The Barnard lecture—Subject Morals—Letter from brother of Captain ToncrayⒶapparatus note—Mr. Clemens replied that original of “Huckleberry Finn” was Tom BlankenshipⒶapparatus note—Tom’s father Town Drunkard—Describes Tom’s character—Death of Injun Joe—Storm which came that night—Incident of the Episcopal sextons and their reforms—Mr. Dawson’s school in Hannibal—Arch Fuqua’s great gift.
It turned out just so. It was an affectionate and hilarious good time. Miss Taylor, and two other charming girls, conveyed me from this house—corner of 9th streetⒶapparatus note and Fifth Avenue—to the CollegeⒶapparatus note by way of Central Park and Riverside Drive, and properly petted me and flattered me all the way, in accordance with the conditions which I had already exacted of Miss Taylor and Mrs. (Professor) Lord—these conditions being that I must be caressed and complimented all the way. Miss Russell, President of Barnard, is young and beautiful. I found in the Dean, Miss HillⒺexplanatory note, an acquaintance of many years ago, when she was a juniorⒶapparatus note in Smith College. We three went on the stage together. The floor and the gallery were compactly jammed with the youth and beauty and erudition of Barnard—a satisfying spectacle to look at.
I put my watch on the table and kept game myself, allowing myself an hour. I lectured upon Morals; and earnestly, imploringly, and even pathetically, inculcated them and urged them upon those masses of girls—along with illustrations—more illustrations thanⒶapparatus note morals—and I never knew so grave a subject to create so much noise beforeⒺexplanatory note.
A reception followed. I had the privilege of shaking hands with all of them, and was flattered to my content, and told them so. They all said that my lessons had gone home to them and that from now on they should lead a better life.
ForⒶapparatus note thirty years, I have received an average of a dozen letters a year from strangers who remember me, or whose fathers remember me as boy and young man. But these letters are almost always disappointing. I have not known these strangers nor their fathers. I have not heard of the names they mention; the reminiscencesⒶapparatus note to which they call my attentionⒶapparatus note have had no part in my experience; all of which means that these strangers have been mistaking me for somebody else. But at last I have the refreshment, this morning, of a letter from a man who deals in names that were familiar to me in my boyhood. The writer encloses a newspaper clipping which has been wandering through the press for four or five weeks, and he wants to know if his brother, Captain Toncray, was really the original of “Huckleberry Finn.”Ⓐapparatus note
[begin page 397]“HUCKLEBERRY FINN” DEAD. Ⓔexplanatory note
Original of Mark Twain’s FamousⒶapparatus note Character
Had Led Quiet Life in Idaho.
[by direct wire to the times.]
WALLACE (Idaho) Feb. 2.—[Exclusive Dispatch.] Capt. A. O. ToncrayⒶapparatus note, commonly known as “Huckleberry Finn,” said to be the original of Mark Twain’s famous character, was found dead in his room at MurrayⒶapparatus note this morning from heart failure.
Capt. ToncrayⒶapparatus note, a native of Hannibal, Mo., was 65 years old. In early life, he ran on steamboats on the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers, in frequent contact with Samuel L.Ⓐapparatus note Clemens, and tradition has it “Mark Twain” later used ToncrayⒶapparatus note as his model for “Huckleberry Finn.” He came to Murray in 1884 and had been living a quiet life since.Ⓐapparatus note
I have replied that “Huckleberry Finn” was Tom BlankenshipⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note As this inquirerⒶapparatus note evidently knew the Hannibal of the ’40sⒶapparatus note, he will easily recall Tom Blankenship.Ⓐapparatus note Tom’sⒶapparatus note father was at one time Town DrunkardⒺexplanatory note, an exceedingly well definedⒶapparatus note and unofficial office of those days. He succeeded “General” Gaines,Ⓐapparatus note and for a time he was sole and only incumbent of the office; but afterward JimmyⒶapparatus note Finn proved competency and disputed the place with him, so we had two town-drunkardsⒶapparatus note at one time—and it made as much trouble in that village as Christendom experienced in the fourteenth centuryⒶapparatus note when there were two Popes at the same time.
