This manuscript, begun in Vienna in late 1898 or early 1899, was left incomplete, ending in mid-sentence at a moment of unresolved suspense. Like “Horace Greeley” and “Ralph Keeler,” it seems to have been intended as part of a series of biographical portraits of friends and acquaintances which Clemens had temporarily adopted as a substitute for the autobiography as first conceived. The names of Nasby, De Cordova, and Hayes printed in the margins are comparable to the marginal dates Clemens later used to guide the reader in his nonchronological Autobiographical Dictations.
Clemens had long had an interest in writing up his experiences on the lecture circuit. As early as July 1869, having completed his first lecture tour of the eastern states, he used his correspondence with the San Francisco Alta California to describe his friend and fellow lecturer David Ross Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby): “Well, Nasby is a good fellow, and companionable, and we sat up till daylight reading Bret Harte’s Condensed Novels and talking over Western lecturing experiences. But lecturing experiences, deliciously toothsome and interesting as they are, must be recounted only in secret session, with closed doors. Otherwise, what a telling magazine article one could make out of them” (SLC 1869b). Despite that caveat, his interest in writing about those experiences remained alive. In a letter to Olivia written in January 1872, he mentioned a manuscript (later published as “Sociable Jimmy”) which he had sent home as something he hoped to include in his “volume of ‘Lecturing Experiences’ ” (10 and 11 Jan 1872 to OLC, L5, 18, 20 n. 6; “Sociable Jimmy,” New York Times, 29 Nov 1874, 7). But “Lecture-Times” and the sketch following it here, “Ralph Keeler,” are as close as he ever came to fulfilling that plan.
Paine included part of “Lecture-Times” under his own title, “Old Lecture Days in Boston. Nasby, and others of Redpath’s Lecture Bureau,” omitting the last four unconcluded paragraphs devoted to Isaac I. Hayes ( MTA, 1:147–53). Neider took his text directly from Paine––duplicating his errors––and he reversed sections of the text, which he then interlarded with material extracted from “Ralph Keeler” and the Autobiographical Dictations of 11 and 12 October 1906 ( AMT, 161–69). The present text is therefore the first time this manuscript has been published in full, as written.
I remember Petroleum Vesuvius NasbyⒶapparatus note (Locke) very well. When the Civil War began he was on the staff of the Toledo Blade, an old and prosperous and popular weekly newspaper. He let fly aⒶapparatus note Nasby letter and it made a fine strike. He was famous at once. He followed up his new lead, and gave the copperheads and the Democratic party a most admirable hammering every weekⒺexplanatory note, and his letters were copied everywhere, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and read and laughed over by everybody,—at least everybody exceptⒶapparatus note particularly dull and prejudiced Democrats and copperheadsⒺexplanatory note. For suddenness, Nasby’s fame was an explosion; for universality it was atmospheric. He was soon offered a company;Ⓐapparatus note he accepted, and was straightway ready to leave for the front; but the Governor of the State was a wiser man than were the political masters of Körner and Petöfi; for he refused to sign Nasby’s commission, and ordered him to stay at home. He said that in the field Nasby would be only one soldier, handling one sword, but at home with his pen he was an army—with artillery!Ⓔexplanatory note Nasby obeyed, and went on writing his electric letters.
I saw him first when I was on a visit to Hartford; I think it was three or fourⒶapparatus note years after the warⒺexplanatory note. The Opera House was packed and jammed with people to hear him deliver his lecture on “Cussed be Canaan.” He had been on the platform with that same lecture—and no other— [begin page 147] during two or three years, and it had passed his lips several hundred times, yet even now he could not deliver any sentence of it without his manuscript—except the opening one. His appearance on the stage was welcomed with a prodigious burst of applause, but he did not stop to bow or in any other way acknowledge the greeting, but strode straight to the reading-desk, spread his portfolio open upon it and immediatelyⒶapparatus note petrified himself into an attitude which he never changedⒶapparatus note during the hour and a half occupied by his performance except to turn his leaves:Ⓐapparatus note his body bent over the desk, rigidly supported by his left arm, as by a stake, the right arm lying across his back. About once in two minutes his right arm swung forward, turned a leaf, then swung to its resting-place on his back again—just the action of a machine, and suggestive of one; regular, recurrent, prompt, exact—you might imagine you heard it clash.Ⓐapparatus note He was a great burly figure, uncouthly and provincially clothed, and he looked like a simple old farmer.
