Letter from lady in regard to story, “A Horse’s Tale,” and Mr. Clemens’s reply—Project for composite story—TwoⒶtextual note letters from lady who tried to aid San Francisco sufferers by contributing her brother’s wife’s “oll woole” suit—Reminiscences of CaptainⒶtextual note Ned Wakeman, and extract from his letter to Mr. Twichell.
In this morning’s mail comes a letter from a stranger, which carries me back to what I was saying a couple of days ago when we were discussing Higbie’s letter. Higbie’s letter came from his heart, and I suggested that when the heart has something to say the product [begin page 189] is literature, no matter whether the phrasing loyally follows accepted literary forms or splendidly ignores them, as the freshet ignores the dam. This lady’s letter is from the heart, and it is in good English—educated English—but her heart would have delivered its message with as sure and moving a touch if sheⒶtextual note had never had a day’s schooling in her life. We have seen this exemplified in Chapter XXXI, where we quoted an ignorant and eloquent letter written by a wronged and grieving westernⒶtextual note girlⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note twenty-seven years ago.
I wish to insert here several letters of this kind,Ⓐtextual note and in this way lead up to an occurrence of a week or two ago. We will begin with this morning’s letter.
Sound Beach, Conn.
August 25, 1906.
Dear “Mark Twain”—
Please dont write any more such heart-breaking stories. I have just been reading Soldier Boy’s storyⒺexplanatory note in Harpers. I dont think I would have read it had I known what was to come to Soldier Boy.
You used to write so differently. The note of pathos, of tragedy, of helpless pain creeps in now, more and more insistent. I fancy life must have taken on its more somber colours for you, and what you feel is reflected in what you write
You belong to all of us—we of America—and we all love you and are proud of you, but you make our hearts ache sometimes.
When your story of the poor dogⒺexplanatory note was published in Harpers I read it and I cant tell you what I felt. I have never re-read it and I try not to remember it, but I cant help it. And now this story of Soldier Boy. It sinks into my heart. I feel like stretching out my hand to you and saying “I, too, feel these things, the dumb helpless pain of all the poor animals, and my soul protests against it, mightily but impotently, like yours.”
I hope there is a heaven for animals somewhere, where they wont have to be with men, and you hope so too, dont you?
Dont think I am hysterical, notoriety seeking, or a crank. I am neither, only just poor and common-place—and—no longer young, but I feel all these things.
I beg to subscribe myself,
Most respectfully yours,
(Mrs) Lillian R. BeardsleyⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
To
Mr. Samuel L. Clemens.
By, Harper and Bros.
New York City.
I have explained my case to the lady as follows:
DublinⒶtextual note, New Hampshire.
Aug. 28.
Dear Madam:
I know it is a pity to wring the poor human heart, and it grieves me to do it; but it is the only way to move some people to reflect.
The “Horse’s Tale” has a righteous purpose. It was not written for publication here, but in Spain. I was asked to write it to assist a band of generous ladies and [begin page 190] gentlemen of Spain who have set themselves the gracious task of persuading the children of that countryⒶtextual note to renounce and forsake the cruel bull-fight. This in the hope that these children will carry on the work when they grow up. It is a great and fine causeⒶtextual note, and if this story, distributed abroad in SpainⒺexplanatory note in translation can in any degree aid it, I shall not be sorry that I complied with the request with which I was honored.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens.Ⓐtextual note
Let us go on with our argument.Ⓐtextual note
Several weeks agoⒶtextual note the editor of Harper’s Bazar Ⓐtextual note projected a scheme for a composite story. A family was to tell the story. The father was to begin it, and, in turn, each member of the family was to furnish a chapter of it. There was to be a boy in the family, and I was invited to write his chapter. I was afraid of the scheme because I could not tell, beforehand, whether the boy would take an interest in it or notⒺexplanatory note. Experience has taught me, long ago, that if I Ⓐtextual note tellⒶtextual note a boy’s story—or anybody else’s—it is never worth printing; it comes from the head, not the heart, and always goes into the waste-basket. To be successful, and worth printing, the imaginedⒶtextual note boy would have to tell his story himself Ⓐtextual note, and let me act merely as his amanuensis. I did not tell the “Horse’s Tale,” the horse told it himself, through me. If he hadn’t done that it wouldn’t have been told at all. When a tale tells itself there is no trouble about it; there are no hesitancies, no delays, no cogitations, no attempts at invention; there is nothing to do but hold the pen and let the story talk through it and say, after its own fashion, what it desires to say.
