Child’s letter about “Huckleberry Finn” being flung out of Concord Library—Ambassador White’s autobiography—Mr. Clemens’s version of the Fiske-Cornell episode—Another example of his great scheme for finding employment for the unemployed—This client wins the Fiske lawsuit.
When “Huck Finn” was flung out of the Concord Public Library twenty-one years ago, a number of letters of sympathy and indignation reached me—mainly from children, I am obliged to admit—and I kept some of them so that I might re-readⒶtextual note them now and then and apply them as a salve to my soreness. I have overhauled those ancient letters this morning and among them I find one from a little girl who resents that library’s treatment of Huck and then goes innocently along and gives me something more of a dig than even the library had done. She says,
IⒶtextual note am eleven years old, and I live on a farm near Rockville, Maryland. Once this winter we had a boy to work for us named John. We lent him “Huck Finn” to read, and one night he let his clothes out of the window and left in the night. The last we heard from him he was out in Ohio; and father says if we had lent him “Tom Sawyer” to read he would not have stopped on this side of the oceanⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
Bless her gentle heart, sheⒶtextual note was trying to cheer me up; andⒶtextual note her effort is entitled to the praise which the country journalist conferred upon the Essex band after he had praised the whole Fourth of July celebration in detail, and had exhausted his stock of compliments. But he was obliged to layⒶtextual note something in the nature of a complimentary egg, and with a final heroic effort he brought forth this:
“TheⒶtextual note Essex band done the best they could.”
I have been reading another chapter or two in Ambassador White’s autobiography, and I find the book charming, particularly where he talks about meⒺexplanatory note. I find any book charming that talks about me. I am expecting this one of mine to do something in that line, and it is my purpose that it shall not lose sight of that subject long at a time. Mr. White was the first President of Cornell University, and he gives the University’s side of the Willard Fiske trouble. I stopped at that point. I didn’t read his version, for I want to give another version first, and as this version may conflict with his, I wish to set it down now before its complexion shall have a chance to undergo a change by coming in contact with his version.
[begin page 34]This brings me back to another example of my great scheme for finding work for the unemployed. The famous Fiske-Cornell episode of a quarter of a century ago grew up in this way. About fifty years ago, when Willard Fiske was a poor and untaught and friendless boy of thirteen, he and Bayard Taylor took steerage passage in a sailing ship and crossed the ocean. They found their way to Iceland, and Willard Fiske remained there a year or two. He acquired the Norse languages and perfected himself in them. He also became an expert scholar in the literature of those languages. By and by he returned to America, and while still a very young man and hardly of age, he got a place as instructor in that kind of learning in the infant Cornell UniversityⒺexplanatory note. This seat of learning was at Ithaca, New York, and Mr. McGraw was a citizen of that little town. He had made a fortune in the electric telegraph, and it was his purpose to leave a large part of it to the University. He had a lovely young daughterⒺexplanatory note, and she and young Fiske fell in love with each other. They were aware of this; the girl’s parents were aware of it; the University was aware of it; Ithaca was aware of it. All these parties expected Fiske to propose, but he didn’t do it. There was no way to account for it, and so all the parties, including the girl, went on from month to month and year to year in a condition of suppressed surprise, waiting for the mystery to solve itself. Which it still didn’t do. At last Mr. McGraw died, and the fact developed that he had left no will. Therefore the daughter was sole heir. However she knew what her father’s intention had been, so she turned over to the University a good part of the fortune and thus made the intention good.
The years drifted along and the relations between Fiske and Miss McGraw remained the same. But there was no proposal. Fiske had a quite definite reason for not proposing. It was that he was very poor and the girl veryⒶtextual note rich, and he was not willing to seemⒶtextual note to marry her for her money. This was good morals, good principle, good sentiment—but it was not business. Things remained just in this way for years and years, and the devotion of the couple to each other went along unimpaired by time. At last, when they were well stricken in years, and when Miss McGraw had developed pulmonary consumption, she invited Fiske and Charles Dudley Warner and his wife to make a trip up the NileⒺexplanatory note with her in the old-fashioned dahabiehⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, a trip which occupied a matter of three months. Miss McGraw had already been on the other side of the ocean several months, and she had been buying all sorts of beautiful things; pictures, sculpture, costly rugs, and so on, wherewith to adorn a little palace which she was building in Ithaca.
