Subject of FebruaryⒶapparatus note 1st continued—The death of SusyⒶapparatus note Clemens— Ends with mention of Dr. John Brown.
It explained that SusyⒶapparatus note was slightly ill—nothing of consequence. But we were disquieted, and began to cable for later news. This was Friday. All day no answer—and the ship to leave Southampton next day, at noon. Clara and her mother began packing, to be ready in case the news should be bad. Finally came a cablegram sayingⒶapparatus note “Wait for cablegram in the morning.” This was not satisfactory—not reassuring. I cabled again, asking that the answer be sent to Southampton, for the day was now closing. I waited in the postofficeⒶapparatus note that night till the doors were closed, toward midnight,Ⓐapparatus note in the hope that good news might still come, but there was no message. We sat silent at home till one in the morning,Ⓐapparatus note waiting—waiting for we knew not what. Then we took the earliest morning train, and when we reached Southampton the message was there. It said the recovery would be long, but certain. This was a great relief to me, but not to my wife. She was frightened. She and Clara went aboard the steamer at once and sailed for America, to nurse SusyⒶapparatus note. I remained behind to search for another and largerⒶapparatus note house in Guildford.
[begin page 324]That was the 15th of August, 1896. Three days later, when my wife and Clara were about half wayⒶapparatus note across the ocean, I was standing in our dining roomⒶapparatus note thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It saidⒶapparatus note “SusyⒶapparatus note was peacefully released to-day.”
It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shockⒶapparatus note and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their full import is mercifullyⒶapparatus note wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the detailsⒶapparatus note and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss. A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for itⒶapparatus note he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential—there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. He did not realize that it was an essential when he had it; he only discovers it now when he finds himself balked, hampered, by its absence. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.
The 18th of August brought me the awful tidings. The mother and the sister were out there in mid-Atlantic, ignorant of what was happening; flying to meet this incredible calamity. All that could be done to protect them from the full force of the shock was done by relatives and good friends. They went down the Bay and met the ship at night, but did not show themselves until morning, and then only to Clara. When she returned to the stateroom she did not speak, and did not need to. Her mother looked at her and said,
“SusyⒶapparatus note is dead.”
At half pastⒶapparatus note ten o’clock that night,Ⓐapparatus note Clara and her mother completed their circuit of the globe, and drew up at Elmira by the same train and in the same car which had borne them and me westwardⒶapparatus note from it one year, one month, and one week before. And again SusyⒶapparatus note was there—not waving her welcome in the glare of the lightsⒶapparatus note as she had waved her farewell to us thirteen months before, but lying white and fair in her coffin, in the house where she was born.
The last thirteen days of Susy’sⒶapparatus note life were spent in our own house in Hartford, the home of her childhoodⒶapparatus note and always the dearest place inⒶapparatus note the earth to her. About her she had faithful old friends—her pastor, Mr. TwichellⒶapparatus note, who had known her from the cradle, and who had come a long journey to be with her; her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore CraneⒺexplanatory note; Patrick, the coachman; KatyⒶapparatus note, who had begun to serve us when SusyⒶapparatus note was a child of eight years; John and Ellen, who had been with us manyⒶapparatus note years. Also Jean was there.
At the hour when my wife and Clara set sail for America, SusyⒶapparatus note was in no danger. Three hours later there came a sudden change for the worse. Meningitis set in, and it was immediately apparent that she was death-struck. That was Saturday, the 15th of August.
“That evening she took food for the last time.”Ⓐapparatus note (Jean’s letter to me.)Ⓐapparatus note TheⒶapparatus note next morning the brain-fever was raging. She walked the floor a little in her pain and delirium, then succumbed to weakness and returned to her bed. Previously she had found hanging in a closet a gown which she had seen her mother wear. She thought it was her mother, dead, and she kissed it, and cried. About noon she became blind (an effect of the disease) and bewailed it to her uncle.Ⓐapparatus note
[begin page 325]From Jean’s letter I take this sentence, which needs no comment:
“About one in the afternoon SusyⒶapparatus note spoke for the last time.”
