Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

  When he returned to Hartford, Clemens wrote Ingersoll asking for a copy of his speech (9 Dec 1879 to Ingersoll, Letters 1876–1880). The printed copy sent by Ingersoll is in the Mark Twain Papers, so identified by Clemens. The sentence he quoted in part to Howells reads as follows:

  Grander than the Greek, nobler than the Roman, the soldiers of the Republic, with patriotism as shoreless as the air, battled for the rights of others, for the nobility of labor, fought that mothers might own their babies, that arrogant idleness should not scar the back of patient toil, and that our country should not be a many-headed monster made of warring states, but a nation, sovereign, great, and free. (“The Grand Banquet at the Palmer House, Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 13th, 1879,” CU-MARK)

  69.29 “Egod! He didn’t get left!”] This was evidently the “slang expression” that was new to Clemens (68.13). While it originally referred to missing a boat or train connection, in the late 1870s it came to mean “lose out” in general. Clemens recorded this exact remark about Ingersoll in his 1882 notebook (N&J2, 373, 507; see, for example, “How a Lawyer Got Left,” Puck 3 [24 Apr 1878]: 4).

  70.13 the child is but the father of the man] A slight misquotation from “The Rainbow,” by William Wordsworth.

  70.15–16 for when they saw the General break up in good-sized pieces they followed suit with great enthusiasm] Clemens described this occasion in his letter to Howells:

  Gen. Grant sat at the banquet like a statue of iron & listened without the faintest suggestion of emotion to fourteen speeches which tore other people all to shreds, but when I lit in with the fifteenth & last, his time was come! I shook him up like dynamite & he sat there fifteen minutes & laughed & cried like the mortalest of mortals. But bless you I had measured this unconquerable conqueror, & went at my work with the confidence of conviction, for I knew I could lick him. He told me he had shaken hands with 15,000 people that day & come out of it without an ache or pain, but that my truths had racked all the bones of his body apart. (17 Nov 1879 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880)

  For the full text of “The Babies,” see Budd 1992a, 727–29.

  [A Call with W. D. Howells on General Grant]

  70.18 1881] The year should be 1882: see the note at 70.19–37.

  70.19 Howells] William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, into a large family with radical political and religious tendencies. He was apprenticed to his father, a printer, and became a journalist. With, as he was to say, “an almost entire want of schooling,” he read widely in his father’s library, teaching himself Spanish, German, French, and Italian (Howells to John S. Hart, 2 July 1871, in Howells 1979, 375). In recognition of his support of Lincoln’s 1860 presidential campaign, Howells was rewarded with a consulship in Venice (1861). Returning to America in 1865, he rose as a journalist, moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be assistant editor (1866–71) and then editor (1871–81) of the Atlantic Monthly. In 1881 he retired to concentrate on writing. Among his personal friends were Henry Adams, William and Henry James, and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (son of the poet). His friendship with Clemens dates from his review of The Innocents Abroad in 1869 (Howells 1869). Howells used his position at the epicenter of American letters to help assure Mark Twain’s literary success; he also served his friend as editor, proofreader, and sounding-board. In literature, Howells championed and practiced realism. His best novels, out of a vast output, are usually considered to be The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890); he memorialized Clemens in My Mark Twain (1910).

  70.19–37 his old father . . . resigned, a couple of years later] Howells’s father, William Cooper Howells (1807–94), was appointed U.S. consul at Toronto in 1878, after serving for four years as the consul at Quebec. Howells learned in late January 1882 that his father might lose his position, and on 2 March wrote him that he planned “to spend Sunday with Mark Twain who is a great friend of Grant’s, and can possibly get me access to him” (Howells to William C. Howells, 2 Mar 1882, in Howells 1980, 10–11). Clemens and Howells called on Grant in New York on 10 March. In My Mark Twain, Howells reported that Grant was “very simple and very cordial, and I was instantly the more at home with him, because his voice was the soft, rounded, Ohio River accent to which my years [i.e., ears] were earliest used from my steamboating uncles, my earliest heroes. When I stated my business he merely said, Oh no; that must not be; he would write to Mr. Arthur” (Howells 1910, 71). Grant acted so promptly that Secretary of State Frederick T. Frelinghuysen (1817–85) responded the following day, “You may inform Mr. Clemens that it is not our purpose to make a change in the Consulate at Toronto” (Frelinghuysen to Grant, 11 Mar 1882, CU-MARK). Grant forwarded the letter to Clemens, and he in turn wrote Howells, on 14 March, “This settles the matter—at least for some time to come—& permanently, I imagine. You see the General is a pretty prompt man” (MH-H, in MTHL, 1:394). The elder Howells resigned his post in June 1883 (21 June 1874 to Howells, L6, 166 n. 2; Howells 1979, 61, 196; Howells 1980, 10–11, 14, 58–59).