In “Huckleberry Finn” I have drawn Tom BlankenshipⒶapparatus note exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by all the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his society. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents, the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than of any other boy’sⒺexplanatory note. I heard, four years ago, that he was Justice of the Peace in a remote village in Montana,Ⓐapparatus note and was a good citizen and greatly respectedⒺexplanatory note.
During JimmyⒶapparatus note Finn’s term heⒶapparatus note (Jimmy) was not exclusive; he was not finical; he was not hypercritical; he was largely and handsomely democraticⒶapparatus note—and slept in the deserted tan-yard with the hogs. My father tried to reform him once, but did not succeed. My father was not a professional reformer. In him the spirit of reform was spasmodic. It only broke out now and then, with considerable intervals between. Once he tried to reform Injun Joe. That also was a failure. It was a failure, and we boys were glad. For Injun Joe, drunk, was interesting and a benefaction to us, but Injun Joe, sober, was a dreary spectacle. We watched my father’s experiments upon him with a good deal of anxiety, but it came out all right and we were satisfied. Injun Joe got drunk oftener than before, and became intolerably interesting.
I think that in “Tom Sawyer”Ⓐapparatus note I starved Injun Joe to death in the cave. But that may have been to meet the exigencies of romantic literature. I can’t remember now whether heⒶapparatus note died in the cave or out of it, but I do remember that the news of his death reached me at a most unhappy time—that is to say, just at bedtime on a summer night when a prodigious storm of thunder and lightning accompanied by a deluging rain that turned the streets and lanes into rivers,Ⓐapparatus note [begin page 398] caused me to repent and resolve to lead a better life. I can remember those awful thunder-burstsⒶapparatus note and the white glare of the lightning yet, and the wild lashing of the rain against the window-panes. By my teachings I perfectly well knew what all the wild riotⒶapparatus note was for—Satan had come to get Injun Joe. I had no shadow of doubt about it. It was the proper thing when a person like Injun Joe was required in the underworldⒶapparatus note, and I should have thought it strange and unaccountable if Satan had come for him in a less impressiveⒶapparatus note way. With every glare of lightning I shriveledⒶapparatus note and shrunk together in mortal terror, and in the interval of black darkness that followed I poured out my lamentings over my lost condition,Ⓐapparatus note and my supplications for just one more chance, with an energy and feeling and sincerity quite foreign to my nature.
But in the morning I saw that it was a false alarm and concluded to resume business at the old stand and wait for another reminder.
The axiom says “History repeats itself.” A week or two ago my nephew, by marriage, Edward Loomis, dined with us, along with his wife, my niece (née Julie Langdon). He is Vice-President of the Delaware and Lackawanna Railway system. The duties of his office used to carry him frequently to Elmira, New York; the exigencies of his courtship carried him there still oftenerⒺexplanatory note, and so in the course of time he came to know a good many of the citizens of that place.Ⓐapparatus note At dinner he mentioned a circumstance which flashed me back over about sixty years and landed me in that little bedroom on that tempestuous night, and brought to my mind how creditable to me was my conduct through thatⒶapparatus note whole night,Ⓐapparatus note and how barren it was of moral spot or fleck during that entire period: heⒶapparatus note said Mr. BucklyⒶapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note was sexton, or something, of the Episcopal church in Elmira,Ⓐapparatus note and had been for many years the competent superintendent of all the church’s worldly affairs, and was regarded by the whole congregation as a stay, a blessing, a priceless treasure. But he had a couple of defects—not large defects, but they seemed large when flung against the background of his profoundly religious character:Ⓐapparatus note he drank a good deal, and he could outswear a brakeman. A movement arose to persuade him to lay aside these vices, and after consulting with his pal, who occupied the same position as himself in the other Episcopal church, and whose defects were duplicates of his own and had inspired regret in the congregationⒶapparatus note he was serving, they concluded to try for reform—not wholesale, but half at a time. They took the liquor pledge and waited for results. During nine days the results were entirely satisfactory, and they were recipients of many compliments and much congratulation. Then on New Year’s EveⒶapparatus note they had business a mile and a half out of town, just beyond the New YorkⒶapparatus note State line. Everything went well with them that evening in the bar-room of the innⒶapparatus note—but at last the celebration of the occasion by those villagers came to be of a burdensome nature. It was a bitter cold night and the multitudinous hot toddies that were circulating began by and byⒶapparatus note to exert a powerful influence upon the new prohibitionists. At last Buckly’sⒶapparatus note friend remarked,
“Buckly,Ⓐapparatus note does it occur to you that we are outside the diocese?”
