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

by Mark Twain

  450.20–21 my nephew, Samuel E. Moffett . . . lost his inherited property] Moffett (1860–1908) had an inheritance left by his father, William (1816–65), a St. Louis commission merchant, consisting of stocks and U.S. savings bonds totaling about eight thousand dollars and a one-third interest in some “unproductive land” in Missouri (“Estate of S. E. Moffett at the beginning of the administration of P. A. Moffett as Guardian in 1870,” 23 Nov 1881, CU-MARK). His mother, Clemens’s sister Pamela, managed it until November 1881, when he turned twenty-one and she transferred control to him, along with a detailed accounting of earnings and expenditures over the years. By August 1882 Moffett had drawn on his inheritance to finance the purchase of a ranch in Kingsburg, California, near Fresno, where he tried raising wheat, fruit, and livestock. Within three years, however, he was attempting to sell the property. In January 1886, having failed to find a buyer, he was instead offering, without success, to rent it. How he finally disposed of this ranch is not presently known, but he evidently was unable to recoup his investment. He also owned a ranch in San Diego that he was preparing to sell for $3,000 in April 1886 (Pamela A. Moffett–Samuel E. Moffett correspondence, 1881–86, especially 23 Nov 1881, 15 June 1885, 25 Apr 1886; Goodman to Moffett, 14 Jan 1886, 23 Jan 1886, 31 Jan 1886; all in CU-MARK).

  450.22–23 A nervous malady had early unfitted him for attending school] Moffett’s unidentified disorder and an eye condition that prevented reading troubled the Clemens and Moffett families in the early 1870s (L4: 17 Feb 1871 to JLC and family, 332–33; 11 June 1871 to JLC, 403; 21 June 1871 to OC and MEC, 411; MEC and SLC to JLC and PAM, 26 Nov 1872, L5, 230, 232 n. 6; 28 Aug 1874 to Belknap, L6, 212). Clemens also discusses the maladies, and Moffett’s compensation for them, in his Autobiographical Dictation of 16 August 1908.

  450.23 he had come up without a school education] Moffett eventually was able to acquire formal education. In 1881 and 1882 he was a student at the University of California in Berkeley before completing his undergraduate education at Columbia University. In 1901 he earned an A.M. degree from Columbia, and in 1907 a Ph.D. (“Editor Moffett Dies, Struggling in Surf,” New York Times, 2 Aug 1908, 1; “Samuel E. Moffett,” Collier’s 41 [15 Aug 1908]: 23; “Vita,” Moffett 1907, 125–26).

  450.31 built the whole game out of his memory] In his Autobiographical Dictation of 16 August 1908, Clemens dates this incident in 1870, when Moffett was ten years old. This history game anticipated the game Clemens conceived of in the spring of 1883 and first worked out in rudimentary fashion in July of that year. His assistants in subsequently researching historical facts and devising the game board were Orion Clemens and Charles L. Webster. Clemens patented the resultant game in August 1885, but it was 1891 before he tried to market it, as “Mark Twain’s Memory-Builder.” He was not successful (see N&J3, 19–20 n. 37).

  450.33–35 he wrote me from San Francisco . . . I wrote back] None of this correspondence is known to survive.

  450.41 he had married] Moffett married Mary Emily Mantz, of San Jose, California, on 13 April 1887 (“Genealogies of the Clemens and Langdon families,” L6, 613; “Samuel E. Moffett” 1908).

  451.15–16 Moffett remains with Collier] Moffett died of a stroke on 1 August 1908 while swimming in the ocean. In its tribute Collier’s magazine gave this summary of Moffett’s career:

  For a brief period during his early life Mr. Moffett was a farmer in California. Practically all his mature years, however, he was engaged in newspaper work. In 1885 he was chief editorial writer of the San Francisco “Evening Post.” In 1891 he was sent to Washington and remained two years as correspondent of the San Francisco “Examiner.” For the four years following he was the chief editorial writer on that paper. The late nineties he spent as an editorial writer on the New York “Journal.” In 1902, while Mr. John Brisben Walker was the owner of the “Cosmopolitan Magazine,” Mr. Moffett was his managing editor. The following two years he was a writer of editorials on the New York “World,” where he was the especial reliance of Mr. Pulitzer. His work for COLLIER’S was begun with the issue of January 14, 1905. He announced it as “a weekly review of current history, under the title ‘What the World is Doing.’ ” (“Samuel E. Moffett,” Collier’s 41 [15 Aug 1908]: 23)

  Autobiographical Dictation, 28 March 1906

  451.27–36 Orion Clemens was born in Jamestown . . . Benjamin, who died in 1843 aged ten or twelve] See the Appendix “Family Biographies” (p. 655) and “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” note at 206.2–6.