Mr. Howells began the composite tale. He held the pen, and through it the father delivered his chapter—therefore it was well done. A lady followed Howells, and furnished the old-maid sister’s chapter. This lady is of high literary distinction; she is nobly gifted; she has the ear of the nation, and her novels and stories are among the best that the country has produced; but she Ⓐtextual note did not tell those tales, she merely held the pen and they told themselves—of this I am convinced. I am also convinced of another thing—that she did not act as amanuensis for the old-maid sister, but wrote the old-maid sister’s chapter out of her own head, without any help from the old maid. The result isⒶtextual note a failure. It is a piece of pure literary manufacture, and has the shop-marksⒶtextual note all over it.
Thus far, the boy has not applied to meⒺexplanatory note. I am ready to hold the pen for him in case he shall desire it, but he must tell his story himself. If I should try to tell it for him it would be poorly done, and would damage my reputation. I cannot afford to damage my reputation for the sake of a boy I am not acquainted with, and who is so dim and shadowy in my mind as this one is.Ⓐtextual note
I now arrive at a couple of letters which were handed to me by a neighbor yesterday—a man of good character and established veracity—and he gives me his word of honor that they are genuine; otherwise I should say they are too good to be true. They flow delightfully along without a break anywhere, from beginning to end, the genial and happy stream suffering not even the momentary interruption of a comma, from the first word [begin page 191] to the last. The spelling is so free, so independent, so majestically lawless, that Susy’s is a slave to rule by comparison with it. The source of these letters is this:
When the appeal for clothing for the sufferers by the San Francisco fire and earthquake went abroad over the land the kind-hearted writer of these letters took a suit of clothes belonging to her brother’s wife and carried them to the Armory in her town and generously devoted them to the cause, delivering them to Miss Blank Blank, chairman of the committee in charge of the matter, and receiving in return Miss Blank’s cordial thanks. This is letter No. 1Ⓔexplanatory note:Ⓐtextual note
Miss BlankⒶtextual note dear freind i took some Close into the armerry and give them to you to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to truble you but i got to have one of them Back it was a black oll woole ShevyottⒺexplanatory note With a jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and passy menterryⒺexplanatory note acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it blonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about It I thoght she was willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was goin to Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For her i gess you remember Me I am shot And stout and light complected i torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it Was offul about that erth quake i shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True freind.
i liked your
appearance very Much.Ⓐtextual note
She wrote that divine letter on the 1st of May. On the following day she got a note from Miss Blank grieving over the fact that the brother’s wife’s all-wool suit of clothes had unfortunately passed out of her hands before the letter requiring its return had reached her. She was sincerely sorry that this calamity had been added to the San Franciscan disaster, and was also sorry that there seemed no way to repair the damage. On the 3d, she received the following reply in rebuttal.Ⓐtextual note Both of this good soul’s letters are winning and eloquent—splendidly and stirringly eloquent—in spite of their departure from the customary shop-worn literary forms, and in spite of their paralysingⒶtextual note originality, and I think it is because they came not out of that good woman’s head—in anyⒶtextual note large degree—but right out of her heart.
ProvidenceⒶtextual note R. I.
May the 3th 1906
Miss BlankⒶtextual note dear frei-
nd i got your Letter all Right now dont you worry eny More about the Black Sute when I told Mame what you said she felt reel Bad about your fretin over it and she says good lord, she must think im meaner than dirt i give Her one of them feathar boars such as is all the Go and she was tickled to death over it and it kind of made it up to her about loosing the Sute she is reel amable By nature but she has ben orful [begin page 192] tried this spring what with one thing and Another and she ant herself Jim says to me one day go slow for a spell with Mame she is orful tried what with the young ones and the spring cleening and a fire broke out in our bacement that thretend to lose our little all the same weak As the california erthguake every one Has there trubles an take it right strate throgh our crosses ant eny hevyer thane we can Bare theys a hire power that waches Over us and protects us from injerry i hope you have had good luck about your good work no more at present from yure true freind.Ⓐtextual note
I am glad I have lived to read those letters. They are a benefaction. They have brightened my life and made me glad to continue it for the present—indefinitely, in fact, if I may have the privilege of hearing further from the writer of themⒶtextual note from time to time. There is a charm about their limpid and flowing simplicity and their abounding and spirit-stirring eagerness which is graciously and benignantly satisfying to me. To my mind they are altogether delicious, and I think it would be hard to match them in the literature of any age or of any country.
