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

by Mark Twain

  251.32–38 when I came to Virginia in 1862 . . . forty dollars a week attached to it] Clemens arrived in Aurora, in the rich Esmeralda mining district claimed by both Nevada Territory and California, in April 1862. There, living hand to mouth, he immediately set about wielding pick and shovel while energetically speculating in mining “feet,” or shares, to the extent his limited funds allowed. That April he also began contributing letters, under the pen name “Josh,” to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Before the end of July, partly on the strength of the “Josh” letters, none of which survive, he was offered the post of local reporter, as a temporary substitute for the paper’s local editor, William Wright (1829–98), best known under his pen name, “Dan De Quille.” By late September 1862, having failed to strike it rich in Aurora, Clemens had relocated to Virginia City and was reporting for the Enterprise. His earliest extant articles appeared in the paper on 1 October 1862 (see ET&S1, 389–91). He remained on the Enterprise staff until he left Virginia City for San Francisco in late May 1864. For his vivid accounts of his experiences in Aurora and Virginia City see his letters of the period (10? Apr 1862 to OC through 28 May 1864 to Cutler, L1, 184–301) and chapters 35–37, 40–49, 51–52, and 54–55 of Roughing It.

  251.41–42 one column of leaded nonpareil every day] Nonpareil was a small (six point) type, commonly used in newspapers.

  252.1–9 I met John Mackay . . . I will try to get a living out of this] It is not known when Mackay and Clemens first became acquainted. According to the Second Directory of Nevada Territory, by sometime in 1863 Mackay was living on C Street and was working as the superintendent of the Milton Silver Mining Company (Kelly 1863, 254). Clemens gave a similar account of their Virginia City encounter in an 1897 interview (Budd 1977, 78).

  252.10–11 I left Nevada in 1864 to avoid a term . . . have to explain that] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 January 1906.

  252.21 chimney] A “chimney,” or “ore-shoot,” was “a body of ore, usually of elongated form, extending downward within a vein” (Raymond 1881, 19, 20).

  252.25 O’Brien—who was a silver expert in San Francisco] William Shoney O’Brien (1826–78), like Mackay and Fair a native of Ireland, had come to San Francisco in 1849 where he had a succession of businesses—including a tobacco shop, a newspaper agency, a ship chandlery, and a saloon—before becoming a dealer in silver stocks. He and his San Francisco partner, James Clair Flood (1826–89), along with Mackay and Fair, came to be known as the “Bonanza Firm” and together controlled the Comstock Lode (Oscar Lewis 1947, 222–23; Hart 1987, 358–59).

  252.30–31 John P. Jones . . . thirty years] See “The Machine Episode,” note at 104.16–17.

  252.32–253.1 Joseph T. Goodman . . . Williams . . . sold the paper to Denis McCarthy and Goodman] Goodman (1838–1917) emigrated from New York to California in 1854 and worked as a compositor and writer on San Francisco newspapers. He and McCarthy (1840–85) were fellow typesetters on two journals there, the Mirror and the Golden Era, before buying into the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, then owned by Jonathan Williams (d. 1876), in March 1861. By 1865 Goodman was the sole proprietor; he sold out at a considerable profit in February 1874, not to “some journeyman” but to the Enterprise Publishing Company (21 Oct 1862 to OC and MEC, L1, 242 n. 2; Angel 1881, 317).

  253.20–22 And when the Bonanza . . . to San Francisco] Following his February 1874 sale of the Enterprise, Goodman had at least two opportunities to see Clemens that year. In April, after moving to San Francisco, he and his first wife, Ellen (1837?-93), stopped in the East on their way to Europe; they returned in October, the same month the “Big Bonanza” silver discovery was made. Although Goodman could have met with Clemens in April, it is more likely that he would have needed a loan at the trip’s conclusion if he found himself temporarily short of ready cash for the return to San Francisco (L6: 23 Apr 1874 to Finlay, 115–16 n. 5; 29 Mar and 4 Apr 1875 to Wright, 439 n. 8).

  253.27–254.4 Denis . . . never got a start again] After selling his interest in the Enterprise in 1865, McCarthy went to San Francisco, where he invested unsuccessfully in the stock market and soon lost his considerable profit. He was working as the managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle when the “Big Bonanza” was discovered in 1874, and through successful speculation earned another fortune. He returned to Virginia City and bought the Evening Chronicle, which became, within a year, the most widely circulated newspaper in Nevada history. Goodman told Clemens in 1881 that McCarthy’s strong “appetite for liquor” had made him seriously ill, and his death four years later was apparently the result of “dissipation” (Goodman to SLC, 11 Dec 1881, CU-MARK; Angel 1881, 326–27; “Death of D.E. McCarthy,” Virginia City Evening Chronicle, 17 Dec 1885, 2).

