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

by Mark Twain

  I am pretty dull in some things, & very likely the Atlantic speech was in ill taste; but that is the worst that can be said of it. I am sincerely sorry if it in any wise hurt those great poets’ feelings—I never wanted to do that. But nobody has ever convinced me that that speech was not a good one——for me; above my average, considerably. (Letters 1876–1880)

  (For an extended discussion of the Whittier dinner speech and its aftermath, including texts of Clemens’s letter of apology and the responses to it, see Smith 1955; see also AD, 23 Jan 1906, for additional comments on the speech.)

  264.38–39 I can see those figures with entire distinctness across this abyss of time] There were sixty Atlantic contributors and associates at the dinner. Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, Houghton, and Howells were at the head of the table. Clemens’s good friend James R. Osgood was seated on one side of him, and on the other was their mutual friend Charles Fairchild, a Boston paper manufacturer. Elsewhere were seated Charles Dudley Warner and James Hammond Trumbull (see AD, 12 Jan 1906, note at 272.31–32). Other more casual acquaintances of Clemens’s were present, including agriculturist and sanitary engineer George E. Waring (1833–98), Unitarian minister Thomas W. Higginson (1823–1911), and poet and fiction writer John T. Trowbridge (1827–1916). Many of the guests, including Clemens, had also attended the Atlantic’s 15 December 1874 dinner for its contributors (see the link note following 14 Dec 1874 to Howells, L6, 317–20).

  264.40–265.5 Willie Winter . . . did love to recite those occasional poems] William Winter (1836–1917) was dramatic critic of the New York Tribune from 1865 to 1909 and also the author of several biographies of actors. He did not attend the Whittier birthday dinner. The occasion Clemens recalled was the 3 December 1879 Atlantic Monthly breakfast for Oliver Wendell Holmes. In a well-received speech intended to redeem his 1877 performance, Clemens described how he had committed “unconscious plagiarism” by echoing Holmes’s dedication to “Songs in Many Keys” in The Innocents Abroad (see “Notes on ‘Innocents Abroad,’ ” note at 225.17–19). Winter appeared later in the roster of speakers and read his thirteen-stanza tribute, “Hearts and Holmes” (“The Holmes Breakfast,” Boston Advertiser, 4 Dec 1879, 1), which concluded:

  True bard, true soul, true man, true friend!

  Ah, lightly on that reverend head

  Ye snows of wintry age descend,

  Ye shades of mortal night be shed!

  Peace guide and guard him to the end,

  And God defend!

  266.9–10 Howells, who was near me . . . couldn’t get beyond a gasp] Howells was seated at the head table, not close to Clemens. Nevertheless, given that newspaper reports do not confirm that Clemens’s speech was generally perceived to be a “disaster,” it is likely that it was chiefly Howells’s reaction that persuaded Clemens that it was.

  266.12–13 If Benvenuto Cellini’s salamander . . . autobiography] See “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” note at 209.41.

  266.15–17 Bishop . . . a most acceptable novel . . . in the Atlantic Monthly] William Henry Bishop (1847–1928) was the author of Detmold: A Romance, serialized in the Atlantic Monthly from December 1877 through June 1878 and published in book form in 1879 (Bishop 1877–78; Bishop 1879).

  266.32–33 at last he slumped down in a limp and mushy pile] Bishop’s speech did not follow Clemens’s. According to press reports, several speakers intervened, including poet Richard H. Stoddard and Charles Dudley Warner. Bishop spoke “last on the regular list,” well past midnight, and after Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow had all left (“Whittier’s Birthday,” Boston Advertiser, 18 Dec 1877, 1; Boston Evening Transcript, “The Atlantic Dinner,” 18 Dec 1877, 3). No account of Bishop’s speech is known to survive, other than the Boston Journal’s observation that he was one of those who talked “briefly and suitably” (“Whittier’s Birthday,” 18 Dec 1877, unknown page) and the Boston Evening Traveller’s remark that he “closed very gracefully the list of regular speakers” (“A Bard’s Birthday Banquet,” 18 Dec 1877, 1).