ItⒶapparatus note was only one word that she said when she spoke that last time, and it told of her longing. She groped with her hands and found Katy,Ⓐapparatus note and caressed her faceⒶapparatus note and said “mamma.”Ⓐapparatus note
How gracious it was thatⒶapparatus note in that forlorn hour of wreck and ruin, with the night of death closing around her, she should have been granted that beautiful illusion—that the latest vision which rested upon the clouded mirror of her mind should have been the vision of her mother, and the latest emotion she should know in life the joy and peace of that dear imagined presence.
About two o’clock she composed herself as if for sleep,Ⓐapparatus note and never moved again. She fell into unconsciousness and so remained two days and five hours, until Tuesday evening at seven minutes past seven, when the release came. She was twenty-four years and five months old.
On the 23dⒶapparatus note her mother and her sisters saw her laid to rest—she that had been our wonder and our worship.
In one of her own books I find some verses which I will copy here. ApparentlyⒶapparatus note she always put borrowed matter in quotation marks. These verses lack those marks, and therefore I take them to be her own.Ⓐapparatus note
When crimson glories, bloom, and songⒶapparatus note were rife;
Love came at dawnⒶapparatus note when hope’s wings fanned the air,Ⓐapparatus note
And murmuredⒶapparatus note “I am life.”Ⓐapparatus note
LoveⒶapparatus note came at even,Ⓐapparatus note when the day was done,Ⓐapparatus note
When heart and brain were tired,Ⓐapparatus note and slumber pressed;
Love came at eve, shut out the sinking sun,Ⓐapparatus note
And whisperedⒶapparatus note “I am rest.”Ⓐapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note
The summer seasons of Susy’sⒶapparatus note childhood were spent at Quarry FarmⒶapparatus note on the hills east of Elmira, New York, theⒶapparatus note other seasons of the year at the home in Hartford. Like other children, she was blithe and happy, fond of play; unlike the average of childrenⒶapparatus note she was at times much given to retiring within herselfⒶapparatus note and trying to search out the hidden meanings of the deep things that make the puzzle and pathos of human existence, and in all the ages have baffled the inquirer and mocked him. As a little child aged seven, she was oppressed and perplexed by the maddening repetition of the stock incidents of our race’s fleeting sojourn here, just as the same thing has oppressed and perplexed maturer minds from the beginning of time. A myriad of men are born; theyⒶapparatus note labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; ageⒶapparatus note creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; thoseⒶapparatus note they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year; atⒶapparatus note lengthⒶapparatus note ambition is dead; prideⒶapparatus note is dead; vanityⒶapparatus note is dead; longingⒶapparatus note for release is in their place. It comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; whereⒶapparatus note they have [begin page 326] left no sign that they have existed—a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place,Ⓐapparatus note and copies all they did, and goes along the same profitless road, and vanishes as they vanished—to make room for another and anotherⒶapparatus note and a million other myriadsⒶapparatus note to follow the same arid path through the same desertⒶapparatus note and accomplish what the first myriad, and all the myriads that came after itⒶapparatus note accomplished—nothing!
“Mamma, what is it all for?” asked SusyⒶapparatus note, preliminarily stating the above details in her own halting language, after long brooding over them alone in the privacy of the nursery.
A year later, she was groping her way alone through another sunless bog, but this time she reached a rest for her feet. For a week, her mother had not been able to go to the nursery, evenings,Ⓐapparatus note at the child’s prayer hour. She spoke of it—was sorry for it, and said she would come to-night, and hoped she could continue to come every night and hear SusyⒶapparatus note pray, as before. Noticing that the child wished to respond, but was evidently troubled as to how to word her answer, she asked what the difficulty was. SusyⒶapparatus note explained that Miss Foote (the governess) had been teaching her about the Indians and their religious beliefs, whereby it appeared that they had not only a God, but several. This had set SusyⒶapparatus note to thinking. As a result of this thinking, she had stopped praying. She qualifiedⒶapparatus note this statement—that isⒶapparatus note she modified it—saying she did not now pray “in the same way” as she had formerly done. Her mother said,
“TellⒶapparatus note me about it, dear.”
