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Autobiographical Dictation, 10 August 1906 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

Gazette       Clipping from the Westminster Gazette of unknown date, formerly pinned to TS1 ribbon: ‘MARK TWAIN TRIPPING . . . a joke.’ (167.7–19).
TS Higbie      Typescript of Calvin H. Higbie, “A Little Experience in Nevada and Surrounding Country,” revised by SLC: ‘At that time . . . stand the strain.” ’ (170.29–171.27).
TS1 ribbon      Typescript, leaves numbered 1027–38, made from Hobby’s notes, the Gazette clipping, and TS Higbie.
TS1 carbon      Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1027–38, revised.

TS1 ribbon is unrevised. Clemens revised TS1 carbon with an NAR installment in mind; but it was never published there. Harvey provided Clemens with the clipping from the Westminster Gazette, which Hobby transcribed. We follow Gazette for the text of the article.

Hobby’s transcription is the unique source of Clemens’s letter to Higbie of ca. 8 August 1906. For Higbie’s memoir, entitled “A Little Experience in Nevada and Surrounding Country,” manuscript and typescript are both extant. For the passage inserted here we follow the typescript, which has Clemens’s minor revisions and which, collation shows, is what was provided to Hobby as copy. The typist of TS Higbie corrected his or her work in pencil; those corrections are not reported.

Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR

Location on TS Writer, Medium Exact Inscription Explanation
TS1 carbon, p. 1027 SLC, ink Use 1027–8—& a little of 2. (it’s about 400 words.) begin the excerpt at ‘This morning’s’ (167.5) and end it at ‘cannot penetrate.” ’ (167.36)
TS1 carbon, p. 1027 SLC, ink VI use as the sixth section of the NAR installment
TS1 carbon, p. 1027 SLC, ink Begin here begin the excerpt at ‘This morning’s’ (167.5)
TS1 carbon, p. 1029 SLC, ink Stop here end the excerpt at
‘cannot penetrate.” ’ (167.36)
[begin page 167]
Friday,textual note August 10textual note, 1906

Clipping from Westminster Gazette textual note , criticisingtextual note statement in “Diary of Eve”explanatory note and calling it irreverent—Mr. Clemens replies to this—Mr. Higbie’s manuscripttextual note—Mr. Clemens’s reply to him—Extract from Mr. Higbie’s essay.

This morning’s mail brings me this clipping from the Westminster Gazette, explanatory note which is one of the brightest and ablest of the London journals.

MARK TWAIN TRIPPING.

Even a professional humorist may be called upon to suffer a laugh at his own expense. “Mark Twain,” in his somewhat irreverent “Diary of Eve” (Harper’s), is guilty of an amusing error. Alluding to the naming by Adam of the brute creation, the “mother of all living” is made to suggest that but for her tactful prompting and assistance the feat would never have been accomplished. As a matter of fact, the naming of the “fowl of the air” and the “beast of the field” was performed prior to the forming of woman, which was indeed, as the famous humorist would have known had he taken the trouble to read carefully the second chapter of Genesis, a consequence of the former transaction, for we are told (Gen. ii., 20): “And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” It is always well to be sure of one’s ground—even before attempting a joke.

This depresses me. It always saddens the professional lightning-bug when he flares up under the mole’s nose and finds that the mole doesn’t know that anything has happened. The Westminster’s man is unaware of the privileges of our profession. He thinks we must stick to the facts, when we use them, and not profane them;textual note whereas by the privileges of our order we are independent of facts; we care nothing for them, in a really religious way. Iftextual note in their integrity they will not work into our scheme with the kind of effect which we wish to produce, we re-arrange them to meet the requirements of the occasion. When we are hot with the fires of production we would even distort the facts of the multiplication-table, let alone the facts of Genesis. We have no inflamed respect for facts. We could keep our head and be calm in their presence even if one in thirty-five of them was true. Even if I had known the unimportant fact that it was not Eve who named the animals, I should have coldly ignored it, in the interest of art. I should have altered the facttextual note to suit my fiction. If I had felt it best to turn the whole fable of creation inside out, I would have done it without compunction. The Gazette says: “It is always well to be sure of one’s ground—even before attempting a joke.” We look at it the other way. One of our principal by-laws says “Do not try to be sure of your audience before attempting a joke; it will always contain at least one person whose quartz its diamond drilltextual note cannot penetrate.”

