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

by Mark Twain

  336.3 Twichell’s littlest cub, now a grave and reverend clergyman] Joseph Hooker Twichell (1883–1961), Joseph and Harmony Twichell’s eighth child and youngest son, graduated from Yale in 1906 and four years later earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Hartford Theological Seminary (Hartford Seminary Record 1910, 222; Courtney 2008, 224, 261–62). He was the only Twichell child to become a clergyman; presumably Clemens was making a joke about his youth.

  336.18 Will Gillette, now world famous actor and dramatist] William Hooker Gillette (1853–1937) was Lilly Warner’s younger brother. After graduating from Hartford Public High School in 1873, he studied acting in St. Louis and New Orleans, playing minor roles with a stock company. In 1875, assisted by Clemens’s personal recommendation and financial support, he secured a role in the touring production of the Gilded Age play, and went on to a long and successful career as an actor and dramatist. He became particularly associated with the role of Sherlock Holmes (OLC and SLC to Langdon, 14 Mar 1875, L6, 413–14 n. 8).

  337.12 the divine Sarah] Sarah Bernhardt (stage name of Rosine Bernard, 1844–1923) was the most famous actress of her time. Susy saw her perform at least twice in Florence in 1893, in two of her most famous vehicles, Adrienne Lecouvreur and La Tosca. At the time of this dictation, Clemens had recently spoken at a Bernhardt performance benefiting the Jews of Russia (OSC to CC, 24 Jan 1893, TS in CU-MARK; “Mark Twain Speaks After Bernhardt Acts,” New York Times, 19 Dec 1905, 9).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 7 February 1906

  337.20–24 When Susy was thirteen . . . writing of a biography of me] Clemens wrote in his notebook in early April 1885, “Susie, aged 13, (1885), has begun to write my biography—solely of her own motion—a thing about which I feel proud & gratified” (N&J3, 112; quoted more fully in the Introduction, p. 9). She worked on the biography until July 1886.

  338.8 I shall print the whole of this little biography] Clemens ultimately used most, but by no means all, of Susy’s text.

  338.10 The spelling is frequently desperate, but it was Susy’s, and it shall stand] Collation of Susy’s manuscript with Hobby’s typescript demonstrates that the text was transmitted orally to Hobby—that is, Clemens evidently read Susy’s text aloud and directed Hobby to spell many of the words incorrectly, as in the original (see the Textual Commentary for AD, 2 Feb 1906, MTPO). Occasionally Susy spelled something properly that was rendered erroneously in the typescript, and vice versa. Clemens also sometimes adapted her prose to the surrounding dictation.

  338.30 John Robards] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 9 March 1906, note at 401.7–16.

  339.17–18 I took the precaution of sending my book, in manuscript, to Mr. Howells, when he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly] William Dean Howells was assistant editor (to 1871) and then editor (1871–81) of the Atlantic Monthly. During that time he reviewed in its pages The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), Sketches New and Old (1875), Tom Sawyer (1876), and A Tramp Abroad (1880). Of these, the only ones he read “in manuscript” were Tom Sawyer and A Tramp Abroad; he did, however, continue to read many of Clemens’s books in manuscript and review them in other journals (Budd 1999, 71–73, 105–6, 151–52, 157–58, 186–88, 215, 292–95, 407).

  339.28–340.5 “The Gilded Age,” . . . Chicago Tribune . . . adopted the view of the humble Daily Graphic, dishonesty-charge and all] Clemens is incorrect in asserting that the New York Daily Graphic “scooped” the Atlantic Monthly in reviewing The Gilded Age. The Atlantic did not review The Gilded Age at all: since Howells felt he could not recommend it, he merely noted it as “received” (Howells 1874b, 374; Howells 1979, 46). As for the Daily Graphic, almost a year earlier its editor, David G. Croly, had given Clemens space to advertise the forthcoming novel. Clemens’s letter, reproduced by the Graphic in facsimile, read in part:

  I consider it one of the most astonishing novels that ever was written. Night after night I sit up reading it over & over again & crying. It will be published early in the fall, with plenty of pictures. Do you consider this an advertisement?—& if so, do you charge for such things, when a man is your friend & is an orphan? (17 Apr 1873 to Croly, L5, 341–44; see “Photographs and Manuscript Facsimiles, 1872–73,” L5, 668–71)

  The Graphic reviewed The Gilded Age rather roughly, calling it an “incoherent series of sketches” and “a rather dreary failure.” But it seems to have been the Chicago Tribune that originated the charges of “fraud,” “deliberate deceit,” and “abus[ing] the people’s trust.” The imputed offense was the authors’ sale of substandard goods, not the use of Mark Twain’s name to sell Warner’s work (“Literary Notes,” New York Daily Graphic, 23 Dec 1873, 351; “The Twain-Warner Novel,” Chicago Tribune, 1 Feb 1874, 9).

