Mr. Clemens tells of several of his schoolmates in Mr. Dawson’s Hannibal school—George Robards and Mary Moss—John Robards, who traveled far—John Garth and Helen Kercheval—Mr. Kercheval’s slave woman and his apprenticeⒶapparatus note save Mr. Clemens from drowning in Bear Creek—Meredith, who became a guerrilla chief in Civil WarⒶapparatus note—Will and Sam BowenⒶapparatus note, Mississippi pilots—Died of yellow fever.
I am talking of a time sixty years ago, and upwards. I remember the names of some of those schoolmatesⒶapparatus note, and, by fitful glimpses, even their faces rise dimlyⒶapparatus note before me for a moment—only just long enough to be recognized; then they vanish. I catch glimpses of George Robards, the Latin pupil—slender, pale, studious, bending over his book and absorbed in it, his long straight black hair hanging down below his jaws like a pair of curtains on the sides of his face. I can see him give his head a toss and flirt one of the curtains back around his head—to get it out of his way, apparently; really to show off. In that day it was a great thing among the boys to have hair of so flexible a sort that it could be flung back in that way, with a flirt of the head. George Robards was the envy of us all. For there was no hair among us that was so competent for this exhibition as his—except, perhaps, the yellow locks of Will Bowen and John Robards.Ⓐapparatus note My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry’sⒺexplanatory note. We tried all kinds of devices to get these crooks straightened out so that they would flirt, but we never succeeded. Sometimes, by soaking our heads and then combing and brushing our hair down tight and flat to our skulls, we could get it straight, temporarily, and this gave us a comforting moment of joy; butⒶapparatus note the first time we gave it a flirt it all shriveledⒶapparatus note into curls again and our happiness was gone.
George was a fine young fellow in all ways. He and Mary Moss were sweethearts and pledged to eternal constancy, from a time when they were merely children. But Mr. Lakenan arrivedⒺexplanatory note now and became a resident. He took an important position in the little town at once, and maintained it. He brought with him a distinguished reputation as a lawyer. He was educated, cultured; he was grave even to austerity; he was dignified in his conversation and deportment. He was a rather oldish bachelor—as bachelor oldishness was estimated in that day. He was a rising man. He was contemplated with considerable awe by the community, and as a catch heⒶapparatus note stood at the top of the market. That blooming and beautiful thing, Mary Moss, attracted his favor. He laid siege to her and won. Everybody said she accepted him to please her parents, not herself. They were married. And everybody again,Ⓐapparatus note testifying,Ⓐapparatus note said he continued her schooling all by himself, proposing to educate her up to standard and make her a meet companion for him. These things may be true. They may not be true. But they were interesting. That is the main requirement in a village like that. George went away, presently, to some far-off region [begin page 401] and there he died—of a broken heartⒺexplanatory note, everybody said. That could be true, for he had good cause. He would go far before he would find another Mary Moss.
How long ago that little tragedy happened! None but the white heads know about it now. Lakenan is dead these many years, but Mary still lives, and is still beautiful, although she has grandchildren. I saw her and one of her married daughters when I went out to Missouri four years ago to receive an honorary LL.D. from Missouri UniversityⒺexplanatory note.
John Robards was the little brother of George; he was aⒶapparatus note wee chap with silky golden curtains to his face which dangled to his shoulders and below, and could be flung back ravishingly. When he was twelve years old he crossed the plains with his father amidst the rush of the gold seekers of ’49; and I remember the departure of the cavalcade when it spurred westward. We were all there to see and to envy. And I can still see that proud little chap sailing by on a great horse, with his long locks streaming out behind. We were all on hand to gaze and envy when he returned, two years later, in unimaginable glory— for he had traveled!Ⓐapparatus note None of us had ever been forty miles from home. But he had crossed the continentⒶapparatus note. He had been in the gold-minesⒶapparatus note, that fairyland of our imagination. And he had done a still more wonderful thing. He had been in shipsⒺexplanatory note—in ships on the actual ocean; in ships on three actual oceans. For he had sailed down the Pacific and aroundⒶapparatus note the Horn among icebergs and through snow-storms and wild wintry gales, and had sailed on and turned the corner and flown northwardⒶapparatus note in the trades and up through the blistering equatorial waters—and there in his brown face were the proofs of what he had been through. We would have sold our souls to Satan for the privilege of trading places with him.