As to my irreverence, I am sure I was never irreverent in my life; I am also sure that no irreverent person has ever existed in the earth. It is not the privilege of governments, or laws, or churches, or even editors, to tell us what we must revere. In this matter we [begin page 168] may choose for ourselves, and we always do. We do not revere Mahomet; we do not revere the gods of India; we do not hold in awe the mosques, the temples, and the other things that are sacred in the eyes of those peoples. And wetextual note are not found fault with for assuming this attitude. All our fellow-citizens forgive us for it and concede that we are merely exercising an indisputable right. Then those fellow-citizens face the other way, and naïvelytextual note require us to revere their sacred things and personages. They even pass laws exacting this reverence of us—laws which punish us if we decline to obey them. These fine intelligences talk about freedom of conscience,textual note and then tell our consciences how to act, under pain of penalties!textual note In permitting us to withhold reverence from the sacred things and personages of India and Turkey, and from the sacred personages and things of Rome and Greece, these citizens grant us the right to withhold our reverence from any other sacred things and personages, here or elsewhere.

Properly, no such thing as irreverence is possible. No man can be irreverent toward the things which he holds sacred in his heart—the thing is impossible; buttextual note he is free to say disagreeable things about any other person’s godstextual note and Bibles—even those oftextual note the Indians, the Turks, the Romans and the Greeks. No one denies him this right. Certainly, then, the word irreverence textual note is a word which has no meaning, and no rightful place in the dictionary, since it describes something which has never existed and is never going to exist. I revere a number of things, and I never speak of them disrespectfully, nor even think of them disrespectfully. If I should do either of these things my act could be described as irreverence; but as it is not possible for me to do them the word is impotent and meaninglesstextual note in my case, as it is in all other cases. I repeat, there are things which are sacred to me and which I hold in reverence—but I do not count Adam and Eve in this list, nor their fabuloustextual note history.


Attextual note last we have heard from Higbie, and there is no denying that I am depressed.textual note Higbie is the silver miner who was my cabin-mate in Aurora, Esmeralda, during two or three months, forty-five years ago. We talked about him in a chaptertextual note away back yonder in the winter, or the spring. He was proposing to write for the New York Herald, upon guardedtextual note invitation, some account of his life and mine out on the frontier in the long ago, and he proposed to pass his manuscript through my handsexplanatory note to see if I might liketextual note what he was going to say about me.

It was then that a warmtextual note old-comrade impulse surged up in me and disordered my judgment. I encouraged him. It was wrong to do this—wrong and foolish. I ought to have reserved my reply until my judgment could have a chance to cool down and get straightened out—and of course I didn’t do that. I jumped at once to a conclusion, and, by all the laws of human experience, it was necessarily an erroneous one. I remembered Higbie perfectly well—a most kindly, engaging, frank, unpretentious, unlettered, and utterly honest, truthful, and honorable giant; practical, unimaginative, destitute of humor, well endowed with good plain common sense, and as simple-hearted as a child. Under the warrant of these facts, I jumped to a conclusion—the apparently entirely trustworthy conclusion that the real Higbie,—textual notethe genuine Higbie, the engaging Higbie, [begin page 169] the unhumorous Higbie, the unimaginative Higbie—would appear in his manuscript and win the heart of every reader. It ought to have occurred to me that no human being who attempts literature for the first time can be his natural self—but it didn’t. I imagined Higbie telling about those old days in the simple and unaffected language of a Robinson Crusoeexplanatory note, and charging his words with the honesty, the truthfulness and the sincerity that were born in him. Such a narrative could not fail to be invitingtextual note and acceptable; I knew this perfectly well. Now then,textual note how could an artificial Higbie ever occur to me? I could not imagine such a thing. I could as easily have imagined the silver and gold amalgam in a retort turning to slag and rubbish—and yet that is what happened to Higbie when he took the unaccustomed pen in his hand. The natural Higbie, the real Higbie, the delightful Higbie, the honest Higbie, the truthful Higbie, the sincere Higbie, the childlike Higbie, went up in the vapor of the quicksilver and left nothing behind but slag—just slag, only slag, and not worth thirty cents a ton in any market of the precious metals.