Still pursuing our subject,Ⓐtextual note I will now insert an extract from a letter written by Captain Ned Wakeman to the ReverendⒶtextual note Joseph H. Twichell twenty or twenty-five years ago. I first knew CaptainⒶtextual note Wakeman thirty-nine years ago. I made two voyages with him, and we became fast friendsⒺexplanatory note. He was a greatⒶtextual note burly, handsome, weatherbeaten, symmetrically built and powerful creature, with coal black hair and whiskers, and the kind of eye which men obey without talking back. He was full of human nature, and the best kind of human nature. He was as hearty and sympathetic and loyal and loving a soul as I have found anywhere, and when his temper was up he performed all the functions of an earthquake, without the noise. He was all sailor, from head to heel; and this was proper enough, for he was born at sea, and, in the course of his sixty-five years, he had visited the edges of all the continents and archipelagoes, but had never been on landⒶtextual note except incidentally and spasmodically, as you may say. He had never had a day’s schooling in his life, but had picked up worlds and worlds of knowledge at second-hand, and none of it correct. He was a liberal talker, and inexhaustibly interesting. In the matter of a wide and catholicⒶtextual note profanity he had not his peer on the planet while he lived. It was a deep pleasure to me to hear him do his stunts in this line. He knew the Bible by heart, and was profoundly and sincerely religious. He was always studying the Bible when it was his watch below, and always finding new things, fresh things, and unexpected delights and surprises in it—and he loved to talk about his discoveries and expound them to the ignorant. He believed that he was the only man on the globe that really knew the secret of the Biblical miracles. He had what he believed was a sane and rational explanation of every one of them, and he loved to teach his learning to the less fortunate.
I have said a good deal about him in my books. In one of themⒶtextual note I have told how he brought the murderer of his colored mateⒶtextual note to trial in the Chincha IslandsⒺexplanatory note before the assembled captains of the ships in port, and how when sentence had been passed he drew the line there. He had intended to capture and execute the murderer all by himself, but had been persuaded by the captains to let them try him with theⒶtextual note due formalitiesⒶtextual note, and [begin page 193] under the forms of law. He had yielded that much, though most reluctantly, but when the captains proposed to do the executing also, that was too much for Wakeman, and he struck. He hanged the man himself. He put the noose around the murderer’s neck, threw the bight of the line over the limb of a tree, and made his last moments a misery to him by reading him nearly into premature death with random and irrelevant chapters from the Bible.
He was a most winning and delightful creature. When he was fifty-three years old he started from a New England port, master of a great clipper ship bound around the Horn for San Francisco, and he was not aware that he had a passenger, but he was mistaken as to that. He had never had a love passage, but he was to have one now. When he was out from port a few weeks he was prowling about some remote corner of his ship, by way of inspection, when he came across a beautiful girl, twenty-four or twenty-five years old, prettily clothed and lying asleep with one plump arm under her neck. He stopped in his tracks and stood and gazed,Ⓐtextual note enchanted. Then he said,
“It’s an angel—that’s what it is. It’s an angel. When it opens its eyes, if they are blue I’ll marry it.”
The eyes turned out to be blue, and the pair were married when they reached San Francisco. The girl was to have taught school there.Ⓐtextual note She had her appointment in her pocket—but the Captain saw to it that that arrangement did not materialize. He built a little house in Oakland—ostensibly a house, but really it was a ship, and had all a ship’s appointments, binnacle, scuppers, and everything else—and there he and his little wife lived an ideal life during the intervals that intervened between his voyages. They were a devoted pair, and worshipedⒶtextual note each other. By and by there were two little girls, and then the nautical paradise was completeⒺexplanatory note.
When the Captain told me about that first encounter with his passenger he got out the pictures of his family, and he had previously described them, in the extravagant way which was natural to him, as being beautiful beyond the power of words to describe; but this time he had not overstatedⒶtextual note the case. The trio really were beautiful beyond the power of words to describe, and also sweet and winning beyond expression.
Captain Ned Wakeman was honored and beloved by San Franciscans as not many men have been honored and loved. He met with reverses, and when he died he left his family in straitenedⒶtextual note circumstances. I was living in Hartford at the time, and some one in San Francisco wrote me and said that as I was known to be an old and warm friend of the Captain it was desired that I should write a paragraph for publication in the Alta California Ⓐtextual note, proposing a subscription of several thousand dollars for the benefit of his family. I did it, of course. I do not now remember what the proposed sum was, but Ralston, the banker, took the matter up and raised it in an hourⒺexplanatory note. It was good evidence of the respect and affection in which the veteran was held.
