Mr. Clemens’s present house unsatisfactory because of no sunshine—Mr. Clemens meets Etta in Washington SquareⒶtextual note—Recalls ball-room in Virginia City forty-fourⒶtextual note years ago—Orion resumed; he invents wood-sawing machine; invents steam canal-boat; his funny experience in bath-tub—Bill Nye’s story—Orion’s autobiography—His death.
This house is No. 21 Fifth Avenue, and stands on the corner of 9th streetⒶtextual note within a couple ofⒶtextual note hundred yards of Washington Square. It was built fifty or sixty years ago by Renwick, the architect of the Roman Catholic CathedralⒺexplanatory note. It is large, and every story has good and spacious rooms. Something more than a year ago, Clara and KatyⒶtextual note, (the housekeeper,)Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note examined it and greatly liked it. They did not superficially examine it, but examined it in detail, and the more they searched it the better they liked it. It was then my turn to act, and instead of taking it for a year, with an option or two, I took it for three years and signed the contract. We put the furniture in, then moved in ourselves, and made a discovery straightway. There was not a window in the whole house, either on the Fifth Avenue front or on the long 9th streetⒶtextual note side,Ⓐtextual note that had ever known what a ray of sunshine was like. It was a bad business, and too late to correct it. The entire house is in shadow at all seasons of the year except dead summertime. The sun gets in then, but as there wouldn’t ever be anybody in the house at that time of the year, it is no advantage.
Nobody thrives in this house. Nobody profits by our sojourn in it except the doctors. They seem to be here all the time. We must move out and find a house with some sunshine in it.Ⓐtextual note
Yesterday I went down to Washington Square, turned out to the left to look at a houseⒶtextual note [begin page 24] that stands on the corner of the Square and University Place. Presently I stepped over to the corner of the Square to take a general look at the frontage of the house. While crossing the street I met a woman,Ⓐtextual note and was conscious that she recognized me, and it seemed to me that there was something in her face that was familiar to me. I had the instinct that she would turn and follow me and speak to me, and the instinct was right. She was a fat little woman, withⒶtextual note a gentle and kindly but aged and homelyⒶtextual note face, and she had white hair, and was neatly but poorly dressed. She said,Ⓐtextual note
“Aren’t you Mr. Clemens?”
“Yes,” I said,Ⓐtextual note “I am.”
She said,Ⓐtextual note “Where is your brother Orion?”
“Dead,” I said.
“Where is his wife?”
“Dead,” I said;Ⓐtextual note and added,Ⓐtextual note “I seem to know you, but I cannot place you.”
She said “Do you remember Etta Booth?”Ⓐtextual note
I had known only one Etta BoothⒶtextual note in my lifetime, and that oneⒶtextual note rose before me in an instant, and vividly. It was almost as if she stood alongside of this fat littleⒶtextual note antiquated dame in the bloom and diffidence and sweetness of her thirteen years, her hair in plaitedⒶtextual note braidsⒶtextual note down her back and her fire-redⒶtextual note frock stopping short at her knees. Indeed I remembered EttaⒶtextual note very well. And immediately another vision rose before me,Ⓐtextual note with that child in the centreⒶtextual note of it and accenting its sober tint like a torch with her red frock. But it was not a quiet vision; not a reposeful one. The scene was a great ball-room in some ramshackle building in Gold Hill or Virginia City, NevadaⒺexplanatory note. There were two or three hundred stalwart men present and dancing with cordial energy. And in the midst of the turmoil Etta’sⒶtextual note crimson frock was swirling and flashing; and she was the only dancer of her sex on the floor. Her mother, large, fleshy, pleasant and smiling, sat on a bench against the wall in lonely and honored state and watched the festivities in placid contentment. She and EttaⒶtextual note were the only persons of their sex in the ball-room. Half of the men represented ladies, and they had a handkerchief tied around the left arm so that they could be told from the men. I did not dance with Etta,Ⓐtextual note for I was a lady myself. I wore a revolver in my belt, and so did all the other ladies—likewise the gentlemen. It was a dismal old barn of a place, and was lighted from end to end by tallow-candle chandeliers made of barrel-hoops suspended from the ceiling, and the grease dripped all over us. That was in the beginning of the winter of 1862.