“Well, mamma, the Indians believed they knew, but now we know they were wrong. By and byⒶapparatus note it can turn out that we are wrong. So now I only pray that there may be a God and a heavenⒶapparatus note—or something betterⒺexplanatory note.”
I wrote down this pathetic prayer in its precise wording, at the time, in a record which we kept of the children’s sayingsⒺexplanatory note, and my reverence for it has grown with the years that have passed over my head since then. Its untaught grace and simplicity are a child’s, but the wisdom and the pathos of it are of all the ages that have come and gone since the race of man has lived,Ⓐapparatus note and longed,Ⓐapparatus note and hoped,Ⓐapparatus note and feared,Ⓐapparatus note and doubted.
To go back a year—SusyⒶapparatus note aged seven. Several times her mother said to her,
“ThereⒶapparatus note, there, SusyⒶapparatus note, you mustn’t cry over little things.”
This furnished SusyⒶapparatus note a text for thought. She had been breaking her heart over what had seemed vast disasters—a broken toy; a picnic canceledⒶapparatus note by thunder and lightning and rain; the mouse that was growing tame and friendly in the nursery caught and killed by the cat—and now came this strange revelation. For some unaccountable reason, these were not vast calamities. Why? How is the size of calamities measured? What is the rule? There must be some way to tell the great ones from the small ones; what is the law of these proportions? She examined the problem earnestly and long. She gave it her best thought,Ⓐapparatus note from time to time, for two or three days—but it baffled her—defeated her. And at last she gave up and went to her mother for help.
“Mamma, what is ‘ littleⒶapparatus note things’?”
It seemed a simple question—at first. And yetⒶapparatus note before the answer could be put into words, unsuspected and unforeseen difficulties began to appear. They increased; they multiplied; they brought about another defeat. The effort to explain came to a standstill. Then SusyⒶapparatus note tried to help her mother out—with an instance, an example, an illustration. The mother was getting ready to goⒶapparatus note down townⒶapparatus note, and one of her errands was to buy a long-promisedⒶapparatus note toy watchⒶapparatus note for SusyⒶapparatus note.
[begin page 327]“If you forgot the watch, mammaⒶapparatus note, would that be a little thing?”
She was not concerned about the watch, for she knew it would not be forgotten. What she was hoping for was that the answer would unriddle the riddleⒶapparatus note and bring rest and peace to her perplexed little mind.
The hope was disappointed, of course—for the reason that the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it, but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it. The king’s lost crown is a vast matter to the king, but of no consequence to the child. The lost toy is a greatⒶapparatus note matter to the child, but in the king’s eyes it is not a thing to break the heart about. A verdict was reached, but it was based upon the above model,Ⓐapparatus note and SusyⒶapparatus note was granted leave to measure her disasters thereafter with her own tape-line.
I will throw in a note or two here touching the time when SusyⒶapparatus note was seventeen. SheⒶapparatus note had written a play modeled upon Greek lines, and she and Clara and Margaret Warner, and other young comradesⒶapparatus note had played it to a charmed housefullⒶapparatus note of friends in our house in HartfordⒺexplanatory note. Charles Dudley Warner and his brother, GeorgeⒺexplanatory note, were present. They were near neighbors and warm friends of ours. They were full of praises of the workmanship of the play, and George Warner came over the next morning and had a long talk with SusyⒶapparatus note. The result of it was this verdict:
“SheⒶapparatus note is the most interesting person I have ever known, of either sex.”
