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

by Mark Twain

  Autobiographical Dictation, 8 March 1906

  396.13–19 Miss Taylor . . . Mrs. (Professor) Lord . . . Miss Russell . . . Miss Hill] Miss Taylor was probably Virginia Taylor of the senior class, who had recently participated in the Barnard Union’s senior debate and appeared as the Earl of Leicester in the undergraduate play, Sheridan’s The Critic. Mrs. Lord was the wife of Herbert Lord, professor of philosophy. Isabelle (Belle) K. Russell of the senior class was chairman of the Barnard Union. The dean of Barnard College, since 1901, was Laura Drake Gill (1860–1926). She received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Smith College in 1881, and her master’s in 1885. She interrupted her subsequent teaching career for advanced studies at the universities of Leipzig and Geneva and at the Sorbonne. She joined the Red Cross in 1898 after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and managed a Red Cross hospital in Cuba. After the war she took charge of the Cuban Orphan Society and helped organize Cuban schools (Barnard Bulletin: “Departmental Changes,” 4 [24 Mar 1902]: 3; Belle K. Russell, “Barnard Union,” 10 [15 Jan 1906]: 1; “Undergraduate Play,” 10 [21 Mar 1906]: 1; “Dr. Laura Drake Gill,” 30 [12 Feb 1926]: 4; Barnard College 2008a, 2008b; “Dr. Laura Gill Dies,” New York Times, 5 Feb 1926, 19).

  396.22–25 I lectured upon Morals . . . never knew so grave a subject to create so much noise before] The Barnard Bulletin described Clemens’s talk:

  He said he had nothing to talk about, but that he did have some fine illustrations he was going to get in somehow. “The Caprice of Memory,” he thought, would be a good subject, though he might just as easily talk on morals. For it is better to teach than to practice them; better to confer morals on others than to experiment too much with them on one’s self. As his first illustration, Mr. Clemens told how he once had in his possession a watermelon—a Missouri melon, and therefore large and luscious. Most people would have said he had stolen it. But the word “steal” was too much for him, a good boy; in fact, the best boy in his town. He said he had extracted it from a grocer’s cart, for “extract” refers to dentistry, and more accurately expresses how he got that melon; since as the dentist never extracts his own teeth, so this wasn’t his own melon. But the melon was green, and because it was so, Mark Twain began to reflect. And reflection is the beginning of morality. It was his duty to take it back and to admonish that grocerman on the evil of selling green melons. The moral, Mr. Clemens said, was that the grocer repented of his sins and soon was perched on the highest pinnacle of virtue.

  In the course of another equally good illustration of a moral, Mark Twain said that in his family there had been a prejudice against going fishing unless you asked permission, and it was bad judgment to ask permission. (“Mark Twain at Barnard,” Barnard Bulletin 10 [14 Mar 1906]: 2)

  The full text of the talk was published in the New York World (“ ‘We Wanted You Because We Love You,’ Said the Barnard Girls to Mark Twain,” 11 Mar 1906, M1; reprinted in Fatout 1976, 495–502).

  397.1 “HUCKLEBERRY FINN” DEAD] The article was from the Los Angeles Times of 3 February 1906; the original clipping that Hobby transcribed has not been found.

  397.13 I have replied that “Huckleberry Finn” was Tom Blankenship] Clemens wrote the same day to Alexander (Aleck) Campbell Toncray (1837–1933), half-brother of the deceased Addison Ovando Toncray (1842–1906) (8 Mar 1906 to Toncray per Lyon, photocopy in CU-MARK):

  Dear Mr. Toncray:

  It is plain to me that you knew the Hannibal of my boyhood, the names you quote prove it. This is an unusual circumstance in my experience. With some frequency letters come from strangers reminding me of old friends & early episodes, but in almost every case these strangers have mixed me up with somebody else, and the names and incidents are foreign to me.