It has taken forty-four years for EttaⒶtextual note to cross my orbit again.
I asked after her father.
“Dead,” she said.
I asked after her mother.
“Dead,” she said.
Another question brought out the fact that she had long been married, but had no children. We shook hands and parted. She walked three or four steps, then turned and came back, and her eyes filled, and she said,
“IⒶtextual note am a stranger here,Ⓐtextual note and far from my friends—in fact I have hardly any friends left. Nearly all of them are dead. I must tell my news to you. I must Ⓐtextual note tell it to somebody. I can’t [begin page 25] bear it by myself, while it is so new. The doctor has just told me that my husband can live only a very little while, and I was not dreaming it was so bad as this.”Ⓐtextual note Ⓐtextual note
Orion Resumed. Ⓐtextual note
I think the poultry experiment lasted aboutⒶtextual note a year, possibly two years. It had then cost me six thousand dollarsⒺexplanatory note. It is my impression that Orion was not able to give the farm away, and that his father-in-law took it back as a kindly act of self-sacrifice.Ⓐtextual note
Orion returned to the law business, and I suppose he remained in that harness off and on for the succeeding quarter of a century, but so far as my knowledge goes he was only a lawyer in name, and had no clients.
My mother died, in her eighty-eighth year, in the summer of 1890. She had saved some money,Ⓐtextual note and she left it to me,Ⓐtextual note because it had come from me. I gave it to Orion and he said, with thanks, that I had supported him long enough and now he was going to relieve me of that burden, and would also hope to pay back some of that expense, and maybe the whole of it. Accordingly,Ⓐtextual note he proceeded to use up that money in building a considerable addition to the house, with the idea of taking boarders and getting rich. We need not dwell upon this venture. It was another of his failures. His wife tried hard to make the scheme succeed, and if anybody could have made it succeed she would have done it. She was a good woman, and was greatly liked. Her vanity was pretty large and inconvenient, butⒶtextual note sheⒶtextual note had a practical side too,Ⓐtextual note and she would have made that boarding-house lucrative if circumstances had not been against her.
Orion had other projects for recouping me, but as they always required capital I stayedⒶtextual note out of them, andⒶtextual note they did not materialize. Once he wanted to start a newspaper. It was a ghastly idea,Ⓐtextual note and I squelched it with a promptness that was almost rude. Then he invented a wood-sawing machineⒺexplanatory note and patched it together himself, and he really sawed wood with it. It was ingenious; it was capable; and it would have made a comfortable little fortune for him; but just at the wrong time Providence interfered again. Orion applied for a patent and found that the same machine had already been patented and had gone into business and was thriving.
PresentlyⒶtextual note the State of New York offered a fifty-thousand-dollarⒶtextual note prize for a practical method of navigating the Erie Canal with steam canal-boats. Orion worked at that thing twoⒶtextual note or three yearsⒺexplanatory note, invented and completed a method,Ⓐtextual note and was once more ready to reach out and seize upon imminent wealth when somebody pointed out a defect: hisⒶtextual note steam canal-boat could not be used in the wintertime;Ⓐtextual note and in the summertimeⒶtextual note the commotion its wheels would make in the water would wash away the State of New York on both sides.
Innumerable were Orion’s projects for acquiring the means to pay off hisⒶtextual note debt to me. These projects extended straight through the succeeding thirty years, but in every case they failed. During all those thirty years hisⒶtextual note well-established honesty kept him in offices of trust where other people’s money had to be taken care of, but where no salary was paid. He was treasurer of all the benevolent institutions; he took care of the money and other property of widows and orphans; he never lost a cent for anybody, and never made [begin page 26] one for himself. Every time he changed his religion the church of his new faith was glad to get him; made him treasurer at once, and at once he stopped the graft and the leaks in that church. He exhibited a facility in changing his political complexion that was a marvel to the whole community. Once the followingⒶtextual note curious thing happened, and he wrote me all about it himself.
