A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings

by Twain, Mark, Griffin, Benjamin

  BURTON, Nathaniel J. (1824–87). Pastor of Hartford’s Fourth Congregational Church and, later, of Park Congregational Church.

  BUSHNELL, Horace (1802–76). Theologian; from 1833 to 1859, minister of Hartford’s North Church of Christ (later Park Congregational Church).

  CABLE, George Washington (1844–1925). Louisiana-born author, famous for stories of Creole life. In 1884–85, Cable and Mark Twain made a joint lecture tour. Cable, a strict Presbyterian, did not travel on Sundays (the point of his letter on page 159).

  CAREY, William (1858–1901). An assistant editor of the Century Magazine.

  CARNOT, Marie François Sadi (1837–94). Fourth president of the French Republic; assassinated at Lyons on 24 June 1894 by an Italian anarchist. At the time, the Clemenses (minus Clara, who was in Paris) were staying at La Bourboule-les-Bains, in central France, where anti-Italian rioting erupted.

  “CHARLIE, COUSIN.” See WEBSTER, Charles L.

  “CHARLEY, UNCLE.” See LANGDON, Charles J.

  CLARKE, William Fayal (1855–1937). An editor at St. Nicholas magazine from its founding; see Mary Mapes DODGE.

  CHENEY family. Hartford business executive Frank W. Cheney and his wife, Mary (the daughter of Horace BUSHNELL), had a large family, with whom the Clemenses were intimate.

  CLEMENS, Jane Lampton (1803–90). Mark Twain’s mother. Born in Kentucky, she married John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847). In Hannibal, Missouri, she raised four children to adulthood: Orion (1825–97), Pamela (1827–1904), Samuel (1835–1910), and Henry (1838–58); three others, Pleasant, Margaret, and Benjamin, died in childhood. From 1882 she lived with Orion and his wife in Keokuk, Iowa. Mark Twain paid tribute to her in his essay “Jane Lampton Clemens” (Inds, 82–92).

  CLEMENS, Olivia (“Livy”) (1845–1904). Born Olivia Louise Langdon in Elmira, New York, the daughter of Jervis LANGDON. Her health was always delicate. In 1867 she met Samuel Clemens, who was captivated, and courted her energetically. They married on 2 February 1870 and settled in Buffalo, New York. Their first child, Langdon, was born in November; he died of diphtheria in 1872. In 1871 they moved, as renters, to the Nook Farm neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, a literary and intellectual enclave where they quickly established themselves. There they built the distinctive house which was their home from 1874 to 1891. In Hartford, Livy raised three daughters, and oversaw a large household with many servants, guests, and visitors; summers were usually spent at Quarry Farm outside Elmira, the home of her sister Susan Crane. In June 1891, mounting expenses and bad investments forced the Clemenses to close the Hartford house; they moved to Europe. In 1895–96 Livy and daughter Clara accompanied Clemens on his around-the-world lecture tour. The death of their daughter Susy in 1896 was a blow from which she never recovered. She died of heart failure in Italy in June 1904.

  CLEMENS, Susy (1872–96). Full name Olivia Susan Clemens. Called “Susy” (“Susie,” in earlier years). Nicknames: “Megalopis.” “The Modoc.” Mark Twain’s eldest daughter. Born at the Langdon family home in Elmira, her education was conducted largely by her mother and governesses. Her talents for writing, dramatics, and music were early apparent. She began her biography of her father in March 1885, when she had just turned thirteen. In 1890 she enrolled at Bryn Mawr College, but completed only one semester. After the family moved to Europe, Susy suffered increasingly from physical and nervous complaints. She declined to go with her father, mother, and sister Clara on the around-the-world lecture tour (1895–96), instead staying with her sister Jean and their aunt Susan CRANE in Elmira. In August 1896, while visiting Hartford, Susy succumbed to spinal meningitis. She died in the Hartford house while her mother and sister were crossing the Atlantic from England to be with her.

  CLEMENS, Clara (1874–1962). Nicknames: “Bay.” “Ben.” Born at Quarry Farm, she was mostly educated at home by her mother and governesses. During the family’s sojourn in Europe between 1891 and 1900, Clara enjoyed more independence than her sisters. The family settled in Vienna in 1897, partly so that Clara could study piano under Theodor Leschetizky. By 1898 Clara’s vocation had changed from pianist to singer, a career in which she found more indulgence than acclaim. She married Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch in 1909; their daughter, Nina (1910–66), was Mark Twain’s last direct descendant. Between 1904 and 1910 Clara lost her mother, her sister Jean, and her father; at the age of thirty-five, she was sole heir to her father’s estate. Gabrilowitsch died in 1936; in 1944 Clara married Russian conductor Jacques Samossoud. Her memoir My Father, Mark Twain was published in 1931. Her final decades were passed in California.