I was all curiosity to hear him begin. He did not keep me waiting. The moment he had crutched himself upon his left arm, lodged his right upon his back and bent himselfⒶapparatus note over his manuscript he raised his face slightly, flashed a glance upon the audience and bellowedⒶapparatus note this remark in a thundering bull-voice—
“We are all descended from grandfathers!”
Then he went roaring right on to the end, tearing his ruthless way through the continuous applause and laughter and taking no sort of account of it. His lecture was a volleying and sustained discharge of bull’s-eye hits, with the slave-power and its Northern apologists for targetⒺexplanatory note, and his success was due to his matter, not his manner; for his delivery was destitute of art, unless a tremendous and inspiring earnestness and energy may be called by that name. The moment he had finished his piece he turned his back and marched off the stage with the seeming of being not personally concerned with the applause that was booming behind him.
He had the constitution of an ox and the strength and endurance of a prize-fighterⒶapparatus note. Express trains were not very plenty in those days. He missed a connection, and in order to meet this Hartford engagement he had traveled two-thirds of a night and a whole day in a cattle-car—it was mid-winter—he went from the cattle-car to his reading-desk without dining; yet on the platform his voice was powerful and he showed no signs of drowsiness or fatigue. He sat up talking and supping with me until after midnight, and then it was I that had to give up, not he. He told me that in his first season he read his “Cussed be Canaan” twenty-fiveⒶapparatus note nights a month for nine successive months. No other lecturer ever matched that record, I imagine.
He said that as one result of repeating his lecture two hundred and twenty-fiveⒶapparatus note nights straight along, he was able to say its opening sentenceⒶapparatus note without glancing at his manuscript; and sometimes even did it, when in a daring mood. And there was another result: he reached home the day after his long campaign, and was sitting by the fire in the evening, musing, when the clock broke into his reverie by striking eightⒶapparatus note. Habit is habit; and before he realized where he was he had thundered out, “We are all descended from grandfathersⒶapparatus note!”
I began as a lecturer in 1866, in California and Nevada; in 1867Ⓐapparatus note lectured in New York once and in the Mississippi valley a few times; in 1868 made the whole western circuit; and in the two or three following seasons added the eastern circuit to my routeⒺexplanatory note. We had to bring out a new lecture every season, now, (Nasby with the rest,)Ⓐapparatus note and expose it in the “Star Course,” Boston, [begin page 148] for a first verdict, before an audience of twenty-five hundredⒶapparatus note in the old Music Hall; for it was by that verdict that all the lyceums in the country determined the lecture’s commercial value. The campaign did not reallyⒶapparatus note begin in Boston, but in the towns around; we did not appear in Boston until we had rehearsed about a month in those townsⒶapparatus note and made allⒶapparatus note the necessary corrections and revisings.
This system gathered the whole tribe together in the city early in October, and we had a lazy and sociable time there for several weeks. We lived at Young’s hotel; we spent the days in Redpath’s bureauⒺexplanatory note smoking and talking shop; and early in the evenings we scattered out amongst the towns and made them indicate the good and poor things in the new lectures. The country audience is the difficult audience; a passage which it will approve with a ripple will bring a crash in the city. A fair success in the country means a triumph in the city. And so, when we finally stepped onto the great stage at Music Hall we already had the verdict in our pocket.
But sometimes lecturers who were new to the business did not know the value of “trying it on a dog,” and these were apt to come to Music Hall with an untried product. There was one case of this kind which made some of us very anxious when we saw the advertisement. De Cordova—Ⓐapparatus notehumoristⒺexplanatory note—he was the man we were troubled about. I think he had another name, but I have forgotten what it was. He had been printing some dismally humorous things in the magazines; they had met with a deal of favor and given him a pretty wide name; and now he suddenly came poaching upon our preserve, and took us by surprise. Several of us felt pretty unwell; too unwell to lecture. We gotⒶapparatus note outlying engagements postponed, and remained in town. We took front seats in one of the great galleries—Nasby, Billings and IⒺexplanatory note—and waited. The house was full. When De Cordova came on, he was received withⒶapparatus note what we regarded as a quite overdone and almost indecent volume of welcome. I think we were not jealous, nor even envious, but it made us sick, anyway. When IⒶapparatus note found he was going to read a humorous story—from manuscript—I felt better, and hopeful, but still anxious. He had a Dickens arrangement of tallⒶapparatus note gallows-frame adorned with upholsteries, and he stood behind it under its overhead-row of hidden lightsⒺexplanatory note. The whole thing had a quite stylishⒶapparatus note look, and was rather impressive. The audience were so sure that he was going to be funny that they took a dozen of his first utterances on trust and laughed cordially; so cordially, indeed, that it was very hard for us to bear, and we felt very much disheartened. Still I tried to believe he would fail, for I saw that he didn’t know how to read. Presently the laughter began to relax; then it began to shrink in area; and next to lose spontaneity; and next to show gaps between; the gaps widened; they widened more; more yet; still more. It was getting to be almostⒶapparatus note all gaps and silences, with that untrained and unlively voice droning through them. Then the house sat dead and emotionlessⒶapparatus note for a whole ten minutes. We drew a deep sigh; it ought to have been a sigh of pity for a defeated fellow craftsman, but it was not—for weⒶapparatus note were mean and selfish, like all the human race, and it was a sigh of satisfaction to see our unoffending brother fail.