ThatⒶapparatus note ended reform No. 1. ThenⒶapparatus note they took a chance in reform No. 2. For a while that one prospered, and they got much applause. I now reach the incident which sent me back a matter of sixty years, as I have remarked a while ago.
One morning this step-nephew of mine, Loomis, met BucklyⒶapparatus note on the street and said,
“YouⒶapparatus note have made a gallant struggle against those defects of yours. I am aware that you failed on No. 1, but I am also aware that you are having better luck with No. 2.”
[begin page 399]“Yes,” Buckly said,Ⓐapparatus note “No. 2 is all right and sound up to date, and we are full of hope.”
Loomis said,Ⓐapparatus note “Buckly,Ⓐapparatus note of course you have your troubles like other people, but they never show on the outside. I have never seen you when you were not cheerful. Are you always cheerful? Really always cheerful?”
“Well, noⒶapparatus note” he said, “no,Ⓐapparatus note I can’t say that I am always cheerful, but— well,Ⓐapparatus note you know that kind of a night that comes: say—youⒶapparatus note wake up ’wayⒶapparatus note in the night and the whole world is sunk in gloom and there are storms and earthquakes and all sorts of disasters in the air threatening,Ⓐapparatus note and you get cold and clammy;Ⓐapparatus note and when that happens to me I recognize how sinful I am and it all goesⒶapparatus note clear to my heart and wrings it and I have such terrors and terrors!—Ⓐapparatus note ohⒶapparatus note they are indescribable, those terrors that assail and thrill meⒶapparatus note, and I slip out of bed and get on my knees and pray and pray and pray and promise that I willⒶapparatus note be good, if I can only have another chance.Ⓐapparatus note And then, you know, in the morning the sun shines out so lovely,Ⓐapparatus note and the birds sing and the whole world is so beautiful, and— b’ God I rally!”Ⓐapparatus note
Now I will quote a brief paragraph from this letter which I have received from Mr. Toncray. HeⒶapparatus note says:
YouⒶapparatus note no doubt are at a loss to know who I am. I will tell you. In my younger days I was a resident of Hannibal, Mo., and you and I were schoolmates attending Mr. Dawson’s schoolⒺexplanatory note along with Sam and Will BowenⒶapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note and Andy FuquaⒺexplanatory note and others whose names I have forgotten. I was then about the smallest boy in school, for my age, and they called me little Aleck ToncrayⒶapparatus note for short.Ⓐapparatus note
I don’tⒶapparatus note remember Aleck Toncray,Ⓐapparatus note but I knew those other people as well as I knew the town-drunkardsⒶapparatus note. I remember Dawson’s schoolhouse perfectly. If I wanted to describe it I could save myself the trouble by conveying the description of it to these pages from “Tom Sawyer.”Ⓔexplanatory note I can remember the drowsy and inviting summer sounds that used to float in through the open windows from that distant boy-paradiseⒶapparatus note, Cardiff Hill, (Holliday’s Hill,)Ⓔexplanatory note Ⓐapparatus note and mingle with the murmurs of the studying pupils and make them the more dreary by the contrast. I remember Andy Fuqua, the oldest pupil—a man of twenty-five. I remember the youngest pupil, Nannie Owsley, a child of sevenⒺexplanatory note. I remember George Robards, eighteen or twenty years old, the only pupil who studied LatinⒺexplanatory note. I remember—in some cases vividly, in others vaguely—theⒶapparatus note rest of the twenty-five boys and girls. I remember Mr. Dawson very well. I remember his boy, Theodore, who was as good as he could be. In factⒶapparatus note he was inordinately good, extravagantly good, offensively good, detestably good—and