  340.28–31 I found this clipping . . . of the date of thirty-nine years ago . . . I will copy it here] The clipping itself does not survive, but the “correspondent of the Philadelphia Press” has been identified as Emily Edson Briggs (1830–1910), who wrote under the pen name “Olivia.” The passage, drawn from her column datelined 2 March 1868 (in Briggs 1906, 45–47), was reprinted in one of the newspapers for which Clemens corresponded from Washington in early 1868—the Chicago Republican, the San Francisco Alta California, or the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 8 February 1906

  341.19–20 Emmeline . . . an impressionist water-color] This painting was by Italian society portraitist Daniele Ranzoni (1843–89). Clemens bought it in Milan as a birthday present for Olivia in 1878. Its nickname of “Emmeline” may be related to the fictional picture made by Emmeline Grangerford described in chapter 17 of Huckleberry Finn (N&J2, 187 n. 50).

  341.22 oil painting by Elihu Vedder, “The Young Medusa.”] American painter Elihu Vedder (1836–1923) had been resident in Rome since 1867. Clemens bought “The Young Medusa” after a visit to Vedder’s studio on 9 November 1878. If the painting was anything like the drawing by Vedder on the same theme, it depicted “the calm face of a woman with flowing locks. Tiny serpents are just springing from her forehead” (Soria 1964, 603–4; N&J2, 244–45 and n. 60).

  342.11 Our burglar alarm] By 1877 the Clemenses’ Hartford house had been outfitted with what one newspaper referred to as “Jerome’s famous burglar alarm.” By 1880 the house had an electrically operated system, installed (and repeatedly serviced) by the New York firm of A. G. Newman. Doors and windows were fitted with magnetic contacts linked to an electrical circuit; when the system was armed, opening a door or window closed the circuit and sounded the alarm. A central device called the “annunciator” indicated which door or window had been opened; the annunciator also had switches for disconnecting all or part of the house from the alarm, and a clock for automatic regulation. Clemens’s struggles with the alarm form the basis of his 1882 story “The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm” (17 July 1877 to OLC [1st], Letters 1876–1880; “Burglar Alarms,” Hartford Courant, 12 Mar 1878, 2; Newman to SLC, 18 May 1880, CU-MARK; 22 Feb 1883 to Webster, NPV; Houston 1898, 11, 22; SLC 1882b).

  342.31 Ashcroft] Ralph W. Ashcroft (1875–1947), born in Cheshire, England, was secretary and treasurer of the Plasmon Company of America in 1905 when Clemens considered legal action against it for mismanagement of his investments. Impressed with Ashcroft, Clemens took him to England in June 1907, and began to rely on him as his business adviser. At Ashcroft’s suggestion, the name “Mark Twain” was registered as a trademark, a step in the formation of The Mark Twain Company (1908). In 1909 Ashcroft married Isabel Lyon, Clemens’s secretary. For a time Ashcroft and Lyon managed Clemens’s business affairs, but in April 1909 he dismissed them. His lengthy and accusatory “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript” (SLC 1909b) describes their mismanagement as he saw it. Ashcroft subsequently worked as an advertising director for various Canadian business firms; he and Lyon divorced in 1926 (HHR, 735–36; Ashcroft 1904; Ashcroft to Lyon, 1 Mar 1906, CU-MARK; “Memorandum for Mr. Rogers re. Clemens’ Matter,” CU-MARK; “Business Leader, Friend and Aide of Mark
Twain,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 9 Jan 1947, 7; Lystra 2004, 265).

  342.33 Henry Butters, Harold Wheeler, and the rest of those Plasmon thieves] Plasmon, a powdered milk extract, was first marketed in Vienna while Clemens was living there in 1897–99. He came to see the product as a remedy for everything from Olivia’s illness to world famine. In his 1909 “Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” he recounted his Plasmon entanglements, which began with an investment in the British branch of the firm:

  By May, 1900, we had the enterprise on its feet & doing a promising business. Then some Americans wanted the rights for America. . . . The American company was presently started in New York. Henry A. Butters of California was one of the promoters & directors. He swindled me out of $12,500 & helped Wright, a subordinate, to swindle me out of $7,000 more.