He was laboring, now, and distressed; he constantly mopped his face with his handkerchief, and his voice and his manner became a humble appeal for compassion, for help, for charity, and it was a pathetic thing to see. But the house remained cold and still, and gazed at him curiously and wonderinglyⒺexplanatory note.
There was a great clock on the wall, high up; presently the general gaze forsook the reader [begin page 149] and fixed itself upon the clock-face. We knew by dismal experience what that meant; we knew what was going to happen, but it was plain that the reader had not been warned, and was ignorant. It was approaching nine, now—half the house watching the clock, the reader laboring on. At fiveⒶapparatus note minutes to nine, twelve hundred people rose, with one impulse, and swept like a wave down the aisles toward the doors! The reader was like a person stricken with a paralysis; he stood choking and gasping for a few moments, gazingⒶapparatus note in a white horror at that retreat, then he turned drearily away and wandered from the stage with the groping and uncertain step of one who walks in his sleep.
The management were to blame. They should have told him that the last suburban cars left at nine, and that half the house would rise and go thenⒶapparatus note, no matter who might be speaking from the platform. I think De Cordova did not appear again in public.
There was another case where a lecturer brought his piece to Music Hall without first “trying it on a dog.” Everybody was anxious to get a glimpse of Dr.Ⓐapparatus note Hayes when he was fresh from the Arctic regionsⒺexplanatory note and at the noon of his celebrity. He wrote out his lecture painstakinglyⒶapparatus note, and it was his purpose to read all of it from the manuscript except the opening passage. This passage was of the flowery eloquent sort, and he got it by heart, with the idea of getting out of it the moving effect of an offhand burst. It was not an originalⒶapparatus note idea; novices had been bitten by it before. Not twice, of course, but once.
The vast audience received him with inspiring enthusiasm as he came down the big stage, and he looked the pleasure he felt. He laid his manuscript on the desk, and stood bowing and smiling and smiling and bowing for a stretch of minutes. At last the noise died down, and a deep hush of expectancy followed. He stepped away from the desk and stood looking out over the sea of faces a while, then slowly stretched forth his hand and began in measured tones and most impressively, somewhat in this fashion:
“When one stands, a lost waif, in the midst of the mighty solitudes of the frozen seasⒶapparatus note stretching cold and white and forbidding, mile on mile, league on league, toward the remote and dim horizons, a solemn desert out of whose bosom rise here and there and yonder stupendous ice-forms quaintly mimicking the triumphs of man, the architect and builder—frowning fortresses, stately castles, majestic temples, their bases veiled in mysterious twilight, their pinnacles and towersⒶapparatus note glowing soft and rich in the rose-flush flung from the dying fires of the midnight sun—”
A figure sped across the stage, touched the lecturer on the shoulder, then bent forward toward the audience, made a trumpet of its hands and shouted—
I remember Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby (Locke) very well . . . a most admirable hammering every week] David Ross Locke (1833–88) left school at an early age and was apprenticed to a printer, after which he worked on a succession of newspapers. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was the owner and editor of the Bucyrus (Ohio) Journal. It was not until a year later that he published his first satirical piece as Petroleum V. Nasby, an ignorant, bigoted, and boorish character who promoted liberal causes by seeming to oppose them. The popularity of the Nasby letters brought Locke to the attention of the proprietor of the Toledo Blade, who hired him as editor in 1865. Locke later became a part owner, and the Nasby letters, which he continued to write until shortly before his death, were an important feature of the weekly edition ( L3: 20 and 21 Jan 1869 to OLL, 56 n. 1; 10 Mar 1869 to OLL and Langdon, 160 n. 5; Austin 1965, 11–12; Marchman 1957).
