Authorship of the two letters concerning San Francisco sufferers traced to Miss Grace Donworth—Letter from Miss Anne Stockbridge.
Several weeks ago I injected into one of these chapters a couple of odd and comical lettersⒺexplanatory note concerning a contribution of clothing for the sufferers by the San Francisco catastrophe. The spelling was painstakingly bad, therefore suspiciously bad; but the neighbor who gave me the copies was able to vouch for their genuineness. He is a man whose word is above reproach, and so I was obliged to believe the letters genuine and I did believe it. I Ⓐtextual note was satisfied, but my mind, fussing at the matter independently while I was busy with other things, wasn’t. It disturbed me with one protest after another, until I asked my neighbor to take measures to reinforce his verification of the genuineness of the letters. He did so. He interviewed the gentleman who had furnished the copies, and he said he knew them to be genuine for his sister had given them to him with the positive assertion that they were of that character. I used one of them in a speech before the Associated Press, the other night, in New York, and in the speech I, in my turn, vouched for the [begin page 246] genuineness of the document. The speech was publishedⒺexplanatory note, and one of the results of the publication is the following letter, which arrived a day or two ago.
Stockbridge Hall
Yarmouth, Me.
Sept. 27. 1906.
My dear Mr. Clemens,
I am the “dear friend” in the letter handed to you lately by Mr. S. B. Pearmain, who tells me that the names of the sender and receiver were cut out by him. If they had not been cut out the letter would have been written by “Jennie Allen” to “Miss AnnyⒶtextual note StokbridgeⒺexplanatory note.”
When I let Mr. Pearmain have my letters, through my brother, Mr. Stockbridge of the University Club, BostonⒺexplanatory note, to show you, neither my brother nor I expected they would be published in any paper. My brother tells me that he told Mr. Pearmain that if they were to be shown to any considerable number of people it would be better to have the names suppressed. I find, however, in the issue of the New York Times for September twentieth the first letter complete with the exception of the names. I thought it was a most fitting and appropriate subject for your discussion at the Associated Press Co. dinner, but how do you think “Jennie” would like it, if she chanced to see the paper?
After the receipt of letter number two, a friend wrote asking “Jennie” to go to Maine for the summer. I am going to have a fotograf copy of that one which I should like to send to you. It is in some respects funnier than the others, and only a fotograf copy can do justice to the cacographyⒶtextual note and the ornamentation.Ⓐtextual note
I then thought I would call on “Jennie.” I had become quite interested in her, but on consulting my street directory, I was dismayed to find there was no such street in Providence.
My next shock came when I had returned to me, from the Dead Letter office, a letter addressed to “Jennie” with the remark “No such person to be found.” This happened, you understand, after I had allowed my brother to lend the letters to Mr. Pearmain. I was nowⒶtextual note thoroughly aroused, and went over my list of friends to see if any one of them could have been bright enough to write these letters which had been accepted as genuine by scores of people to whom I had read them.
At lastⒶtextual note I hit upon a ladyⒶtextual note from Machias, Maine, Miss Grace DonworthⒺexplanatory note, who had been at the “Armerry” with me while we were collecting the clothing for the Californians. She heard me read the first letter and also heard me say I had written to “Jennie.”
Also as good fortune would have it some one did call for me at the Armory who was a stranger to every one. I was not there at the time,Ⓐtextual note so you seeⒶtextual note I was deceived myself.
At first Miss Donworth was non-committal but at last acknowledged the authorship and has since sent me some notes, continuing Jennie’s story, which are irresistibly funny, and which bring in other characters such as one runs across in Maine. . . . .
Very truly yoursⒺexplanatory note,
Anne W. Stockbridge.
257 Benefit St.Ⓐtextual note
Providence, R.I.
It shows that the human race doesn’t change, but remains as easily deceived and as eager to be deceived as it always was. If I remember rightly, Chatterton deceived Horace Walpole with his Rowley inventionsⒺexplanatory note, and he would as certainly have deceived you and me with them. The Ireland forgeries were accepted by astute ShakspereanⒶtextual note scholarsⒺexplanatory note in a past generation, and their like would win the suffrage of ShakspereanⒶtextual note scholars to-dayⒶtextual note. In very truth, “Jennie’s” over-elaborated, inartistic, and unscientific forgeries ought not to have deceived anybody, for now that we know them to be fakes we promptly perceive that there is little or no plausibility about them; yet they deceived the scores of persons to whom they were shown. The Book of Mormon, engraved upon metal plates, was dug up out of the ground in some out-of-the-wayⒶtextual note corner of CanadaⒶtextual note by Joseph SmithⒺexplanatory note, a man of no repute and of no authority, and upon this extravagantly doubtful document the Mormon ChurchⒶtextual note was built, and upon it stands to-dayⒶtextual note and flourishes. “Science and Health” was sent down from heaven to Mother Eddy, after having been sent up there by Brother QuimbyⒺexplanatory note, and upon “Science and Health” stands the great and growing and prosperous Christian Science ChurchⒶtextual note to-day. Evidently one of the least difficult things in the world, to-day, is to humbug the human race.
“Jennie’s” letters are an innocent fraud, and a quite justifiable one, since they make pleasant reading and can harm no one. They are to be multiplied and a book is to be made of them. It may be that the book will prosper better as a genuine work than as a fake, and so I will keep the secret by not publishing this chapter at the present time.