One morning he was a RepublicanⒶtextual note, and upon invitation he agreed to make a campaign speech at the Republican mass meetingⒶtextual note that night. He prepared the speech. After luncheon he became a Democrat and agreed to write a score of exciting mottoes to be painted upon the transparencies which the Democrats would carry in their torchlight procession that night. He wrote these shouting Democratic mottoes during the afternoon, and they occupied so much of his time that it was night before he had a chance to change his politics again; so he actually made a rousing Republican campaign speech in the open air while his Democratic transparencies passed by in front of him, to the joy of every witness presentⒺexplanatory note.
HeⒶtextual note was a most strange creature—but in spite of his eccentricities he was beloved, all his life, in whatsoever community he lived. And he was also held in high esteem, for at bottom he was a sterling man.
WheneverⒶtextual note he had a chance to get into a ridiculous position he was generally competent for that occasion. When he and his wife were living in Hartford, at the time when he was on the staff of the Evening Post, Ⓐtextual note they were boarders and lodgers in a house that was pretty well stocked with nice men and women of moderate means. There was a bath-room that was common to the tribe, and one Sunday afternoon when the rest of the house was steeped in restful repose,Ⓐtextual note Orion thought he would take a bath, and he carried that idea to a more or less successful issue. But he didn’t lock the door. It was his custom, in summer weather, to fill the long bath-tub nearly full of cold water and then get in it on his knees with his nose on the bottom and maintain this pleasant attitude a couple of minutes at a time. A chambermaid came in there,Ⓐtextual note and then sheⒶtextual note rushed out and went shrieking through the house,
“Mr.Ⓐtextual note Clemens is drowned!”
EverybodyⒶtextual note came flying out of the doors,Ⓐtextual note and Mrs. Clemens rushed by,Ⓐtextual note crying out in agony,
“HowⒶtextual note do you know it is Mr. Clemens?”
AndⒶtextual note the chambermaid said,Ⓐtextual note “I don’t.”
It reminds me of Bill Nye, poor fellow,—that real humorist, that gentle good soul. Well, he is deadⒺexplanatory note. Peace to his ashes. He was the baldest human being I ever saw. His whole skull was brilliantly shining. It was like a dome with the sun flashing upon it. He had hardly even a fringe of hair. Once somebody admitted astonishment at his extraordinary baldness.
“Oh” he said “it is nothing. You ought to see my brother. OneⒶtextual note day he fell overboard from a ferry-boat and when he came up a woman’s voice broke high over the tumult of frightened and anxious exclamations and said, ‘YouⒶtextual note shameless thing! And ladies present! Go down and come up the other way.’ ”
[begin page 27] About twenty-five years ago—along there somewhere—I suggestedⒶtextual note to Orion that he write an autobiography. I asked him to try to tell the straight truth in it; to refrain from exhibiting himself in creditable attitudes exclusively, and to honorably set down all the incidents of his life which he had found interesting to him, including those which were burned into his memory because he was ashamed of them. I said that this had never been done, and that if he could do it his autobiography would be a mostⒶtextual note valuable piece of literature. I said I was offering him a job which I could not duplicate in my own case, but I would cherish the hope that he might succeed with it. I recognize now that I was trying to saddle upon him an impossibility.Ⓐtextual note I have been dictating this autobiography of mine daily for three months; I have thought of fifteen hundred or two thousand incidents in my life which I am ashamed of,Ⓐtextual note but I have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet. I think that that stock will still be complete and unimpaired when I finish these memoirs,Ⓐtextual note if I ever finish them.Ⓐtextual note I believe that if I should put in all or any ofⒶtextual note those incidents I shouldⒶtextual note be sure to strike them out when I came to revise this book.
