by Mark Twain
300.35–40 old Dr. Peake, who was the ringleader . . . person in the community] Humphrey Peake (1773–1856) grew up on his family’s Virginia estate, which bordered on Mount Vernon; his father had been a hunting companion of George Washington’s. He was a surgeon in the Virginia Militia in 1812, a justice of the peace in 1813, and the collector of the port of Alexandria from 1820 to 1830. He moved to Missouri in the middle 1830s and then to Hannibal, where in 1839 he bought land, opened a medical office, and became a friend of John Marshall Clemens’s. In 1847, at age seventy-four, he was still practicing at the same office. In 1897 Clemens described him as a “courtly gentleman of the old school,” and in 1898 based the character of Dr. Wheelwright, the “stately old First-Family Virginian and imposing Thinker of the village,” upon him in “Schoolhouse Hill” (Inds, 104, 238, 296; U.S. and International Marriage Records 2011; “Medical Notice,” Hannibal Journal, 1 July 1847, unknown page; Hannibal Courier-Post 2011; Jim Boulden, personal communication, 23 Aug 2011, CU-MARK). In 1902 Clemens told a newspaper reporter that
he remembered old Dr. Peake better than almost any of the Hannibal citizens of fifty years ago. He described Dr. Peake as a Virginian who, on state occasions, wore knee breeches and large silver buckles on his low cut shoes, and wore a wig. He . . . and the elder Clemens, Sam’s father, were subscribers for the Weekly National Intelligencer, published at Washington, D.C., and it was their custom to discuss the speeches made in Congress from the time the paper was received until the next copy came to hand. (“Good-bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1)
300.42 I rejoiced without shame] Clemens’s 1880 working notes for Huckleberry Finn show that he considered making use of his encounter with the mesmerizer: “Do the mesmeric foolishness, with Huck & the king for performers” (HF 2003, 486). And again in 1897 he considered using his experience in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy”: “The mesmerizer—Tom gets no pay, yet was superior to Hicks, who got $3 a week” (Notebook 41, p. 58, CU-MARK). In the end, neither story used the “mesmeric foolishness.”
Autobiographical Dictation, 2 December 1906
301.1 Mr. Clemens’s experiments in mesmerism, continued] Like the previous day’s text, this one and the next are in fact 1903 manuscripts inserted in 1906.
301.2–6 large white house on the corner of Hill and Main . . . Dr. Grant’s] The Clemens family moved in with Dr. Orville R. Grant (1815–?54) and his family in 1846, occupying the flat above his drugstore. They boarded the Grant family in exchange for their lodging, after it became clear that all of the Clemens property would be sold to pay a debt (see AutoMT1, 62–63, 454). John Marshall Clemens died several months later, in March 1847. Grant was born in Kentucky, received his Doctor of Medicine “on the Modus Operandi of Medicines” at the Louisville Medical Institute in March 1838, and evidently spent time in Virginia before setting up shop in Hannibal, where he served as a physician, surgeon, and pharmacist for nearly a decade (Yandell 1838). In 1845 he attended the dying Sam Smarr, who had been shot in the street in front of the drugstore by William Owsley—an incident that Clemens used in chapter 21 of Huckleberry Finn. And Clemens remembered, in 1867, that when Jimmy Finn, one of the town’s drunkards, died the same year, “his body went to Dr. Grant” (SLC 1867b). Clemens had seen the house when he was last in Hannibal, from 29 May to 3 June 1902, a year before writing this manuscript (Wecter 1952, 133; Inds, 318–19, 339–40; Kanawha Census 1850, 954:101A).
301.6–7 Dr. Grant and Dr. Reyburn argued a matter on the street with sword-canes] In August 1845, a report on the incident appeared in the newspaper exchanges, which named another assailant: “An affray took place in Hannibal on last Friday week, in which a man by the name of Railey stabbed Dr. Orville R. Grant through the left lung, with a spear attached to his cane” (“Affray at Hannibal, Mo.,” Philadelphia North American, 26 Aug 1845, 1).
301.13 Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. Grant’s mother] Orville Grant married Miriam M. McFarland (1820–53) in 1837 in Charleston, West Virginia. Her mother, Lethe Reynolds McFarland (1800–1882), was the first of her father’s four wives. No confirmation has been found that she ever took the name Crawford (Little 1893, 149–50; Atkinson 1876, 273).