his letters were copied everywhere . . . copperheads] According to an obituary of Locke:
These political satires sprang at once into tremendous popularity. They were copied into newspapers everywhere, quoted in speeches, read around camp-fires of Union armies and exercised enormous influence in molding public opinion North in favor of vigorous prosecution of the war. Secretary Boutwell declared in a speech at Cooper Union, New York, at the close of the war that the success of the Union army was due to three causes—the army, the navy, and the Nasby letters. . . . These letters were a source of the greatest delight to President Lincoln, who always kept them in his table drawer for perusal at odd times. (“Death of D. R. Locke,” Washington Post, 16 Feb 1888, 4)
George S. Boutwell (1818–1905) was secretary of the treasury, 1869–73.
Governor of the State was a wiser man than were the political masters of Körner and Petöfi . . . he was an army—with artillery!] Locke himself almost certainly told Clemens this anecdote, which is also reported in an obituary, and there is no reason to doubt its substance. Nasby did, however, receive a commission as a second lieutenant in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, signed on 5 November 1861 by Governor William Dennison, which required him to recruit a company of thirty men within fifteen days. The 16 November issue of the Bucyrus Journal contained Locke’s “valedictory,” and announced that he was “recruiting a company.” Ultimately Locke paid a substitute to fight in his place (Marchman 1957; John M. Harrison 1969, 64–66; “Death of D. R. Locke,” Washington Post, 16 Feb 1888, 4). Theodor Körner (1791–1813) and Sándor Petöfi (1823–49) were nationalist poets killed in battle: Körner died fighting for Prussia in the Napoleonic wars, and Petöfi died in the unsuccessful Hungarian revolt against the Austrians.
I saw him first . . . three or four years after the war] Clemens heard Locke lecture in Hartford on 9 March 1869 (10 Mar 1869 to OLL and Langdon, L3, 158, 159–60 n. 1).
with the slave-power and its Northern apologists for target] For his “Cussed be Canaan” lecture Locke posed as Nasby (without the peculiar dialect he employed in print), making it clear that Nasby’s views were not his own. His argument—couched in satire—was that African Americans should be granted full equality, both economically and politically (John M. Harrison 1969, 192–96). In a letter to the San Francisco Alta California Clemens described the lecture as “a very unvarnished narrative of the negro’s career, from the flood to the present day”:
For instance, the interpolating of the word white in State Constitutions existing under a great general Constitution which declares all men to be equal, is neatly touched by a recommendation that the Scriptures be so altered, at the same time, as to make them pleasantly conform to men’s notions—thus: “Suffer little white children to come unto me, and forbid them not!” (SLC 1869b)
I began as a lecturer in 1866 . . . added the eastern circuit to my route] Clemens delivered his first lecture, on the Sandwich Islands, in San Francisco on 2 October 1866. For his account of that experience, and the tour that followed, see “Notes on ‘Innocents Abroad.’ ” In March and April 1867 he lectured on the same topic in St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi, and then three times in New York and Brooklyn in May. In January 1868 he gave “The Frozen Truth” in Washington, D.C., a new lecture about his Quaker City voyage, before returning to the West (for the last time), where he delivered it in San Francisco on 14 and 15 April. He then performed it in several of the California and Nevada towns that he had visited on his 1866 tour, lecturing for the last time in San Francisco on 2 July. During the 1868–69 season Clemens toured from 17 November until 20 March, delivering “The American Vandal Abroad” (also about the Quaker City trip) throughout the Midwest and East ( L1: link note following 25 Aug 1866 to Bowen, 361–62; 29 Oct 1866 to Howland, 362 n. 1; 2 Nov 1866 to JLC and family, 366–67 nn. 3, 4; L2: 19 Mar 1867 to Webb, 19 n. 2; link note following 1 May 1867 to Harte, 40–44; 8 Jan 1868 to JLC and PAM, 147 n. 7; 2–14 Apr 1868 to Fairbanks, 208; 14 Apr 1868 to Williams, 209–10 n. 2; 1 and 5 May 1868 to Fairbanks, 213 n. 4; 5 July 1868 to Bliss, 233 n. 1; L3: enclosure with 12 Jan 1869 to Fairbanks, 453–57; “Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870,” 481–83).
