by Mark Twain
247.9–10 Book of Mormon, engraved upon metal plates . . . by Joseph Smith] Smith (1805–44) claimed to have found the metal plates, engraved with ancient characters he called “Reformed Egyptian,” after seeing their location in several visions. He translated them by means of “seer” stones to create the Book of Mormon. The plates had been buried under a stone near Manchester, in western New York State (RI 1993, 601 n. 107.5–10). Clemens dictated “the State of New York” but later revised that to “Canada” on the typescript. The reason for this is unclear.
247.14 Brother Quimby] Phineas Quimby (1802–66), the first practitioner of mental healing in the United States, used hypnotism to treat Eddy in the 1860s. From his teaching she derived her belief in the power of the mind to cure illness, later developing his ideas into the religious doctrine that became the foundation of the Church of Christ, Scientist (see AD, 22 June 1906, note at 136.10–12).
Autobiographical Dictation, 8 October 1906
247.28 various entries, covering a month] In these entries Susy records her parents’ visit to Onteora Park, a colony of artists and writers in the Catskills, from 24 to 29 August 1885, while she and her sisters remained at Quarry Farm in Elmira. Clemens continues to talk about his experiences there in the Autobiographical Dictations of 9 October and 10 October 1906.
247.29 General Grant, the sculptor Gerhardt] In the spring of 1885 Karl Gerhardt had sculpted a bust of the dying Grant that greatly pleased his family. At Clemens’s suggestion, he tried to win a commission to make a statue of Grant—a bid that was ultimately unsuccessful (N&J3, 157; for Gerhardt, and Clemens’s account of his work on the Grant bust, see AutoMT1, 86–91, 480 n. 74.2–7).
247.29 Mrs. Candace Wheeler, Miss Dora Wheeler] Candace Wheeler (1827–1923), a pioneering decorative artist and an associate of Louis Comfort Tiffany, helped to decorate the Clemenses’ Hartford house in 1881. In 1883 she was one of the founders of Onteora Park. Dora (1857–1940), Candace’s daughter, was an artist and portrait painter. The Clemenses met them through their mutual friend Dean Sage and began a “long and enjoyable friendship” (Wheeler 1918, 324; N&J3, 178, 212, 221, 562).
247.30 Mr. Frank Stockton, Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 9 October 1906, notes at 250.29 and 250.30.
247.30 widow of General Custer] Elizabeth B. Custer (1842–1933) married General George A. Custer in 1864 and thereafter accompanied him wherever he was stationed, including the front lines during the Civil War. After his death at Little Bighorn in 1876, she glorified his memory in lectures and books. In 1887 Webster and Company issued Tenting on the Plains, her account of their experiences at military forts in Texas and Kansas in 1865–67.
249.42–250.4 I made a brave experiment . . . I made a talk before a full house, in the village, clothed like a ghost] Clemens described the “experiment” in a letter to Mary Rogers:
The night of the great storm I drove to the village through the deluge & talked, in the basement of the church, to a housefull of wet farmers & their families (it’s a gratis monthly function instituted by the ladies of the church) all clothed in sombre colors; & my spectral costume was the only cheerful object in that place. I meant to explain my clothes, but as I was passing to the platform Miss Fanny Dwight—summer-resorter, friend of ours, a person of extraordinary taste & wonderful judgment—halted me & whispered, “Mr. Clemens, you look just too sweet for anything!” I whispered back, “Miss Fanny, I was going to explain & justify these clothes, but in my opinion they don’t need it now.” My, but some girls do have the clear eye! (11–16 Oct 1906, NNC, in Leary 1961, 69–75)
250.9 I hope to get together courage enough to wear white clothes all through the winter] Clemens first wore his now-famous white suit to speak to a congressional committee on copyright in Washington on 7 December 1906 (see AD, 26 Dec 1906, where his speech is reprinted). He had appeared in the suit during interviews earlier in the day, giving several reporters a preview of the coming spectacle. Howells recalled:
Nothing could have been more dramatic than the gesture with which he flung off his long loose overcoat, and stood forth in white from his feet to the crown of his silvery head. It was a magnificent coup; but the magnificent speech which he made, tearing to shreds the venerable farrago of nonsense about non-property in ideas which had formed the basis of all copyright legislation, made you forget even his spectacularity. (Howells 1910, 96)
He began to wear the suit so regularly, both in private and for public appearances, that on 1 May the Washington Post called it his “copyrighted white flannel suit” (“Mark Twain in Gloom,” 5; for an excellent discussion of the white suit phenomenon see Shelden 2010, xvii–xxiv and notes on 433–35).