  CLEMENS, Jean (1880–1909). Full name Jane Lampton Clemens. Born at Quarry Farm, she was educated largely at home. At the age of sixteen she suffered her first epileptic seizure; over the next several years her anxious parents tried to forestall the progress of her illness with various spas and treatments. Her condition, and the household’s frequent relocations, gave Jean little chance to develop an independent life. She loved horseback riding and other outdoor activities, and espoused animal and human rights causes. In 1906 Jean was sent to a sanatorium in Katonah, New York, which she felt to be “exile”; she was there, and under care elsewhere, until April 1909, when she was allowed to rejoin her father at his newly built house in Redding, Connecticut. Over the next months she enjoyed a close, happy relationship with him. Jean died on 24 December 1909, apparently of a heart attack suffered during a seizure.

  COLT family. In the 1880s, the surviving family of Hartford arms manufacturer Samuel Colt (1814–62) were his widow, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt (1826–1905), and their adult son, Caldwell (1858–94). Mrs. Colt was the unofficial director of the business and a prominent philanthropist.

  CORD, Mary Ann (1798–1888). Born a slave in Maryland. She, her husband and children were sold on the auction block at Richmond, Virginia, around 1852. One of her sons, Henry WASHINGTON, escaped slavery and settled in Elmira, where he brought his mother to live after the Civil War. She married a local man, Primus Cord, and became a cook in the household of Susan and Theodore CRANE. In the summer of 1874, she related her life’s story to Mark Twain, who adapted it as “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It.”

  COREY, Susan (born 1866). Susy and Clara’s tutor in the 1880s.

  CRANE, Susan (1836–1924). Born Susan Dean, she was adopted by Livy’s parents. She and her husband Theodore Crane lived at Quarry Farm, just outside of Elmira, New York. She was very close to all the Clemenses.

  CUSTER, Elizabeth (1842–1933). Widow of General George A. Custer, who died at the battle of the Little Big Horn. She published three books memorializing her husband, the last of them (Tenting on the Plains, 1887) through Mark Twain’s firm, Charles L. Webster and Company.

  DEVENS, Charles, Jr. (1820–91). Union Civil War general. Commanded divisions at battles in Virginia including Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg.

  DODGE, Mary Mapes (1831–1905). Children’s author (Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, 1865) and friend of the Clemens family. Founding editor of St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks. Published by the Century Company, it printed work by—among many others—Louisa May Alcott, Joel Chandler Harris, Charles Kingsley, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain.

  DUNHAM, Samuel G. (1849–1934). Business executive; member of a wealthy Hartford family. He often played billiards at Mark Twain’s house. With his wife, Alice, he had six children.

  “EGYPTIAN, THE.” See MCLAUGHLIN, Maria.

  ELISE (also “Elisa” and “Elize”). German-born nursemaid, in the family’s service from 1883 to 1887.

  “ENGLISH MARY.” A name Clemens used to conceal the identity of Lizzie WILLS.

  FAIRCHILD, Lucius (1831–96). Union Civil War general. After the war he was a three-term governor of Wisconsin, then held a variety of diplomatic posts. He was consul general at Paris when the Clemenses met him, his wife Frances, and their three daughters, in 1879.

  FIELDS, James T. (1817�
�81). Head of the eminent publishing firm of Ticknor and Fields, in Boston (later Fields, Osgood and Co.).

  FOOTE, Lilly Gillette (1860–1932). Susy and Clara’s Hartford governess from about 1880.

  FRANKLIN, William B. (1823–1903). Union Civil War general; afterwards manager of the Colt arms manufacturing company in Hartford.

  GAY family. Julius Gay (1834–1918), banker and historian, and his wife, Maria, had four daughters; they lived in Farmington, Connecticut. Maria Gay was a close friend of Livy’s.

  GERHARDT, Karl (1853–1940). Hartford-based sculptor; with Mark Twain’s help, studied art in Paris. On returning to the United States in 1884, Gerhardt received some important commissions; his career later faltered.

  GILLETTE. The “Gillette place” referred to in “Small Foolishnesses” was the residence (from 1884) of George WARNER’S family.

  GLEASON, Rachel Brooks (1820–1905). Physician and pioneer in women’s health. With her husband, Silas, she operated a health resort in the hills just outside Elmira. Rachel Brooks was Livy’s physician, and delivered all three Clemens daughters.