Redpath’s bureau] In the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 October 1906, Clemens describes James Redpath (1833–91) as a man of “honesty, sincerity, kindliness, and pluck.” An abolitionist, author, journalist, and social reformer, Redpath founded the Boston Lyceum Bureau (later called the Redpath Lyceum Bureau) in 1868, in partnership with George L. Fall. This business, one of the first of its kind, managed the tours of popular lecturers, readers, and musicians, arranging bookings and negotiating fees with local committees in cities both large and small. Lecturers paid their own traveling expenses, in addition to a 10 percent commission. (See “Ralph Keeler,” the next sketch, for more about the Redpath Bureau.) Redpath arranged Clemens’s 1869–70 tour, with the lecture “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” and his 1871–72 tour, with “Roughing It” (after “Reminiscences of Some un-Commonplace Characters I Have Chanced to Meet” and “Artemus Ward, Humorist” were tried and discarded). Clemens did not tour during the 1870–71 season (Eubank 1969, 91–115, 119–20; L3: 20 Apr 1869 to Redpath, 199 n. 1; 10 May 1869 to Redpath, 214–16, 217–18 n. 8; 30, 31 Oct and 1 Nov 1869 to OLL, 383–84 n. 9; “Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870,” 483–86; L4: 24 Oct 1871 to Redpath, 478; 8 Dec 1871 to Redpath and Fall, 511; “Lecture Schedule, 1871–1872,” 557–63).
148.15–16 De Cordova—humorist] Raphael J. De Cordova (1822–1901) was a merchant until 1857, when an economic panic forced him to turn to writing and lecturing. He served on the staff of the New York Evening Express for a time, and contributed to the New York Times, but became best known as a humorous writer and lecturer. During the 1871–72 season he offered eight humorous talks through the Redpath Bureau, and he continued to appear on the platform until at least 1878 (“Death List of a Day,” New York Times, 5 Apr 1901, 9; Annual Cyclopaedia 1901, 419; Lyceum 1871, 17–18).
We took front seats in one of the great galleries—Nasby, Billings and I] Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818–85) was well known for the homespun philosophy he expressed in his humorous essays and sketches. Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, his third book and the first of a series of ten comic annuals, was published in October 1869 and sold over ninety thousand copies in three months. Clemens, Billings, and Nasby were photographed together in the second week of November of that year, when all three were in Boston on tour. On 27 October Billings delivered his popular lecture “Milk and Natral Histry” at Boston’s Music Hall, where Nasby appeared on 9 November, and Clemens himself the following night. De Cordova gave four readings at Tremont Temple (not Music Hall) in mid-November; the three men probably heard him on 8 or 12 November (“Lecture Course,” Boston Post, 6 Nov 1869, 3; L3: 9 Nov 1869 to PAM, 386–87, 389 n. 4; 15 and 16 Nov 1869 to OLL, 397 n. 3; 24 and 25 Nov 1869 to OLL, 406, 408 n. 10).
Dickens arrangement of tall gallows-frame . . . overhead-row of hidden lights] Clemens heard Dickens read in New York on 31 December 1867, when he accompanied Olivia Langdon and her family (8 Jan 1868 to JLC and PAM, L2, 146 n. 3). He described the occasion for his Alta California readers:
Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen—a bulkhead—a sounding-board, I took it to be—and overhead in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to it, which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects of great paintings. Style!—There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings. (SLC 1868c)
But the house remained cold and still, and gazed at him curiously and wonderingly] The Boston correspondent of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican agreed with Clemens’s opinion of De Cordova, but not with his assessment of the audience’s reaction: “Mr De Cordova is, among the lecturers, what one of the illustrated weeklies of the poorer sort would be among newspapers, provided it were better printed and on better paper. There is no wit in him, and no humor. His audience, however, seemed pleased, and not bored by his vivacious nothingness” (William S. Robinson 1869).
Dr. Hayes when he was fresh from the Arctic regions] Isaac I. Hayes (1832–81), a physician and explorer, accompanied Elisha Kent Kane on an Arctic expedition in 1853–55. He later led two Arctic expeditions of his own, in 1860–61 and 1869. The Redpath Lyceum booked his popular lectures from 1869 to 1878 (9 Mar 1858 to OC and MEC, L1, 78 n. 6; Eubank 1969, 295–306).
Source document.
MS Manuscript of 16 leaves, written in 1898–99.The MS paper and ink match those used for “Horace Greeley,” and are described in its Textual Commentary. Clemens apparently never completed the piece: page 16 of the MS, half of which is blank, ends in the middle of a sentence (‘and shouted—’).