250.19–20 what Choate said last March] Clemens and Choate spoke at the 29 March 1906 meeting of the New York State Association for Promoting the Interests of the Blind (see AutoMT1, 649 n. 464.17–19). Choate’s remarks, as reported in the New York Times, did not include any comments about life after seventy; they were probably expressed in a private conversation (“Twain and Choate Talk at Meeting for Blind,” 30 Mar 1906, 9).
Autobiographical Dictation, 9 October 1906
250.29 Mr. Frank Stockton] Francis R. Stockton (1834–1902) worked for Scribner’s Monthly, and later served as assistant editor of St. Nicholas, a magazine for young people. His numerous stories and novels for children were known for their clever humor.
250.30 Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge] Dodge (1831–1905) became an author after she was widowed in 1858. Her most famous work is the children’s novel Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates (1865). She edited St. Nicholas magazine from 1873 until her death.
250.36 Rip Van Winkle’s time] Washington Irving’s famous story, first published in 1819, takes place in the Catskills both before and after the Revolutionary War.
Autobiographical Dictation, 10 October 1906
251.28–29 Laurence Hutton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Carroll Beckwith] Clemens’s friendship with drama critic and editor Laurence Hutton (1843–1904) probably began in 1883, when Hutton invited Clemens to join the Kinsmen, an informal club of writers, artists, and actors. James Carroll Beckwith (1852–1917), a famous artist and teacher, painted a portrait of Clemens in 1890; it is now at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford (AutoMT1, 498–99 n. 113.10; N&J3, 10 n. 10; for Warner see AD, 10 Apr 1906, note at 34.27–28).
251.31 Dean Sage] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 31 July 1906, note at 156.26–34.
251.32–33 Susy is in error . . . we were her guests] Clemens apparently conflates two different visits to Onteora. Susy described the first one, which took place in August 1885 (see AD, 8 Oct 1906, note at 247.28), but the Clemenses returned for a nearly three-month stay in the summer of 1890—as the marginal date Clemens provides here indicates. The dinner hosted by Mary Mapes Dodge must have occurred in 1890, because she did not build her Onteora summer home until 1888.
252.11 Chicago, eleven years ago, to witness the Grant festivities] Clemens described the banquet held in General Grant’s honor at the convention of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1879 in “The Chicago G.A.R. Festival” (AutoMT1, 67–70).
252.13 Mr. Medill, proprietor of the Chicago Tribune] Joseph Medill (1823–99) was a founder of the antislavery Republican party, a strong Lincoln supporter, and a radical Reconstructionist after the Civil War. He bought an interest in the Chicago Tribune in 1855, and after becoming a majority stockholder in 1874 he remained the active manager of the newspaper until his death (Mott 1950, 284, 347–48).
253.4–14 Dean Sage . . . He and Reverend Joe Twichell had been classmates in college] Sage and Twichell were already close friends when Clemens met them in the late 1860s, but no record of Sage’s attending Yale has been found. He earned his law degree at Albany Law School in 1861 (Courtney 2008, 141–42; Yale Alumni Directory 1920).
253.17–22 In ’73, when Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was being tried . . . guest in the Sage mansion] Beecher was accused of committing adultery with Elizabeth Tilton
, a parishioner, and in August 1874 her husband, Theodore, sued him for alienation of affection. The newspapers reported daily on the trial, which ended in a hung jury in July 1875 (see AutoMT1, 575 n. 314.38–315.1). The Sage family had a special interest in the case because Henry W. Sage had been a trustee of Beecher’s Plymouth Church for many years, and employed Beecher’s son William in his lumber business. On 13 April 1875 Clemens and Twichell arrived at the Sages for a two-night stay, and they attended Beecher’s trial together the following day (L5: MEC and SLC to JLC and PAM, 26 Nov 1872, 231 n. 3; 3 Dec 1872 to OLL, 237–38, nn. 7–11; L6: 29? July 1874 to Twichell, 202–3 n. 2; link note preceding 18 Apr 1875 to OLC, 446, 448–49).