IⒶapparatus note saw him when I was out on that Missouri trip four years ago. He was old then—though not quite so old as I—and the burden of life was upon him. He said his granddaughter, twelve years old, had read my books and would like to see me. It was a pathetic time, for she was a prisoner in her room and marked for death. And John knew that she was passing swiftly away. Twelve years old—just her grandfather’s age when he rode away on that great journey with his yellow hair flapping behind him. In her I seemed to see that boy again. It was as if he had come back out of that remote past and was present before me in his golden youth. Her malady was heart disease, and her brief life came to a close a few days laterⒺexplanatory note.
Another of those schoolboysⒶapparatus note was John Garth. And one of the prettiest of the schoolgirls was Helen Kercheval. They grew up and married.Ⓐapparatus note He became a prosperous banker and a prominent and valued citizen; and a few years ago he died, rich and honored. He died.Ⓐapparatus note It is what I have to say about so many of those boys and girls. The widow still lives, and there are grandchildren. In her pantalette days and my barefoot days she was a schoolmate of mine.Ⓐapparatus note I saw John’s tombⒺexplanatory note when I made that Missouri visit.
Her father, Mr. Kercheval,Ⓐapparatus note had an apprentice in the early days when I was nine years old, and he had alsoⒶapparatus note a slave woman who had many merits. But I can’t feelⒶapparatus note very kindly or forgivingly toward either that good apprentice boy or that good slave woman, for they saved my life. One day when I was playing on a loose log which I supposed was attached to a raft—but it wasn’t—it tiltedⒶapparatus note me into Bear Creek. And when I had been under water twice and was coming up to make the third and fatal descent my fingers appeared above the water and that slave woman seized them and pulled me out. Within a week I was in again, and that apprentice had to come [begin page 402] along just at the wrong time,Ⓐapparatus note and he plunged in and dived, pawed around on the bottom and found me, and dragged me out andⒶapparatus note emptied the water out of me, and I was saved againⒺexplanatory note. I was drowned seven times after that before I learned to swim—once in Bear Creek and six times in the MississippiⒺexplanatory note. I do not now know who the people were who interfered with the intentions of a Providence wiser than themselves, but I hold a grudge against them yet. When I told the tale of these remarkable happenings to Rev. Dr. Burton of Hartford, he said he did not believe it. He slipped on the ice the very next year and sprained his ancle.Ⓐapparatus note
Another schoolmate was JohnⒶapparatus note Meredith, a boy of a quite uncommonly sweet and gentle disposition. He grew up,Ⓐapparatus note and when the Civil WarⒶapparatus note broke out he became a sort of guerrilla chief on the Confederate side, and I was told that in his raids upon Union families in the country parts of Monroe County—in earlier times the friends and familiars of his father—he was remorseless in his devastations and sheddings of bloodⒺexplanatory note. It seems almost incredible that this could have been that gentle comrade of my school days; yet it can be true, for Robespierre when he was young was like that. John has been in his grave many and many a year.
Will BowenⒶapparatus note was another schoolmate, and so was his brother, Sam, who was his junior by a couple of years. Before the Civil WarⒶapparatus note broke outⒶapparatus note both became St. Louis and New Orleans pilotsⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note While Sam was still very young he had a curious adventure. He fell in love with a girl of sixteen, only child of a very wealthy German brewer. He wanted to marry her, but he and she both thought that the papa would not only not consent, but would shut his door against Sam. The old man was not so disposed, but they were not aware of that. He had his eye upon them, and it was not a hostile eye. That indiscreet young couple got to living together surreptitiously. Before long the old man died. When the will was examined it was found that he had left the whole of his wealth to Mrs. Samuel A. BowenⒶapparatus note. Then the poor things made another mistake. They rushed down to the German suburb, Carondelet, and got a German magistrate to marry them and date the marriageⒶapparatus note back a few months. The old brewer had some nieces and nephews and cousins, and different kinds of assets of that sort, and they traced out the fraud and proved it and got the property. This left Sam with a girl wife on his hands and the necessity of earning a living for her at the pilot wheel. After a few years Sam and another pilot were bringing a boat up from New Orleans when the yellow fever broke out among the few passengers and the crew. Both pilots were stricken with it and there was nobody to take their place at the wheel. The boat was landed at the head of Island 82 to wait for succor. Death came swiftly to both pilots—and there they lie buried, unless the river has cut the graves away and washed the bones into the stream, a thing which has probably happened long ago.