  Huckleberry Finn was Tom Blankenship. You may remember that Tom was a good boy, notwithstanding his circumstances. To my mind he was a better boy than Henry Beebe & John Reagan put together, those swells of the ancient days.

  Sincerely Yours,

  S. L. Clemens

  Alexander (born in Rushville, Illinois) and Addison (born in Fort Madison, Iowa) were the sons of John Goodson Toncray (1810–60), who emigrated to Hannibal in the mid-1840s and opened the Virginia Hotel and Saloon on the levee. Alexander worked as a steamboat and forwarding agent in 1860 in Hannibal, and as a sign painter in Los Angeles after 1912. After what he claimed was a stint as captain on the steamboat Key West, Addison moved West as well. In 1880 he was listed in the census as a farm hand in Red Bluff, Montana, and by 1884 he had moved to Murray, Idaho. There, though “Capt. Tonk” was known as a habitual drunk, he was well liked and lived by odd jobs and hand-me-downs (Brainard [n.d.]; Sellers 1972; James R. Toncray, personal communications, 17 Dec 2008, 20 Dec 2008; Marion Census 1850, 307; Fotheringham 1859, 57).

  397.14–15 Tom’s father was at one time Town Drunkard] Tom Blankenship (b. 1831?) was one of eight children of Woodson and Mahala Blankenship. Woodson Blankenship (b. 1799?) was listed in the 1850 census as a laborer from South Carolina (Marion Census 1850, 308, 309).

  397.20–26 In “Huckleberry Finn” I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly . . . more of his society than of any other boy’s] Clemens’s description here of Tom Blankenship, who was perhaps four years his senior, closely reflects his characterizations of Huckleberry Finn in numerous works. In chapter 6 of Tom Sawyer, for example, Huck is “the juvenile pariah of the village . . . son of the town drunkard” who is “cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar and bad—and because all their children admired him so” (SLC 1982, xvii, 47). After hearing this chapter read aloud, Clemens’s sister, Pamela Moffett, said, “Why, that’s Tom Blankenship!” (MTBus, 265). In 1899, Blankenship’s sister, apparently “little impressed with the distinction conferred on the family,” recognized Tom and perhaps her other older brother in Huck: “Yes, I reckon it was him. Sam and our boys run together considerable them days, and I reckon it was Tom or Ben, one; it don’t matter which, for both of ’em’s dead” (Fielder 1899, 10). Huckleberry Finn also appears in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad (SLC 1894a), and “Tom Sawyer, Detective” (SLC 1896c), as well as in several unfinished works: “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians” (SLC 1884), “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (SLC 1897–?1902), “Schoolhouse Hill” (SLC 1898c), and the fragmentary “Huck Finn” (Inds, 260–61, 302–3; see also Clemens’s 1895 draft introduction for a reading from chapter 16 of Huckleberry Finn in HF 2003, 619).

  397.26–27 I heard, four years ago, that he was Justice of the Peace in a remote village in Montana, and . . . greatly respected] Blankenship, who remained in Hannibal, was arrested repeatedly for stealing food (Hannibal Messenger, 21 Apr 1861, and “At His Old Business,” 4 June 1861, reprinted in Lorch 1940, 352). No evidence has been found that he went to Montana. In 1889 Clemens was informed of his death from cholera, and confirmed it when visiting Hannibal in 1902 (Wetzel 1985, 33; “He Returns,” undated clipping from the Hannibal Journal, enclosed in Coontz to SLC, 18 Apr 1889, CU-MARK; Fielder 1899, 10; “Good-Bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1).

  398.12–15 my nephew, by marriage, Edward Loomis . . . carried him there still oftener] Edward Eugene Loomis (1864–1937) married Julia Olivia Langdon (1871–1948), Charles Langdon’s eldest daughter, in 1902. After his graduation from Utica Commercial College in the early 1880s, Loomis worked for a succession of railway companies in Denver and in New York, by 1894 serving as superintendent responsible for overseeing the bituminous coal and lumber interests of the Erie Railroad Company. In June 1899, he became manager of the anthracite coal properties of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company. He was responsible for several innovations in the company’s anthracite mines, and in 1902 was elected first vice-president, member of the board of managers, and director and officer of all the railroad’s subsidiary corporations.