  GOODWIN, Francis (1839–1923). Hartford clergyman, wealthy businessman, and amateur architect.

  GRANT, Ulysses S. (1822–85). Commanding general of the Union Army in the Civil War; later, eighteenth president of the United States. Mark Twain published his Personal Memoirs in 1885–86. Colonel Frederick D. Grant (1850–1912) was his eldest son; Jesse Root Grant (1858–1934), his youngest.

  GRIFFIN, George (1849?–97). Born in Virginia, he was the Clemenses’ butler from about 1875 until 1891, when they moved to Europe. The fullest records of his life are the documents published in this book.

  HAMERSLEY, William (1838–1920). Attorney; state prosecutor for Hartford County from 1868 to 1888; later a judge.

  HARRIS, Joel Chandler (1848–1908). Georgia-born author of the “Uncle Remus” stories.

  HAY, Rosina (1852?–1926). German-born nursemaid and tutor, hired in 1874. Called “Rosa.” In 1883 she married Horace Terwilliger and moved with him to Elmira.

  HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell (1826–1905). Civil War general, Republican Party leader, co-owner of the Hartford Courant, Connecticut representative and senator and, briefly, governor. A Hartford neighbor of the Clemenses’.

  HESSE, Fanny C. (1821?–1907). A friend of Susan WARNER’S. Served as Mark Twain’s personal secretary in 1876–77.

  HILLYER, Drayton (1816–1908). Insurance tycoon; also president of the Hartford Engineering Company, in which Mark Twain made a large and unprofitable investment.

  HOLMES, Oliver Wendell (1809–94). Physician, author, Harvard professor; in his time, considered one of America’s foremost poets.

  HOOKER, John (1816–1901). Among the original residents of the Nook Farm community in Hartford. His wife, Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907), was a half-sister of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher STOWE. The Clemenses’ first home in Hartford was the Hooker house, which they rented (from October 1871 to September 1874) while building their own home nearby.

  HOWELLS, William Dean (1837–1920). Prominent novelist, editor, and critic; close friend of Mark Twain. Editor (1871–81) of the Atlantic Monthly. He lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Elinor, and their children: Winifred, John, and Mildred (called “Pilla”).

  HUTTON, Laurence (1843–1904). Drama critic. He and his wife, Eleanor, lived in New York, and later in Princeton, New Jersey.

  IRVING, Henry (1838–1905). Shakespearean actor and theatrical impresario.

  JEWELL, Marshall (1825–83). Republican party politician, two-term governor of Connecticut, and United States minister to Russia. Hartford resident and friend of the Clemenses’.

  JOHNSON, Robert Underwood (1853–1937). Associate editor of the Century Magazine and tireless literary politician. Mark Twain privately characterized him as “Robert Undershirt Johnson—The great American undertaker—He’ll undertake anything that can add to his popularity” (Lyon 1907, entry for 11 March).

  KINGSLEY, Charles (1819–75), prominent English clergyman, Cambridge history professor, novelist, and poet.

  KIPLING, Rudyard (1865–1936). The Anglo-Indian writer was only twenty-four when he visited Mark Twain in Elmira in August, 1889. Kipling’s subsequent rise to fame, as well as his writings, made a deep impression on the Clemenses.

  LANG, Andrew (1844–1912). Prolific British folklorist, anthropologist, and historian; a warm admirer of Mark Twain’s writings—with the exception of Connecticut Yankee.

  LANGDON, Susie. See CRANE, Susan.

  LANGDON, Jervis (1809–70). Livy’s father. He married Olivia Lewis (1810–90) in 1832, and the pair settled in Elmira in 1845. He became wealthy in the coal trade. The Langdon household was strongly religious and ardently abolitionist. Besides Livy, the Langdons had a son, Charles J. LANGDON, and an adopted daughter, Susan CRANE.

  LANGDON, Charles J. (1849–1916). Livy’s brother. Succeeded to the Langdon family coal business. He lived with his wife and children in Elmira.

  LEARY, Katy (1856–1934). Born to Irish immigrants in Elmira, she came to serve the Clemenses in Hartford in 1880, leaving only after Mark Twain’s death in 1910. She later ran a boardinghouse in New York City. Her memoirs, “as told to” Mary Lawton, were published as A Lifetime with Mark Twain (Lawton 1925).

  LEWIS, John T. (1835–1906). Born in Maryland, where he lived as a black freeman. He settled in Elmira in 1864, working for the Langdons as coachman. He then went into business as a blacksmith; still later, he was the Langdons’ tenant farmer at Quarry Farm. His wife’s name was Mary.

