The manuscripts for these next three pieces (“Horace Greeley,” “Lecture-Times,” and “Ralph Keeler”) are all in the Mark Twain Papers. Clemens wrote all three in Vienna at about the same time, either in late 1898 or (more likely) in early 1899. He had apparently abandoned (at least briefly) the autobiography as he had originally conceived it in favor of a “portrait gallery of contemporaries,” as he told one interviewer in May 1899: “A man cannot tell the whole truth about himself, even if convinced that what he wrote would never be seen by others. . . . For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others” (“Mark Twain’s Bequest,” datelined “Vienna, May 22,” London Times, 23 May 1899, 4, in Scharnhorst 2006, 333–34).
Although Clemens here placed the encounter with Greeley in 1871, it almost certainly occurred slightly earlier, sometime between 12 and 17 December 1870, while Clemens was on a week-long trip to New York ( RI 1993, 825 n. 78). He told a nearly identical version of the story in 1905 (3 Oct 1905 to the Editor of Harper’s Weekly, RPB-JH, published in SLC 1905e). Paine did not include this anecdote in his edition of the autobiography, but a brief typescript of it prepared for him suggests that he very likely considered doing so. He had already quoted still another version of the story in his 1912 biography ( MTB, 1:472). Neider likewise omitted it, but Bernard DeVoto published it in the “Miscellany” section of Mark Twain in Eruption, which he said was “composed of fragments lifted from contexts that did not seem to me interesting enough to be run in their entirety” ( MTE, xii–xiii, 347–48).
I met Mr. GreeleyⒺexplanatory note only onceⒶapparatus note and then by accident. It was in 1871, in the (old) Tribune office. I climbed one or two flights of stairsⒶapparatus note and went to the wrong room. I was seeking Colonel John Hay and I really knew my way and only lost it by my carelessness. I rapped lightly on the door, pushed it open and stepped in. There sat Mr. GreeleyⒶapparatus note, busy writing, with his back to me. I think his coat was off. But I knew who it was, anyway. It was not a pleasant situation, for he had the reputation of being pretty plain with strangers who interrupted his train of thought. The interview was brief. Before I could pull myself together and back out, he whirled around and glared at me through his great spectacles and said—
“Well, what in hell do you want!”
“I was looking for a gentlem—”
“Don’t keep them in stock—clear out!”
I could have made a very neat retortⒶapparatus note but didn’t, for I was flurried and didn’t think of it till I was down stairs.
Mr. Greeley] Horace Greeley (1811–72) grew up in New Hampshire and Vermont. He left school at fourteen to help his father with farming and odd jobs, and at age fifteen was apprenticed to a printer. Over the succeeding years he developed his skills as a journalist, writing for numerous New York newspapers and journals. In 1841 he founded the New York Tribune and remained its editor until his death. Through his newspaper, which gained enormous national influence, he attacked slavery and poverty and championed the rights of African Americans, women, and the working class. He made a brief bid to enter politics, but suffered a crushing defeat by Grant in the presidential election of 1872 and died shortly thereafter.
Source document.
MS Manuscript of 2 leaves, written in 1898–99.The MS was written in black ink on torn half sheets of heavy cream-colored wove paper, measuring 5 5/16 by 8 7/16 inches. At the top of the first page Paine noted that it was written ‘about 1898’; Clemens used this paper as late as May 1899.