301.14–15 the Richmond theatre burned down thirty-six years before . . . that memorable tragedy] On the night of 26 December 1811, during a pantomime afterpiece entitled “Raymond and Agness, or the Bleeding Nun,” fire engulfed the Richmond Theatre “with electric velocity,” spreading from a chandelier onstage to the entire building in only ten minutes. Despite all efforts to rescue those who were trapped inside, fifty-four women and eighteen men died out of an audience of six hundred (Richmond Then and Now 2011).
302.34–35 General Sherman used to rage and swear over “When we were marching through Georgia,”] In 1865 Henry Clay Work wrote “Marching through Georgia” to celebrate Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea at the end of 1864, which left a wide path of destruction and hastened the end of the Civil War.
302.41–42 Thirty-five years after those evil exploits . . . I had not seen for ten years] Clemens probably confessed his deception to his mother in January 1885, when he stopped in Keokuk on his reading tour with George Washington Cable. The last time he had seen her was in August 1874, when he and Olivia visited her in Fredonia, New York, where she was living with Pamela Moffett (14 Jan 1885 to OLC, CU-MARK; link note following 1–3 Aug 1874 to Dickinson, L6, 205).
304.2 Carlyle said “a lie cannot live.”] Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution was one of Clemens’s favorite books, but he was familiar with other works as well. “Nature admits no lie,” Carlyle wrote in “The Stump-Orator,” but no closer version of the quotation has been found (Gribben 1980, 1:128–29; Carlyle 1864, 180).
Autobiographical Dictation, 3 December 1906
304.5 Mesmerism continued—The Baron F. incident] This text, like those of 1 and 2 December, is from a 1903 manuscript inserted here in 1906.
304.6–14 dined with the C.’s, (in Vienna, in 1897) . . . across the table at a Mr. B.] The people mentioned in this paragraph have not been identified.
304.35–305.1 mesmerism—as it was then called . . . by Charcot under its other name of hypnotism] The term “mesmerism” derived from the name of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815), one of the earliest researchers to experiment with the phenomenon. Mesmer theorized that a force called “animal magnetism”—a transference of energy from one animate or inanimate object to another—produced the unusual effects he witnessed. In 1842 a Scottish physician, James Braid (1795–1860), concluded that the cause was instead “a peculiar condition of the nervous system, induced by a fixed and abstracted attention of the mental and visual eye, on one object, not of an exciting nature,” and he proposed the term “hypnotism” to replace the scientifically derided “mesmerism” (Braid 2008, 10, 31). Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), an eminent French neurologist, turned a Paris asylum for women into a renowned research and teaching hospital; he became world famous for his public lectures and demonstrations in which hypnotized patients reproduced symptoms such as temporary paralysis of the limbs, deafness and muteness, amnesia, heightened or lost sensitivity of the skin, hallucinations, somnambulism, and fits of contortions, flailing, and seizures (Hustvedt 2011, 10–12, 58–63, 90–93, 106–13).
Autobiographical Dictation, 5 December 1906
307.23–31 not so cruel, not so pitiful, as is life in Russia to-day . . . so long as the Czardom continues to exist] Clemens published the bitter “Czar’s Soliloquy” in 1905 and expressed similar sentiments about the “insane and intolerable slavery” of the Russian people and the tsar’s “medieval barbarisms” in a public protest the same year (SLC 1905c; see AutoMT1, 648 nn. 462.36–37, 463.2).
307.35 SELLING WIVES FOR BREAD] This dispatch appeared in the New York Sun on 5 December. The 1906 famine in Russia was one of the worst in the country’s history: an estimated twenty million people were threatened with starvation (“20,000,000 Face Famine,” New York Times, 4 Dec 1906, 4).
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308.6–7 John Cadwalader, a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia, furnished me such a note] John Cadwalader (1843–1925) practiced law in state and federal courts throughout his career (“John Cadwalader Dies at 81 Years,” New York Times, 13 Mar 1925, 19). Clemens heard this story from him when they dined together on 28 August 1902 (Notebook 45, TS p. 20, CU-MARK).
308.9–12 the illustrious John Marshall, Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court . . . a monument to commemorate the event] John Marshall (b. 1755) died on 6 July 1835. The following day, the Bar Association of Philadelphia met to establish the monument fund (U.S. Government Printing Office 1884, 81–82).