My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry’s] See the photograph of Henry at age eight or nine, preceding page 203.
George . . . and Mary Moss were sweethearts and pledged to eternal constancy . . . But Mr. Lakenan arrived] Mary Moss (b. 1832) was one of six children of Mary Moss (b. 1816) and Russell W. Moss (b. 1810?), who with William Samuel owned a pork and beef packing plant on the levee, reputed to be the second largest in the United States. Mary, remembered as “the belle of Hannibal,” was a frequent visitor to the Clemens home. Robert F. Lakenan (1820–83), of Virginia, moved to Hannibal soon after his admission to the bar in 1845. He helped to found the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railway in the late 1840s, acting as its director attorney and later as its general attorney. His first wife, Lizzie Ayres, died in 1850 after less than a year of marriage. He married Mary Moss in 1854. They retired to his farm in Shelby County from 1861 to 1866, thereafter returning to Hannibal. He was elected state senator in 1876, and then state representative in 1882. They had six children ( Inds, 328–29, 336; Holcombe 1884, 608–10; Brashear 1935). Clemens told the story of their unhappy marriage in “Villagers of 1840–3,” written in 1897:
Mary, very sweet and pretty at 16 and 17. Wanted to marry George Robards. Lawyer Lakenan the rising stranger, held to be the better match by the parents, who were looking higher than commerce. They made her engage herself to L. L. made her study hard a year to fit herself to be his intellectual company; then married her, shut her up, the docile and heart-hurt young beauty, and continued her education rigorously. When he was ready to trot her out in society 2 years later and exhibit her, she had become wedded to her seclusion and her melancholy broodings, and begged to be left alone. He compelled her—that is, commanded. She obeyed. Her first exit was her last. The sleigh was overturned, her thigh was broken; it was badly set. She got well with a terrible limp, and forever after stayed in the house and produced children. Saw no company, not even the mates of her girlhood. ( Inds , 94)
George went away, presently, to some far-off region and there he died—of a broken heart] In “Villagers of 1840–3” Clemens remembered that George, after the failure of his courtship, was “disappointed, wandered out into the world, and not heard of again for certain. Floating rumors at long intervals that he had been seen in South America (Lima) and other far places. Family apparently not disturbed by his absence. But it was known that Mary Moss was” ( Inds, 93, 344–45). In fact, Robards was living in Hannibal and working as a farmer in 1860, and thereafter served as a captain in the Confederate Army throughout the war. He worked in Hannibal as a real estate and insurance agent in the 1870s, and was elected county assessor in 1876 ( Robards Family Genealogy 2009, part 14:65).
Mary still lives . . . Missouri University] For Clemens’s honorary degree, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 12 February 1906. Upon arrival in Hannibal in 1902, Clemens wrote to his wife about the trip from St. Louis to Hannibal (where he stopped for several days before proceeding to Columbia, Missouri, to receive his degree): “In the train was accosted by a lady who required me to name her. I said I was sure I could do it. But I had the wit to say that if she would tell me her name I would tell her whether I had guessed correctly or not. It was the widow of Mr. Lakenan. I had known her as a child. We talked 3 hours” (31 May 1902 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 337; Holcombe 1884, 610; Hagood and Hagood 1985, 46; Boone Census 1900, 212; “Farewell to Hannibal,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 3 June 1902, 2).