Remark of a lady—Mrs. Cheney, I think, author of the biography of her fatherⒺexplanatory note, Rev. Dr. Bushnell:
“I made this note after one of my talks with SusyⒶapparatus note: ‘She knows all there is of life and its meanings. She could not know it better if she had lived it out to its limit. Her intuitions and ponderings and analyzings seem to have taught her all that my sixty years have taught me.’ ”
Remark of another lady; she is speaking of Susy’sⒶapparatus note last days:
“In those last days she walked as if on air, and her walk answered to the buoyancy of her spirits and the passion of intellectual energy and activity that possessed her.”Ⓐapparatus note
I return now to the point where I made this diversion. From her earliest days, as I have already indicated, SusyⒶapparatus note was given to examiningⒶapparatus note things and thinking them out by herself. She was not trained to this; it was the make of her mind. In matters involving questions of fair or unfair dealing, she reviewed the details patiently, and surely arrived atⒶapparatus note a right and logical conclusion. In MunichⒺexplanatory note, when she was six years old, she was harassed by a recurrent dream, in which a ferocious bear figured. She came out of the dream each time sorely frightened, and crying. She set herself the task of analyzing this dream. The reasons of it? The purpose of it? The origin of it? No—the moral aspect of it. Her verdict, arrived at after candid and searching investigation, exposed it to the charge of being one-sided and unfair in its construction: for (as she worded it),Ⓐapparatus note she was “never the one that ate, but always the one that was eaten.”Ⓔexplanatory note
SusyⒶapparatus note backed her good judgmentⒶapparatus note in matters of morals with conduct to match—even upon occasions when it caused her sacrifice to do it. When she was six and her sister Clara fourⒺexplanatory note, the pair were troublesomely quarrelsome. Punishments were tried as a means of breaking up this custom—these failed. Then rewards were tried. A day without a quarrel brought candy. The children were their own witnesses—each for or against her own self. Once SusyⒶapparatus note took the candy, hesitated, then returned it with a suggestion that she was not fairly entitled to it. Clara kept [begin page 328] hers,—so, here was aⒶapparatus note conflict of evidence; one witness for a quarrel, and one against it. But the better witness of the two was on the affirmativeⒶapparatus note side, and the quarrel stood proved, and no candy due to either side.Ⓐapparatus note There seemed to be no defenceⒶapparatus note for Clara—yet there was, and SusyⒶapparatus note furnished it;Ⓐapparatus note and Clara went free. SusyⒶapparatus note said “I don’t know whether she felt wrong in her heart, but I didn’t feel right in my heart.”
It was a fair and honorable view of the case, and a specially acute analysis of it for a child of six to make. There was no way to convict Clara now, except to put her on the stand again and review her evidence. There was a doubt as to the fairness of this procedure, since her former evidence had been accepted, and not challenged at the time. The doubt was examined, and canvassed—then she was given the benefit of it and acquitted;Ⓐapparatus note which was just as well, for in the meantime she had eaten the candy, anyway.
Whenever I think of SusyⒶapparatus note I think of Marjorie FlemingⒺexplanatory note. There was but one Marjorie Fleming. There can never be another. No doubt I think of Marjorie when I think of SusyⒶapparatus note mainly because Dr. John Brown, that noble and beautiful soul—rescuer of marvelous Marjorie from oblivion—was Susy’sⒶapparatus note great friend in her babyhood—her worshipper and willing slave.
In 1873, when SusyⒶapparatus note was fourteen months old, we arrived in EdinburghⒺexplanatory note from London, fleeing thither for rest and refuge, after experiencing what had been to us an entirely new kind of life—six weeks of daily lunches, teas, and dinners away from home. We carried no letters of introduction; we hid ourselves away in Veitch’s family hotel in George streetⒶapparatus note, and prepared to have a comfortable season all to ourselves. But by good fortune this did not happen. Straightway Mrs. Clemens needed a physician, and I stepped around to 23 Rutland streetⒶapparatus note to see if the author of “Rab and His Friends” was still a practising physician. He was. He came, and for six weeks thereafter we were together every day, either in his house or in our hotel.
her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Crane] Susan Langdon Crane (1836–1924) was born Susan Dean, but was orphaned at the age of four and adopted by the Langdon family. Although she was nearly ten years older than Olivia, her foster sister, they remained close throughout their lives. In 1858 she married Theodore Crane (1831–89), who later became a partner in the Langdon family coal business. The Cranes lived at Quarry Farm, outside Elmira. The uncle present during Susy’s final illness was Charles Langdon, not Crane, who had died some years earlier (19 Aug 1896 to OLC [1st], CU-MARK, in LLMT, 321–22; Notebook 39, TS p. 55, CU-MARK).