Captain Wakeman had a fine large imagination, and he once told me of a visit which he had made to heaven. I kept it in my mind, and a month or two later I put it on paper—this was in the first quarter of 1868, I think. It made a small book of about forty [begin page 194] thousand words, and I called it “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” Five or six years afterward I showed the manuscriptⒶtextual note to Howells and he said, “PublishⒶtextual note it.”Ⓔexplanatory note
But I didn’t.Ⓐtextual note I had turned it into a burlesque of “The Gates Ajar,” a book whichⒶtextual note had imagined a mean little ten-centⒶtextual note heavenⒺexplanatory note about the size of Rhode Island—aⒶtextual note heaven large enough to accommodate about a tenth of 1 per centⒶtextual note of the Christian billions who had died in the past nineteen centuries. I raised the limit; I built a properly and rationally stupendous heaven, and augmented its Christian population to 10 per cent of the contents of the modern cemeteries; also, as a volunteer kindness I let in a tenth of 1 per cent of theⒶtextual note pagans who had died during the preceding eons—a liberty which was not justifiable, because those people had no business there; but as I had merely done it in pity, and out of kindness, I allowed them to stay. Toward the end of the book my heaven grew to such inconceivable dimensions on my hands that I ceased to apply poor little million-mile measurements to its mighty territories, and measured them by light-years only! and not only that, but a million of them linked together in a stretch.*
In the thirty-eight years which have since elapsed I have taken out that rusty old manuscript several timesⒶtextual note and examined it with the idea of printing it, but I always concluded to let it rest. However, I mean to put it into this Autobiography now.† It is not likely to see the light for fifty years, yetⒺexplanatory note, and at that time I shall have been so long under the sod that I shan’tⒶtextual note care about the results.
I used to talk to Twichell about Wakeman, there in Hartford, thirty years ago and more, and by and by a curious thing happened. Twichell went off on a vacation, and as usual he followed his vacation-custom—that is to say, he traveled under an alias, so that he could associate with all kinds of disreputable characters and have a good time, and nobody be embarrassed by his presence, since they wouldn’t know that he was a clergyman. He took a Pacific mail ship and started South for the Isthmus. Passenger traffic in that line had ceased almost entirely. Twichell found but one other passenger on board. HeⒶtextual note noticed that that other passenger was not a saint, so he went to foregatheringⒶtextual note with him at once, of course. After that passenger had delivered himself of about six majestically and picturesquely profaneⒶtextual note remarks Twichell (alias Peters) said,
“Could it be, byⒶtextual note chance, that you are Captain Ned Wakeman of San Francisco?”
His guess was right, and the two men were inseparableⒶtextual note during the rest of the voyage. One day Wakeman asked Peters-Twichell if he had ever
read the Bible. Twichell said a number of
things in reply—things of a rambling and non-committal character, but, taken in the
sum, they left the impression that Twichell—wellⒶtextual note, never mind the impression; suffice it that Wakeman set himself the task of persuading
Twichell to read that book. He also set
himself the task of teaching Twichell how to understand the miracles. He expounded
to him,Ⓐtextual note among other miracles, the adventure of Isaac with the prophets of Baal. Twichell
could have told him that it wasn’t
Isaac, but that wasn’t Twichell’s game,
*“Light-year.” This is without doubt the most stupendous and impressive phrase that exists in any language. It is restricted to astronomy. It describes the distance which light, moving at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, travels in our year of fifty-two weeks.Ⓐtextual note
†Three hours later. I have just burned the closing two-thirds of it. M.T.Ⓐtextual note [begin page 195] and he didn’t make the correction. It was a delicious story, and it is delightful to hear Twichell tell it. I have printed it in full in one of my booksⒺexplanatory note—I don’t remember which one.
Perhaps these prefatoryⒶtextual note words will answer well enough as an introduction to that extract from Wakeman’s letter to Twichell which I mentioned a while ago. I shall not meddle with Captain Wakeman’s spelling and construction, but putⒶtextual note in the extract exactly as it came from his pen.
Christmas day. Cal.