  452.17–18 Edward Bates, who was afterwards in Mr. Lincoln’s first cabinet] Bates (1793–1869) was Lincoln’s first attorney general, serving from March 1861 until November 1864. It was Bates who, soon after taking his cabinet office, secured Orion’s appointment as Nevada territorial secretary (6 Feb 1861 to OC and MEC, L1, 114 n. 9; see RI 1993, 574, for Bates’s letter of recommendation to William Seward, dated 12 Mar 1861).

  453.22–23 Dr. Meredith] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 9 March 1906, note at 402.8–12.

  454.32 the dishonest act of one Ira Stout] See “The Tennessee Land,” note at 62.41–63.1.

  454.33–38 My father had just been elected County Judge . . . to be sworn in, about the end of February] This account of John Clemens’s career is not entirely accurate: see the Appendix “Family Biographies” (p. 654).

  455.1–2 I became a bankrupt through . . . Charles L. Webster] The 1894 failure of Clemens’s own publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, was a critical element in his bankruptcy. Clemens unfairly blamed Webster for the firm’s collapse, although much of its decline came after his 1888 retirement as manager. See the note at 79.21–22 in “About General Grant’s Memoirs,” the Autobiographical Dictations of 2 June and 6 August 1906, and N&J3, passim.

  455.10–11 In Florence, Italy, June 5, 1904] See “Villa di Quarto,” Clemens’s account of the family’s sojourn in Florence.

  455 footnote *Inventor of a type-setting machine . . . Cornell University] See “The Machine Episode.” Paige built two prototypes. His 1887 machine survives at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford. His 1894 machine went to Cornell University, which eventually donated it for scrap metal during World War II (Rasmussen 2007, 2:828).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 29 March 1906

  455.22–23 Orion . . . was a journeyman printer and earning wages] Orion lived in St. Louis, working as a typesetter in the printing house of Thomas Watt Ustick, from about 1842 until mid-1850, when he returned to Hannibal (Inds, 311, 351). See the note at 459.22–23.

  455.25 My sister Pamela helped . . . by taking piano pupils] Paine reported that Pamela Clemens, “who had acquired a considerable knowledge of the piano and guitar, went to the town of Paris, in Monroe County, about fifty miles away, and taught a class of music pupils, contributing whatever remained after paying for her board and clothing to the family fund” (MTB, 1:75–76).

  455.27–28 placed in the office of the Hannibal Courier . . . Mr. Ament, the editor and proprietor of the paper] Clemens was apprenticed to Henry La Cossitt, editor and owner of the Hannibal Gazette, in 1847, and then, probably in May 1848, to Joseph P. Ament (1824–79), who had just moved his Missouri Courier from Palmyra to Hannibal. Clemens remained in school part-time until at least 1849, however (6 Feb 1861 to OC and MEC, L1, 113–14 n. 5; Gregory 1976, 1).

  455.34–456.2 There were two other apprentices . . . Wales McCormick . . . was delightful company] McCormick had left Hannibal by 1850 and in 1885 was living in Quincy, Illinois, where Clemens visited him while on a lecture tour. Clemens was in touch with McCormick, and assisted him financially, at least as late as 1888. He was the inspiration for the handsome and charming printer Doangivadam in “No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger” (MSM, 221–405, 489–92; see Inds, 332–33). There were two apprentices in addition to McCormick: William T. League (see the note at 459.40–41) and Dick Rutter, of nearby Palmyra, Missouri. In December 1907 Clemens recalled the names of all three of his colleagues (3? Dec 1907 to Powell, MoHM
; see Inds, 331).

  456.9 Ralph] Unidentified.

  456.25–26 Emperor . . . tried to pretend that he was not shocked and outraged] This incident occurred in Vienna on 20 February 1892, at a banquet given by Clemens’s third cousin Alice Clemens von Versen (1850–1912), whose husband, Maximilian (1833–93), was an officer on the Imperial German general staff. Despite Clemens’s blunder, Wilhelm II (1859–1941), emperor of Germany and king of Prussia, was complimentary. In his Autobiographical Dictations of 6 December 1906 and 10 February 1907, Clemens reported that Wilhelm praised A Tramp Abroad and called “Old Times on the Mississippi” (that is, Life on the Mississippi) his “best and most valuable book” (Notebook 31, TS pp. 21, 31, CU-MARK; Selby 1973, 75, 146; Maximilian von Versen biographical information in CU-MARK).