  71.7–8 “How he sits and towers” . . . Dante] Howells quoted this phrase in a letter to Clemens from Bethlehem, New Hampshire, of 9 August 1885: “We had a funeral service for Grant, here, yesterday, and all the time while they were pumping song and praise over his great memory, I kept thinking of the day when we lunched on pork and beans with him in New York, and longing to make them feel and see how far above their hymns he was even in such an association. How he ‘sits and towers’ as Dante says” (CU-MARK, in MTHL, 2:536). Less than a month later, on 10 September, Clemens added this quotation to his dictated typescript, inserting in brackets the words “It was bacon and beans” and Howells’s presumed quote from Dante. The phrase is not, however, from Dante, but from a sonnet by Italian dramatist and poet Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803): “Siena, dal colle ove torreggia e siede” (“Siena, from the hill where she towers and sits”). Howells’s source was E. A. Brigidi’s La Nuova Guida di Siena (a work he drew on for his Tuscan Cities), where it appeared without citation (Brigidi 1885, 11; Howells 1886, 126, 139). Many years later Howells recalled that the “baked beans and coffee were of about the railroad-refreshment quality; but eating them with Grant was like sitting down to baked beans and coffee with Julius Caesar, or Alexander, or some other great Plutarchan captain” (Howells 1910, 72).

  71.9–18 “Squibob” Derby at West Point . . . would change places with him] Howells later recalled:

  Grant seemed to like finding himself in company with two literary men, one of whom at least he could make sure of, and unlike that silent man he was reputed, he talked constantly, and so far as he might he talked literature. At least he talked of John Phoenix, that delightfulest of the early Pacific Slope humorists, whom he had known under his real name of George H. Derby, when they were fellow-cadets at West Point. (Howells 1910, 72)

  George Horatio Derby (1823–61), a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, was known primarily for the humorous sketches he wrote under his pseudonym while stationed on the Pacific Coast. These were collected in Phoenixiana; or, Sketches and Burlesques (1856) and, posthumously, The Squibob Papers (1865) (15 Dec 1866 to JLC and family, L1, 374 n. 2).

  71.27–29 General Badeau’s military history . . . John Russell Young’s account . . . had hardly any sale at all] Adam Badeau (1831–95) became Grant’s military secretary in 1864, and by the time he retired from the army in 1869 (with the brevet rank of brigadier general) the two men had become close friends. President Grant appointed Badeau U.S. consul in London, where he served from 1870 to 1881, except for a leave from his post to travel with Grant for the first five months of his 1877–79 world tour. Between 1868 and 1881 Badeau published his three-volume Military History of Ulysses S. Grant (Badeau 1868–81; N&J3, 107 n. 137; 15 June 1873 to Badeau, L5, 382 n. 1). John Russell Young (1840–99) had a distinguished career as a journalist with several newspapers before becoming managing editor of the New York Tribune from 1866 to 1869. In 1872 he accepted a posit
ion as foreign correspondent for the New York Herald. He accompanied Grant on his tour, which he chronicled in Around the World with General Grant (1879). Appointed by President Chester A. Arthur as U.S. minister to China in 1882 (through Grant’s influence), Young mediated a number of disputes involving the United States, China, and France before returning to the Herald in 1885 (14 May 1869 to OLL, L3, 230 n. 6; 17 or 18 June 1873 to Young, L5, 383 n. 1).

  71.34–35 best plan of publication—the subscription plan] Subscription publishers sold books in advance of publication through agents who went door to door, largely in rural areas, and persuaded people to place orders by showing them a bound “prospectus” with sample pages and illustrations. Subscription books typically cost more than those sold in bookstores, and were the best way to ensure high profits—a lesson that Clemens had learned from his own experience, beginning in 1869 with the American Publishing Company.

  71.36–37 American Publishing Company . . . swindling me for ten years] In early 1872, shortly after the publication of Roughing It, Clemens began to suspect that his publisher, Elisha P. Bliss, Jr., of the American Publishing Company, was cheating him by overstating his production expenses. He was reassured by Bliss’s explanation, however, and stayed with the firm through the publication of A Tramp Abroad in 1880 (see RI 1993, 877–80; AD, 21 Feb 1906, note at 370.32–33). Although after Bliss’s death in 1880 Clemens considered suing the company, he decided that Francis Bliss, who had succeeded his father, had treated him fairly (26 Oct 1881 to Webster, NPV, in MTBus, 173–74; 28 Dec 1881 to Osgood and Company and 31 Dec 1881 to Osgood, MH-H, in MTLP, 147–49; 3? Oct 1882 to Elliott, CU-MARK; 6 Oct 1882 to Webster, NPV, in MTBus, 203–4). By mid-1883 he was willing to recommend the firm to fellow author George Washington Cable:

  If I were going to advise you to issue through a Hartford house, I would say, every time, go to my former publishers, the American Publishing Company, 284 Asylum st. They swindled me out of huge sums of money in the old days, but they do know how to push a book; and besides, I think they are honest people now. I think there was only one thief in the concern, and he is shoveling brimstone now. (4 June 1883 to Cable, LNT)

  Grant and the Chinese

  72.6 Yung Wing, late Chinese Minister at Washington] Yung Wing (1828–1912) was raised in a peasant family in southern China and learned to read and write English at a missionary school. He came to the United States with his teacher in 1847 and graduated from Yale College in 1854. In 1876 he was appointed minister to Washington jointly with Chin Lan Pin, a position he declined, agreeing instead to serve as Chin’s assistant minister (1878–81). Clemens became acquainted with Yung through their mutual friend the Reverend Joseph Twichell (Yung 1909, 1, 3, 7, 13, 19–21, 27, 41, 173, 180–90, 197–200; New York Times: “The Chinese Ambassadors,” 29 Sept 1878, 1; “China’s Backward Step,” 2 Sept 1881, 5; 21 Feb 1875 to Sprague and others, L6, 393 n. 3).

  72.7–9 Li-Hung-Chang . . . military railroads in China] Li Hung Chang (1823–1901), viceroy of the Chinese capital province of Zhili from 1870 to 1896, was, as Clemens claimed, a progressive politician who promoted modernization of the army and the building of railroads. Clemens first approached Grant about the railroad project in early 1881. Twichell described the circumstances in a journal entry for 25–28 March of that year:

  Yung Wing arrives from Washington full of business. The Chinese Gov. (so he is advised) is soon to embark in a great Rail Road enterprize, and he wants the United States to get in ahead of England and all the world in furnishing the men and the capital involved in carrying out the project. . . . Accordingly M. T. is called on for counsel and aid. He writes to Gen. G. at once. Answer comes promptly that he is on the point of setting out for Mexico, but will be sure to seize an opportunity to write en route to Li Hung Chang making recommendations in the line of Y. W’s ideas. (Twichell 1874–1916)

  Neither Clemens’s letter nor Grant’s reply is known to survive. On 1 April Grant wrote to Clemens while en route to Mexico, enclosing the promised letter to Li:

  If you will show this letter to Yung Wing, and he approves of it, and then forward it to Li Hung Chang, I will be much obliged to you.

  I regret much not reading your letter when it was received. Had I done so I would have arranged for a meeting with you and friends no matter what I had to do. (CU-MARK)

  In a second letter of the same day he added, “On my return to New York I will be very glad to meet you with Yung Wing, and any others you, or he, choose to bring, to talk on this subject” (CU-MARK). Clemens wrote to thank Grant on 22 April: “Your letter to the viceroy has gone at a fortunate time, for it will strengthen his hands at a needed season” (quoted in Dawson 1902). Clemens’s recollection that he and Yung called on Grant three years later to discuss the project, in early 1884, is confirmed by his remark below about Grant’s “fall on the ice,” an accident that occurred in December 1883 (Badeau 1887, 416).

  72.8 Prince Kung] Prince Gong (1833–98), as he is now more commonly known, was head of China’s Grand Council. As the most prominent statesman in China during the 1860s and 1870s, he pursued an agenda of modernization and cooperation with Western countries. Clemens had evidently read a false newspaper report that the prince had committed suicide after the emperor deposed him, but he had only retired from public life (“Prince Kung,” Chicago Tribune, 2 May 1884, 5).

  72.33–34 About 1879 or 1880, the Chinese pupils . . . had been ordered home by the Chinese government] Yung’s life work was to promote the education of Chinese students in the United States. As a result of his efforts, in 1872 the Chinese government established the Chinese Educational Commission, which brought more than a hundred boys to Hartford for a program of studies intended to prepare them for government service in their native country. Yung was appointed co-commissioner with Chin Lan Pin. Both Chin and Woo Tsze Tun, who became co-commissioner in 1876, were conservatives who feared that the mission was a threat to traditional Chinese culture. According to Yung, Woo’s “malicious misrepresentations and other falsehoods” ultimately persuaded the Chinese government, with the consent of Viceroy Li, to take steps to abolish the program in late 1880 (Yung 1909, 200–210).

  73.2–3 Wong, non-progressionist, was the chief China Minister] Although Clemens did not correctly recall Minister Chin’s name, he did accurately describe his role in bringing about the end of the Chinese Mission (Yung 1909, 203).