In Higbie’s essay there are seventeen thousand five hundred words; thirteen thousand of the words are such extravagant distortions of the actual facts that hardly an unimpeachable grain of truth is discoverable in them. This Higbie of seventy-five immature years is not the splendid and stalwart Higbie I cabined with forty-four years ago. His paper is headed “A Little Experience in Nevada and Surrounding Country in the Early Sixties, Leading up to My Acquaintance with Samuel L. Clemens, ‘Mark Twain.’ ”explanatory note His Introduction, of four thousand words, leads gradually up to me, and is an unadorned statement of his goings and comings, and sounds true—doubtless is true. Then he encounters me, and the newly-born literary artist sets his fancy afire and the conflagration begins. Evidently he sat down with my book “Roughing It”textual note before him and reproduced every detail of my Esmeralda chapters from it, translating each and every detail into his own language. Manifestly, whentextual note those texts gave out he filledtextual note in with his fancies, and whenever he fetched me ontextual note the stage he evidently felt the necessity of bursting into frenzies of humor, and he did it. It is sad, it is pathetic;textual note Higbie was always gravity, seriousness, practicality itself. I can almost imagine a humorous camel, but a humorous Higbie is beyond my strength.

If only Higbie were a stranger! Then I could write him an uncharitable letter and return his manuscript to him—but we can’t treat friends in that way. We have to write them gently; we have to write them candidly, too. Therefore we do it, but we do not enjoy it. It hurts, and we are glad when the uncomfortable task is achieved. I have written Higbie the following letterexplanatory note, which will not see print until years after both of us are dead.

Dublintextual note, New Hampshire.

Dear Higbie:

I have read it, and the fact is, I am greatly disappointed. It is mainly second-hand news, worked over. In “Roughing It”textual note I have already told about the Wide-West blind lead; and about your locating it; and about our dreams of what we would do when we got the money; and about your going cementing and my going off to nurse Nye; and about the relocatingtextual note of the blind lead; and about my joining the staff of the “Enterprise;”textual note and about Lake Mono; and about the robbery on the divide—and [begin page 170] so forth and so on. To make the retellingtextual note of these things valuable there is only one way, not two: they must be better told than I told them. You have not done that, and any editor would say so at once; and he would add that he could not use matter, anyway, that had already been used. I exhausted that ore-pile, and left nothing behind but waste rock.

You have invented some new things—such as the flap-jacks and the ballexplanatory note—but any editor would strike them out, because such things are without value except when funny, and you have not made them funny. And how could you? You are a straight, honest, practical, sincere man, and no schooling, no training, no diligence would ever qualify you to write humorously—it is out of your line; and even if it were not, you could not pick up that exacting art in a day.

You have made me pretty ridiculous, but I shan’t mind thattextual note if the editors will buy your MS. But I clearly perceive that it would damage its chances for me to offer it to them, for the reason that they would certainly ask me for a paragraph in praise of it and I could not furnish it. In print I have never praised anything which I could not praise with heartiness and sincerity. For in my way I am as honest as you are, Cal.

But there is one thing I can do, and this I will gladly do if you say the word: I can send it to the Herald, through my literary agent, and he can say you passed it through my hands to see if there was anything in it that would wound me, and that I found it innocent of reproach in that respect. Shall I do that? Let me hear from you, old friend.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. Clemens.textual note

In justice to Higbie—for it may be that his humor will appeal to others, although it has gone over my head—I here append his flap-jack episodeexplanatory note—an episode which resembles his extravagant ball, in this: that neither of them happened. Both are exudations of his unschooled fancy.

At that time I was very fond of hot-cakes—slap-jacks the miners called them—and when alone would have them every morning as they could be made very quick with good flour, yeast powder, and water. The first slap-jacks made after Sam’s arrival, there was nothing said and I supposed he liked them as well as myself, so we had hot-cakes several mornings in succession. I thought I discovered a frown of disapproval at those cakes, but he said nothing. When I happened to be at home at mid-day we would have slap-jacks for both breakfast and dinner, and when I was sure he didn’t like them we had them three times a day regular with no dishes on the side.textual note I was wondering what would happen next and ran away with the foolish idea that I had him in a tight place and would compel him to go to work and cook something for himself that he liked rather than feed on flap-jacks three times a day forever.