  456.35 Pet McMurry] In 1885 Clemens recalled T. P. (Pet) McMurry (d. 1886) as “a dandy, with plug hat tipped far forward & resting almost on his very nose; dark red, greasy hair, long & rolled under at the bottom, down on his neck; red goatee; a most mincing, self-conceited gait—the most astonishing gait that ever I saw—a gait possible nowhere on earth but in our South & in that old day” (23 Jan 1885 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 232–33). McMurry later became a merchant; he was probably the model for the title character of “Jul’us Caesar,” a sketch Clemens wrote in the mid-1850s but left unpublished (SLC 1855–56; Inds, 334–35).

  456.36–37 Mrs. Ament was a bride . . . after waiting a good part of a lifetime for it] Ament’s wife, Sarah, was only nineteen in 1850; Clemens was probably recalling his fifty-year-old mother, Judith D. Ament (Gregory 1976, 2).

  457.10–11 new and wide-spread sect called Campbellites] The Disciples of Christ, also called Campbellites after their leaders, Thomas Campbell (1763–1854) and his son Alexander (1788–1866), originated in America early in the nineteenth century. The sect advocated individual interpretation of the Bible as the basis of faith. Clemens’s father, John Marshall Clemens, was a Campbellite sympathizer, though never a church member. Clemens’s sister Pamela was a member in her early teens (Inds, 288).

  459.22–23 About 1849 or 1850 Orion . . . bought a weekly paper called the Hannibal Journal] Orion returned to Hannibal in mid-1850 and started a weekly paper, the Western Union. Within a year he purchased the Hannibal Journal, and on 4 September 1851 first published the consolidated Hannibal Journal and Western Union, which six months later became just the Hannibal Journal (Inds, 311).

  459.40–41 Finally he handed it over to Mr. Johnson, and . . . acquired a small interest in a weekly newspaper there] In fact, on 22 September 1853 Orion sold the Hannibal Journal to William T. League, Samuel Clemens’s former fellow apprentice on the Hannibal Courier. League already was proprietor of the Hannibal Whig Messenger at the time. Orion then moved with his brother Henry and their mother to Muscatine, Iowa, where he purchased an interest in the Muscatine Journal. He published his first issue in Muscatine on 30 September 1853 (Inds, 311, 331; L1: 3? Sept 1853 to PAM, 15 n. 5; 8 Oct 1853 to PAM, 18 n. 3).

  460.8–9 Then he married the Keokuk girl and they began a struggle for life] Orion married Mary Eleanor (Mollie) Stotts (1834–1904) on 19 December 1854. For details of his varied and futile struggles to earn a living, some of which Clemens alludes to later in this dictation, see Inds, 311–13.

  460.12–13 He bought a little bit of a job printing-plant] After selling the Muscatine Journal in June 1855, Orion bought the Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, in Keokuk, Iowa (link note following 5 March 1855 to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal, L1, 58).

  460.16–29 I disappeared one night and fled to St. Louis . . . didn’t wake again for thirty-six hours] In June 1853 Clemens escaped Hannibal to work as a typesetter in St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia, and to visit Washington, D.C. He returned to St. Louis briefly in the spring of 1854, then went to Muscatine, where he worked on Orion’s Journal for several months, before taking work in St. Louis again by August 1854. (For the best account of this period, see the link note preceding 24 Aug 1853 to JLC through the link note preceding 16 Feb 1855 to the Editors of the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal, L1, 1–46.)

  460.31 I worked in that little job office in Keokuk as much as two years] Except for a few brief interruptions, Clemens lived in Keokuk, working as Orion’s assistant at the Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, from mid-June 1855 until October 1856 (see the link note following 5 Mar 1855 to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal through the link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC, L1, 58–69).

  460.35 One day in the mid-winter of 1856 or 1857] Other than the present account, relatively little detail is available about Clemens’s activities between his departure from Keokuk in October 1856 (not in “mid-winter”) and the beginning of his steamboat piloting apprenticeship in April 1857. For a reconstruction of the period, see L1 (link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC, 69–71).

  461.5–6 the printing-office of Wrightson and Company] Clemens worked at T. Wrightson and Company, one of Cincinnati’s leading printers, from late October 1856 until 16 February 1857, when he left Cincinnati aboard the Paul Jones (Branch 1992, 2).