At last there on board the dahabiehⒶtextual note a sorrowful time came—for Miss McGraw’s malady was making great progress and it was manifest that she could not live long. Then she came out frankly and said she wanted to marry Fiske so that she could leave her fortune to him. Fiske wanted to marry her, but his ideas remained unimpaired in his heart and head and he was not willing to accept the fortuneⒺexplanatory note. The Warners wrought with him. They used their best persuasions. He was as anxious for the marriage as was Miss McGraw, but he wouldn’t accept the fortune. At last he was persuaded to a modification of the terms. He was willing to accept the little palace and its furnishings and three hundred thousand dollars; he would accept nothing more.Ⓐtextual note The marriage took place. Mrs. Fiske made a will, and in the will she left the palace and its furnishings and [begin page 35] three hundred thousand dollars to her husband, Willard Fiske. She left the residueⒶtextual note of the fortune to Cornell UniversityⒺexplanatory note.
By and by Fiske arrived at an understanding of the fact that he had not acted wisely. The income of three hundred thousand dollars was wholly inadequate. He could not live in the Ithaca house on any such income as that. He did not try to live in itⒺexplanatory note. There it stood,Ⓐtextual note with all those beautiful things in it which Miss McGraw had gathered in her travels in Europe, and Fiske lived elsewhere—lived most comfortablyⒶtextual note elsewhere—lived where three hundred thousand dollars was really a fortune, and he was entirely satisfied. He lived in Italy.Ⓐtextual note He was as dear and sweet a soul as I have ever known. His was a character which won friends for him, and whoso became his friend remained so,Ⓐtextual note ever afterward.
Now followed this curious circumstance. Cornell had received by Mrs. Fiske’s will a noble addition to its endowment—two million dollars, if I remember rightly. No doubt Cornell University was satisfied. But the University’s lawyers, picking and searching around through Mrs. Fiske’s will, found a defect in it which neither Mrs. Fiske nor CharleyⒶtextual note Warner, who drew the willⒺexplanatory note, suspected was there. It was somethingⒶtextual note about “residue.” It was the opinion of those lawyers that the University might claim the little palace and its rich equipment,Ⓐtextual note and make the claim good in a court of law.
The claim was put forward. Fiske and Warner were outraged by this insolence, this greed. Both knew that it was the desire of the dying wife that her husband should live in that house and have the sacred companionship of those things which had been selected by her own hands for its adornment. Both knew that but for Fiske’s stubborn resistance he would have had not only the house but a great sum of money besides, and now that the University proposed to take the house away from Fiske—well, it was time for the worm to turn. The worm turned. Fiske was the worm. Fiske resisted the University’s claim and the University brought suitⒺexplanatory note.
Now then,Ⓐtextual note I must go back to a point antedating the bringing of this suit three or four years. One day in Hartford a young fellow called and wanted to see me. I think he said he was from Canada. He said he had a strong desire, an irresistible desire,Ⓐtextual note to become a lawyer,Ⓐtextual note and he thought that if he could get some work to do that would support him,Ⓐtextual note he could meantimeⒶtextual note use his off hours, if he had any, in studying Blackstone. He thought he could be a journalist. He thought he could at least become a good reporter, and his idea was to get me to use my influence with the Hartford newspaper people to the end that he might get the sort of chance he was after.
IⒶtextual note said “Certainly, I will get you a berth in any newspaper in the town. Choose your own paper.”
He was very grateful. These clients of mine always are,Ⓐtextual note until they learn the conditions. I furnished him the conditions in the same old wayⒺexplanatory note. He considered a moment and then said,
“HowⒶtextual note simple that is; how sure it is; how certain it is; how actually infallible it is, human nature being constructed as it is—how is it that that has not been thought of before?”Ⓐtextual note Then he added,Ⓐtextual note as he went out of the door,Ⓐtextual note “I choose the Courant, and I will have the job before night.”Ⓐtextual note
[begin page 36]About three months afterward he came out to report progress. He had moved along so briskly, from sweeper-out, up through the several grades,Ⓐtextual note that he was now on the editorial staff;Ⓐtextual note and was very happy, particularly as staff work allowed him a good deal of off time for the study of the law, and the law was where his high ambition lay.