  398.20 Mr. Buckly] Unidentified.

  399.17–18 Mr. Dawson’s schoo
l] John D. Dawson (b. 1812?), a native of Scotland and veteran of fourteen years’ teaching, announced the opening of his school for young ladies and boys “of good morals, and of ages under 12 years,” on Third Street in Hannibal, in April 1847. He ran the school until 1849, when he left for California, where he became a miner in Tuolumne County. Dawson’s was the last school Clemens attended. The character Dobbins in Tom Sawyer is based on Dawson (Wecter 1952, 132–34; Inds, 317).

  399.18 Sam and Will Bowen] See AD, 9 Mar 1906, note at 402.16–33.

  399.18 Andy Fuqua] Anderson (Andy) Fuqua (1829?–97) was one of the six children of Nathaniel Fuqua, a tobacco merchant and a town councilman in 1845 when Hannibal was incorporated. In the 1860s Anderson worked at a livery stable and then became a tobacconist and commercial boat owner (Marion Census 1860, 122–23; Fotheringham 1859, 26, 33; Ellsberry 1965a, 5; Holcombe 1884, 900; MTBus, 83).

  399.22–23 I remember Dawson’s schoolhouse perfectly. If I wanted to describe it I could save myself the trouble by conveying the description of it . . . from “Tom Sawyer.”] Clemens described Dawson’s school in chapters 6–7 and 21 of Tom Sawyer and again in chapter 1 of the unfinished “Schoolhouse Hill” manuscript, where the Scottish schoolmaster is based on Dawson (Inds, 317).

  399.25 Cardiff Hill, (Holliday’s Hill,)] For Clemens’s memories of Cardiff Hill (his fictional name for Holliday’s Hill) see “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX.”

  399.27–28 Nannie Owsley, a child of seven] Anna (Nannie) B. Owsley (b. 1840?) was one of six children of William Perry Owsley (b. 1813) and Almira Roberts Owsley. She and her sister Elizabeth (b. 1839?) attended Dawson’s school with Clemens. Nannie, who later married William M. Johnson, had six children of her own. It was William Owsley who shot Sam Smarr on a street in Hannibal (see “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX,” note at 158.5; Marion Census 1850, 323; Marion Census 1860, 121; Owsley 1890, 28, 29, 133).

  399.28–29 George Robards, eighteen or twenty years old, the only pupil who studied Latin] George C. Robards (1833–79) was the eldest of six children born to Amanda Carpenter Robards (1808–65) and Captain Archibald S. Robards (1787–1862), a former Kentucky plantation and slave owner (Marion Census 1860, 133; Holcombe 1884, 992; Robards Family Genealogy 2009, part 14:65). The spelling of the family name was later changed to RoBards by George’s younger brother, John L. RoBards (see AD, 9 Mar 1906).

  399.34 Arch Fuqua—the other one’s brother] Archibald (b. 1833?) Fuqua, Anderson’s brother, worked as a tobacco roller, and served with Clemens in the Marion Rangers. The character of Archy Thompson in “Boy’s Manuscript” (SLC 1868e) is based on him (Marion Census 1860, 122–23; Fotheringham 1859, 26; Ellsberry 1965a, 5; Inds, 268, 319).

  399.40–400.1 Theodore Eddy, who could work his ears like a horse] Theodore Eddy (b. 1836?) was the eldest of five children of Martha J. Eddy (b. 1818?) and William Eddy (b. 1804?), a carpenter and builder and one of Hannibal’s first town councilmen in 1845 (Marion Census 1850, 323; Holcombe 1884, 900).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 9 March 1906

  400.20 My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry’s] See the photograph of Henry at age eight or nine, following page 204.

