Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  380.4 Patrick] Patrick McAleer, the Clemens family’s coachman from 1870 until 1891 (AutoMT1, 579 n. 322.31–42, 621 n. 412.41–42).

  380.24 P.S. Saturday. He has been here. Let us not talk about it] In her journal Lyon reported on Dunne’s billiards visit on Friday, 25 January:

  The King says “I am just thirsting for blood & Mr Dooley is going to furnish it!”—Billiards!— Mr Dooley is coming for luncheon. But the King is walking up & down the billiard room with quick light eager steps—ready for dictation, but readier for the blood of Mr Dooley—

  Later:—He got the blood, for he & Mr Dooley played all the afternoon—& while Mr D isn’t a good billiardist, he is good company, & the King was quite happy I think— (Lyon 1907)

  Evidently recalling this same occasion, Paine noted that Dunne’s defeats “continued until Clemens had twenty-five dollars of Dunne’s money, and Dunne was sweating and swearing, and Mark Twain rocking with delight” (MTB, 3:1367). Nevertheless, given that Clemens’s postscript suggests that the billiards contest was not to his satisfaction, this may also have been the occasion on which—according to Dunne’s biographer—he played his

  trick of introducing one white billiard ball that was not quite round, and watching the consternation of his opponent as he tried to use it as his cue ball. But Dunne was either forewarned or quick to detect the imperfection; for he ignored it until Twain’s back was turned, and then he reversed the white balls and the shoe was on the other foot. (Ellis 1941, 195)

  Autobiographical Dictation, 23 January 1907

  380.28 George] George M. Robinson.

  380.34–35 More than forty years ago . . . office staff adjourned] If the year Clemens supplies here—1865—is correct, then he refers to his work for the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle: between October and December of that year he contributed several dozen unsigned items to that paper. He was the local reporter for the San Francisco Morning Call from June to October 1864 (see AD, 12 June 1906, note at 112.18–24, and AD, 13 June 1906).

  381.37–38 A quarter of a century ago I arrived in London . . . Dickens readings in America] See AutoMT1, 516 n. 161.24–27, 517 n. 162.6.

  383.16–19 Mr. Clemens . . . Bateman’s Point] The insertion here of a summary paragraph (typically found only at the beginning of a dictation) marks the beginning of a new section. Despite the absence of a new dateline, the two sections were evidently created on different days: according to Hobby’s typed notes, each one took two and a half hours to dictate, a typical time for one morning’s work.

  384.16–19 Jackass Gulch, California . . . in my time it had disappeared] Clemens refers to his visit to the “Southern mines” at Angels Camp and Jackass Hill in the winter of 1864–65. The whole economy of the area had declined after the rich placer deposits discovered in 1848 were exhausted, leaving opportunity only for the “pocket mining” practiced by his friends Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker. For Clemens’s fictional representation of the rickety saloon and pool table in the decaying city of “Boomerang,” written in September 1865 just months after leaving the area, see “The Only Reliable Account of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (SLC 1865a; see also the ADs of 13 June 1906 and 4 Feb 1907; Herbert O. Lang 1882, 3–4).

  384.32–34 Last winter, here in New York, I saw Hoppe and Schaefer and Sutton . . . contend against each other] Clemens attended three matches of the world-championship billiards tournament held in Madison Square Garden in the early spring of 1906: on 9 April with Rogers, on 11 April with Paine, and on 18 April (no companion identified). On the first two occasions the audience applauded him spontaneously. According to a report in the New York Times after the third match, he occupied “his usual seat at one side of the table” to watch the game, a type of carom billiards with balklines drawn eighteen inches from each cushion (which he calls the “eighteen-inch game” below at 385.1). In addition, on 24 April (the day after the tournament ended) he spoke briefly at a billiards exhibition, a benefit for the San Francisco earthquake victims (for a text see Fatout 1976, 520–21; Lyon 1906, entry for 10 Apr; New York Times: “Hoppe Defeats Cutler; Schaefer Wins Easily,” 12 Apr 1906, 7; “Sutton Beats Slosson by Superior Billiards,” 19 Apr 1906, 14; “Billiard Benefit Plans,” 23 Apr 1906, 12; “Sutton Beats Schaefer,” 24 Apr 1906, 12). William F. Hoppe (1887–1959) was only eighteen at the time of the tournament, but had already won his first world title. He earned fifty more before retiring in 1952. Jacob Schaefer, Sr. (1855–1910), called the “Wizard,” was known for his versatility, becoming a champion of several different types of games. George H. Sutton (1870–1938) graduated from medical school before becoming a professional billiards player. Despite losing both his arms to the elbow in a sawmill accident at the age of eight, he astonished observers with his remarkable skill. In the April 1906 tournament, Sutton placed second, followed by Schaefer and Hoppe. The winner was George F. Slosson of New York; the other contenders were Louis Cure (of Paris), Albert G. Cutler, and Orlando E. Morningstar (Gamo 1908, 309; Hoppe 1975, vii, 4, 88, 97, 105–9; New York Times: “Schaefer, the Wizard, Dead,” 9 Mar 1910, 9; “‘Handless’ Sutton, Billiard Player, 68,” 16 May 1938, 17).