I come back now to that Fiske lawsuit. We had gone to Elmira one summer to spend the summer, as usual, at Quarry Farm, and we were visiting Mrs. Clemens’s family down in the town for a while. A young man called and said he would like to see me. I went to the library and saw him there. It was the young man of whom I have been talkingⒺexplanatory note, but as I had not seen him for three or four years I did not at first recall him. He said that while he was on the Courant he saved all the money he could, andⒶtextual note studied the law diligently in his off hours—that now, recently, he had given up journalism and was going to make a break into the law; that he had canvassed the field and had decided that he would become office assistant to David B. Hill of Elmira, New York—that is to say, he had decided to do this, evidently without requiring Mr. Hill to state whether he wanted it so or not. Hill was a very distinguished lawyer and a big politicianⒺexplanatory note, a man of vast importance and influence—and he is still that to-day, in his old age. The application was made and Hill said promptly that he didn’t need anybody’s assistance. But young Bacon said he didn’t want any pay, he only wanted a chance to work; he could support himself. He would do anything that could be of any assistance to Mr. Hill, even to sweeping out the office; that he wanted to work, and he wanted to be near a man like Hill because he was determined to become a lawyer. Well, as he was not expensive, and showed a determination that pleased Hill, Hill gave him office room. Very well, the usual thing happened, the thing that always happensⒶtextual note. Little by little Bacon got to beguiling out of Hill things to do, and presently Hill was furnishing him the things to do without any beguilement.
“Now then,”Ⓐtextual note Bacon said,Ⓐtextual note “Mr. Clemens,Ⓐtextual note I’ve got a chance—I’ve got a chance.”
ProfessorⒶtextual note Willard Fiske brought his case to Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill examined it carefully and declined to take it. He said Fiske had no case, and therefore he did not wish to take it merely to lose it. Fiske insisted, and presently Hill said,Ⓐtextual note “Well, here’s this young fellow here in my office. If he wants to take your case, all right;Ⓐtextual note I will advise him and help him to the best of my ability without charge;”Ⓐtextual note and he asked if Fiske was willing to put the case into Bacon’s hands. Fiske did it.
Then young Bacon had this happy idea. There being nothing for Fiske in the apparent conditions, he went to the University charter to see what he might find there. He found a very pleasant thing there;Ⓐtextual note to use a phrase of the day, he struck oil in that charter. He brought the charter to Mr. Hill and showed him this large fact: that Cornell University was not privileged to accept or to acquire any property if, at the time, it already possessed property worth three millions of dollars. Cornell University possessed property worth more than that at the time that Mrs. Fiske made her will, and it still possessed that amount.
Hill said “Well, Bacon, the case is yours—that is to say, well, Bacon, the case is Fiske’s. It is the University, now, that has no show.”Ⓔexplanatory note
[begin page 37]Bacon won the case. It was his first case. He charged Fiske aⒶtextual note hundred thousand dollars for his services. Fiske handed him the check, and his thanks therewith.
I didn’t see Bacon again for some years—I don’t know how many—and then he told me that that first lawsuit of his was also his last oneⒺexplanatory note; that that first fee of his was the only one he had ever received; that he had hardly pocketed that check until he ran across a most charming young widow possessed of a great fortune and he took them both in.
I think I will say nothing more about my great scheme for providing jobs for the unemployed. I think I have proven that it is a good and effective scheme.
I find one from a little girl . . . the ocean] Clemens quotes a letter of 31 March 1906 (not from “twenty-one years ago”) from Elizabeth Owen Knight (1894–1981) (CU-MARK; Rasmussen 2013, letter 164). He probably read aloud to his stenographer the portion of the letter he wanted to quote, but he substituted two different titles for the ones in the original: where the present text has “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer,” the original letter reads “Tom Sawyer” and “Tom Sawyer abroad.”
Ambassador White’s autobiography, and I find the book charming, particularly where he talks about me] Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) was a preeminent educator and diplomat. Among other achievements, he was a cofounder, with Ezra Cornell, of Cornell University, and served as its first president (1868–85). Later he served as the U.S. minister to Russia (1892–94) and ambassador to Germany (1897–1902). In his two-volume autobiography, published in 1905, he recalled:
My first visit to the upper Mississippi left an indelible impression on my mind. No description of that vast volume of water slowly moving before my eyes ever seemed at all adequate until, years afterward, I read Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” and his account of the scene when his hero awakes on a raft floating down the great river struck a responsive chord in my heart. It was the first description that ever answered at all to the picture in my mind. (Andrew Dickson White 1905, 2:379)
White was evidently recalling chapter 19 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, not Tom Sawyer. But it must have been this paragraph that charmed Clemens. White’s other references to him are perfunctory (Andrew Dickson White 1905, 2:82, 203, 231).