Orion wrote his autobiography and sent it to me. But great was my disappointment;Ⓐtextual note and my vexation, too. In it he was constantly making a hero of himselfⒺexplanatory note, exactly as I should have done and am doing now, and he was constantly forgetting to put in the episodes which placed him in an unheroic light. I knew several incidents of his life which were distinctly and painfully unheroic, but when I came across them in his autobiography they had changed color. They had turned themselves inside outⒶtextual note, and were things to be intemperately proud of. In my dissatisfaction I destroyed a considerable part of that autobiographyⒺexplanatory note. But in what remains Miss LyonⒺexplanatory note has discovered passagesⒶtextual note which she findsⒶtextual note interesting, and I shall quote from themⒶtextual note here and there and now and then,Ⓐtextual note as I go alongⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
While we were living in Vienna in 1898 a cablegram came from Keokuk announcing Orion’s deathⒺexplanatory note. He was seventy-two years old. He had gone down to the kitchen in the early hours of a bitter December morning; he had built the fire, and had thenⒶtextual note sat down at a table to write something,Ⓐtextual note and there he died, with the pencil in his hand and resting against the paper in the middle of an unfinished word—an indication that his release from the captivity of a long and troubled and pathetic andⒶtextual note unprofitable life was mercifullyⒶtextual note swift and painless.Ⓐtextual note
Renwick, the architect of the Roman Catholic Cathedral] James Renwick (1818–95), a graduate of Columbia College but self-trained as an architect, designed many prominent buildings in New York, including banks and hotels, luxurious private residences, and several churches. The most important of these was Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, completed in 1879, except for the spires, which were added in 1888.
Katy, (the housekeeper,)] Katy Leary, who had been with the Clemens family for twenty-six years (see AutoMT1 , 541 n. 242.22).
Etta Booth . . . Virginia City, Nevada] Booth was probably the daughter of Lucius A. Booth of Virginia City, owner of the Winfield Mill and Mining Company. In 1877 Clemens recalled seeing her at a ball in Virginia City when she was “8 years of age” (10 Sept 1877 to Booth, Letters 1876–1880; 12 July 1867 to JLC and family, L2, 73 n. 2).
poultry experiment . . . had then cost me six thousand dollars] Since the chicken farm was never actually purchased, it is unlikely that the two-year “poultry experiment” cost Clemens this much, even allowing for the regular support “loans” he made to Orion (see AD, 5 Apr 1906, especially the note at 22.36–39).
he invented a wood-sawing machine] This invention was one of many that Orion worked on but never successfully completed, such as an “Anti-Sun-Stroke hat” and a “flying machine” (7 June 1871 to OC and MEC, L4, 396; 4 Feb 1874 to OC, L6, 26–27, 28 n. 2).
fifty-thousand-dollar prize . . . Orion worked at that thing two or three years] In 1871 the New York legislature established a commission to test inventions to enable economical navigation on the state’s canals by steam power rather than by “bank propulsion,” that is, towage by draft animals. Prizes were offered in two categories—“degrees of perfection as to methods employed and results attained,” and “successful operation and probable general adoption”—each paying $50,000 to a single winner, or the same amount divided among three winners (Whitford 1906, 1:281–82). At that time Orion was, in fact, working on his invention of a boat propelled by a paddle wheel ( L4: 7 June 1871 to OC and MEC, 396 n. 3; 16 Sept 1871 to OC, 457–58).
he wrote me all about it himself . . . to the joy of every witness present] No letter of Orion’s describing such an event has been found. During the presidential campaign of 1888, however, Orion assisted Keokuk Republicans despite being a supporter of the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland. In a letter of 31 August Orion described a torchlight event staged by African American residents that included “two tariff sentiments I furnished for the white folks Republican procession . . . though I expect to vote for Cleveland on that issue.” And in a letter of 8 September he reported that “transparencies” bearing his tariff mottoes were used in both Republican processions, “white and colored.” One of his slogans was “Protection is the eagle’s wings that keep her out of the lion’s mouth” (CU-MARK).
Bill Nye, poor fellow . . . is dead] Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye (1850–96), the popular humorist and lecturer, suffered from chronic meningitis for many years before his death from that illness, at age forty-five.