In one of her own books I find some verses . . . whispered “I am rest.”] As Clemens later discovered (see AD, 22 Jan 1907), this poem was not written by Susy but by Canadian poet William Wilfred Campbell (1860?–1918). Entitled “Love,” it was first published in the October 1891 issue of the Century Magazine, where Susy most likely saw it (Campbell 1891).
Miss Foote (the governess) had been teaching her . . . God and a heaven—or something better] Since about 1880 Susy and Clara’s Hartford governess had been Lilly Gillette Foote (1860–1932), a “recent graduate of Cambridge University’s Newnham College, . . . worldly, well-travelled, and socially progressive,” and also “the niece of Harriet Foote Hawley, one of the five Hartford women who in October 1880 founded the Connecticut Indian Association, a female native rights advocacy organization” (Salsbury 1965, 426; Driscoll 2005, 8). Clemens was not above learning something from his daughter and her governess. In 1884 he extensively annotated Richard Irving Dodge’s Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years’ Personal Experience among the Red Men of the Great West (Dodge 1883), saying at one point that “The Indian’s bad God is the twin of our only God; his good God is better than any heretofore devised by man.” Also: “Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge.” And: “We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him—how much higher and finer is the Indian’s God” ( HH&T, 90; quoted in Driscoll 2005, 5).
I wrote down this pathetic prayer . . . children’s sayings] In 1881 Clemens did indeed record this exchange in “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants)”:
Susie (9 yrs old,) had been sounding the deeps of life, & pondering the result. Meantime the governess had been instructing her about the American Indians. One day Mamma, with a smitten conscience, said—
“Susie, I have been so busy that I haven’t been in at night lately to hear you say your prayers. Maybe I can come in tonight. Shall I?”
Susie hesitated, waited for her thought to formulate itself, then brought it out:
“Mamma, I don’t pray as much as I used to—& I don’t pray in the same way. Maybe you would not approve of the way I pray now.”
“Tell me about it, Susie.”
“Well, mamma, I don’t know that I can make you understand; but you know, the Indians thought they knew: & they had a great many gods. We know, now, that they were wrong. By & by, maybe it will be found out that we are wrong, too. So, now, I only pray that there may be a God—& a heaven—or something better.”
It was a philosophy that a sexagenarian need not have been ashamed of having evolved. (SLC 1876–85, 89–90)
She had written a play . . . friends in our house in Hartford] Susy’s play, entitled A Love-Chase, was performed in the drawing room of the Hartford house on Thanksgiving night 1889, and repeated twice on later occasions. The cast included Susy, Clara, Jean, and Margaret (Daisy) Warner (1872–1931), the daughter of George and Lilly Warner (3 Dec 1889 to Baxter, NN-BGC). Clemens gave a fuller version in “Memorial to Susy”:
When Susy was nearly seventeen she wrote a play herself—a lovely little fancy, formed upon Greek lines. There were songs in it, & music, & several dances. There were only five characters: Music, Art, Literature, Cupid, & a shepherd lad. Susie was Music, Margaret Warner was Literature, Clara was Art, Fanny Frees was the shepherd lad, & our Jean— what there was of her—was Cupid. She was very little. Susy was a vision. I can see her yet as she parted the curtains & stood there, young, fresh, aglow with excitement, & clothed in a tumbling cataract of pink roses. (SLC 1896–1906, 42–43)
George] George H. Warner (1833–1919) worked for the American Emigrant Company, which helped foreign settlers. His wife, Lilly (1835–1915), was the former Elisabeth Gillette (link note following 7 Mar 1872 to OC, L5, 56).