  385.9–10 Twenty-seven years ago . . . at Bateman’s Point, near Newport, Rhode Island] The Clemens family stayed at this popular summer resort, built on an old farm by proprietor Seth Bateman, from 31 July to 8 September 1875 (L6: link note following 29? July 1875 to Redpath, 521–22; 1 Sept 1875 to Milnes, 531).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 28 January 1907

  387.8–10 particular friend . . . take me to a dinner at the Union League Club] The Union League Club of New York was a private social club of wealthy and influential businessmen, lawyers, and statesmen. It was formed in 1863 to support the Union cause, and after the war it dedicated its efforts to civic service of all kinds. Clemens dined at the clubhouse at Fifth Avenue and East Thirty-ninth Street on 26 January with William Evarts Benjamin (1859–1940), a member of the club since 1902. Benjamin, a book collector and publisher, was married to Anne Engle Rogers, Henry H. Rogers’s oldest daughter (New York Times: “Dinner to Senator Clark,” 27 Jan 1907, 13; “Union League Club May Quit Fifth Avenue,” 14 Oct 1905, 1; Lyon 1907, entry for 26 Jan; Union League Club 1916, 57; HHR, 736).

  387.17 Senator Clark of Montana] William A. Clark (1839–1925) accumulated his considerable fortune through gold and copper mining in Montana and Arizona, and later through banking. He lost two bids to become a Democratic senator, in 1889 (when Montana became a state) and in 1893, and was finally elected in 1899, but not seated. See the note at 387.35–388.5.

  387.26 We have lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary] Joseph R. Burton (1852–1923), a Republican senator from Kansas, was convicted of accepting $2,500 from a company whose “get-rich-quick business” had been “barred from the mails,” in return for pleading its case with the Post Office Department. He resigned in June 1906 after his conviction was upheld on appeal by the Supreme Court, and served five months in prison (“Burton Must Go to Jail Supreme Court Decides,” New York Times, 22 May 1906, 2).

  387.29–31 They all rob the Treasury . . . to keep on good terms with the Grand Army of the Republic] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 15 January 1906 and the note at 371.42–372.15.

  387.31–32 Grand Army of the Republic, junior . . . Grand Army of the Republic, junior, junior] Clemens alludes to two allied organizations: Sons of Veterans of the United States of America (founded in 1881) and National Auxiliary to Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (founded in 1883).

  387.35–388.5 Clark of Montana . . . most disgusting reptile that the republic has produced since Tweed’s time] In January 1900 a Senate investigative committee concluded that Clark was not entitled to the seat he had won in 1899 because he had bought the votes of the Montana legislators who elected him. Although he denied any wrong-doing, he admitted to spending nearly $140,000 on his campaign, and resigned before he could be tried and punished. Clark’s bribery of the Montana legislature was instru
mental in bringing about the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, which requires senators to be elected directly by voters instead of by their state legislatures (Rossum 2001, 2, 190, 214). In early 1901 Clark was vindicated when he was again elected to the Senate (without resorting to bribes), where he served for a full term. Clemens’s animosity was no doubt magnified by his friendship with Henry Rogers, vice-president of Standard Oil, which had long sought to control the copper industry in Montana. Rogers and Clark were bitter political enemies, each accusing the other of corruption. Standard Oil’s reputation for unscrupulous business practices and its harsh labor policies contributed to Clark’s 1901 victory (Foor 1941, 136, 150–59, 251–56, 259–62, 266–71; for Tweed see AD, 4 Apr 1906, note at 13.26).