Orion wrote his autobiography . . . he was constantly making a hero of himself] Clemens gives a similar account of Orion’s autobiography in his Autobiographical Dictation of 23 February 1906 (see AutoMT1 , 6, 378, 599–600 n. 378.25–27). Paine mined Orion’s manuscript for details about Clemens’s childhood while researching and writing his official (authorized) biography, and quoted from it in that work, published in 1912. He called “altogether unwarranted” Clemens’s assertion that Orion “was constantly making a hero of himself.” He judged Orion’s work faithful to Clemens’s “original plan,” characterizing it as “just one long record of fleeting hope, futile effort, and humiliation. It is the story of a life of disappointment; of a man who has been defeated and beaten down and crushed by the world until he has nothing but confession left to surrender” ( MTB, 1:24, 28, 44, 85, 89–93, 103–4, 107–8, 2:676–77).
I destroyed a considerable part of that autobiography] Today only a few pages of Orion’s autobiography survive in the Mark Twain Papers. What befell the bulk of the manuscript that Lyon and Paine saw is unclear. In later years Paine himself reported, inconsistently, that it was buried “deep in the dusty obscurity of a safe deposit vault” and that it had been burned in keeping with “M.T.’s wish.” According to Lyon, however, Paine lost the manuscript in Grand Central Station in July 1907 (Fanning 2003, 218–19; MTHL, 1:313).
Miss Lyon] Isabel Van Kleek Lyon (1863–1958) was the daughter of Giorgiana and Charles Lyon. Her father, an author of Greek and Latin textbooks, left his family impoverished when he died in 1883, and Isabel, after several other jobs, took a position as governess for the Franklin Whitmore family in Hartford. Clemens met her while playing whist at their home in the late 1880s. She came to work for the Clemenses as a secretary in the fall of 1902, despite her lack of typing or stenographic skills. She soon assumed some of Olivia’s housekeeping duties and befriended Clara and Jean, on occasion serving as their chaperone. By the time the family went to Florence in the fall of 1903 she had become Clemens’s amanuensis (Trombley 2010, 10–12, 19–28, 261).
I shall quote from them here and there and now and then, as I go along] In the remaining dictations, through 1909, Clemens only once quotes an excerpt from Orion’s autobiography: into his dictation of 29 January 1907 he inserted the text of a letter he had written to Orion and Mollie on 6 February 1861, which Orion had transcribed into his manuscript.
in 1898 a cablegram came from Keokuk announcing Orion’s death] Orion died on 11 December 1897. From Vienna, Clemens wrote Mollie the same day:
We all grieve for you; our sympathy goes out to you from experienced hearts, & with it our love; & with Orion, & for Orion, I rejoice. He has received life’s best gift.
He was good—all good, and sound; there was nothing bad in him, nothing base, nor any unkindness. It was unjust that such a man, against whom no offence could be charged, should have been sentenced to live 72 years. It was beautiful, the patience with which he bore it. (IaCrM)
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 664–75 (altered in pencil to 673–84), made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 823–34, made from the revised TS1 and further revised.
NAR 12pf Galley proofs of NAR 12, typeset from the revised TS2 and further revised: ‘Yesterday I . . . sterling man.’ (23.37–25.17); ‘About twenty-five . . . and painless.’ (27.1–30), ViU.
NAR 12 North American Review 184 (15 February 1907), 341–44: ‘I think . . . sterling man.’ (25.4–26.17); ‘About twenty-five . . . and painless.’ (23.37–26.17).
Hobby incorporated Clemens’s TS1 revisions in typing TS2, which bears further revisions by Clemens. In several places he acted on suggestions penciled onto TS2 by Paine. TS2 also has markings by Harvey and/or Munro, in blue pencil, made to adapt parts of the installment for NAR. Starting with the issue of 4 January 1907, the issue length of NAR was shortened from 128 pages to 112. Autobiography installments which had been prepared earlier, such as NAR 12 (which drew on the present dictation), had to be shortened. In this case, Clemens made two large deletions on NAR 12pf, one of which deleted material from the present dictation (see the “Marginal Notes” table). The eventual NAR installment combined parts of this dictation with “John Hay” and an excerpt from the AD of 5 April 1906.
Marginal Notes on TS2 Concerning Publication in NAR