Brooklyn, East OaklandⒶtextual note
Rev. Joseph. H. Twichell. Sir—last Eve right in the Midst of Enjoying all the pleasure there is or can be, round the Christmas tree that unlike any other Tree I Ever see, Bears Fruit in Every Clime which is the finest and the greatest variety and of Most Excellent flavour that I ever knew, it is a Golden fruit of a Devoted Mothers Love and Effection towards five of the Most Beautiful Children you ever see, and in effect far excells any other Tree there is in the world, as I was enjoying, hugely the happy emotions of the Bigger Children as they with difficulty restrained their Joyish feelings, as they Plucked the fruit thatⒶtextual note God had sent them and turning towards their mother with all the tenderest words of Love and Effection and with Eyes that was beaming of what my Poor Pensel cannot Portray, whilst the little ones ran Perfectly frantic with Joy BtueenⒶtextual note the Tree and ma-ma Lap, and I was enjoying in a cosy Parlor of our little Hut, that which filled me with feelings of not only Present but Past, it was in watching that heavenly Smile which now and again Broke out in a hearty Girlish Laugh on the most Beatic Countinance of a Mother 40 years old that I Ever see, just at this time your letter was put into my hands, the Perusal of which I can assure you added much to my unbounded pleasure to hear from you so soon and from my old friend Don Carlos Flucha which Brought Back Volumes of Pleasant RemissisesⒶtextual note, all Bound in Gilt, any one of which were in the hand of our Mutual friend Mark Twain would make a Small Book Bound in Calf.
Chapter XXXI, where we quoted . . . a wronged and grieving western girl] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 18 June 1906. Like the earlier reference to “Chapter XLI” (AD, 27 Aug 1906), this mention of a chapter number has not been explained.
Soldier Boy’s story] “A Horse’s Tale,” discussed in the note at 189.43–190.4.
your story of the poor dog] “A Dog’s Tale,” which appeared in Harper’s Monthly in December 1903 (SLC 1903f).
(Mrs) Lillian R. Beardsley] Lillian Robinson Beardsley (1867–1925) was born in Coventry, Connecticut; her husband was a clerk in a custom house (Rasmussen 2013, letter 165).
The “Horse’s Tale” . . . distributed abroad in Spain] Clemens began “A Horse’s Tale” in September 1905 at the request of the actress and animal rights activist Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932), who wrote:
I have lain awake nights very often wondering if I dare ask you to write a story of an old horse that is finally given over to the bull-ring. The story you would write would do more good than all the laws we are trying to have made and enforced for the prevention of cruelty to animals in Spain. We would translate and circulate the story in that country. (Fiske to SLC, 15? Sept 1905, MTB, 3:1245–46)
“I shall certainly write the story,” Clemens replied, and it was soon written—“not manufactured calmly but with an eight-day drive & rush,” as he told Clara. “For an 8-day job it isn’t a bad tale. Profitable, too—an average of $700 a day—for it is to go into the magazine—Jan. & Feb. numbers of Harper’s” (18 Sept 1905 to Fiske, CU-MARK; 1 Oct 1905 to CC, photocopy in CU-MARK; 6 Oct 1905 to CC, CU-MARK). Publication in Harper’s Monthly was delayed to August and September of 1906; the story was reprinted as a book in 1907 (see AD, 17 July 1906, note at 145.36–146.2). No Spanish translation or printing has been found, although Mrs. Fiske apparently “had thousands of ‘The Horse’s Prayer’ [sic] printed on water-proof paper and distributed” in Cuba (W.C.T.U. 1913, 205; SLC 1906h, 1907b).
editor of Harper’s Bazar projected a scheme for a composite story . . . would take an interest in it or not] Elizabeth Jordan (1867–1947) was the editor in charge of Harper’s Bazar, but it was Howells who initiated the idea for the collaborative novel The Whole Family. Serialized from December 1907 to November 1908, it almost realized an interest Howells and Clemens had shared for many years. In 1876 they planned a “Blindfold Novelette”—or “Skeleton Novelette”—in which several writers would independently work up a story from the same basic outline and publish the results serially in the Atlantic Monthly, then edited by Howells. In April 1876 Clemens wrote out his treatment of the plot, which he called “A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage,” and eventually handed it in to Howells. It remained unpublished, however, because Howells could not persuade enough authors to join the scheme. Clemens nevertheless couldn’t “seem to give up that idea,” as he told Howells in 1879, and in 1893 he wrote Olivia, “I mean to change the plan of the skeleton novelettes, & throw in a new detail or two which will be an improvement, I think. Pity, too; for if I kept to the old plan, my story is already written, & lies in pigeonholes at home” (15 Apr 1879 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880; 20 Oct 1893 to OLC, photocopy in CU-MARK). In May 1906, more than twenty years after their first discussions, Howells pitched The Whole Family to editor Jordan, offering to contribute the chapter in the persona of “the Father” and suggesting that Clemens “do the Small Boy” (Howells 1928, 2:224; June Howard 2001, 1, 13–15).