  266.34–35 the program . . . ended there] The program did not conclude prematurely, as Clemens implied. By most newspaper accounts, following Bishop’s satisfactory delivery of the last “regular” speech, there was just one additional speaker before the festivities ended around 1 A.M. on 18 December.

  267.22–23 Even the Massacre did not produce a like effect, nor the Anthony Burns episode] The Boston Massacre occurred on 5 March 1770, when British troops opened fire on a rioting crowd and killed five colonists. Anthony Burns (1834–62) was a slave who fled from Richmond, Virginia, to Boston in 1854. That same year he was arrested and convicted under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, occasioning mass protests on a scale unknown since the days of the Revolution. After his forced return to Virginia, Boston supporters purchased his freedom and paid for his education at Oberlin College; he later became a Baptist minister.

  267.27 the New Hampshire hills] Clemens spent the summer of 1906 at Upton Farm, near Dublin, New Hampshire, dictating his autobiography.

  267.28–29 I will go before . . . Twentieth Century Club] The Twentieth Century Club (since 1934 the Twentieth Century Association for the Promotion of a Finer Public Spirit and a Better Social Order) was begun in Boston in January 1894. Membership was open to

  men and women over the age of 21 who had “rendered some service in the fields of science, art, religion, government, education or social service; and those who in their business, home life, or civic relations have made some contribution to the life of the community, state or nation, worthy of recognition. . . .” Club activities centered around Saturday Luncheons. Begun as men-only affairs, they were opened to women by 1895. . . . Speakers were told to expect vigorous questioning. . . . Speakers included: newspaper editors, reformers, missionaries, socialists, educators, authors, labor leaders, economists and others. (Massachusetts Historical Society 2008)

  Clemens had appeared before the club on 4 November 1905, speaking satirically on peace, missionaries, and statesmanship (SLC 1905f). He is not known to have resurrected the Whittier dinner speech before the club. For his additional remarks on that speech, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 23 January 1906.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 12 January 1906

  267 title January 12, 1906] The first page of this dictation is reproduced in facsimile in the Introduction (figure 15).

  267.35 Colonel Harvey] George Brinton McClellan Harvey (1864–1928) worked as a reporter for the Springfield (Mass.) Republican and the Chicago News before he became managing editor of Pulitzer’s New York World while still in his twenties. He made a very large fortune building electric railways, and in 1899 he purchased the venerable North American Review and became its editor. The following year he became president of the financially troubled Harper and Brothers, and in 1901 he also became editor of Harper’s Weekly. It was he who negotiated with Clemens and Rogers to secure the 1903 contract that gave Harper essentially exclusive rights to everything Clemens wrote or had written. In an interview published on 3 March 1907 by the Washington Post Harvey identified Clemens as the best-paid writer in the United States, thanks to this contract, which guaranteed payment for “everything he wrote, whether it was printed or thrown away” (“Mark Twain’s Exclusive Publisher Tells What the Humorist Is Paid,” A12). His title of “Colonel” was civilian rather than military, and was the rank he held from 1885 to 1892 as an aide-de-camp on New Jersey gubernatorial staffs (HHR, 513 n. 2).

  268.15–16 President and the Governors had to have my birthday—the 30th—for Thanksgiving Day] In 1789 George Washington created the first nationally designated Thanksgiving Day, held on 26 November that year. Subsequently, the holiday was appointed by presidential and gubernatorial proclamation, but irregularly and not on a uniform date. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that a national Thanksgiving Day henceforth would be celebrated on the last Thursday in November, which in 1905 was the fifth Thursday, and also Clemens’s birthday. In 1939 Franklin D. Roose
velt changed the date to the third Thursday of November, and in 1941 Congress passed legislation definitively establishing Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November.

  268.23–24 several vicious and inexcusable wars] In addition to the Russian Revolution (see AD, 10 Jan 1906, note at 257.18–21), Clemens doubtless alludes to the Russo-Japanese War and possibly to uprisings in Yemen, Crete, the French Congo, and German East Africa (Tanzania), all in 1904–5.