Mrs. Cheney, I think, author of the biography of her father] Mary Bushnell Cheney published Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell in 1880.
In Munich] The Clemens family—Samuel, Olivia, Susy, and Clara, with family friend Clara Spaulding and the children’s nurse Rosina Hay—toured Europe in 1878–79, visiting Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, and England. They were in Munich from November 1878 through February 1879. This European tour furnished Clemens with material for his travel book A Tramp Abroad ( N&J2, 3, 41–43, 48).
she was “never the one that ate, but always the one that was eaten.”] Clemens recorded Susy’s comment in his manuscript “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants),” where it is given in Susy’s “exact language”: “But mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear but always the person” (SLC 1876–85, 31).
When she was six and her sister Clara four] In “Small Foolishnesses” Clemens dated this incident 7 December 1880, at which time Susy was eight, and Clara six (SLC 1876–85, 86).
Marjorie Fleming] Marjorie (properly Marjory) Fleming, born in Kirkcaldy (Fife, Scotland) in 1803, died of spinal meningitis at the age of eight, leaving behind her a small but precocious body of writing: letters, journals, and poems. In 1858, H. B. Farnie published selections from her works in Pet Marjorie: A Story of Child Life Fifty Years Ago. Dr. John Brown (1810–82), an Edinburgh physician and man of letters best known for his dog story “Rab and His Friends” (1858), published an elaborate essay inspired by Farnie’s book in 1863, developing a sentimental and undocumented friendship between Marjory and Sir Walter Scott. Brown’s essay was frequently reprinted in book form. When the Clemenses befriended Dr. Brown in 1873, he gave Olivia a copy. Clemens’s enthusiasm for this literary child heroine found belated expression in his magazine article “Marjorie Fleming, the Wonder Child” (SLC 1909d). Susy might have reminded Clemens of Marjory for reasons beyond their connection with Dr. Brown: both were precocious literary talents, both died of meningitis, and Clemens was now engaged in publishing Susy’s juvenilia (Fleming 1935, xiii–xxii; Farnie 1858; OLC and SLC to Langdon, 2 and 6 Aug 1873, L5, 428–29 n. 2; John Brown 1863a, 1863b; Gribben 1980, 1:87).
In 1873 . . . we arrived in Edinburgh] The Clemens family—with Clara Spaulding, Clemens’s secretary (Samuel C. Thompson), and Susy’s nursemaid (Nellie)—arrived in London in May 1873 expecting to stay in England until October. Clemens was greatly lionized, and his social schedule left the family little time for sightseeing, leisure, and the collection of materials for a book. Clemens wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks on 6 July: “We seem to see nothing but English social life; we seem to find no opportunity to see London sights. . . . nothing, in fact, to make a book of”; and to Warner he complained, “We only dine. We do nothing else.” For relief, they decided to “ ‘do’ Scotland,” and went to Edinburgh ( L5: 12 May 1873 to Redpath, 364; OLC and SLC to Langdon, 17 May 1873, 366–67; 6 July 1873 to Fairbanks, 402; 10? July 1873 to Warner, 411).
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 204–19, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 352–67, made from the revised TS1.
TS3 ribbon (lost) Typescript, leaves numbered 7–18, made from the revised TS1; now lost.
TS3 carbon Carbon copy of TS3, leaves numbered 7–18, made from the revised TS1 and further revised, WU (the same extent as NAR 3, plus the dateline and summary paragraph).
NAR 3pf Galley proofs of NAR 3, typeset from the revised TS3 ribbon and further revised, ViU (the same extent as NAR 3).
NAR 3 North American Review 183 (5 October 1906), 580–85: ‘It explained . . . tape-line.’ (323.25–327.10).