253.27 Along about 1873 Sage fell a victim to an attack of dysentery] Clemens recorded an incomplete version of the following anecdote at the end of the manuscript of “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” written in Vienna in 1897–98. He deleted the passage when revising the manuscript in 1906 for inclusion in the autobiography (see the Textual Commentary for that sketch at MTPO).
Autobiographical Dictation, 11 October 1906
255.16 I saw a rather disparaging paragraph the other day] The author and exact date of this newspaper article have not been identified. The “disparaging paragraph” to which it refers, however, probably appeared in the New York Sun on 1 August 1885. It claimed that the “man heavily enriched by Grant’s death is Mark Twain,” who would earn “a quarter to one-third of a million dollars” by publishing the Personal Memoirs. It said erroneously that the profits would be split evenly with Grant’s heirs, but in fact Webster and Company’s portion was only 30 percent. Clemens gave various estimates of the royalties paid to Mrs. Grant. In the latest, in the Autobiographical Dictation of 1 June 1906, he claimed her total was “half a million dollars”—which would make his share about $215,000 (“Mark Twain’s Big Speculation,” Scrapbook 22:62, CU-MARK; AutoMT1, 486–87 n. 80.35; see also AD, 2 June 1906, note at 73.24–25).
255.17–18 Grant obsequies. I was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel . . . mob of American celebrities] Grant’s funeral took place on 8 August 1885 in Manhattan. His coffin was escorted from City Hall north to Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson River, in a cortege of some fifty thousand dignitaries and members of the armed forces. (Grant’s body was placed in a temporary tomb in Riverside Park, but in 1897 it was moved elsewhere in the park to the large granite and marble mausoleum known as Grant’s Tomb.) Grant’s family—without his wife, who did not attend—stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where they received numerous friends and celebrities offering their condolences, including Clemens himself, who traveled to New York for the occasion (“Mighty in Death. Grant Followed to the Tomb by Thousands,” New York Express and Mail, 8 Aug 1885, Scrapbook 22:78–83, CU-MARK; 6 Aug 1885 to OLC [3rd], CU-MARK).
255.35–256.4 He was one of Ossawatomie Brown’s right-hand men in the “bleeding Kansas” days . . . “jayhawkers,” who were pro-slavery Missourians] The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which granted those two territories the right to determine their own slavery policy, led to bloody conflicts between Kansas free-state settlers and proslavery “border ruffians” from western Missouri. John Brown, who with his sons and other followers sought to defend and protect the settlers, earned the nickname “Ossawatomie” from violent skirmishes with such ruffians near the Kansas town of that name. Redpath, an ardent abolitionist, worked as a journalist in Kansas from 1855 to 1858, writing in support of the antislavery cause. For a time he published his own newspaper, the Doniphan Crusader of Freedom. In mid-1856 he interviewed Brown and briefly joined his armed band, occasionally participating in military actions. Redpath wrote a sympathetic (and consequently controversial) biography of Brown, published in 1860. “Jayhawkers” were not—as Clemens claims—proslavery. The term was actually applied to the antislavery guerrillas like Brown and his men; the proslavery “border ruffians” were also called “bushwhackers” (McKivigan 2008, 7–42, 47, 51–54; for Brown see AutoMT1, 512–13 n. 154.27–31).
Autobiographical Dictation, 12 October 1906
256.8 dare-devil guerrilla who led the jayhawkers] This guerrilla leader—correctly called a “bushwhacker,” not a jayhawker—has not been identified.