  268.24–25 King Leopold . . . slaughters and robberies in the Congo State] Leopold II (1835–1909) had been king of Belgium since 1865. Between 1878 and 1884, with the help of explorer Henry M. Stanley, he had personally acquired treaty rights to a vast section of central Africa (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), which he organized into the Congo Free State and then, over the next decade, brought under his ruthless control. He ruled it as his private commercial empire, enriching himself while exploiting and brutalizing the Africans compelled to work for the mining and rubber companies that were his concessionaires. Clemens’s scathing satire, King Leopold’s Soliloquy, written in 1905, helped bring these cruelties under scrutiny (SLC 1905a). In 1908 Leopold was forced to relinquish control of the Congo Free State to the Belgian government.

  268.25 Insurance revelations in New York] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 10 January 1906.

  268.28 birthday celebration . . . 5th of December] The lavish banquet to commemorate Clemens’s birthday was held at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York. Following this paragraph he dictated the instruction “(Here paste in the proceedings of the Birthday Banquet).” This was not done in any of the later typescripts, however, where the instruction was merely retranscribed. The “proceedings,” including photographs of the guests as well as texts of the speeches and other tributes, filled thirty-two pages in the 23 December 1905 “Mark Twain’s Birthday Souvenir Number” of Harper’s Weekly (SLC 1905g). In his Autobiographical Dictation of 16 December 1908, Clemens again noted, “I think I will insert here (if I have not inserted it in some earlier chapter of this autobiography) the grand account of the banquet.” A facsimile of the publication is available at MTPO.

  268.30 In the speech which I made were concealed many facts] Clemens’s speech is reprinted in the Appendix, pp. 657–61.

  269.1–6 when I was fifty . . . 1891] The Hartford Monday Evening Club held its first meeting on 18 January 1869. Horace Bushnell (1802–76), the minister of Hartford’s North Church of Christ (later Park Congregational Church) from 1833 to 1859 and the author of numerous important theological works, was the prime mover in the club’s creation. The constitution adopted in February 1869 set the membership at twenty. Despite Clemens’s recollection, the essayists did not regularly follow each other in alphabetical order. Clemens became a member in 1873 and continued on the membership roll until his death in 1910, although he ceased to attend meetings after the family left Hartford in June 1891. The Reverend Francis Goodwin (1839–1923), a prominent Protestant Episcopal clergyman who served several Hartford churches, and was also an architect, became a member in 1877. The topic of the evening at Goodwin’s house that Clemens recalled here, “Dreams,” indicates that the meeting took place on 21 January 1884, when he was forty-eight. Most of the men present were founding members; five joined later, as noted below. Like Clemens, they all remained on the membership list until their deaths (Howell Cheney 1954, passim; “Francis Goodwin” in “Hartford Residents” 1974).

  269.14–16 The wives . . . were not allowed to throw any light upon the discussion] “It was the early rule that the wife of the host invited two or three of her intimates to sit with her. . . . At rare times the hostess engaged in the conversation. . . . The predominance of the feeling of members is that the Club should be limited in its audience to men” (Howell Cheney 1954, 6).

  269.24–26 J. Pierpont Morgan’s cigars . . . at dinner in Mr. Dodge’s house] John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) was the preeminent American banker, financier, and art collector of his day. William E. Dodge (1832–1903) had succeeded his father of the same name (1805–83) as a partner in Phelps, Dodge and Company, leading wholesalers of copper and other metals, and also continued his father’s numerous charitable, religious, and philanthropic activities.

  269.34 George, our colored butler] George Griffin. See the Autobiographical Dictation of 6 February 1906.

  269.38 Wheeling long nines] Wheeling, West Virginia, had been a center for the manufacture of cigars, particularly cheap cigars, since the 1820s. “Long nine” as a generic term for a cheap cigar was in use at least by 1830 (Ohio County Public Library 2008; Mathews 1951, 2:1000).

  270.1 When I was . . . late ’50s] Clemens first boarded the Paul Jones, piloted by Horace Bixby, in Cincinnati bound for New Orleans on 16 February 1857. He returned to St. Louis working informally as Bixby’s apprentice, or steersman, on 15 March aboard the Colonel Cross-man. He received his license on 9 April 1859, and continued as a pilot until mid-May 1861, when the Civil War put an end to commercial traffic on the river. He recounted his experiences on the river in Life on the Mississippi, especially chapters 4–21 (see also the link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC through 26 Apr 1861 to OC, L1, 69–121; Branch 1992, 2–3).