Willard Fiske was a poor and untaught and friendless boy . . . Cornell University] Daniel Willard Fiske (1831–1904), a journalist, editor, and book collector, was a professor of Northern European languages and the head librarian at Cornell University from its inauguration in 1868 until his resignation in 1883. Clemens met him through their mutual friend, Charles Dudley Warner (see the note at 34.27–28; AutoMT1 541–42 n. 239.23–24). Between 1845 and 1848 he had received schooling at Cazenovia Seminary, in Cazenovia, New York, and at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York. According to his biographer, Fiske met Bayard Taylor (1825–78) in New York in 1850. In the summer of that year he went abroad to study Scandinavian languages and literature, and they apparently renewed their friendship in Europe sometime in the next few years (Horatio S. White 1925, 5, 10–16). Taylor, already a published poet and travel writer, later served as U.S. secretary of legation at St. Petersburg (1862–63) and U.S. minister to Germany (1878).
Mr. McGraw . . . had a lovely young daughter] John McGraw (1815–77), a founding trustee and great benefactor of Cornell University, made his fortune in the lumber industry. Clemens may have confused him with Ezra Cornell, the university’s cofounder, who became wealthy through his partnership with Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. Jennie McGraw (1840–81) was his only child.
she invited Fiske and Charles Dudley Warner and his wife to make a trip up the Nile] Warner, Clemens’s Hartford neighbor and his collaborator on The Gilded Age, had been a fellow student and Psi Upsilon fraternity brother of Fiske’s at Hamilton College, becoming his lifelong friend. Although he and his wife, Susan, visited Egypt during an 1874–76 excursion, they did not accompany Jennie McGraw and Fiske when they traveled there in the winter of 1880–81, after their marriage (3 Oct 1874 to Howells, L6, 248 n. 3; Horatio S. White 1925, 63, and Fiske to Andrew D. White, 27 Nov 1880, 426–27).
the old-fashioned dahabieh] A native sailing vessel, somewhat resembling a houseboat.
she wanted to marry Fiske . . . he was not willing to accept the fortune] Before his marriage in Berlin on 14 July 1880, Fiske signed a document renouncing his right to his wife’s property (Morris Bishop 1962, 226). He later recalled:
I declined, when I had the opportunity, by her own offer, to learn the contents of her will; I signed, without an instant’s hesitation, the prenuptial contract, refusing to take any advantage hereafter of the rights that I might derive from the Prussian marriage laws . . . and when I saw her sad death weekly drawing nearer, I persisted in my resolution to make no suggestion which might pecuniarily benefit myself. I would not have exchanged the chance of losing one additional week of her life for all the money she had. (Horatio S. White 1925, 104)
Mrs. Fiske made a will . . . left the residue of the fortune to Cornell University] The estate of Jennie McGraw Fiske was estimated to be as much as $3 million. She bequeathed $300,000 to her husband, $550,000 to family members, and $290,000 to Cornell for the construction of three buildings; Cornell was also the sole residuary legatee (New York Times: “Trying to Annul a Will,” 7 Sept 1883, 5; “Cornell Loses a Legacy,” 20 May 1890, 9; Morris Bishop 1962, 227). Fiske assumed that the mansion under construction in Ithaca above Cayuga Lake—which the newlyweds had planned over the course of “many a pleasant Nile evening”—was bequeathed to him as well. In fact, the will “contained no provision for the completion of the house nor for its support” (Fiske to Boardman, 29 May 1890, Horatio S. White 1925, 105; “Two Millions Lost,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1890, 3; Morris Bishop 1962, 227).
He could not live in the Ithaca house on any such income as that. He did not try to live in it] According to the historian of Cornell University, Fiske “realized that the income on $300,000 would not suffice to keep the house in proper style.” White “saw it as his dream home for an Art Gallery. Everyone supposed that Fiske would occupy it, as custodian for the University,” but that plan was never realized (Morris Bishop 1962, 227).
Charley Warner, who drew the will] Warner earned a law degree in 1858, but he made his career in journalism and literature. He did not draw Jennie Fiske’s will, which was prepared by Douglass Boardman, the university’s chief counsel and a justice on the state supreme court (Andrew Dickson White 1905, 1:419–20; “Two Millions Lost,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1890, 3).