he had pop-eyes—and I would have drowned him if I had had a chance. In that school we were all about on an equality, and, so far as I remember, the passion of envy had no place in our hearts, except in the case of Arch Fuqua—the other one’s brotherⒺexplanatory note. Of course we all went barefoot in the summertimeⒶapparatus note. Arch Fuqua was about my own age—ten or eleven. In the winter we could stand him, because he wore shoes then, and his great gift was hidden from our sight and we were enabled to forget it. But in the summertimeⒶapparatus note he was a bitterness to us. He was our envy, for he could double back his big toe and let it fly and you could hear it snap thirty yards. There was not another boy in the school that could approach this feat. He had not a rival as regards a physical distinction—except in Theodore Eddy, who could [begin page 400] work his ears like a horseⒺexplanatory note. But he was no real rival, because you couldn’t hear him work his ears; so all the advantage lay with Arch Fuqua.
I am not done with Dawson’s school; I will return to it in a later chapter.Ⓐapparatus note
Miss Taylor . . . Mrs. (Professor) Lord . . . Miss Russell . . . Miss Hill] Miss Taylor was probably Virginia Taylor of the senior class, who had recently participated in the Barnard Union’s senior debate and appeared as the Earl of Leicester in the undergraduate play, Sheridan’s The Critic. Mrs. Lord was the wife of Herbert Lord, professor of philosophy. Isabelle (Belle) K. Russell of the senior class was chairman of the Barnard Union. The dean of Barnard College, since 1901, was Laura Drake Gill (1860–1926). She received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Smith College in 1881, and her master’s in 1885. She interrupted her subsequent teaching career for advanced studies at the universities of Leipzig and Geneva and at the Sorbonne. She joined the Red Cross in 1898 after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and managed a Red Cross hospital in Cuba. After the war she took charge of the Cuban Orphan Society and helped organize Cuban schools (Barnard Bulletin: “Departmental Changes,” 4 [24 Mar 1902]: 3; Belle K. Russell, “Barnard Union,” 10 [15 Jan 1906]: 1; “Undergraduate Play,” 10 [21 Mar 1906]: 1; “Dr. Laura Drake Gill,” 30 [12 Feb 1926]: 4; Barnard College 2008a, 2008b; “Dr. Laura Gill Dies,” New York Times, 5 Feb 1926, 19).
I lectured upon Morals . . . never knew so grave a subject to create so much noise before] The Barnard Bulletin described Clemens’s talk:
He said he had nothing to talk about, but that he did have some fine illustrations he was going to get in somehow. “The Caprice of Memory,” he thought, would be a good subject, though he might just as easily talk on morals. For it is better to teach than to practice them; better to confer morals on others than to experiment too much with them on one’s self. As his first illustration, Mr. Clemens told how he once had in his possession a watermelon—a Missouri melon, and therefore large and luscious. Most people would have said he had stolen it. But the word “steal” was too much for him, a good boy; in fact, the best boy in his town. He said he had extracted it from a grocer’s cart, for “extract” refers to dentistry, and more accurately expresses how he got that melon; since as the dentist never extracts his own teeth, so this wasn’t his own melon. But the melon was green, and because it was so, Mark Twain began to reflect. And reflection is the beginning of morality. It was his duty to take it back and to admonish that grocerman on the evil of selling green melons. The moral, Mr. Clemens said, was that the grocer repented of his sins and soon was perched on the highest pinnacle of virtue.