  73.13 Rev. Mr. Twichell] Joseph H. Twichell (1838–1918), the son of a tanner, was born in Connecticut. He graduated from Yale in 1859, but his studies at Union Seminary were interrupted by Civil War service as chaplain of the Seventy-first New York Volunteers. In 1865 he completed his divinity studies at Andover Seminary and accepted the pastorate of Asylum Hill Congregational Church (Hartford, Connecticut), where he would remain for the rest of his career. The same year, he married Julia Harmony Cushman (1843–1910); they had nine children. He struck up a friendship with Clemens in 1868, which deepened when the Clemenses moved to the Hartford neighborhood of Nook Farm, where the Twichells also lived. Twichell preached a “muscular Christianity” more concerned with social progress than with doctrine, and was broad-minded enough to be Clemens’s confidant and adviser. He accompanied Clemens to Bermuda in 1877 and to Europe in 1878; in A Tramp Abroad he is the model for the character of Harris. He was one of Clemens’s closest friends, presiding at both his wedding and his funeral.

  73.13–22 went down to New York to see the General . . . do it immediately] Twichell, who had befriended Yung and strongly endorsed his work, asked Clemens to enlist Grant’s support. The two men called on Grant in New York on 21 December 1880. Clemens wrote Howells, “Grant took in the whole situation in a jiffy, & before Joe had more than fairly got started, the old man said: ‘I’ll write the Viceroy a letter—a separate letter—& bring strong reasons to bear upon him’ ” (24 Dec 1880 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880).

  73.31–33 General Grant’s letter . . . peremptory command to old Minister Wong to continue the Chinese schools] In M
arch 1881 Clemens wrote to thank Grant for his intervention, announcing that the “Mission in Hartford is saved. The order to take the students home to China was revoked by the Viceroy three days ago—by cable. This cablegram mentions the receipt of your letter” (15 Mar 1881 to Grant, OKeU).

  73.36–37 policy of the Imperial government had been reversed] Ultimately, the efforts of Grant and others to continue the mission were futile. By July 1881 it had been abolished and the students recalled to China (New York Times: “China’s Educational Mission,” 16 July 1881, 5; “China’s Backward Step,” 2 Sept 1881, 5).

  Gerhardt

  74.1 at the farm at Elmira] From 1871 until 1889, the Clemens family spent their summers at Quarry Farm, the Elmira, New York, residence of Olivia’s sister and brother-in-law, Susan and Theodore Crane. Susy, Clara, and Jean were all born there. The property had been purchased in 1869 by Jervis Langdon, who bequeathed it to his daughter Susan. Named after an old slate quarry on the site, it was situated outside the city, on a hill overlooking the Chemung River. In 1874 Susan built an octagonal study on the hill above the house for Clemens to use as a writer’s retreat. There he worked on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) (17 Mar 1871 to Bliss, L4, 366–67 n. 3; Cotton 1985, 59).

  74.2–7 Gerhardt . . . not able to get anything to do] Clemens befriended Karl Gerhardt (1853–1940), a young self-taught sculptor and chief mechanic for a tool manufacturer in Hartford, in February 1881. His wife, Josephine (called “Hattie”), initiated the relationship by calling on Clemens and persuading him to visit her husband’s studio. Clemens, impressed by Gerhardt’s talent, sought the opinions of several artists, who endorsed his judgment: painter James Wells Champney (1843–1903), sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910), and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7–8). Clemens offered to loan Gerhardt $3,000 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, an amount that Ward and others assumed would easily support the artist and his wife for five years. Gerhardt exhausted his stipend (and supplements) in less than four years and returned to the United States in the summer of 1884, leaving his wife in Paris with their infant daughter, Olivia (named in honor of Olivia Clemens; his “little boy,” Lawrence, was not yet born). Having failed to secure any work, he sculpted a clay bust of Clemens, and a plaster casting of it was photographed to provide a second frontispiece for Huckleberry Finn. In the late 1880s Gerhardt won a number of important commissions for memorial statues, but by the end of the decade work became scarce. In the mid-1890s he was briefly in partnership with architect Walter Sanford and was employed by a bicycle manufacturer. Sometime after Hattie died in 1897, he moved to New Orleans and lived in obscurity, doing some sculpting but chiefly tending bar and doing other odd jobs until his own death in 1940 (21 Feb 1881 to Howells [1st], NN-BGC, and 7 Aug 1884 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL, 1:350–55, 2:497–98; “Art Notes,” New York Times, 6 Mar 1881, 8; letters to the Gerhardts: 30 Sept and 1 Oct 1882, MB; 26 Mar 1883, CLjC; 14–25 June 1883, CU-MARK; 1 Aug 1883, CtHMTH; HF 2003, xxvii, 374; AskART 2008e; see Schmidt 2009c).