Mr. Howells began the composite tale . . . Thus far, the boy has not applied to me] Clemens at first consented to contribute to The Whole Family, telling Jordan that the idea was “excellent” but that he would first need to see some of the other authors’ installments (notes by Lyon on Jordan to SLC, 29 May 1906, CU-MARK). Howells’s chapter was dispatched to him, as well as the second chapter—“The Maiden Aunt”—written by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930), a widely published author of novels and tales of New England life. But inspiration did not strike, and on 4 August Clemens resigned his charge. Jordan begged him to leave the matter open, however, and in December 1906 Harper’s Bazar was still advertising Mark Twain as one of the authors of The Whole Family (SLC 2001, 70–75; 4 Aug 1906 to Jordan, CU-MARK; Jordan to SLC, 10 Aug 1906, CU-MARK; June Howard 2001, 16–17).
letters which were handed to me by a neighbor yesterday . . . letter No. 1] These semiliterate letters were shown to Clemens in August 1906 by Sumner B. Pearmain (1859–1941), a Boston stockbroker and Clemens’s neighbor in Dublin, New Hampshire (Roswell F. Phelps 1941; Lyon 1906, entries for 17 June and 29 Aug). Pearmain had excised the names of the writer (Jennie Allen) and the addressee (Anne Stockbridge). For the complete story, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 5 October 1906.
Shevyott] That is, cheviot, a kind of wool cloth.
passy menterry] That is, passementerie, decorative trimming or edging.
Captain Ned Wakeman . . . I made two voyages with him, and we became fast friends] Edgar Wakeman (1818–75), once described by Clemens as “a splendidly uncultured old sailor, but in his own opinion a thinker by divine right,” was born not at sea (as Clemens claims at 192.24), but in Westport, Connecticut (24 Apr 1901 to Phelps, CtY-BR). He went to sea at the age of fourteen, and from 1850 was a steamship captain based in San Francisco. Clemens made just one journey with Wakeman, in 1866, on the America going from California to Nicaragua on the way to New York, and saw him thereafter only once, in 1868. But Wakeman was to inspire a whole crew of fictional or semifictional sea captains in Mark Twain’s works: Captain Waxman in his December 1866 letters to the San Francisco Alta California, Captain Ned Blakely in chapter 50 of Roughing It, Hurricane Jones in “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion” (1877–78), the Admiral in “The Refuge of the Derelicts” (1905–6), and Eli Stormfield, the hero of the long-gestating “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” (see the note at 193.39–194.2). In December 1872 Clemens was instrumental in a successful campaign to relieve the ailing seaman’s financial distress; and he tried to help Wakeman find a publisher for his book, eventually issued posthumously as The Log of an Ancient Mariner (Edgar Wakeman 1878, 21, 30–31, 119–37; N&J1, 241–43; RI 1993, 331, 677–78 n. 331.10; FM, 157–248).
he brought the murderer of his colored mate to trial in the Chincha Islands] Clemens’s notebook entry made during his 1866 voyage with Wakeman reads “Hanging the negro in the Chinchas.” This alludes to an incident of March 1858 when Wakeman was commanding the clipper ship Adelaide, anchored at Elide Island, off Mexico. A black sailor, William Williams, was accused of murdering the second mate, a white man; Wakeman was part of a group of ships’ officers and crewmen who sat in judgment on Williams and hanged him. (The Chinchas, off Peru, are guano islands, like Elide Island.) Clemens used the same phrase in an August 1868 letter to the Chicago Republican. Four years later, adapting Wakeman’s experience in chapter 50 of Roughing It, Clemens swapped the ethnicities of the accused and the dead man. Thereafter, he consistently recalled that Wakeman “hung the mate . . . for killing the negro,” rather than the other way around (18 Mar 1874 to OC, L6, 82–84). Wakeman was noted for his involvements with summary justice; he was a prominent vigilante in San Francisco’s early days, and was remembered in connection with more than one lynching ( N&J1, 253, 336; SLC 1868b; RI 1993, 677 n. 331.10; “Tragedy at Elide Island. Homicide of Thomas P. Lewis and Lynching of William Williams,” San Francisco Bulletin, 12 Apr 1858, 3; “Coroner’s Inquest,” San Francisco Alta California, 14 June 1851, 4; “Our Ocean Commandery, No. 3. High-Handed Work of Capt. Wakeman,” Boston Journal, 2 Aug 1890, 5).
