1123).

  172.40–173.1 In a previous chapter I have told how John T. Lewis saved the lives of a rich man’s wife and daughter] There is no such “chapter” in the Autobiography, but the anecdote was one that Clemens was fond of recounting, as he had done three years earlier in the Ladies’ Home Journal (see the note at 173.19–20). John T. Lewis (1835–1906) was born in Carroll County, Maryland, where he lived as a black freeman. He settled in Elmira in 1864, working as a coachman for Jervis Langdon, then as a blacksmith, then as the tenant farmer at Quarry Farm. Clemens described the events of 23 August 1877 in a letter to the Howellses (the entire letter, written on 25 and 27 August, is in Letters 1876–1880):

  Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit. Aunt Marsh & Cousin May Marsh were here visiting Susie Crane & Livy at our farm house. By & by mother Langdon came up the hill in the “high carriage” with Nora the nurse & little Jervis (Charley Langdon’s little boy)—Timothy the coachman driving. Behind these came Charley’s wife & little girl in the buggy, with the new, young, spry gray horse—a high-stepper. Theodore Crane arrived a little later.

  The Bay & Susie were on hand with their nurse, Rosa. I was on hand, too. Susie Crane’s trio of colored servants ditto—these being Josie, housemaid; Aunty Cord, cook, aged 62, turbaned, very tall, very broad, very fine every way (see her portrait in “A True Story Just as I Heard It” in my Sketches); Chocklate (the laundress,) (as the Bay calls her—she can’t say Charlotte), still taller, still more majestic of proportions, turbaned, very black, straight as an Indian——age, 24. Then there was the farmer’s wife (colored) & her little girl, Susie.

  Wasn’t it a good audience to get up an excitement before? Good excitable, inflammable material?

  Lewis was still down town, three miles away, with his two-horse wagon, to get a load of manure. Lewis is the farmer (colored.) He is of mighty frame & muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face & a clear eye. Age about 45—& the most picturesque of men, when he sits in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears & neck. It is a spectacle to make the broken-hearted smile.

  Lewis has worked mighty hard & remained mighty poor. At the end of each whole year’s toil he can’t show a gain of fifty dollars. He had borrowed money of the Cranes till he owed them $700—& he being conscientious & honest, imagine what it was to him to have to carry this stubborn, hopeless load year in & year out.

  Well, sunset came, & Ida the young & comely (Charley Langdon’s wife) & her little Julia & the nurse Nora, drove out at the gate behind the new gray horse & started down the long hill—the high carriage receiving its load under the porte cochère. Ida was seen to turn her face toward us across the fence & intervening lawn—Theodore waved goodbye to her, for he did not know that her sign was a speechless appeal for help.

  The next moment Livy said, “Ida’s driving too fast down hill!” She followed it with a sort of scream, “Her horse is running away!”

  We could see two hundred yards down that descent. The buggy seemed to fly. It would strike obstructions & apparently spring the height of a man from the ground.

  Theodore & I left the shrieking crowd behind & ran down the hill bareheaded & shouting. A neighbor appeared at his gate—a tenth of a second too late!—the buggy vanished past him like a thought. My last glimpse showed it for one instant, far down the descent, springing high in the air out of a cloud of dust, & then it disappeared. As I flew down the road, my impulse was to shut my eyes as I turned them to the right or left, & so delay for a moment the ghastly spectacle of mutilation & death I was expecting.

  I ran on & on, still spared this spectacle, but saying to myself “I shall see it at the turn of the road; they never can pass that turn alive.” When I came in sight of that turn I saw two wagons there bunched together—one of them full of people. I said, “Just so—they are staring petrified at the remains.”

  But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy & nobody hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle. Ida was pale but serene. As I came tearing down she smiled back over her shoulder at me & said, “Well, you’re alive yet, aren’t you?” A miracle had been performed—nothing less.

  You see, Lewis,-the-prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging down the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his heels as high as a man’s head at every jump. So Lewis turned his team diagonally across the road just at the “turn,” thus making a V with the fence—the running horse could not escape that but must enter it. Then Lewis sprang to the ground & stood in this V. He gathered his vast strength, and with a perfect Creedmoor aim he siezed the gray horse’s bit as he plunged by & fetched him up standing!

  In recognition of Lewis’s deed, the Cranes made him gifts of money and forgave all of his debt to them, Ida Langdon bought him an engraved gold watch, and Clemens gave him some inscribed copies of his own works. By 1902, however, Lewis was again in financial difficulties, and Clemens arranged a pension for him, to which both he and Rogers contributed. In his fiction, Clemens reworked Lewis’s feat of rescue twice: in Pudd’nhead Wilson (in a passage omitted from the finished novel) and in chapter 52 of Life on the Mississippi (McKeithan 1961, 23–25; 9 Aug 1876 to Howells, n. 4, Letters 1876–1880; MTB, 2:599–600). “Creedmoor aim” refers to a famous long-range rifle match that took place in 1874 on the Creed farm in upstate New York.