Harvey reviewed TS1 in August 1906 for possible publication in the NAR and selected one excerpt. Hobby incorporated the revisions that Clemens made on TS1 into both TS2 (which was not further revised) and TS3. The ribbon copy of TS3 is lost, but the carbon survives but the carbon survives (its typed page numbers were altered by hand to 10–20, with one leaf left unnumbered between 19 and 20). TS3 carbon comprises a total of twenty-seven pages, a catena of excerpts from the ADs of 1 February, 2 February, and 5 February 1906 (see Contents and Pagination of TS3, Batch 2). Harvey carried away TS3 ribbon, from which NAR 3pf was typeset, while TS3 carbon remained with Clemens, who belatedly revised it. He made three revisions in the 2 February material and sent it off to the NAR, but it arrived too late for its revisions to be incorporated into NAR 3pf. All of them are adopted in the present edition. He reinscribed one of them, the addition of an underscore, when he read NAR 3pf. Clemens may have made a few revisions on the lost TS3 ribbon as well, but collation reveals no substantive variants between it and NAR 3, and the alterations in punctuation and spelling have been rejected as editorial interference.
In this dictation, Clemens began to draw on his already composed manuscript memorial to his daughter Susy. He had begun to write a memorial for private distribution immediately upon her death in 1896; by 1902 it had reached relative completion as a manuscript entitled “In Memory of Olivia Susan Clemens, 1872–1896.” Twenty-two leaves of this manuscript were in the Estelle Doheny Collection at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, until sold in 1989. Four further leaves (22–25) were repurposed by Clemens as part of his manuscript “Notes to Susy’s Biography,” in ViU. There are other manuscripts and typescripts relating to the memorial in CU-MARK, which Clemens was still adding to as late as 1906.
Collation reveals that the manuscript materials were not transcribed directly into TS1: the numerous substantive changes and expansions between the written materials and the dictation typescript can only be the result of authorial revision. For example, the manuscript reading ‘hindered, baffled’ became ‘hampered’ in TS1; ‘mid-ocean’ became ‘mid-Atlantic’; ‘lights’ became ‘lights as she had waved her farewell to us thirteen months before’; and ‘which broke my heart when I read it’ became ‘which needs no comment’ (324.15, 324.18, 324.27). The TS1 variants in spelling, however, provide evidence that Hobby did not directly transcribe an intervening document that Clemens revised: the medium of transmission must have been oral/aural. For example, Clemens’s manuscript spelling ‘Susy’ consistently became ‘Susie’ in TS1. And the phrase ‘glories, bloom, and song’, quoted from William Wilfred Campbell’s poem “Love,” correctly transcribed in Clemens’s manuscript, was rendered by Hobby as ‘glories’ bloom and sun’ (this phrase and one other substantive error in TS1’s version of the poem have been emended in the present text: see 325.19 and the entry for ‘even’ at 325.22). In addition, the manuscript’s use of italics for emphasis is not reflected in TS1, which italicized different words, presumably on the basis of Clemens’s oral delivery. Everything points to Clemens’s “cannibalizing” the Susy memorial for his autobiography, dictating to Hobby with his manuscript (or a revision of it) before him, and altering the wording as he went along. This deduction is confirmed by the wording of Clemens’s notation on a page of the Susy memorial materials: ‘this was dictated & is no longer required’ (“Notes to Susy’s Biography,” p. 22, ViU); the text in question appears in the AD of 7 February 1906. In accordance with our general policy of relying on the version of the text that is closest to what Clemens provided to Hobby (which, in this case, is his oral reworking of the material), TS1 is adopted as the primary source, and the readings of the various related manuscripts have not been reported.
At the top of TS1 Clemens wrote a reference to his poem “Broken Idols,” written on 18 August 1898 (the two-year anniversary of Susy Clemens’s death) and revised as “In Dim and Fitful Visions” on 18 August 1902. The distraught mother in the poem recalls her lost daughter at four stages of life and imagines that she has lost four daughters. Clemens never acted on his reminder about the poem.
Marginal Notes on TS1 Concerning Publication in the NAR