  388.10–13 Mr. Clark had lately lent to the Union League Club . . . European pictures for exhibition] Clark had loaned “thirty canvases . . . representing $1,000,000 in value” (“Dinner to Senator Clark,” New York Times, 27 Jan 1907, 13). His collection included works by Titian, Degas, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Gainsborough, among others. In 1926 he bequeathed more than eight hundred works to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which form the core of its holdings of European art (Corcoran Gallery 2011).

  388.19–20 Clark’s income . . . was thirty million dollars a year] Clark was by far the wealthiest senator, with a fortune of $100 million. Chauncey Depew, the fourteenth on the list, was worth a mere $2 million (William K. Howard 1906).

  388.28–38 late Jay Gould . . . was the noblest thing in American history, and the holiest] In September 1879 Gould telegraphed $5,000 to the Howard Association of Memphis to help it care for the city’s yellow fever victims, and he directed it to “keep on at your noble work till I tell you to stop and I will foot the bill.” This generosity was reported widely in the newspapers, and was even remembered after his death in 1892, in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post (“Watching Yellow Fever,” New York Times, 6 Sept 1879, 1; “Jay Gould’s Good Deeds,” Washington Post, 8 Dec 1892, 4; see AutoMT1, 594 n. 364.19).

  388.39 President of the Art Committee of the club] Unidentified.

  389.9–10 President of the Union League] Financier George R. Sheldon (1857–1919) was elected president on 10 January 1907 (New York Times: “Sheldon Beats Odell’s Man,” 11 Jan 1907, 2; “Geo. R. Sheldon Dies of Mine Injuries,” 15 Jan 1919, 11).

  390.4–6 Palm Readings . . . prints of my hands to several New York palmists] “Palm Readings,” which comprises the remainder of this day’s text, is a manuscript that Clemens wrote in 1905, interleaving typed copies of the three palmists’ reports, followed by his own comments (see the note at 391.21). In the Autobiographical Dictation of 29 January 1907 he explains that the palm readings were arranged by George Harvey, editor of Harper’s Weekly and president of Harper and Brothers. The sketch remained unpublished during Clemens’s lifetime, but in 2010 excerpts appeared in Playboy (SLC 2010b).

  390.8–16 Mr. Stead tried it nine years ago . . . destitute of the sense of humor] One of the four palmists commented that Clemens had “a strong and a fine sense of humour“; the complete text of the reading has not been found, but these words were quoted by Stead in the January 1895 issue of Borderland (Stead 1895, 61): see the Autobiographical Dictation of 26 December 1906, note at 336.32–337.2.

  391.16 in London, once, I went to Fowler] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 26 December 1906, note at 334.24–26.

  391.21 Reading by Niblo] The three experts who examined the prints of Clemens’s palm in 1905, and whose readings are interpolated into this dictation, were all active at the turn of the twentieth century. “Professor Niblo” (real name Marshall Clark) was based in San Francisco, where he advertised himself in local newspapers as an “Astro-Trance Clairvoyant.” He attained brief notoriety in 1909 when a young heiress’s hypnotic trance revealed to him that she was destined to marry him (he was already married). John William Fletcher (1852–1913) was a medium and lecturer, who in his last years practiced as a palm reader in New York. (Clemens would subsequently meet him in person: see the AD of 12 Feb 1907.) In 1913 Fletcher had a fatal heart attack when policemen visited him with a warrant for his arrest. The third palmist, Carl Louis Perin, rejected the label of spiritualist, calling himself a “scientific palmist” and claiming to have graduated from the “Oriental Occult College of India.” If he performed this reading after 24 February 1905, he was violating a court order not to practice palmistry and potentially forfeiting a bond of $500 (Melton 2001, s.v. “Fletcher, John William”; “Clairvoyants,” San Francisco Call, 16 Aug 1905, 10; “Niblo, Mystic, Also Author,” Chicago Tribune, 18 Jan 1910, 5; “Says He Is a Clairvoyant,” Washington Post, 25 Mar 1900, 16; “Sleuths Fooled the Wizard,” New York Times, 25 Feb 1905, 16).

  392.7–8 “The World turns aside to let him pass who knows whither he is going”] From The Call of the Twentieth Century: An Address to Young Men by David Starr Jordan, a naturalist and president of Stanford University from 1891 to 1913 (Jordan 1903, 48).