308.22–23 the young subscription-gatherer already mentioned died in the harness . . . undistinguished lawyer] Peter McCall (1809–80) was the last surviving member of the committee. After graduating from Princeton with high honors in 1826, McCall studied law under the lawyer and statesman Joseph R. Ingersoll and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1830, the beginning of what was in fact a distinguished career. Among his more famous clients was Samuel Morse, whom he successfully represented in several cases regarding infringements of his telegraphic patents. A member of Philadelphia’s Select Council between 1840 and 1848, McCall served as mayor in 1844–45 (U.S. Government Printing Office 1884, 91; Wilson and Fiske 1887–89, 4:75; “Obituary. Death of Hon. Peter McCall, a Well-Known Citizen,” Philadelphia North American, 1 Nov 1880, unknown page).
308.41–309.1 Philadelphia’s most revered, beloved, and illustrious old lawyer, Daniel O’Dogherty] Daniel Dougherty (1826–92), a native of Philadelphia whose early years were spent in poverty, was admitted to the bar in 1849. He soon became celebrated not only for his courtroom appearances but for the brilliance of his oratory, often in support of political causes. He worked for Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, and gave the presidential nomination speeches for General Winfield Scott Hancock at the Democratic Convention in 1880 and for Grover Cleveland in 1888 (“Daniel Dougherty Dead,” New York Times, 6 Sept 1892, 2; Young 1892; Wilson and Fiske 1887–89, 2:210–11).
309.14–15 to raise this fifty thousand dollars is happily not necessary—it is already raised!] The initial $2,557 raised in 1835 from members of the bar in Pennsylvania and other localities—with the stipulation that no individual contribution should exceed $10—had grown to almost $20,000 in 1880. In 1882, “Congress, in order that the nation might join the bar in honoring the memory of the great man to whom so much was due, added another $20,000 to the lawyers’ fund” (U.S. Government Printing Office 1884, 3, 12–13, 23–25, 90).
309.18 The resulting Marshall monument is in the Capitol grounds at Washington] The bronze statue was sculpted in 1883 by William Wetmore Story (1819–95), son of Justice Joseph Story, Marshall’s friend and colleague on the Supreme Court. It was installed on the west plaza of the Capitol and formally unveiled on 10 May 1884; in 1981 it was moved to the basement of the Supreme Court building, where it remains.
Autobiographical Dictation, 6 December 1906
310.2–3 each stitch that he took made Clara wince slightly, but it shriveled the others] Clemens may be conflating two incidents. In July 1880 he made note of both in “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens.” The first occurred in about 1877, when Clara was three years old, and had “the end of her forefinger crushed nearly off—she was full of interest & comment while the doctor took his stitches, & hardly winced.” In the second incident, which he described as occurring “last spring,” Clara had
an angry & painful boil on her hand, & mamma made preparation to cut into it. Bay was serene, Susie was full of tremors & anxieties. As the cruel work progressed, Bay was good grit, & only winced, from time to time. Susie kept saying, “Isn’t she brave!”—& at last a compliment was even wrung from mamma, who said, “Well you are a brave little thing!” Bay placidly responded, “There ain’t anybody braver but GOD!” (SLC 1876–85, 69, 71)
310.12–20 a command from the Emperor of Germany to come to dinner . . . to get acquainted with but God] The dinner took place in Berlin on 20 February 1892 at the house of Clemens’s third cousin, Alice Clemens von Versen, and her husband, Maximilian, a Prussian cavalry general (see AutoMT1, 456, 645 n. 456.25–26, where the city is misidentified as Vienna). On 24 January Clemens had been forced by “congestion of lungs & influenza” to decline an earlier invitation she had conveyed from the emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, to visit the palace:
Frau von V. came again that day or the next & said the Emperor had commanded her to prepare dinner for him & me in her house—the date of the dinner to be the day that I shd be well enough.
A day or two ago, Jean was overheard to say—after some talk about this approaching event—”I wish I could be in papa’s clothes”—pause & reflection—”but it wouldn’t be any use, I reckon the Emperor wouldn’t reconnize me.” (Notebook 31, TS p. 21, CU-MARK)
310.24 Prince Heinrich, and six or eight other guests] Prince Heinrich of Prussia was the emperor’s brother (see AD, 11 Feb 1907, note at 432.15–18). The other guests included Prince Hugo von Radolin (1841–1917), the former Count Radolinski, soon to be appointed the German ambassador at Constantinople, and two of Clemens’s friends from the German ministry: Franz von Rottenburg (1845–1907), undersecretary in the Ministry of the Interior, and Rudolf Lindau (see AD, 31 July 1906, note at 157.7–8, and the notes at 310.35–37 and 312.19–20 in this dictation; Notebook 31, TS p. 31, CU-MARK; MTB, 2:940; London Morning Post: “Germany,” 22 Apr 1891, 7; “Germany,” 2 July 1892, 5; “Death of Dr. Von Rottenburg,” London Times, 15 Feb 1907, 7).