  461.6–7 Herndon’s account of his explorations of the Amazon] Volume one, by William Lewis Herndon, of Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, Made under Direction of the Navy Department (Herndon and Gibbon 1853–54). In 1910 in “The Turning Point of My Life,” Clemens recalled that Herndon told “an astonishing tale” about the “miraculous powers” of coca, instilling in him “a longing to ascend the Amazon” and “open up a trade in coca with all the world” (SLC 1910).

  461.10 One of the pilots of that boat was Horace Bixby] Bixby (1826–1912) was a leading Mississippi River steamboat pilot and later captain.

  461.16–17 He said he would do it for a hundred dollars cash in advance] In 1910, after Clemens’s death, Bixby recalled telling Clemens “that I would instruct him till he became a competent pilot for $500.” This fee was considered exorbitant and Clemens evidently ended up paying only $300 or $400, including his down payment of $100 (see L1: linknote following 5 Aug 1856 to HC, 70–71; 25 Oct 1861 to PAM and JLC, 134–35 n. 5).

  461.21–22 I became a competent pilot, and I served that office until . . . the Civil War] Clemens received his pilot’s license on 9 April 1859, after a nearly two-year apprenticeship. He made his last trip as a pilot in early May 1861, about three weeks after the outbreak of the Civil War. For details of his time on the Mississippi, see the link note following 5 Aug 1856 to HC through the link note following 26 Apr 1861 to OC, L1, 70–121, and Life on the Mississippi, chapters 6–21 (1883).

  461.29 Blackstone] Commentaries on the Laws of England, by Sir William Blackstone (1723–80), an exhaustive treatise on English law, was crucial to the teaching and study of law in England and the United States (Blackstone 1765–69).

  461.38–39 Orion and I cleared for that country . . . I paying the fares] The Clemens brothers left St. Louis, on the first leg of their journey to Nevada Territory, on 18 July 1861. The fare for the two of them was $400 (link note following 26 Apr 1861 to OC, L1, 121–22). Clemens devoted the first twenty chapters of Roughing It to an account of the journey (see RI 1993, 574–612).

  462.4 Noah Webster] Webster (1758–1843), an educator and editor as well as a lexicographer, published his landmark American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 30 March 1906

  462.12 a neighbor brought the celebrated Russian revolutionist, Tchaykoffsky] Nikolai Vasilievich Chaykovsky (1850–1926), founder and leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, was in New York to appeal for weapons for the Russian revolutionary struggle (“Russian Here for Firearms,” New York Times, 21 Mar 1906, 4). The neighbor was Charlotte Teller (1876–1953), a writer and socialist who lived nearby. Teller later explained that when Chaykovsky arrived he was

  much depressed because he did not know how to reach Mark Twain, whom he wanted as chairman for a big mass meeting. Although I did not know Mark Twain myself, I offered to see what could be done. I went to 21 Fifth Ave.
and asked for Mr. Clemens’ secretary. She said to bring Tschaikowsky back at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. (Teller 1925, 5)

  Clemens developed a friendship with Teller and treated her as a sort of protégée. Their relationship later became problematic, when rumors circulated that she was a fortune hunter who sought to marry him (see Schmidt 2009a).

  462.19 McKinleys] William McKinley (1843–1901) was the twenty-fifth president of the United States, elected in 1896 and again in 1900, but was assassinated in September 1901, whereupon he was succeeded by his vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt. The Spanish-American War (1898), which left the United States in control of Cuba and the Philippines, was fought during his term of office.

  462.33–36 when our windy and flamboyant President . . . new Angel of Peace . . . peace between Russia and Japan] The Russo-Japanese War, fought over control of Manchuria and Korea, lasted from February 1904 until September 1905. On 30 March 1905, exactly a year before the present dictation, it was first reported that the combatant nations had chosen Theodore Roosevelt as mediator. Roosevelt’s sustained efforts eventually resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire), signed on 5 September. His peacemaking received lavish praise, at home and abroad, including a tribute from Cardinal James Gibbons (1834–1921), the ranking Catholic prelate of the United States, who called him “an angel of peace to the world.” As a result of the conflict, Russia, which had lost several major battles and had seen its entire fleet destroyed, was forced to recognize Korea’s independence and to make major concessions in Manchuria, while Japan emerged as the strongest power in East Asia (New York Times: numerous articles, 31 Mar–7 Sept 1905, especially “Roosevelt May End War in Far East,” 31 Mar 1905, 1, and “Roosevelt ‘Angel of Peace,’ ” 18 June 1905, 2).