Autobiographical Dictation, 15 October 1906
257.28 George] George Griffin.
258.29–33 I was trying to tame an old-fashioned bicycle . . . Twichell and I took lessons every day] Clemens and Twichell tried to master bicycle riding in the spring of 1884. Clemens described his experience in “Taming the Bicycle,” which he considered submitting to the New York Sun. After deciding that he “didn’t like it at all,” he tore up his manuscript, but he had already sent a copy to Charles Webster, who had it typed (31 May 1884 and 6 June 1884 to Webster, NPV, in MTBus, 258). A manuscript (presumably the copy sent to Webster) survives at Vassar, and an incomplete typescript, which Clemens revised, is in the Mark Twain Papers (SLC 1884; N&J3, 55 n. 123).
259.5 Pond’s Extract] A popular patent medicine made of witch hazel, marketed since 1846 as a topical remedy for bruises, cuts, burns, and a variety of other ailments.
259.21–26 Papa will be fifty years old tomorrow . . . I will put the poem and paragraphs in here] Into her biography Susy pasted a clipping from The Critic of 28 November 1885 (253), which contained a poem and three letters written in honor of Clemens’s fiftieth birthday. Clemens included two of these tributes, letters from Stockton and Warner, in the present dictation; he postponed the other two—a poem by Holmes and a letter from Harris—until the Autobiographical Dictation of 30 October 1906. Warner and Harris are described in the Autobiographical Dictation of 16 October 1906; for Stockton see the Autobiographical Dictation of 9 October 1906, note at 250.29.
259.40 FRANK R. STOCKTON] Clemens thanked Stockton for his good wishes on 29 November 1885 (Pforzheimer):
My Dear Mr. Stockton:
Ah, but I am like the man who polished the pin-points: I am not going to repeat. For a different reason though: he could but wouldn’t, I would but can’t. And yet I thank you for the generous wish, all the same, & I value it to the utmost, coming from you.
Sincerely Yours
S.L. Clemens
The “man who polished the pin-points” is an allusion to Stockton’s story “His Wife’s Deceased Sister,” first published in the Century Magazine in January 1884. One of its characters is a writer who cannot repeat an early success and so ends up earning his living by “grinding points to pins.”
Autobiographical Dictation, 16 October 1906
260.13–14 Warner is gone. Stockton is gone. I attended both funerals . . . nineteen years afterward] Warner died in October 1900 (twenty-nine years after the Clemenses settled in Hartford). His funeral took place in the Asylum Hill Congregational Church; Clemens was an honorary pallbearer, and the Reverend Joseph Twichell officiated. Frank Stockton died in April 1902, and his funeral was held at his sister’s home in Philadelphia; Clemens was again an honorary pallbearer (“Funeral of Mr. Warner,” Hartford Courant, 24 Oct 1900, 4; “Frank R. Stockton’s Funeral,” New York Times, 25 Apr 1902, 3).
260.24–26 Uncle Remus still lives . . . photograph of him in the public prints within the last month or so] Clemens probably saw a photograph of Joel Chandler Harris taken by Underwood and Underwood that was published in the Washington Post on 15 July 1906 (17) and possibly elsewhere. Harris was fifty-seven years old (see the photograph section; AutoMT1, 532–33 n. 217.25–27).
260.29–30 It is just a quarter of a century since I have seen Uncle Remus . . . our home in Hartford] Harris made a long-promised visit to Hartford in the spring of 1883 (12 Dec 1881 and 5 Sept 1882 to Harris, GEU; Harris 1918, 191–92).
261.1–3 in an earlier chapter I have already introduced him . . . memorable adventure with the cats] See “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX” (AutoMT1, 159–61).
Autobiographical Dictation, 30 October 1906
263.28–29 Susy inserts a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes and
a greeting from Uncle Remus (Joel Chandler Harris)] Holmes’s poem and the letter from Harris are from a clipping of The Critic of 28 November 1885 which Susy pasted into her biography (see AD, 15 Oct 1906, note at 259.21–26).
264.25 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES] Clemens expressed his gratitude in the following letter to Holmes, probably written on 29 November 1885 (MTL, 2:466):
DEAR MR. HOLMES,—I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the trouble you took. And then the family: If I can convey the electrical surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the children last night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would happen—well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by; and if you also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise should come.