  392.39 Mr. Spencer] Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English philosopher and polymath.

  393.13 Henry A. Butters of Long Valley] Clemens believed that Butters had swindled him out of $12,500 in 1905 by causing the bankruptcy of the Plasmon Company, in which he had invested. In addition to a mansion in Piedmont, California, Butters owned a cattle ranch in Long Valley, Lassen County (California), on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada (AutoMT1, 586–87 n. 342.33; “Big Deal Made Yesterday,” Reno Nevada State Journal, 12 July 1903, 1; “Oakland Capitalist Succumbs to Pneumonia,” San Francisco Chronicle, 27 Oct 1908, 4).

  394.9 within one gasp of drowning nine different times] Clemens was consistent in saying that he had nearly drowned nine times. See the Autobiographical Dictation of 9 March 1906 (AutoMT1, 401–2; 2 Jan 1895 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in HHR, 115; SLC 1899a, 2).

  397.6 Mount of Venus proves his love for home] On the typescript of Perin’s reading Clemens deleted the following remark: “In judging from the formation of this mount I should say that this man is married and happy” (see the Textual Commentary at MTPO).

  399.29–31 I wrote a philosophy six years ago . . . hidden away in a secret place] Clemens alludes to What Is Man? (see AD, 25 June 1906, note at 142.14, and AD, 21 Dec 1906, note at 332.35–36).

  400.19–20 attached his reading of Queen Marguerite’s to the Countess Raybaudi-Massiglia’s prints] If this incident actually occurred, nothing further has been learned about it. Margherita Maria Teresa Giovanna of Savoy (1851–1926) was married to King Umberto I of Italy. After he was assassinated in 1900, her son, Vittorio Emanuele III, assumed the throne, and she became known as the Queen Mother. (Her reputed favorite pizza was named “Margherita” after her.) The Countess Raybaudi-Massiglia was the owner of the Villa di Quarto near Florence, where the Clemens family lived from late 1903 until Olivia’s death in June 1904. Clemens despised her for her obnoxious demeanor, petty cruelties, and adulterous relationship with her steward (AutoMT1, 540–41 n. 231.13).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 29 January 1907

  401.3–6 an acquaintance up town . . . clairvoyant was a portly middle-aged gentleman] Isabel Lyon recorded that on the afternoon of 23 January 1907 Clemens went to the home of social worker and suffragist Maud Nathan (1862–1946) “to see a clever clairvoyant, Prof. Bert Rees, a big-faced German who read the contents of folded bits of paper in quite a wonderful way. He told the King among other things that he would live to be 98 years ten months & 2 days old—& the King wants to swap off some of those years & months & days” (Lyon 1907). “Prof. Bert Reese” (W. Berthold Riess, 1840–1926) was a native of Prussia who moved to New York around 1890. He traveled in America and Europe as a professional psychic entertainer, achieving fleeting notoriety in 1910 when Thomas Edison bore witness to his clairvoyant powers. Reese was a “billet-reader”: his audience wrote questions on slips of paper and folded them; Reese would read the questions clairvoyantly and would also answer them. Harry Houd
ini said that “of all the clever sleight-of-hand men, he is the brainiest I have ever come across” (Ernst and Carrington 1932, 120–23; Marshall 1910; “W. Bert Reese Dies; Famed Clairvoyant,” New York Times, 11 July 1926, E9).

  403.1–4 a chapter of this Autobiography . . . all about my marriage and my children] Clemens apparently refers to his Autobiographical Dictation of 28 March 1906, part of which appeared in the 18 January 1907 issue of the North American Review (NAR 10). Neither it nor the chapter “which preceded it,” in the 4 January issue (NAR 9), incorporating his dictations of 1, 2, and 13 December 1906, gives all the family details he recalls here.

  403.30–32 death of Mrs. Hooker . . . being residents of Hartford for so many years] Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907) was the half-sister of Henry Ward Beecher. John and Isabella Hooker, whom Clemens had met in early 1868 through Olivia’s family, were among the original residents of the Nook Farm community in Hartford. The Clemenses rented their house for three years (from October 1871 to September 1874) while building their own home nearby. Isabella Hooker, a lifelong champion of women’s rights, died on 25 January (8 Jan 1868 to JLC and PAM, L2, 146 n. 4; 20 Sept 1874 to Parish, L6, 236–37; “Last of Beecher Family Is Dead,” Hartford Courant, 25 Jan 1907, 1).