  254.5–14 Joe Goodman . . . several times what he paid for it originally] Goodman was a member of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board from 1877 to 1880 and then became a raisin farmer in Fresno, southeast of the city. He had informed Clemens of the change in occupations in a letter of 9 March 1881:

  I got busted in San Francisco—dead broke. Mackay (who owns half of the Enterprise) offered to buy the other half and give it to me; but I saw no profit in it,—Virginia City will soon be as desolate a place as Baalbec,—and, besides, my health was too poor to undertake literary work; so I borrowed $4,000 from Mackay and have started in to vine-growing in this region. I don’t know how it will turn out—and don’t care much. We are about 200 miles from San Francisco, in the San Joaquin Valley. Four or five years ago it was all a desert, but they have brought in irrigating ditches and the land is being rapidly settled—some places already being marvelously fine. I have only 130 acres, but it is quite as much as I shall be able to get under cultivation. At present it is the merest and most desolate speck in the desert you can imagine. Mrs. Goodman gets so homesick she almost cries her eyes out. But, if I live, I will make it a paradise—on a small scale. If you and Mrs. Clemens should ever come to California you will want to see this wonderful southern country, and I extend you a hearty invitation to come and visit us. Should you chance to come soon there would be only the original desert prospect, so far as my ranch is concerned, but there shall be a fountain of welcome for you, and an oasis of hospitality, and—to make the picture complete—I will import a bird for the occasion to sing in the solitude. (CU-MARK)

  Goodman remained in Fresno until 1891, when he moved to Alameda, California (Goodman to Alfred B. Nye, 6 Nov 1905, CU-BANC; Joseph L. King 1910, 59, 339, 344).

  254.16–23 Before this eastern visit . . . published in about 1901] In a letter of 24 May 1902, Goodman informed Clemens:

  Eighteen years ago my attention was called to the inscriptions on the ruins of Central America and Yucatan, and I inconsiderately said I could decipher them. I worked seven years without accomplishing a thing, but then I succeeded in breaking an opening into the mystery. In 1895 they sent for me to come to London and publish the results of my studies up to then. I telegraphed you from Chicago to try to meet me in New York, but as I heard nothing from you I supposed you didn’t get the message in time. Since then I’ve kept on working at the glyphs until I have the whole thing pretty well thrashed out, and am now putting it into book form. So far as concerns me and mine, the pursuit has been a sheer waste of time, money and nerve force. There is no hope of profit in it. Not a thousand persons care anything about the study. The only compensation is that I found out what nobody else could, and that my name will always be associated with the unraveling of the Maya glyphs, as Champollion’s is with the Egyptian. But that is poor pay for what will be twenty years’ hard work. I will send you a copy of the London volume—not that I think it will interest you at all, but as a curiosity. I have since discovered that I made a few mistakes in it, but the bulk of it will stand the test of all time. (CU-MARK)

  At the urging of prominent archaeologist Alfred P. Maudslay (1850–1931), Goodman traveled to London in 1895. There in 1897 he published his findings as The Archaic Maya Inscr
iptions, a book-length work that Maudslay later made the appendix to his own multivolume Archaeology. In 1898 Goodman published a monograph, The Maya Graphic System: Reasons for Believing It to Be Nothing but a Cipher Code, and in 1905 he published an article, “Maya Dates” (Tozzer 1931, 403, 407–8; Goodman 1897; Goodman 1898; Goodman 1905; Maudslay and Goodman 1889–1902). Modern scholarship has validated Goodman’s confidence in his discoveries. Michael D. Coe, in Breaking the Maya Code, noted that Goodman “made some truly lasting contributions,” among them “calendrical tables . . . still in use among scholars working out Maya dates” and his “amazing achievement” in proposing “a correlation between the Maya Long Count calendar and our own” (Coe 1999, 112, 114). Jean François Champollion (1790–1832), considered the father of Egyptology, was the first to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  254.24 account in the New York Times] The article referred to at 251.20, which has not been found.

  254.24–29 strike in the great Bonanza . . . now confessedly exhausted] The total value of the Consolidated Virginia, the California, and the other mines of the Comstock Lode declined from more than $393 million in 1875 to just under $7 million in 1880 (Angel 1881, 619–20).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 10 January 1906