Attextual note that time I was not aware of the resources of the man or his disinclinationtextual note for any kind of physical exertion and supposed that any kind of a mortal under the circumstances would pitch in and cook some kind of a dish that would suit his taste. Not he. So with desperation in every fiber I would renew the attack and make it my particular business to be home at every meal and stack up in front of him a pile of flap-jacks as high as his head and in diameter thetextual note size of a large frying-pan. I went [begin page 171] on the principle of quantity versus quality. I couldn’t help but admire his patience and perseverance, but saw that the barometer was low and a storm brewing, and proceeded to batten down hatches, take in sail, and make everything snug before the gale struck: and as an extra safeguard pilled more cakes on the table as ballast.

With a fearful scowl and a glance of contempt and defiance at that pile of cakes, he leaned back from the table and opened up that innocent mound of flap-jacks.

“Hot-cakes,”textual note he says, “hot-cakes three times a day the year round. Why man they would ruin the digestive organs of the most able-bodied ostrich that ever roamed the wilds of Africa.” Then he went into a learned dissertation on the injurious effects of yeast powders in combination with flour and water straight; that it would ruin the constitution of any man alive to keep that kind of a diet up for any length of time;textual note and with other very decisive opinions on the subject. All this time I had been stowing away hot-cakes for dear life with the inward conviction that he was coming to time. In fact had eaten more than I should otherwise have done in order to give him time to finish his eloquent discussion. As a final appeal he says, “For Heavens sake man, lets have a change. Hot cakes, hot-cakes! Straight three times a day with nothing on the side. Why I never heard of such a thing.”

Bytextual note this time I was nearly exploding withtextual note hot-cakes and laughter, but I said, “All right, Sam. I am so fond of hot-cakes myself that I think nothing about the wants of others and if there is anything you would particularly like our credit is good up at the store. Get anything you like and fix it up to suit yourself and it will suit me.”

“Thats the talk,” he says, “we’ll have a change to-morrow. Good lord man.textual note its a wonder we are alive to-day stuffing ourselves with nothing but hot-cakes,” and in a mollified tone “I will admit you make fine large cakes and use great skill in tossing them into the air and catching them upside down in that frying-pan, but as a regular diet three times a day the year round, I will admit my constitution will not stand the strain.”

Textual Notes Friday, August 10, 1906
  Friday, ●  Friday, (TS1 ribbon)  Friday, Dictated (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  10 ●  9 10 (TS1 ribbon-Hobby, TS1 carbon-Hobby) 
  Westminster Gazette  ●  Westminster Gazette (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  criticising ●  criticizing (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  manuscript ●  MS (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  them; ●  them, (TS1 ribbon)  them, ; comma mended to a semicolon  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  If ●  If, (TS1 ribbon)  If,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  fact ●  facts (TS1 ribbon)  facts  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  its diamond drill ●  it (TS1 ribbon)  its diamond drill  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  And we ●  We (TS1 ribbon)  And We (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  naïvely ●  naively (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  conscience, ●  conscience (TS1 ribbon)  conscience,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  penalties! ●  penalties. (TS1 ribbon)  penalties. ! period mended to an exclamation point  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  but ●  B but erased, retyped  (TS1 ribbon)  B but ‘B’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  person’s gods ●  person’sgods gods erased, retyped  (TS1 ribbon)  person’sggods (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  those of ●  not in  (TS1 ribbon)  those of  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  irreverence  ●  textual note: ir- | reverence was hyphenated at the end of a page; SLC deleted the underscore under ‘ir-’ and then restored it
  impotent and meaningless ●  impotent, meaningless, (TS1 ribbon)  impotent, and meaningless,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  fabulous ●  fabulous (TS1 ribbon)  fabulous  (TS1 carbon) 
  extra line space [¶] At ●  [¶] At (TS1 ribbon)  (Double space.) [¶] At (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  depressed. ●  impressed (TS1 ribbon)  de impressed. (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  talked about him in a chapter ●  dictated a chapter about him (TS1 ribbon)  dictated talked about him in a chapter about him  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  guarded ●  not in  (TS1 ribbon)  guarded  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  like ●  approve (TS1 ribbon)  approve like  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  a warm ●  an (TS1 ribbon)  an a warm  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  Higbie,— ●  Higbie— (TS1 ribbon)  Higbie ,—  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  inviting ●  engaging (TS1 ribbon)  engaging inviting  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  then, ●  then (TS1 ribbon)  then,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  It” ●  It,” (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  Manifestly, when ●  When (TS1 ribbon)  Manifestly, When (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  filled ●  fell (TS1 ribbon)  fell filled  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  on ●  on to (TS1 ribbon)  on to  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  pathetic; ●  pathetic. (TS1 ribbon)  pathetic. ; period mended to a semicolon  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  Dublin ●  “Dublin (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  “Roughing It” ●  ‘Roughing It’ (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  relocating ●  re-locating (TS1 ribbon)  re-locating marked to close up  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  “Enterprise;” ●  ‘Enterprise;’ (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  retelling ●  re-telling (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  that ●  that, (TS1 ribbon)  that,  (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  Clemens. ●  Clemens.” (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  side. ●  side.. (TS Higbie)  side. (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  At ●  At (TS Higbie)  “At (TS1 ribbon)  At (TS1 carbon-SLC) 
  disinclination ●  dis-inclination marked to close up  (TS Higbie-SLC)  disinclination (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  the ●  as the ‘as’ canceled by the typist  (TS Higbie)  as the (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  flap-jacks. [¶] “Hot-cakes,” ●  flap-jacks. “Hot-cakes”, (TS Higbie-SLC)  flap-jacks. [¶] “Hot-cakes,” (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  time; ●  time;  (TS Higbie-SLC)  time; (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  thing.” [¶] By ●  thing.” By (TS Higbie-SLC)  thing.” [¶] By (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  with ●  wit (TS Higbie)  with (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
  man. ●  man. (TS Higbie)  man, (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon) 
Explanatory Notes Friday, August 10, 1906
 