the University might claim the little palace . . . Fiske resisted the University’s claim and the University brought suit] The executors asserted that Fiske was entitled to absolutely nothing beyond the $300,000 bequeathed him, claiming not only the house but its contents; according to some reports, these included Jennie Fiske’s personal effects. It was actually Fiske who initiated the lawsuit, in 1883, in an attempt to break the will. After numerous conflicts with Boardman and the trustees (especially Henry W. Sage), he finally became “furiously indignant” when he learned of the university’s deceit (see the note at 36.32–41; Fiske to Boardman, 29 May 1890, Horatio S. White 1925, 104–5). The case became a cause célèbre in the newspapers. Some of them represented Fiske as a fortune hunter carrying out a “diabolical and long-matured plot to win millions” (Morris Bishop 1962, 229–30). Others printed unsubstantiated (and no doubt exaggerated) reports of the university’s cruelty, like this one in the San Francisco Chronicle:
If he wished his wife’s wedding-ring and his wife’s wedding-dress he would have to buy them at the highest figure they would command, and in a similar manner and at a like rate he paid for every souvenir and present she had in her possession. Professor Fiske made a proposition to give Cornell University at his death every dollar he was worth if they would let him live in his wife’s house, and he met with a scornful refusal. (“Two Millions Lost,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1890, 3)
I furnished him the conditions in the same old way] Clemens’s scheme for getting a job, by first working without pay, is the subject of his Autobiographical Dictation of 27 March 1906 (see AutoMT1 , 446–51).
the young man of whom I have been talking] Charles P. Bacon (1859?–1916) was one of the Cornell students in whom Fiske took a special interest, and for several years he lived with Fiske and his mother on campus. He earned his degree in 1879. Clemens may have pointed him toward the Elmira Gazette, not the Hartford Courant (where Fiske had worked briefly). At any rate, it was the Gazette that Bacon edited during the journalistic phase of his career (New York Times: “Cornell Loses a Legacy,” 20 May 1890, 9; “Charles P. Bacon,” 20 June 1916, 11; “Two Millions Lost,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1890, 3).
David B. Hill of Elmira . . . a very distinguished lawyer and a big politician] Hill (1843–1910) was the leader of the New York State Democratic party. He served briefly as mayor of Elmira (1882), then was state lieutenant governor (1882–85), governor (1885–91), and U.S. senator (1892–97).
young Bacon had this happy idea . . . It is the university, now, that has no show] At the time of Mrs. Fiske’s bequest, White and Boardman were both aware of the restriction in the university’s charter. But Boardman argued that it was “intended simply to prevent the endowment of corporations beyond what the legislature might think best for the commonwealth,” and assured White that “if the attorney-general did not begin proceedings against us to prevent our taking the property, no one else could; and that he would certainly never trouble us” (Andrew Dickson White 1905, 1:419–21). Nevertheless, in 1882 the university amended its charter in an attempt to secure the bequest. Fiske “exploded” when he learned that
the charter revision was designed (though ex post facto) to remove this disability, that according to state law no decedent having a husband could leave more than half her estate to charity, that Judge Boardman . . . had sedulously—and improperly—refrained from informing Fiske of his rights, and that the trustees in the know had surrounded Fiske with a wall of concealment. (Morris Bishop 1962, 228)
It was at this point, on the eve of his departure for Europe in 1883, that Fiske signed the papers initiating the suit.
Bacon won the case . . . that first lawsuit of his was also his last one] In 1890, after seven years of litigation, the case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which awarded the entire estate to Fiske; his attorney received a fee of $180,000. Bacon remained close friends with David B. Hill, serving as his confidential adviser during Hill’s term as governor of New York, and (despite Clemens’s assertion that it was his first and only case) continued to practice law for many years (Morris Bishop 1962, 231–32; “Charles P. Bacon,” New York Times, 20 June 1916, 11). Ultimately Cornell was not greatly injured by the loss of the lawsuit. Henry W. Sage, at one time John McGraw’s partner in the lumber industry, donated over $200,000 for a new library building, together with an endowment of $300,000. And Fiske bequeathed his valuable book collection and nearly $600,000 (Horatio S. White 1925, 96–97, 237–38; “Mr. Sage’s Gift to Cornell,” New York Times, 24 May 1889, 1; for Sage see AutoMT1 , 599 n. 377.14).
Source documents.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 692–703 (altered in pencil to 701–12), made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS2 Typescript, leaves numbered 847–58, made from the revised TS1.
TS1 was revised by Clemens, evidently with publication in mind (he marked one extract to be set ‘solid’). But he decided against publication in NAR for any part of this dictation. Hobby typed TS2, incorporating Clemens’s TS1 revisions. He marked TS2 ‘Not usable yet’ in pencil, and gave it no further attention.
In this dictation, Clemens inserts an adapted extract from a 31 March 1906 letter by the eleven-year-old Elizabeth Owen Knight, which he misrepresents in terms of its age (‘twenty-one years ago’) and its content (the books Knight mentions are Tom Sawyer and Tom Sawyer Abroad, for which Clemens substitutes Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer). The original letter is extant (CU-MARK), but it is not what Hobby was following as copy. Clemens’s adaptations, whether performed orally or on an intermediary document, are clearly deliberate, and we follow the text of the typescript series.