  254.30–31 I have to make several speeches . . . last two months] Between 10 November 1905 and 11 April 1906, Clemens spoke on at least twenty-five occasions. The events included a Washington, D.C., dinner attended by members of the Roosevelt administration (25 November); his own seventieth birthday dinner (5 December); a benefit for Russian Jews (18 December); a dinner for him at The Players (3 January); a Tuskegee Institute fundraiser at Carnegie Hall (22 January); a meeting of the Gridiron Club in Washington, attended by Theodore Roosevelt (27 January); remarks on copyright to the House of Representatives (29 January); a New York Press Club dinner in memory of Charles Dickens (8 February); a Barnard College reception (7 March); a meeting of the New York State Association for Promoting the Interests of the Blind (29 March); a Vassar College Students’ Aid Society benefit (2 April); and a dinner for Russian author Maxim Gorky (11 April) (see Schmidt 2008a for a full list; texts of several of the speeches can be found in Fatout 1976; New York Times: “Choate and Twain Plead for Tuskegee,” 23 Jan 1906, 1; “President in ‘Panama’ Has a Jolly Time,” 28 Jan 1906, 4; “Twain on Rockefeller, Jr.,” 8 Feb 1906, 9; “Three New Plays at Vassar Aid Benefit,” 3 Apr 1906, 9; “Gorky and Mark Twain Plead for Revolution,” 12 Apr 1906, 4).

  255.18–19 my friends of ancient days in the Players Club gave me a dinner] The dinner for Clemens was held on 3 January 1906 at a house at 16 Gramercy Park in New York, which actor Edwin Booth (1833–93) had given to the club for its headquarters. Booth had conceived of the club as a place where actors could “associate on intimate and equal terms with the foremost authors, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, editors, publishers, and patrons of the arts” (Lanier 1938, 47). Clemens was a charter member and had attended the organizational luncheon convened by Booth at Delmonico’s restaurant on 6 January 1888. Walter Oettel, Edwin Booth’s former valet and the longtime majordomo of The Players club, recalled that at the 3 January 1906 dinner “the table decorations and favors were stuffed frogs, à propos of his tale, ‘The Jumping Frog.’ ” Oettel reported that the dinner was hosted by some two dozen club members, among them Brander Matthews (see the note at 255.24), who presided; John H. Finley (1863–1940), author, former Harper’s Weekly editor, and president of City College of New York; Daniel Frohman (see the note at 255.19–22); poet and Century Magazine editor Richard Watson Gilder (see “About General Grant’s Memoirs,” note at 77 footnote); poet and Century Magazine associate editor Robert Underwood Johnson (1853–1937); Francis D. Millet (see the note at 255.28–29); David A. Munro, who was unable to attend (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, and note at 284.7); Albert Bigelow Paine; and Robert Reid (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7–8; Oettel 1943, 53–54, 94; N&J3, 429 n. 73; Lanier 1938, passim; “Players Dine Mark Twain,” New York Times, 4 Jan 1906, 2).

  255.19–22 an absence of three years, occasioned by the stupidity of the Board . . . it amounted to the same] The original board members were Booth; actor Lawrence Barrett (1838–91); merchant William Bispham (d. 1909); brothers Augustin (1838–99) and Joseph F. Daly (1840–1916), the former an eminent playwright, producer, and theater owner, the latter a lawyer and judge; actor Henry Edwards (d. 1891); dramatic critic, biographer, and Harper’s Magazine literary editor Laurence Hutton (1843–1904); actor Joseph Jefferson (1829–1905); and theatrical manager Albert M. Palmer (1838–1905). Bispham, Joseph F. Daly, Jefferson, and Palmer were still on the board in 1903 when Clemens withdrew from the club (see AD, 21 Mar 1906, for Clemens’s further account of his “expulsion”). The other board members then were author Charles E. Carryl (1841–1920); actor John Drew (1853–1927); theatrical manager and producer Daniel Frohman (1851–1940); actor and theatrical manager Frank W. Sanger (1849–1904); and actor Francis Wilson (1854–1935). Carryl had sent Clemens a form letter, dated 12 January 1903, expelling him for “non-payment of dues.” In the top margin of the letter Clemens wrote: “Expelled! (by the mistake of an idiot Secretary)” (CU-MARK). The invitation to return, sent on 10 November 1904, slightly misquoted Carolina Oliphant’s popular lyric, addressed to Bonnie Prince Charlie: “Will ye no com back again? / Better lo’ed ye canna be” (Reid et al. to SLC, NNWH). On 11 November Clemens replied, on mourning stationery, “Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charlie’s heart, if he had one, & certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad & proud to come back again. . . . It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is the only thing I worship” (11 Nov 1904 to Reid and The Players, NNWH). In her 1906 diary, Lyon noted Clemens’s triumphant return from the dinner:

  Mr Clemens has just come home at midnight, from a dinner at “The Players” where he was made an honorary member. It was a great night for all the rest of them, because he had stayed away so long.