John Robards . . . He had been in ships] In 1849, John Lewis RoBards (1838–1925) left for Mariposa, California, with his father, Archibald, and a party of fifteen men, for whom his father furnished “at his own expense ample vehicles, provisions, stock, etc., for the entire expedition” (Holcombe 1884, 991). Letters to the local newspapers helped Hannibal’s citizens keep track of the Robards party, who took the route through New Mexico, prospecting in the Taos Mountains in July 1849 but finding only “small quantities” of gold and moving on (“The Emigrants,” Hannibal Courier, 23 Aug 1849, unknown page). John RoBards remembered that “about 1,200 hostile Pimo Indians surrounded the camp, and, with arrows presented, demanded the surrender of the itinerant strangers. Except for the remarkable presence of mind of his father the company would have been massacred” (Holcombe 1884, 992). Other adventures included a Mexican fandango in Santa Barbara, after which the hosts, childless, offered his father $1,000 in silver for John. By the middle of 1850, a local newspaper reported that “Capt. Robards is at Stockton—his men all left him,” and in early January 1851, another reported the return to Hannibal of “Capt. A. S. Robards and Son” on the steamer Wyoming (“California Letter,” Hannibal Courier, 27 June 1850, unknown page; “Returned Californians,” Hannibal Western Union, 9 Jan 1851, unknown page; RoBards 1909, 71–74). RoBards attended the University of Missouri and Jefferson School of Law in Kentucky, and in 1861 returned to Hannibal, where he set up his law practice and married Sara (Sallie) Crump Helm (1842–1918), with whom he had seven children, only three of whom survived until adulthood. In 1861, RoBards, along with Clemens and others, organized the Marion Rangers, a company in the Missouri State Guard. In “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” Clemens mocked RoBards’s spelling of his name by portraying his character as “d’Un Lap” (formerly Dunlap), which later he “was ashamed of” (SLC 1885b; 19? Apr 1887 to Davis, ViU, in Wecter 1952, 298 n. 13; Robards Family Genealogy 2009, part 14:65; Inds, 345–46).
his granddaughter, twelve years old . . . her brief life came to a close a few days later] Sara Ellen Richardson (1890–1902) was the only child of RoBards’s daughter Mary L. RoBards Richardson (b. 1864) and her husband, Elisha A. Richardson (b. 1860) of Louisville, Kentucky ( Jefferson Census 1900, 8A, 8B; Portrait 1895, 144–45). At the news of her death, Clemens wrote: “My dear old playmate & friend, the tidings you send me are inexpressibly distressing, & my heart goes out to you in your sorrow. Good-bye—I grieve with you” (3 June 1902 to RoBards, MoHM and MoCoJ).
John Garth . . . Helen Kercheval . . . John’s tomb] John H. Garth (1837–99), one of Clemens’s close childhood friends, was the younger son of John Garth (1784–?1857), a tobacco and grain merchant, and his wife, Emily Houston Garth (d. 1844?). He attended the University of Missouri, then returned to Hannibal to work in the family tobacco business. In 1860 he married Helen Kercheval (1838–1923), and in 1862 they moved to New York City, where he worked alongside his brother David J. Garth (1822–1912) at the newly established Garth, Son and Company, a nationwide chain of tobacco warehouses. In the early 1870s he returned to Hannibal, where he became one of the town’s most prominent and prosperous citizens ( Portrait 1895, 776–77; Inds, 320). Helen V. Kercheval (1838–1923) was the daughter of Anna M. and William E. Kercheval, manager of a Hannibal dry goods firm called the “People’s Store” (“ ‘The People’s Store’ Once More,” Hannibal Courier, 15 Apr 1852, unknown page; Inds, 328). In May 1882, while visiting old friends in Hannibal, Clemens stayed with the Garths at “Woodside,” their six-hundred-acre estate: “It has been a moving time. I spent my nights with John & Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious & beautiful house. They were children with me, & afterwards school-mates” (17 May 1882 to OLC, CU-MARK, in MTL, 1:419). John Garth died of Bright’s disease; Clemens saw his tomb at Mount Olivet cemetery when Helen Garth and her daughter took him there during his 1902 visit to Hannibal. In his working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill,” Clemens planned characters named Jack Stillson and Fanny Brewster modeled on John and Helen, but only Jack Stillson appears in the unfinished manuscript (31 May 1902 to OLC, CU-MARK, in LLMT, 338; Hagood and Hagood 1985, 29).
Mr. Kercheval, had an apprentice . . . and he had also a slave woman . . . I was saved again] The apprentice has not been identified. The “slave woman,” who must have been about forty-four years old when she rescued Clemens, is identified only by Kercheval’s name in the 1850 census, which describes her as a female mulatto ( Marion Census 1850 [“Slave Inhabitants”], 615).
I was drowned seven times . . . once in Bear Creek and six times in the Mississippi] Clemens elsewhere claimed that he had survived drowning nine times: “As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, & was considered to be a cat in disguise” (2 Jan 1895 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in HHR, 115; see also SLC 1899a).