When he was fifty-three . . . then the nautical paradise was complete] Wakeman was thirty-six when he met and married Mary E. Lincoln, one of the passengers aboard his ship, the SS New Orleans, en route from San Francisco to Panama. By his own account in The Log of an Ancient Mariner, his words on seeing the young lady sleeping in an armchair on deck were: “ ‘Gentlemen,’ I replied, ‘that is my wife; if, when she opens her eyes, she be not swivel-eyed and with all her head-rails rotted out, I shall marry that girl, if I kill eleven men before breakfast to get up an appetite.’ ” They were married on 24 December 1854. In 1862 Wakeman built with his own hands the house in Brooklyn, California (later part of Oakland), where Mary and he would raise five children (“Births, Marriages and Deaths in California,” New York Times, 31 Jan 1855, 1; Edgar Wakeman 1878, 171–76, 227–28; Robert P. Wakeman 1900, 292; Bishop 1877, 450).
when he died he left his family . . . Ralston, the banker, took the matter up and raised it in an hour] In 1872, when Clemens’s help was enlisted, Captain Wakeman had not died, but had suffered a disabling stroke. Clemens’s public appeal for $5,000 to pay off the mortgage on the Wakemans’ house was published on the front page of the San Francisco Alta California on 14 December 1872. The money was raised in a few days, thanks to the energetic solicitation of H. D. Bacon; banker William C. Ralston, mentioned by Clemens, also contributed (Ray B. Browne 1961, 322–24; “Success of the Wakeman Subscription,” San Francisco Bulletin, 27 Dec 1872, 3).
he once told me of a visit which he had made to heaven . . . Howells and he said, “Publish it.”] In 1906 Clemens had been working on “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” for at least thirty-seven years, off and on, and considering (and rejecting) publication for nearly as long. Clemens said in an August 1868 letter to the Chicago Republican that he had heard Wakeman tell “his remarkable dream” while visiting with him in Panama City, sometime in late July (SLC 1868b). This precludes his having started to write his own version “in the first quarter of 1868,” but the first quarter of 1869 is plausible. Clemens worked on the tale fitfully until March 1878, at which time Howells urged publication of a newly reconceived version (with the addition, he suggested, of a preface by the dean of Westminster). In 1878–81, the bulk of the story (chapters 3 and 4) was written. Sometime in the 1880s, according to Joe Goodman, Clemens showed him those chapters and expressed the fear that publishing the story “might hurt his literary reputation; that the public wasn’t yet advanced enough for that sort of thing” (Goodman to Tufts, 12 July 1908, CU-MARK). The manuscript stayed “pigeonholed” until 1905–6, when Clemens added chapters 1 and 2, along with other passages whose intended position within the whole is unclear (23 Mar 1878 to OC, Letters 1876–1880; Baetzhold and McCullough 1995, 129–38).
“The Gates Ajar,” a book which had imagined a mean little ten-cent heaven] The Gates Ajar, by Massachusetts author Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911), was published in November 1868 and, according to Clemens, went “straight to the hearts of all the sentimental people with limited imaginations in the land” (SLC 1901–2 ). The afterlife is portrayed in this novel as an extension and perfection of earthly life—a conception that was criticized as unorthodox and materialistic; Bret Harte sneered, in a review which Clemens reprinted in the Buffalo Express, that Phelps’s heaven was “a place where little boys find the balloons that they lose on earth” (Harte 1869a, 293). The Gates Ajar was a tremendous commercial success, selling nearly 70,000 copies in its first decade and spawning three sequels (Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 1964, 124–25; BAL, 8:20865; 25 Aug 1869 to Stoddard, n. 2, Letters NP1; “The Great Novel of the Year!” Publishers’ Weekly, 13 Oct 1877, 449).