In the course of another equally good illustration of a moral, Mark Twain said that in his family there had been a prejudice against going fishing unless you asked permission, and it was bad judgment to ask permission. (“Mark Twain at Barnard,” Barnard Bulletin 10 [14 Mar 1906]: 2)
The full text of the talk was published in the New York World (“ ‘We Wanted You Because We Love You,’ Said the Barnard Girls to Mark Twain,” 11 Mar 1906, M1; reprinted in Fatout 1976, 495–502).
“HUCKLEBERRY FINN” DEAD] The article was from the Los Angeles Times of 3 February 1906; the original clipping that Hobby transcribed has not been found.
I have replied that “Huckleberry Finn” was Tom Blankenship] Clemens wrote the same day to Alexander (Aleck) Campbell Toncray (1837–1933), half-brother of the deceased Addison Ovando Toncray (1842–1906) (8 Mar 1906 to Toncray per Lyon, photocopy in CU-MARK):
Dear Mr. Toncray:
It is plain to me that you knew the Hannibal of my boyhood, the names you quote prove it. This is an unusual circumstance in my experience. With some frequency letters come from strangers reminding me of old friends & early episodes, but in almost every case these strangers have mixed me up with somebody else, and the names and incidents are foreign to me.
Huckleberry Finn was Tom Blankenship. You may remember that Tom was a good boy, notwithstanding his circumstances. To my mind he was a better boy than Henry Beebe & John Reagan put together, those swells of the ancient days.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. Clemens
Alexander (born in Rushville, Illinois) and Addison (born in Fort Madison, Iowa) were the sons of John Goodson Toncray (1810–60), who emigrated to Hannibal in the mid-1840s and opened the Virginia Hotel and Saloon on the levee. Alexander worked as a steamboat and forwarding agent in 1860 in Hannibal, and as a sign painter in Los Angeles after 1912. After what he claimed was a stint as captain on the steamboat Key West, Addison moved West as well. In 1880 he was listed in the census as a farm hand in Red Bluff, Montana, and by 1884 he had moved to Murray, Idaho. There, though “Capt. Tonk” was known as a habitual drunk, he was well liked and lived by odd jobs and hand-me-downs (Brainard [n.d.]; Sellers 1972; James R. Toncray, personal communications, 17 Dec 2008, 20 Dec 2008; Marion Census 1850, 307; Fotheringham 1859, 57).
Tom’s father was at one time Town Drunkard] Tom Blankenship (b. 1831?) was one of eight children of Woodson and Mahala Blankenship. Woodson Blankenship (b. 1799?) was listed in the 1850 census as a laborer from South Carolina ( Marion Census 1850, 308, 309).
In “Huckleberry Finn” I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly . . . more of his society than of any other boy’s] Clemens’s description here of Tom Blankenship, who was perhaps four years his senior, closely reflects his characterizations of Huckleberry Finn in numerous works. In chapter 6 of Tom Sawyer, for example, Huck is “the juvenile pariah of the village . . . son of the town drunkard” who is “cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar and bad—and because all their children admired him so” (SLC 1982, xvii, 47). After hearing this chapter read aloud, Clemens’s sister, Pamela Moffett, said, “Why, that’s Tom Blankenship!” ( MTBus, 265). In 1899, Blankenship’s sister, apparently “little impressed with the distinction conferred on the family,” recognized Tom and perhaps her other older brother in Huck: “Yes, I reckon it was him. Sam and our boys run together considerable them days, and I reckon it was Tom or Ben, one; it don’t matter which, for both of ’em’s dead” (Fielder 1899, 10). Huckleberry Finn also appears in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad (SLC 1894a), and “Tom Sawyer, Detective” (SLC 1896c), as well as in several unfinished works: “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians” (SLC 1884), “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (SLC 1897–?1902), “Schoolhouse Hill” (SLC 1898c), and the fragmentary “Huck Finn” ( Inds, 260–61, 302–3; see also Clemens’s 1895 draft introduction for a reading from chapter 16 of Huckleberry Finn in HF 2003, 619).