  Two of the directors—Butters and another—proceeded to gouge the company out of its cash capital. By about 1905 they had sucked it dry, & the company went bankrupt. (SLC 1909b, 8–9)

  Clemens’s grievance was set forth in more detail by his lawyer, John B. Stanchfield:

  Mr. Clemens contributed to the enterprise $25,000 . . . and believed that he was purchasing stock in the corporation, and that for every share that he bought, he was entitled to another share as a bonus. This was the arrangement Butters had told him had been made. . . .

  It seems that Butters, who was the directing agent of the American corporation at the time, had the avails of Mr. Clemens’ moneys credited to his personal account, and transferred his own shares to the extent of 250 to Mr. Clemens. (Enclosure with Stanchfield to SLC, 4 Mar 1905, CU-MARK)

  Henry A. Butters (1830–1908) was a San Francisco capitalist; his associates Howard E. Wright and Harold Wheeler successively managed the American Plasmon Company. Clemens began threatening Butters with a suit for grand larceny early in 1905. He returned to the subject of the Plasmon fiasco in the Autobiographical Dictations of 30 August 1907 and 31 October 1908 (8–9 Apr 1900 to Rogers, Salm, in HHR, 438–42; Ober 2003, 169–72; “Death Claims Railroad Man,” Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct 1908, 15; Ashcroft 1904; 11 and 14 Mar 1909 to CC, MS draft in CU-MARK).

  343.28–29 I can’t see how it is ever going to fetch me out right when we get to the door] Clemens’s perplexity in this matter of the spoon-shaped drive of the house in Hartford can be better understood with the aid of a diagram he sketched in an 1892 notebook, reproduced here. No matter which way the buggy rounds the loop, a passenger seated to the right of the driver will end up on the side away from the house (Notebook 31, TS p. 37, CU-MARK).

  345.9 ombra] The term that the Clemenses used for the veranda that surrounded the house; it means “shade” in Italian.

  346.9 Susy Warner] Charles Dudley Warner’s wife (1838?–1921) was a talented pianist and a close friend of Olivia’s. Susy Clemens’s manuscript biography left a blank for Susan Warner’s name. Clemens supplied it in his dictation, but when he prepared the text for publication in the North American Review, he toyed with a pseudonym (“Tabitha Wilson”) before settling on “your wife” for the text he published there (24 and 25 Nov 1869 to OLL, L5, 407 n. 3; NAR 4).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 9 February 1906

  349.18–23 His mother is Grandma Clemens . . . F.F.V’s of Virginia . . . always strongly interested in the ancestry of the house] In Clemens’s lifetime the phrase “First Families of Virginia” was used informally to designate those who claimed descent from the earliest settlers of the state. The present-day Order of First Families of Virginia was founded in 1912. Susy apparently read an interview with her grandmother published in the Chicago Inter-Ocean sometime in March or April 1885 which was widely reprinted. The last paragraph read:

  Mrs. Clemens was Miss Jane Lampton before her marriage and was a native of Kentucky. Mr. Clemens was of the F. F. V.’s of Virginia. They did not accumulate property and the father left the family at his death nothing but, in Mark’s own words, “a sumptuous stock of pride and a good old name,” which, it will be allowed, has proved in this case at least a sufficient inheritance. (“Mark Twain’s Boyhood. An Interview with the Mother of the Famous Humorist,” New York World, 12 Apr 1885, 19, reprinting the Chicago Inter-Ocean)

  349.23–26 Lambtons of Durham . . . broke into the peerage] The Lambton family’s residence in County Durham, England, can be traced nearly to the time of the Norman Conquest (1066). John George Lambton (1792–1840) was created first earl of Durham in 1833; his grandson, also John George Lambton (1855–1928), became the third earl in 1879. Jane Clemens’s paternal grandfather, William Lampton (1724–90), who evidently belonged to a collateral branch of the family, emigrated to Virginia about 1740 (Burke 1904, 528–29; Debrett 1980, P409; Selby 1973, 112; Keith 1914, 3–4, 7).

  349.29–33 Jere. Clemens . . . shot old John Brown’s Governor Wise in the hind leg in a duel] Clemens mistook the identities of both combatants. It was not Jeremiah Clemens but Sherrard Clemens who fought O. Jennings Wise—a son of Henry Alexander Wise, the governor of Virginia from 1856 to 1860, when abolitionist John Brown was active. Sherrard Clemens was severely wounded in the right thigh; Wise was uninjured (see “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” note at 205.18; 21 June 1866 to JLC and PAM, L1, 346 n. 6; “The Wise and Clemens Duel,” New York Times, 24 Sept 1858, 2).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 12 February 1906

  350.4 trick on Grandma, about the whipping] This incident occurs in chapter 1 of Tom Sawyer.