  173.19–20 I got myself spaciously photographed alongside of John T. Lewis] The photograph was taken in July 1903 by Thomas E. Marr as part of a pictorial article in the Ladies’ Home Journal, “Three Famous Authors Outdoors” (20 [Nov 1903]: 1, 36–37; 17 July 1903 to Bok, ViU). It is reproduced in the photograph section.

  173.37 Lewis was a Dunker Baptist] The Church of the Brethren—known as the Dunkers—is an anabaptist church with origins in eighteenth-century Germany. Their distinctive theological tenet is baptism of adults by triple immersion (otherw
ise the faith resembles that of the Mennonites, who sprinkle). Never numerous, American Dunker congregations are found primarily in the mid-Atlantic and midwestern states.

  175.20 Lewis’s last estate reminds me of David Gray’s] See AutoMT1, 375, 598 n. 375.7.

  175.26–28 This morning’s cables contain a verse or two from Kipling . . . the conquered Boers] Great Britain defeated the Boers in southern Africa in 1902 and annexed their lands (see AD, 23 June 1906, note at 137.40–138.21). The Boers still outnumbered the British, however, and when the Liberal party came to power in 1905, its decision to enfranchise them inflamed Kipling (see the note at 175.33–37). His poem “South Africa,” published in the London Standard on 27 July 1906, brands the government’s proposal as treachery (“A Kipling Political Poem,” New York Times, 27 July 1906, 1). Clemens is, however, unlikely to have seen the poem in “this morning’s cables,” as he claims here; it was news from two weeks earlier. A more probable source is the excerpt and comment in Harper’s Weekly of 11 August (Gilmour 2002, 196–99; “Comment,” Harper’s Weekly 50 [11 Aug 1906]: 1123).

  175.33–37 He came over and traveled about America . . . up to Quarry Farm in quest of me] From March to October 1889, Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), at the time an obscure journalist, traveled from India to Britain by an eastward route: crossing the Pacific to San Francisco, he made his way overland to Pennsylvania (to visit friends) before taking ship for Liverpool. Along the way he sent back travel letters to the Allahabad Pioneer, collected later in From Sea to Sea (1899). The day Kipling visited the Clemenses in Elmira was probably 15 August 1889; his article about the visit, however, was not published until a year later (New York Herald, 17 Aug 1890, 5, in Scharnhorst 2006, 117–26). By that time Kipling—still only twenty-four years old—had become well known in Britain and America for his stories and poems. Clemens frequently alluded to the sudden, overwhelming quality of Kipling’s rise to fame; in 1898 he wrote, “In those days you could have carried Kipling around in a lunch basket—now he fills the world” (Notebook 40, TS p. 62, CU-MARK). Clemens’s anti-imperialist commitments never kept him from reading and praising Kipling’s works. Isabel Lyon recorded that Clemens explained Kipling’s reactionary views as the result of “his training that makes him cling to his early beliefs; then he loves power & authority & Kingship” (Lyon 1907, entry for 22 Jan). See also the Autobiographical Dictation of 13 August 1906 (Graver 1992; Gilmour 2002, 87–97; Krauth 2003, 209, 248–57; Gribben 1980, 1:375–82).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 13 August 1906

  176.10 Eric Ericsons] Norwegian mariners Eric the Red and his son Leif Ericson explored Greenland and Vinland (variously identified as Labrador, Newfoundland, or New England) in the second half of the tenth century.

  176.31–32 He was a stranger . . . universally known] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 August 1906, note at 175.33–37.

  177.2–16 “Plain Tales,” . . . “Kim”] Kipling’s short story collection Plain Tales from the Hills (1888); The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (1894, 1895); and his novel Kim (1901).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 15 August 1906

  177.24–25 Mrs. Horr taught the children . . . Mr. Sam Cross taught the young people of larger growth] Elizabeth Horr (1790?–1873), born in New York, was Clemens’s first schoolteacher. Samuel Cross (1812–86), born in Ireland, moved to Missouri in 1837 and by 1840 was a teacher in Hannibal. Clemens attended his school in the mid-1840s. In the spring of 1849 Cross led a party of Hannibal citizens to California and settled in Sacramento, where he practiced law and eventually became a judge (Inds, 326, 316).

  178.7–8 Jim Dunlap] There was a James Dunlap among Clemens’s Hannibal contemporaries; however, “Dunlap” was one of Clemens’s stock names for disguising or inventing villagers, and on the evidence of a 1902 notebook entry it was Ed Stevens who gave him his “first whipping” (Notebook 45, TS p. 16, CU-MARK; AutoMT1, 627 n. 420.17; Marion Census 1850, 293B).