I heard, four years ago, that he was Justice of the Peace in a remote village in Montana, and . . . greatly respected] Blankenship, who remained in Hannibal, was arrested repeatedly for stealing food (Hannibal Messenger, 21 Apr 1861, and “At His Old Business,” 4 June 1861, reprinted in Lorch 1940, 352). No evidence has been found that he went to Montana. In 1889 Clemens was informed of his death from cholera, and confirmed it when visiting Hannibal in 1902 (Wetzel 1985, 33; “He Returns,” undated clipping from the Hannibal Journal, enclosed in Coontz to SLC, 18 Apr 1889, CU-MARK; Fielder 1899, 10; “Good-Bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1).
my nephew, by marriage, Edward Loomis . . . carried him there still oftener] Edward Eugene Loomis (1864–1937) married Julia Olivia Langdon (1871–1948), Charles Langdon’s eldest daughter, in 1902. After his graduation from Utica Commercial College in the early 1880s, Loomis worked for a succession of railway companies in Denver and in New York, by 1894 serving as superintendent responsible for overseeing the bituminous coal and lumber interests of the Erie Railroad Company. In June 1899, he became manager of the anthracite coal properties of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company. He was responsible for several innovations in the company’s anthracite mines, and in 1902 was elected first vice-president, member of the board of managers, and director and officer of all the railroad’s subsidiary corporations.
Mr. Buckly] Unidentified.
Mr. Dawson’s school] John D. Dawson (b. 1812?), a native of Scotland and veteran of fourteen years’ teaching, announced the opening of his school for young ladies and boys “of good morals, and of ages under 12 years,” on Third Street in Hannibal, in April 1847. He ran the school until 1849, when he left for California, where he became a miner in Tuolumne County. Dawson’s was the last school Clemens attended. The character Dobbins in Tom Sawyer is based on Dawson (Wecter 1952, 132–34; Inds, 317).
Sam and Will Bowen] See AD, 9 Mar 1906, note at 402.16–33.
Andy Fuqua] Anderson (Andy) Fuqua (1829?–97) was one of the six children of Nathaniel Fuqua, a tobacco merchant and a town councilman in 1845 when Hannibal was incorporated. In the 1860s Anderson worked at a livery stable and then became a tobacconist and commercial boat owner ( Marion Census 1860, 122–23; Fotheringham 1859, 26, 33; Ellsberry 1965a, 5; Holcombe 1884, 900; MTBus, 83).
I remember Dawson’s schoolhouse perfectly. If I wanted to describe it I could save myself the trouble by conveying the description of it . . . from “Tom Sawyer.”] Clemens described Dawson’s school in chapters 6–7 and 21 of Tom Sawyer and again in chapter 1 of the unfinished “Schoolhouse Hill” manuscript, where the Scottish schoolmaster is based on Dawson ( Inds, 317).
Cardiff Hill, (Holliday’s Hill,)] For Clemens’s memories of Cardiff Hill (his fictional name for Holliday’s Hill) see “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX.”
Nannie Owsley, a child of seven] Anna (Nannie) B. Owsley (b. 1840?) was one of six children of William Perry Owsley (b. 1813) and Almira Roberts Owsley. She and her sister Elizabeth (b. 1839?) attended Dawson’s school with Clemens. Nannie, who later married William M. Johnson, had six children of her own. It was William Owsley who shot Sam Smarr on a street in Hannibal (see “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX,” note at 158.5; Marion Census 1850, 323; Marion Census 1860, 121; Owsley 1890, 28, 29, 133).