Another schoolmate was John Meredith . . . devastations and sheddings of blood] John D. Meredith (1837–70) was one of five children of the Clemens family’s old friend and doctor, Hugh Meredith, and his wife, Anna D. Meredith (b. 1813?) (see “Something about Doctors,” note at 188.19–20). John worked as a printer at the Hannibal Messenger office in 1859. Despite Clemens’s memory of John as a Confederate guerrilla, official records show that Hugh, John, and his younger brother, Henry H. Meredith (b. 1840), all served in the Union army. Hugh served as a captain surgeon in 1861 and 1862 in the Twenty-second Regiment Infantry Volunteers; between 1863 and 1865 John served as a captain in the Fifty-third Regiment of the Enrolled Missouri Militia, then in the Second Regiment of the Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia, and finally in the Thirty-ninth Regiment Infantry Volunteers. Henry, who enlisted in 1861, served in 1864 under his brother John in the Enrolled Missouri Militia ( Marion Census 1850, 326; Marion Census 1860, unknown page; Marion Census 1870, 690; Fotheringham 1859, 41; Marion Veterans Census 1890, 1; Missouri Digital Heritage 2009b, reels s794, s817, s852, s863, s895; Inds, 310, 335; Wecter 1952, 55).
Will Bowen was another schoolmate, and so was his brother, Sam . . . Death came swiftly to both pilots] William Bowen (1836–93) and Samuel Adams Bowen, Jr. (1838?–78), were the two youngest boys of seven children born to Samuel Adams Bowen, Sr., and Amanda Stone Bowen (1802–81). Will and Sam (and their older brother Bart) became pilots on the Mississippi, operating on the same route as Clemens, between St. Louis and New Orleans. Clemens was Sam’s copilot on the John H. Dickey during the summer of 1858, and twice Will’s copilot on the A. B. Chambers and the Alonzo Child between 1859 and 1861 ( Inds, 303–5). Clemens told the story of Sam’s marriage, using fictional names, in chapter 49 of Life on the Mississippi; the character based on Sam was a “shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, good-hearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing.” Clemens retold the story in “Villagers of 1840–3,” noting that Sam “slept with the rich baker’s daughter, telling the adoptive parents they were married,” and describing Sam’s character and death: “Sam no account and a pauper. Neglected his wife; she took up with another man. Sam a drinker. Dropped pretty low. Died of yellow fever and whisky on a little boat with Bill Kribben the defaulting secretary” ( Inds, 97). William J. (Bill) Kribben (d. 1878), who had embezzled the Western Boatmen’s Benevolent Association Fund when he was secretary and treasurer during the Civil War, was Sam Bowen’s copilot on the Molly Moore when they caught yellow fever and died. “Island 82” was just above Greenville, Mississippi, and Columbia, Arkansas. In 1882, when Clemens revisited the Mississippi Valley, he noted that Bowen had been buried in Arkansas at “Jackson’s point” (or “Parker’s Bend”) at the head of Island 65. “The river has cut away the banks & Bowen is washed into the river.” Island 65 had completely disappeared by 1884 ( N&J2, 527, 561; Bragg 1977, 105–9, 130; Clabaugh to SLC, 19 July 1890, CU-MARK; Inds, 328).
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 442–49, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 579–86, made from the revised TS1 and further revised.
NAR 23pf (lost) Galley proofs of NAR 23, typeset from the revised TS2; now lost.
NAR 23 North American Review 186 (October 1907), 161–63: ‘Friday . . . 1906’ (400 title); ‘I am . . . was gone.’ (400.10–25); ‘John Robards . . . his ancle.’ (401.7–402.7); ‘Will Bowen . . . Orleans pilots.’ (402.16–18).
Hobby incorporated the revisions that Clemens made on TS1 into TS2. Clemens selected two excerpts for publication (appending two sentences from later in the dictation), and revised TS2 to serve as printer’s copy for NAR 23, where it is followed by the entire AD of 16 March 1906 and excerpts from the ADs of 26 July and 30 July 1907. Collation reveals no evidence of authorial revision on the lost NAR 23pf.
Marginal Notes on TS2 Concerning Publication in the NAR