  178.18–20 I prayed for gingerbread. Margaret Kooneman . . . brought a slab of gingerbread to school every morning] In notes made in Switzerland in 1897, Clemens planned to make use of the baker, his daughter, and her gingerbread in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy,” transferring the episode to Huck Finn: “Old Koonemann, & make him talk broken English. Make a great character of this kind-hearted garrulous old thing. (baker) Margaret K used to bring gingerbread to school & Huck used to pray for it” (Notebook 41, TS p. 59, CU-MARK; Inds, 289). And in a note made around 1905 he assigned a deeper importance to the gingerbread episode in a note headed “Prayer”:

  Why should one laugh at my praying for gingerbread when I was a child? What would a child naturally pray for?—a child who had been lied to by teachers & preachers & a lying Bible-text?

  My prayer failed. It was 65 years ago. I remember the shock yet. I was as astonished as if I had caught my own mother breaking a promise to me.

  Was the doubt planted then, which in 50 years grew to a certainty: that the X & all other religions are lies & swindles? (Autobiographical Fragment #146, CU-MARK)

  Autobiographical Dictation, 27 August 1906

  179.3–4 Several weeks ago, in Chapter XLI, I spoke of how rare a thing a good memory for names and faces is] Unless this refers to the remarks on James W. Nye (AD, 2 Apr 1906), there is no such passage. The last time Clemens is known to have used chapter numbers for parts of his autobiography was in 1903 (AutoMT1, 17–18). He never used them for the dictations begun in 1906, and his reference here has not been explained.

  179.5–7 I received a distressed letter from my London publisher . . . tax due upon my English copyrights] This contretemps arose in 1887, when Clemens’s London publishers, Chatto and Windus, informed him: “We have been having a ‘brush’ with the commissioners of H. M. Inland Revenue, who have been putting the screw to us to obtain income tax from our payments to authors residing abroad.” Clemens requested further documentation, which he received, and kept—“because I might want to print some nonsense on the subject some time, when I’ve got an idle hour” (Chatto and Windus to SLC, 24 Aug 1887, UkReU; 19 Sept 1887 to Chatto, UkReU).

  180.12–13 Harpers applied to me for some nonsense, and I sent . . . “An Open Letter to the Queen.”] Clemens’s exercise in lèse-majesté, “A Petition to the Queen of England,” appeared in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for December 1887; its content is largely recreated in the present dictation. When Chatto and Windus read the article, they wrote to him, “We are sorry we did not have a copy of it in time that we might have sent the Inland Revenue instead of the cheque for £47.19.4 which we reluctantly paid on your account” (Chatto and Windus to SLC, 25 Nov 1887, CU-MARK; SLC 1887).

  180.29 flight of Saxon arrows at the battle of Senlac] The Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066) took place at Senlac Hill, but it was the Normans, not the English, who used archers in their attack.

  180.38 “Mr. President, I am embarrassed—are you?”] Clemens told this story in an 1885 dictation, “The Chicago G.A.R. Festival” (AutoMT1, 67–68), which he never published, as well as in chapter 2 of Following the Equator (1897). For a sorting out of the actual timing and circumstances of his several meetings with Grant, see AutoMT1, 472–73 nn. 67.6–13, 67.17–19, 68.1, 68.4–5.

  181.4–5 In an earlier chapter I have already told how Chicago was packed and jammed with people] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 31 May 1906.

  181.31–36 In 1891 or ’92 . . . he asked me if I would like to meet the Prince of Wales] The Clemenses spent the summer of 1892 at Bad Nauheim, being joined by Joseph and Harmony Twichell in August. Nauheim is less than twenty miles from Bad Homburg, where on 21 August 1892 Clemens was introduced to the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward (1841–1910; later King Edward VII), by British ambassador Sir Edward Malet (Notebook 32, TS pp. 19–20, CU-MARK, original at TxU-Hu; Courtney 2008, 244–45).

  182.25 W.W. Jacobs’s “Dialstone Lane.”] William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) was a British writer mostly of comic fiction, but he is best remembered for his t
ale of horror “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902). Clemens frequently recommended Jacobs’s 1904 novel Dialstone Lane (Gribben 1980, 1:348).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 28 August 1906

  182.35 Higbie’s reply has come] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 10 August 1906.

  183.34 Bar Harbor] A bay off Mount Desert Island, Maine.

  183.37–38 Fellow-Craftsmen’s Club, and I attended its first banquet] The Fellowcraft Club, an organization of New York journalists and illustrators with a membership of over two hundred, was founded in 1888 with Richard Watson Gilder as president. “One of the principal features,” wrote Gilder, “is a monthly dinner, which begins with a little informal speech-making, and goes on into music, story-telling, etc. A peculiar point of this dinner is its informality, and the fact that although the room is full of reporters the speeches are not reported” (Gilder 1916, 185). In the present dictation, Clemens describes the dinner of 15 November 1889. The Fellowcraft Club was defunct by 1892 (N&J3, 522 n. 132, 530 n. 148; “The Fellowcraft Club,” New York Times, 19 May 1888, 5; King 1892, 503; for Gilder see AutoMT1, 486 n. 77 footnote). Clemens returns to the subject of “spontaneous oratory” in the Autobiographical Dictations of 31 August and 3 September 1906.