310.32–34 he said that my best and most valuable book was “Old Times on the Mississippi.” . . . presently] Clemens mentions the emperor’s praise of Life on the Mississippi, and some of his other works, in the Autobiographical Dictations of 17 December 1906, 11 February 1907, and 12 February 1907.
310.35–37 An official who was well up in the Foreign Office . . . Smith, I will call him] “Smith” was in fact Clemens’s friend Rudolf Lindau, who had been chief of the press department of the Foreign Office under Otto von Bismarck (1815–98), first chancellor of the German Empire. He was one of Bismarck’s “most trusted subordinates” from 1878 until 1890, when Wilhelm II replaced Bismarck with Count Georg Leo von Caprivi (1831–99), and he retained the same office under Caprivi until his “vacation” in Constantinople beginning in 1892 (“The German Emperor and Prince Bismarck,” London Standard, 28 Sept 1897, 5).
312.19–20 Eight years later Smith was passing through Vienna . . . no interruption of his vacation] Clemens last saw Lindau in Vienna in 1898, and in 1901 recounted his memories of the Berlin dinner in a letter:
How well I remember the night when you told me to watch the Emperor and count how many seconds he conversed with you, so that I might know if the seconds reached sixty it would be a sure sign that he was satisfied with you and that you would get your vacation in Constantinople; and I also remember that he put his hand on your shoulder and that when he was done with you the watch had marked twelve minutes, so I knew that you could stay as long in Constantinople as you pleased and boss the German Embassy there if you chose. Ten years have gone by since that night and there you have been luxuriating in the Turkish capital ever since. You have been leading an ideal life there, and we all hope you will be able to transport the charm of it to Heligoland. (24 Apr 1901 to Lindau, ViU)
After his years in Constantinople, in part working as a director of the Tobacco Board of the Anatolian Railway, Lindau retired to the island of Heligoland, near Germany in the North Sea (Lindau 1917).
Autobiographical Dictation, 13 December 1906
312.23–24 As regards the coming American monarchy . . . chairman of the banquet] The occasion for Clemens’s remarks was a banquet in honor of Secretary of State Elihu Root (1845–1937), held at the Waldorf-Astoria on 12 December by the Pennsylvania Society (see the note at 312.25–26). Clemens returned to New York from a trip to Washington on the afternoon of the banquet, but
there is no evidence that he actually attended it (see AD, 18 Dec 1906; Lyon 1906, entries for 10–12 Dec). The source of the present text is a manuscript, into which Clemens copied a series of quotations excerpted from Root’s speech as reported in the New York Times the following morning. The chairman was James Hampden Robb (1846–1911), a retired banker and former state assemblyman and senator (New York Times: “Root, Crying for Power, Meets a Judge’s Reply,” 13 Dec 1906, 1–2; “J. Hampden Robb, Ex-Senator, Dead,” 22 Jan 1911, 11).
312.25–26 that such a man as you, Mr. Root, is chief adviser of the President] After a distinguished legal career of over thirty years in New York City, Elihu Root served in 1899–1904 as secretary of war under William McKinley, and since 1905 had been secretary of state under Theodore Roosevelt. He later served as a U.S. senator from New York (1909–15), and was a prominent figure in international law and diplomacy, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912.
312.32–33 He did not say . . . unavoidable replacement of the republic by monarchy] Root made an appeal for the centralization of power in the federal government, arguing that the contradictory laws of the individual states were often inconsistent with national interests. The applause for Root’s speech was “comparatively slight,” while the rebuttal delivered by John Hay Brown, a justice on the supreme court of Pennsylvania, was enthusiastically received; he argued that it was the role of the federal judiciary to “save the country from the consequences of legislative wandering beyond constitutional limits” (“Root, Crying for Power, Meets a Judge’s Reply,” New York Times, 13 Dec 1906, 1–2).