George Robards, eighteen or twenty years old, the only pupil who studied Latin] George C. Robards (1833–79) was the eldest of six children born to Amanda Carpenter Robards (1808–65) and Captain Archibald S. Robards (1787–1862), a former Kentucky plantation and slave owner ( Marion Census 1860, 133; Holcombe 1884, 992; Robards Family Genealogy 2009, part 14:65). The spelling of the family name was later changed to RoBards by George’s younger brother, John L. RoBards (see AD, 9 Mar 1906).
Arch Fuqua—the other one’s brother] Archibald (b. 1833?) Fuqua, Anderson’s brother, worked as a tobacco roller, and served with Clemens in the Marion Rangers. The character of Archy Thompson in “Boy’s Manuscript” (SLC 1868e) is based on him ( Marion Census 1860, 122–23; Fotheringham 1859, 26; Ellsberry 1965a, 5; Inds, 268, 319).
Theodore Eddy, who could work his ears like a horse] Theodore Eddy (b. 1836?) was the eldest of five children of Martha J. Eddy (b. 1818?) and William Eddy (b. 1804?), a carpenter and builder and one of Hannibal’s first town councilmen in 1845 ( Marion Census 1850, 323; Holcombe 1884, 900).
Source documents.
Times Microfilm of the Los Angeles Times, 3 February 1906, 1 (the original clipping that Hobby transcribed is now lost): ‘ “HUCKLEBERRY FINN” . . . life since.’ (397.1–12).TS1 (incomplete) Typescript, leaves numbered 430–41 (most of 430 is missing), made from Hobby’s notes and the lost Times clipping and revised: ‘Thursday . . . great gift.’ (396 title–12); ‘allowing myself . . . later chapter.’ (396.22–400.3).
TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 567–78, made from the revised TS1 and further revised.
TS4 Typescript, leaves numbered 817–28, made from the revised TS1.
NAR 21pf Galley proofs of NAR 21, typeset from the revised TS2, ViU (the same extent as NAR 21).
NAR 21 North American Review 186 (2 August 1907), 691–95: ‘For thirty . . . later chapter.’ (396.29–400.3).
The partial page missing from TS1 was discarded by Paine when he edited the dictation for MTA. He cut away the dateline and summary paragraph and pasted them to the top of page 431, partially covering the text, which is nevertheless still legible. Hobby incorporated the revisions that Clemens made on TS1 into TS2, and they were incorporated into TS4 as well. TS4 has no authority for the text that survives in TS1. Where TS1 is missing, however, TS4 was collated and its variants reported, because TS2 and TS4 derive independently from TS1 and therefore either may incorporate authorial readings not present in the other. When TS2 and TS4 agree, they confirm the readings of the missing portion of TS1.
The clipping of the Times that Hobby transcribed into TS1 does not survive. The source of the present text is a microfilm of the newspaper, which is damaged by a strip of paper reading ‘Congressional Library’; the obscured letters have been supplied by TS1 and TS2. The readings of the Times are adopted, and the accidental variants Hobby introduced in TS1 are not reported. One ink revision on TS1 is in Paine’s hand: the alteration of ‘he’ to ‘the real Injun Joe’ (397.38). Since this revision was incorporated into TS2, it must date from 1906, but is not adopted here.
When Harvey reviewed TS1 in August 1906 for possible publication in the NAR, he selected an excerpt to begin at ‘For thirty years’ (396.29), but no printer’s copy was prepared at that time. When Clemens revised TS2 he marked an excerpt to begin at the same place, but deleted the article copied from the Los Angeles Times. TS2 served as printer’s copy for NAR 21, where it appears between an excerpt from the AD of 8 November 1906 and the entire AD of 6 January 1907. Clemens made no revisions in these excerpts on NAR 21pf.
Marginal Notes on TS1 and TS2 Concerning Publication in the NAR