  400.26–27 George . . . and Mary Moss were sweethearts and pledged to eternal constancy . . . But Mr. Lakenan arrived] Mary Moss (b. 1832) was one of six children of Mary Moss (b. 1816) and Russell W. Moss (b. 1810?), who with William Samuel owned a pork and beef packing plant on the levee, reputed to be the second largest in the United States. Mary, remembered as “the belle of Hannibal,” was a frequent visitor to the Clemens home. Robert F. Lakenan (1820–83), of Virginia, moved to Hannibal soon after his admission to the bar in 1845. He helped to found the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railway in the late 1840s, acting as its director attorney and later as its general attorney. His first wife, Lizzie Ayres, died in 1850 after less than a year of marriage. He married Mary Moss in 1854. They retired to his farm in Shelby County from 1861 to 1866, thereafter returning to Hannibal. He was elected state senator in 1876, and then state representative in 1882. They had six children (Inds, 328–29, 336; Holcombe 1884, 608–10; Brashear 1935). Clemens told the story of their unhappy marriage in “Villagers of 1840–3,” written in 1897:

  Mary, very sweet and pretty at 16 and 17. Wanted to marry George Robards. Lawyer Lakenan the rising stranger, held to be the better match by the parents, who were looking higher than commerce. They made her engage herself to L. L. made her study hard a year to fit herself to be his intellectual company; then married her, shut her up, the docile and heart-hurt young beauty, and continued her education rigorously. When he was ready to trot her out in society 2 years later and exhibit her, she had become wedded to her seclusion and her melancholy broodings, and begged to be left alone. He compelled her—that is, commanded. She obeyed. Her first exit was her last. The sleigh was overturned, her thigh was broken; it was badly set. She got well with a terrible limp, and forever after stayed in the house and produced children. Saw no company, not even the mates of her girlhood. (Inds, 94)

  400.38–401.1 George went away, presently, to some far-off region and there he died—of a broken heart] In “Villagers of 1840–3” Clemens remembered that George, after the failure of his courtship, was “disappointed, wandered out into the world, and not heard of again for certain. Floating rumors at long intervals that he had been seen in South America (Lima) and other far places. Family apparently not disturbed by his absence. But it was known that Mary Moss was” (Inds, 93, 344–45). In fact, Robards was living in Hannibal and working as a farmer in 1860, and thereafter served as a captain in the Confederate Army throughout the war. He worked in Hannibal as a real estate and insurance agent in the 1870s, and was elected county assessor in 1876 (Robards Family Genealogy 2009, part 14:65).

  401.4–6 Mary still lives . . . Missouri University] For Clemens’s honorary degree, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 12 February 1906. Upon arrival in Hannibal in 1902, Clemens wrote to his wife about the trip from St. Louis to Hannibal (where he stopped for several days before proceeding to Columbia, Missouri, to receive his degree): “In the train was accosted by a lady who required me to name her. I said I was sure I could do it. But I had the wit to say that if she would tell me her name I would tell her whether I had guessed correctly or not. It was the widow of Mr. Lakenan. I had known her as a child. We talked 3 hours” (31 May 1902 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 337; Holcombe 1884, 610; Hagood and Hagood 1985, 46; Boone Census 1900, 212; “Farewell to Hannibal,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 3 June 1902, 2).