  At midnight he stood at the foot of my flight of stairs in happy mood, with a Japanese paper frog hanging by a hind leg from his coat lapel, & this he handed to me as I went down the stairs to greet him. He knew I would be up & waiting to register his safe return. (Lyon 1906, unnumbered leaf inserted after p. 2)

  255.24 Brander Matthews] Matthews (1852–1929), a prominent writer and critic, was a professor of literature and drama at Columbia University (1892–1924). He and Clemens first met in March 1883 when Clemens joined the Kinsmen club, of which Matthews was a founding member (see “Travel-Scraps I,” note at 113.10). In 1887 and 1888 the two men had disagreed in print about international copyright, which placed a temporary strain on their friendship. In 1922 Matthews recalled that episode and other details of their acquaintance in “Memories of Mark Twain” (Matthews 1922; see also Matthews 1917, 231, and N&J3, 345–46, 348, 362–68, 373).

  255.28–29 Frank Millet (painter)] Francis D. Millet (1846–1912) was born in Massachusetts. He earned a degree in literature from Harvard University, but decided to study art in Antwerp, Venice, and Rome. He later served as an artist-correspondent during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78). Many of his portraits and murals depicted historical subjects. He died on the Titanic.

  255.33–36 Sculpture . . . make a speech in Saint-Gaudens’s place] Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7–8) was one of three Players who were unable to attend and sent telegrams of regret; the others were David Munro and author Thomas Bailey Aldrich (see “Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich”). It is not known who spoke extemporaneously “in Saint-Gaudens’s place” (“Players Welcome Mark Twain,” New York Tribune, 4 Jan 1906, 7).

  256.5–6 For I came without a text, and these boys furnished plenty of texts for me] The texts of the other speeches have not been found. Clemens “told the amusing story of English Mary,” which is reprinted in his “Speech at The Players, 3 Ja
nuary 1906” (Oettel 1943, 54–57; see the Appendix, pp. 662–63). Clemens had first told this story in three letters of 17 July 1877 to his wife in Elmira, as the actual events were unfolding in their Hartford household. In 1897 or 1898 he fictionalized the episode in a tale he called “Wapping Alice,” which he did not succeed in publishing in his lifetime. Then he reworked it again in his Autobiographical Dictation of 10 April 1907 (for the early versions see SLC 1981, 7–24, 39–67). Appropriately, he read the “Jumping Frog” story (SLC 1865) as an encore.

  256.17–19 one which I am to attend in Washington on the 27th . . . President and Vice-President of the United States] At the 27 January annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, a prestigious and convivial journalistic society organized in 1885, “Mr. Samuel L. Clemens was in his happiest vein, and spoke for nearly twenty minutes. He was introduced by an alleged roustabout on a Mississippi steamboat who heaved the lead and shouted ‘mark twain’ as he reported the depth of the water” (“A Night in Panama,” Washington Post, 28 Jan 1906, 1, 6). The Gridiron Club forbade reporting of speeches, and no text of Clemens’s remarks is known to survive. President Theodore Roosevelt also spoke, as did other members of his administration, and numerous congressmen and other luminaries attended, but Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks (1852–1918) was not among them.

  256.26 Morris incident] See Clemens’s account below and the note at 258.34.

  257.6–9 Even yesterday . . . in banks] On 6 September 1905, a New York State legislative committee had begun an investigation of longtime and widespread abuses in the life insurance industry, including extravagant executive salaries; illegal political contributions, both to finance electoral campaigns (especially to Republican presidential candidates) and to influence legislation; illicit dealing in stocks and bonds; and entangling alliances with banks. The investigation—reported exhaustively in the New York press—focused primarily on the Mutual Reserve Life Insurance Company, the New York Life Insurance Company, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society. On 22 February 1906 the committee issued its report to the New York State legislature, along with twenty-five proposed reform bills, all of which were signed into law by 27 April 1906. The executives who came under fire were Richard A. McCurdy and his son Robert H. McCurdy, president and foreign manager, respectively, of Mutual Life (these two, and the senior McCurdy’s son-in-law, collected $4,643,926 in salaries and commissions between 1885 and 1905); John A. McCall and his son John C. McCall, president and secretary, respectively, of New York Life; Chauncey M. Depew, Republican senator from New York and for years the highly paid special counsel of Equitable Life and a member of its executive committee; and James W. Alexander and James H. Hyde, president and first vice-president of Equitable Life, respectively. The influence of these men extended far beyond the three insurance companies. In October 1905, for example, Hyde was reported to be a director of forty-five corporations and Depew a director of seventy-four. As a result of the investigation at least some of those connections were severed. By 10 January 1906 the McCurdys, Depew, the elder McCall, Alexander, and Hyde had all resigned from—or failed to be reelected to—bank directorships (New York Times, numerous articles, 15 Aug 1905–28 Apr 1906). Clemens returns to the subject in his Autobiographical Dictation of 16 February 1906.