  MACDONALD, George (1824–1905). Scottish novelist and children’s author. The Clemenses met him and his wife, Louisa, when MacDonald’s 1872 lecture tour took him to Elmira. MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (1871) was a favorite with Susy and Clara.

  MCALEER, Patrick (1844?–1906). The Clemens family’s coachman. Born in Ireland; emigrated to America at age sixteen. With his wife, Mary, he had nine children.

  MCLAUGHLIN, Maria. Briefly but memorably Clara’s wet-nurse. Two years after this service, pregnant and about to be expelled from a charity ward for smoking and drinking, she asked Mark Twain for a letter of reference. Called “the Egyptian” in “A Family Sketch.”

  MILLET, Francis D. (1846–1912). Painter and journalist. He painted Mark Twain’s portrait in 1876, and became a close friend of the family. He died on the Titanic.

  NASBY, Petroleum V. Pseudonym of David Ross Locke (1833–88), journalist. As the boorish “Nasby” he lent ironic support to reactionary political positions.

  NYE, Emma (1846–70). A school-friend of Livy’s. She died of typhoid fever while visiting the Clemenses at their house in Buffalo, New York.

  “PAGE THE ARTIST.” William Page (1811–85), American painter.

  PARKER, Edwin Pond (1836–1920). Pastor of Hartford’s Second Church of Christ and a friend of the Clemenses’.

  PERKINS, Charles E. (1832–1917). Hartford attorney; nephew of Harriet Beecher Stowe and of Henry Ward Beecher. With his wife, Lucy, he had five children. Mark Twain consulted him frequently up to 1882.

  POND, James B. (Major) (1838–1903). Impresario. He managed Mark Twain’s public readings in 1884–85 and 1895–96. His “friend” “Miss Jessie” (page 118) has not been identified, but Mark Twain found it necessary to delete the reference to her when he used this passage in his own autobiography. Pond had earned his rank in battle during the Civil War.

  “RACHEL, AUNT.” Fictionalized representation of Mary Ann CORD, in Mark Twain’s “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It.”

  REDPATH, James (1833–91). Founder of the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, a booking agency for lecturers. Mark Twain’s tour manager from 1869 to 1872, and a personal friend. In 1885 Redpath acted as stenographer for Mark Twain’s dictations on his experiences publishing Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs.

  ROBINSON, Henry C. (1832–1900). Mayor of Hartford from 1872 to 1874. “Governor Robinson” in “A Famil
y Sketch”; although Connecticut Republicans twice nominated him for the office, he was never governor.

  ROSA. See HAY, Rosina.

  SAGE, Dean (1841–1902). Wealthy lumber merchant, bibliophile, and angler. Mark Twain’s friend and occasional financial advisor. He lived in Albany with his wife, Sarah, and their five children.

  SHERIDAN, Philip H. (1831–88). A leading Union general in the Civil War. Mark Twain’s firm, Charles L. Webster and Company, published Sheridan’s Personal Memoirs in 1888.

  SHRADY and DOUGLAS. George F. Shrady and John H. Douglas were two of the doctors who attended Ulysses S. GRANT in his final illness.

  SMITH family. Mark Twain’s reference to “the Norman Smiths” (page 40) is perhaps a slip. Among the Clemenses’ neighbors was Charles B. Smith (1811–1900), a son of manufacturer Normand Smith (d. 1860).

  SMITH, George Williamson (1840–1921). Clergyman; president of Trinity College in Hartford from 1883 to 1904.

  SPAULDING, Clara (1850–1935). A close friend of Livy’s from childhood, Clara Spaulding lived in Elmira. She accompanied the Clemens family to Europe twice, in 1873 and in 1878–79. In 1886 she married lawyer and politician John B. Stanchfield. Her sister Alice was also a family friend.

  STANLEY, Henry M. (1841–1904). African explorer, writer and lecturer; founder of the Congo Free State on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium.

  STEDMAN, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908). Banker and man of letters. “I only despise him, I don’t dislike him,” Mark Twain told his secretary (Lyon 1906, entry for 13 December).

  STEPNIAK, Sergius. Pseudonym of Sergei Kravchinski (1851–95), Russian revolutionist. He called on Mark Twain when passing through Hartford in April 1891, and was warmly received.

  STOCKTON, Frank R. (1834–1902). Popular short-story writer and novelist, known for his humorous and fantastic plots.

  STOWE, Harriet Beecher (1811–96). Writer and political reformer; author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). She and her husband, biblical scholar Calvin Stowe, were Nook Farm neighbors of the Clemenses’. She was the sister of Henry Ward Beecher and half-sister of Thomas K. BEECHER.