This morning’s mail brings me this clipping from the Westminster Gazette] The undated clipping was sent by George Harvey of Harpers, enclosed in a letter of 9 August. On it he wrote, “What ho! GH” (CU-MARK).

 

“Diary of Eve”] Eve’s Diary was written in July 1905 and published as a book in June 1906 (16 July 1905 to Duneka, NN-BGC; SLC 1906a; BAL, 2:3489).

 

At last we have heard from Higbie . . . he proposed to pass his manuscript through my hands] Calvin Higbie was Clemens’s cabinmate in the mining camp of Aurora in 1862. His letter of 15 March 1906, in which he proposed to write an account of his experiences in the West, is transcribed in the Autobiographical Dictation of 26 March 1906 ( AutoMT1 445–46, 640 n. 445.4–13).

 

Robinson Crusoe] Clemens owned a 1747 edition of Daniel Defoe’s novel, one of his favorite books to read to his children (Gribben 1980, 1:181; CC 1931, 25). See also the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 June 1906, note at 109.17–20.

 

“A Little Experience in Nevada and Surrounding Country in the Early Sixties, Leading up to My Acquaintance with Samuel L. Clemens, ‘Mark Twain.’ ”] Higbie’s essay is in the Mark Twain Papers, in two forms (both purchased in 2002): the original manuscript, and a typed copy of it bearing Clemens’s revisions. It remained unpublished at Higbie’s death in 1914, but was quoted extensively in a 1920 Saturday Evening Post article (Higbie 1906; Phillips 1920).

 

I have written Higbie the following letter] Only Hobby’s typed transcription of this letter is extant; the original sent to Higbie has not been found.

 

You have invented some new things—such as . . . the ball] Higbie’s essay describes a ball celebrating the opening of a saloon:

It was a queer combination five ladies and a thousand men, and in the nature of things the sets were composed allmost entirely of men, and very picturesque they were. All sorts and conditions; very few wore coats, miners with red shirts, pants outside of boots, with gun knife or both strapped to their waist. . . . Sam was all animation and making great play to entertain his partner, bowing and scraping at a great rate but paying not the slightest attention to the music or prompter calling off the figures. (Higbie 1906, TS pp. 15–16)

 

I here append his flap-jack episode] The “episode” is an extract from the original typescript of Higbie’s essay, on which Clemens made one spelling correction and added several paragraph breaks (Higbie 1906, TS pp. 11–12).