  350.15–17 Grandma couldn’t make papa go to school . . . those who were more studious in early life] Susy found this information in the April 1885 interview with Jane Clemens. She quoted nearly verbatim the last sentence in the following paragraph:

  When Sam’s father died, which occurred when Sam was eleven years of age, I thought then, if ever, was the proper time to make a lasting impression on the boy and work a change in him, so I took him by the hand and went with him into the room where the coffin was and in which the father lay, and with it between Sam and me I said to him that here in this presence I had some serious requests to make of him, and that I knew his word, once given, was never broken. For Sam never told a falsehood. He turned his streaming eyes upon me and cried out: “Oh mother, I will do anything, anything you ask of me, except to go to school; I can’t do that!” That was the very request I was going to make. Well, we afterwards had a sober talk, and I concluded to let him go into a printing office to learn the trade, as I couldn’t have him running wild. He did so, and has gradually picked up enough education to enable him to do about as well as those who were more studious in early life. (“Mark Twain’s Boyhood. An Interview with the Mother of the Famous Humorist,” New York World, 12 Apr 1885, 19, reprinting the Chicago Inter-Ocean)

  350.30–31 It was Henry . . . the thread . . . had changed color] See Tom Sawyer, chapter 1.

  351.5 If the incident of the broken sugar-bowl is in “Tom Sawyer”] It is in chapter 3.

  351.39 to give the cat the Pain-Killer] See Tom Sawyer, chapter 12. Perry Davis’s Pain-Killer was invented in 1840 and enjoyed widespread success. The label indicated that it could be taken internally “for Chills, Cramps, Colic” or applied externally for “Sore Throat, Sprains, Bruises, Chilblains.” Its main ingredient was alcohol, with added camphor and cayenne pepper (Ober 2003, 54–60).

  351.42–352.1 Mr. Pavey’s negro man] Jesse H. Pavey was the proprietor of a Hannibal tavern until 1850, when he moved his family to St. Louis (Inds, 340).

  352.3–6 cholera days of ’49 . . . chose Perry Davis’s Pain-Killer for me] Cholera visited the Mississippi valley perennially throughout Clemens’s youth. After its appearance in New Orleans in February 1849 it soon spread northward along the Mississippi River. Numerous deaths in Hannibal caused fear of a major epidemic like the one that was ravaging St. Louis, and the Pain-Killer was used as a preventive (Holcombe 1884, 297–98; Wecter 1952, 213–14; Ober 2003, 45–54).

  352.19–20 I don’t remember what my explanation was . . . may not be the right one] Tom’s “explanation” was a
s follows:

  “Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?”

  “I done it out of pity for him—because he hadn’t any aunt.”

  “Hadn’t any aunt!—you numscull. What has that got to do with it?”

  “Heaps. Because if he’d a had one she’d a burnt him out herself! She’d a roasted his bowels out of him ’thout any more feeling than if he was a human!” (SLC 1982, 96)

  353.3 Tom Nash was a boy of my own age—the postmaster’s son] Clemens’s schoolmate Thomas S. Nash was the son of Abner O. Nash (1804?-59) and his second wife. In “Villagers of 1840–3” (1897) Clemens noted that he became a house painter. Abner Nash was a former storekeeper and president of Hannibal’s Board of Trustees; although his “mother was Irish, had family jewels, and claimed to be aristocracy,” he had been forced to declare bankruptcy in 1844 and accept a low-paying postmastership in 1849 (Inds, 96, 337–38).

  353.23 closing one was scarlet fever, and he came out of it stone deaf] In the working notes for the “St. Petersburg Fragment,” the second extant version of “The Mysterious Stranger,” Clemens wrote that “Tom Nash’s mother took in a deserted child; it gave scarlet-fever death to 3 of her children & deaf[ness] to 2” (MSM, 416; see also Inds, 96).

  353.28–29 Four years ago . . . receive the honorary degree of LL.D.] Clemens traveled to Missouri in late May–early June 1902, to receive an honorary LL.D. from the University of Missouri at Columbia (4 June). He also spent a few days in both St. Louis and Hannibal, his final visit to the scenes of his childhood and youth (New York Times: “Degree for Mark Twain,” 5 June 1902, 2; “Mark Twain among Scenes of His Early Life,” 8 June 1902, 28; Notebook 45, TS pp. 14–17, CU-MARK).