  401.7–16 John Robards . . . He had been in ships] In 1849, John Lewis RoBards (1838–1925) left for Mariposa, California, with his father, Archibald, and a party of fifteen men, for whom his father furnished “at his own expense ample vehicles, provisions, stock, etc., for the entire expedition” (Holcombe 1884, 991). Letters to the local newspapers helped Hannibal’s citizens keep track of the Robards party, who took the route through New Mexico, prospecting in the Taos Mountains in July 1849 but finding only “small quantities” of gold and moving on (“The Emigrants,” Hannibal Courier, 23 Aug 1849, unknown page). John RoBards remembered that “about 1,200 hostile Pimo Indians surrounded the camp, and, with arrows presented, demanded the surrender of the itinerant strangers. Except for the remarkable presence of mind of his father the company would have been massacred” (Holcombe 1884, 992). Other adventures included a Mexican fandango in Santa Barbara, after which the hosts, childless, offered his father $1,000 in silver for John. By the middle of 1850, a local newspaper reported that “Capt. Robards is at Stockton—his men all left him,” and in early January 1851, another reported the return to Hannibal of “Capt. A. S. Robards and Son” on the steamer Wyoming (“California Letter,” Hannibal Courier, 27 June 1850, unknown page; “Returned Californians,” Hannibal Western Union, 9 Jan 1851, unknown page; RoBards 1909, 71–74). RoBards attended the University of Missouri and Jefferson School of Law in Kentucky, and in 1861 returned t
o Hannibal, where he set up his law practice and married Sara (Sallie) Crump Helm (1842–1918), with whom he had seven children, only three of whom survived until adulthood. In 1861, RoBards, along with Clemens and others, organized the Marion Rangers, a company in the Missouri State Guard. In “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” Clemens mocked RoBards’s spelling of his name by portraying his character as “d’Un Lap” (formerly Dunlap), which later he “was ashamed of” (SLC 1885b; 19? Apr 1887 to Davis, ViU, in Wecter 1952, 298 n. 13; Robards Family Genealogy 2009, part 14:65; Inds, 345–46).

  401.23–29 his granddaughter, twelve years old . . . her brieflife came to a close a few days later] Sara Ellen Richardson (1890–1902) was the only child of RoBards’s daughter Mary L. RoBards Richardson (b. 1864) and her husband, Elisha A. Richardson (b. 1860) of Louisville, Kentucky (Jefferson Census 1900, 8A, 8B; Portrait 1895, 144–45). At the news of her death, Clemens wrote: “My dear old playmate & friend, the tidings you send me are inexpressibly distressing, & my heart goes out to you in your sorrow. Good-bye—I grieve with you” (3 June 1902 to RoBards, MoHM and MoCoJ).

  401.30–34 John Garth . . . Helen Kercheval . . . John’s tomb] John H. Garth (1837–99), one of Clemens’s close childhood friends, was the younger son of John Garth (1784–?1857), a tobacco and grain merchant, and his wife, Emily Houston Garth (d. 1844?). He attended the University of Missouri, then returned to Hannibal to work in the family tobacco business. In 1860 he married Helen Kercheval (1838–1923), and in 1862 they moved to New York City, where he worked alongside his brother David J. Garth (1822–1912) at the newly established Garth, Son and Company, a nationwide chain of tobacco warehouses. In the early 1870s he returned to Hannibal, where he became one of the town’s most prominent and prosperous citizens (Portrait 1895, 776–77; Inds, 320). Helen V. Kercheval (1838–1923) was the daughter of Anna M. and William E. Kercheval, manager of a Hannibal dry goods firm called the “People’s Store” (“‘The People’s Store’ Once More,” Hannibal Courier, 15 Apr 1852, unknown page; Inds, 328). In May 1882, while visiting old friends in Hannibal, Clemens stayed with the Garths at “Woodside,” their six-hundred-acre estate: “It has been a moving time. I spent my nights with John & Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious & beautiful house. They were children with me, & afterwards school-mates” (17 May 1882 to OLC, CU-MARK, in MTL, 1:419). John Garth died of Bright’s disease; Clemens saw his tomb at Mount Olivet cemetery when Helen Garth and her daughter took him there during his 1902 visit to Hannibal. In his working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill,” Clemens planned characters named Jack Stillson and Fanny Brewster modeled on John and Helen, but only Jack Stillson appears in the unfinished manuscript (31 May 1902 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 338; Hagood and Hagood 1985, 29).