I mean to put it into this Autobiography now.† It is not likely to see the light for fifty years, yet] On the typescript of this dictation Paine noted, “He changed his mind a year later—Stormfield was published both in journal & book form in 1907–8.” This would not necessarily preclude the text’s incorporation into the Autobiography; but in subsequent Autobiographical Dictations, Clemens’s references to “Captain Stormfield” assume that the reader has not read (or indeed heard of) it. The inference must be that at some point he rescinded his order to insert it; consequently it is not included in this edition (for the fullest text of “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” see Baetzhold and McCullough 1995, 129–88). At the time he made the present dictation, it is clear that Clemens had not decided what to do with “Stormfield.” The footnote in which he says he has “just burned the closing two-thirds of it” is contradicted by the next day’s dictation (AD, 30 Aug 1906). His intention as declared here to let the work remain unpublished “for fifty years, yet” is at odds with the fact that he offered it at this time to George Harvey as an article for Harper’s Monthly. Harvey rejected the story as too controversial for religious sensibilities, and mildly scolded Clemens: “I’m sure it wouldn’t do to print it now and I guess you’re sure too, if you’ll tell the truth.” Yet a year later Harvey published it in Harper’s Monthly after all, and in 1909 the same text became Mark Twain’s last published book (Harvey to SLC, 7 Sept 1906, NNC; SLC 1907–8, 1909b).
His guess was right, and the two men were inseparable . . . I have printed it in full in one of my books] In August 1874 Twichell traveled from New York to Peru, accompanying his friend Yung Wing, who was on a diplomatic mission. On 22 August he wrote Clemens from a steamship approaching Panama that he had met Captain Wakeman on board (CU-MARK):
What a delicious old misanthrope he is—what an entertaining denunciator! And, oh Mark, what a titanic commentator on the Old Testament!! . . . The thought that you had heard the same fascinating and unspeakably amusing talk, added to my relish of it. But I mean to tell him before I say goodbye, or when I say goodbye that I am a minister. I think it will tickle him to recall certain of his remarks on the profession.
Drawing on Twichell’s account of his conversations with Wakeman, Clemens worked up the rationalizing exposition of 1 Kings 18 (Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal), which he attributed to Captain Hurricane Jones in the second chapter of “Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion.” This sketch, first published in the Atlantic Monthly, was included in the collection The Stolen White Elephant, Etc. in 1882 (Courtney 2008, 151–52; SLC 1877–78, 1882b, 36–105).
Source documents.
Beardsley to SLC MS letter, Lillian R. Beardsley to SLC, 25 August 1906: ‘Sound Beach . . . New York City.’ (189.9–36).Wakeman transcript MS transcript by SLC of Edgar Wakeman to Joseph H. Twichell, 25 December 1874: ‘Christmas day . . . in Calf.’ (195.7–27).
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 1089–1105, made from Hobby’s notes, Beardsley to SLC, and Wakeman transcript and revised in pencil.
Clemens revised TS1—in pencil, unless otherwise specified in the apparatus entries. TS1 bears pencil revisions by DeVoto as well as Clemens; distinguishing these has been facilitated by collation against TS4 (which was made from TS1 in its post-Clemens but pre-DeVoto condition). Several of Clemens’s revisions are meant to obscure the names of real persons, showing that he was considering imminent publication, and are rejected.
For the letter from Lillian Beardsley, the source text is the holograph, and Hobby’s TS1 variations from her copy are not reported. For Clemens’s reply to Lillian Beardsley, no holograph survives. A manuscript copy by Lyon is in NN-BGC; this gives the same text as TS1 except for the styling of the dateline, and even this is not necessarily closer to Hobby’s copy than is TS1, which is our source text.
The originals of the letters by “Jennie Allen” (pseudonym of Grace Donworth) are no longer extant; TS1 is therefore the source text. In revising TS1, Clemens deleted from the letters the name of ‘Amy Stockbridge’ and substituted ‘Miss Blank’. It would have been possible, conceivably, to restore this name in the text, but since Clemens himself, in dictating, has called her ‘Miss Blank’ this emendation would create an awkward combination of terms. For the full story of Stockbridge (whose correct name was Anne) and these letters, see the AD of 5 October 1906 and notes.
The document here called “Wakeman transcript” is Clemens’s careful but not exact handwritten transcript of Edgar Wakeman’s Christmas 1874 letter to Twichell. Wakeman’s original letter is extant, but we base our text on the transcript, which was the copy provided to Hobby, which is the transcript.
This dictation is heavy with inserted texts, and would be still more so if Clemens’s instruction (at 194.17) to insert “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” were followed. But Clemens soon decided to publish his “Stormfield” extract separately, and his later references to it in the Autobiography suggest that it is no part thereof; see AD, 29 March 1906, note at 8.19–23; and SLC 1907–8.