  270.12 Rev. Dr. Parker] Edwin Pond Parker (1836–1920), a Congregational clergyman, was pastor of Hartford’s Second Church of Christ from 1860 until 1912, when he became pastor emeritus.

  270.15 Rev. Dr. Burton] Nathaniel J. Burton (1824–87) was pastor of Hartford’s Fourth Congregational Church (1857–70) and Park Congregational Church (1870–87).

  270.18 Rev. Mr. Twichell] Joseph H. Twichell, pastor of Hartford’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church from 1865 to 1912, was one of Clemens’s closest friends (see “Grant and the Chinese,” note at 73.13).

  270.34–35 you can start at the front door and . . . tread on one of them cigars every time] Clemens had included many of the details of this story of the long nines in “Conversations with Satan,” written in 1897–98 (see SLC 2009, 42–44).

  271.6–8 the late Colonel Greene . . . President presently] Jacob L. Greene (1837–1905) was breveted lieutenant colonel for distinguished gallantry and faithful and meritorious service during the Civil War. A lawyer, he was secretary of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company from 1871 until 1878 and in the latter year became its president. He joined the Monday Evening Club in 1883 (Heitman 1903, 1:475).

  271.29–32 elder Hamersley . . . his son, Will Hamersley . . . Supreme Court] William James Hamersley (1808–77) was a journalist, book publisher, and former Hartford mayor (1853–54, 1862–64). For William Hamersley, see “The Machine Episode,” note at 101.23 (Trumbull 1886, 1:117–18, 385, 612, 620, 624; “Death of the Hon. William James Hamersley,” Hartford Courant, 16 May 1877, 2).

  272.8–9 Charles E. Perkins] For about ten years (until 1882), Perkins (1832–1917) was Clemens’s Hartford attorney. He became a club member in 1871 (12 Aug 1869 to Bliss, L3, 294 n. 4; 8 May 1872 to Perkins, L5, 84 n. 1).

  272.29 Penitentiary down there at Wethersfield] The Wethersfield (Connecticut) State Prison opened in 1827 and remained in operation until 1963 (Connecticut State Library 2008b).

  272.31–32 J. Hammond Trumbull, the most learned man in the United States] Hartford historian James Hammond Trumbull (1821–97) provided the multilingual chapter headings for The Gilded Age.

  272.36–37 Governor Henry C. Robinson] Robinson (1832–1900), an attorney and business executive, was mayor of Hartford from 1872 to 1874. Although twice nominated by the Republican Party for governor of Connecticut (in 1876 and 1878), he never held that office (Burpee 1928, 3:41; Connecticut State Library 2008a).

  272.39–40 A. C. Dunham . . . capitalist] Austin Cornelius Dunham (1833–1917), awool merchant, inventor, and founder and since 1882 president of the Hartford Electric Light Company, joined the Monday Evening Club in 1870 (3 Oct 1874 to Howells, L6, 248 n. 3; Connecticut Light and Power 2008).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 13 January 1906

  273.3–5 Franklin was a
. . . West Pointer . . . Mexican war . . . Civil War at the time that McClellan was commander-in-chief ] General William Buel Franklin (1823–1903) graduated first in the West Point class of 1843, then served capably with the army’s Topographical Engineers, and in the Mexican War (1846–48). His Civil War service, in part under General George B. McClellan, was checkered, however. Despite successes, he was blamed, evidently unfairly, for the Union loss at Fredericksburg (1862) and served the rest of his army career in relative obscurity. After his resignation from the army in 1866 he became vice-president of Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, a post he held until 1888. He joined the Hartford Monday Evening Club in 1871 (“Franklin Dead,” Hartford Courant, 9 Mar 1903, 13).

  273.11–12 Johnson was a member of Trinity . . . most brilliant member of the Club] Charles Frederick Johnson (1836–1931), a literary historian, critic, and poet, was a professor of mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy from 1865 to 1870 and then a professor of English literature, active and emeritus, at Trinity College in Hartford from 1883 until his death. He became a member of the Monday Evening Club in 1886 (“Prof. Charles F. Johnson,” New York Times, 10 Jan 1931, 11).