Several weeks ago I injected into one of these chapters a couple of odd and comical letters] Clemens included the texts of two “odd and comical” letters in the Autobiographical Dictation of 29 August 1906.
I used one of them in a speech before the Associated Press . . . The speech was published] Clemens used the first letter in his speech at the Associated Press dinner on 19 September, which was printed in the New York Times the following day and is inserted into the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 November 1906 (“Spelling and Pictures and Twain at Dinner,” New York Times, 20 Sept 1906, 4; see AD, 2 Oct 1906, note at 235.33–34, and AD, 19 Nov 1906).
Miss Anny Stokbridge] Anne W. Stockbridge (b. 1854), a music teacher, was the principal of Stockbridge Hall, a girls’ boarding school in Yarmouth, Maine ( Freeport Census 1900, 590:21A; Patterson 1908, 96).
Mr. Stockbridge of the University Club, Boston] William H. Stockbridge (b. 1844), a music teacher ( Freeport Census 1900, 590:5B). The University Club was an athletic and social club founded in 1891.
Miss Grace Donworth] Donworth (1857–1945) was the historian of the Machias chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution ( Machias Census 1900, 602:10A; D.A.R. Directory 1908, 45; Flagg 1966, 97–98).
Very truly yours] In the top margin of Stockbridge’s letter Clemens wrote, “Tell her I will find a publisher when I get to New York.” He replied to her on 4 October, offering his assistance (NN-BGC):
Dear Miss Stockbridge (if she really exists):
257 Benefit Street (if there is any such place)
Yes, I should like a copy of that other letter. This whole fake is delightful, & I tremble with fear that you are a fake yourself & that I am your guileless prey. (But never mind, it isn’t any matter)
Now as to publication. I shall be going home to New York 8 days hence—
21 Fifth Avenue
Suppose you send me, there, type-written copies of as many of “Jennie’s” letters as Miss Donworth has thus far forged, & I will show them to a magazine editor & put him in correspondence with you if he thinks well of them.
For they ought to be serialized in a magazine first.
I think that the swindle that they are genuine ought to be maintained. This is a sin, but that is nothing. The newspapers will attack their genuineness, & this will furnish good & cheap advertising. The Christian publisher likes that.
Sincerely Yours
S. L. Clemens.
In 1907 the “Jennie Allen” letters ran serially in the Ladies’ Home Journal; Donworth admitted authorship only when she published them in book form the following year ( MTB, 3:1318–20; Donworth 1908).
Chatterton deceived Horace Walpole with his Rowley inventions] Thomas Chatterton (1752–70) was born in Bristol and grew up in relative poverty. At the age of sixteen he began forging manuscripts in a pseudo-medieval diction. Seeking the patronage of Horace Walpole (1717–97), the fourth earl of Orford and famed man of letters, Chatterton sent him a supposed treatise on early English painters, ostensibly the work of a fifteenth-century poet-monk named Thomas Rowley. Initially, Walpole was taken in, asking to see the poems; but further reflection and advice from literary friends convinced him of the fraud. Chatterton continued to create Rowley’s works, but died in 1770 of an overdose of arsenic and laudanum; he was not yet eighteen. In the decade after his death, his “Rowley poems” began to be published and admired; immediately the question of their authenticity sparked a public controversy, in the course of which his fakery was proved, and his precocity acknowledged.
The Ireland forgeries were accepted by astute Shaksperean scholars] William-Henry Ireland (1775–1835) was the illegitimate son of a Shakespeare-worshiping London artisan. To please his father, and in emulation of Chatterton (see the note at 247.2–3), Ireland began in 1794 to produce forged documents, supposedly in Shakespeare’s hand, which he claimed were from a cache of the playwright’s personal papers. Ireland’s early attempts were modest—a deed and a promissory note—but soon he was forging letters and dramatic manuscripts, including the complete play Vortigern. Ireland’s father exhibited his son’s “finds” to literary gentlemen, many of whom (including James Boswell) signed a “Certificate of Belief” in their genuineness. Upon publication of a collection of these papers in 1795, the fraud was exposed by Edmond Malone, the preeminent Shakespearean scholar of the age. Acclaim turned to abuse; Vortigern was “howled off the stage”; and the elder Ireland died in 1800, still refusing to accept that his son’s documents were forgeries (Schoenbaum 1991, 132–67).
Book of Mormon, engraved upon metal plates . . . by Joseph Smith] Smith (1805–44) claimed to have found the metal plates, engraved with ancient characters he called “Reformed Egyptian,” after seeing their location in several visions. He translated them by means of “seer” stones to create the Book of Mormon. The plates had been buried under a stone near Manchester, in western New York State ( RI 1993, 601 n. 107.5–10). Clemens dictated “the State of New York” but later revised that to “Canada” on the typescript. The reason for this is unclear.
Brother Quimby] Phineas Quimby (1802–66), the first practitioner of mental healing in the United States, used hypnotism to treat Eddy in the 1860s. From his teaching she derived her belief in the power of the mind to cure illness, later developing his ideas into the religious doctrine that became the foundation of the Church of Christ, Scientist (see AD, 22 June 1906, note at 136.10–12).
Source documents.
Stockbridge to SLC (incomplete) MS letter, Anne Stockbridge to SLC, 27 September 1906, revised: ‘Stockbridge . . . street in’ (246.3–24).TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1314–18, made from Hobby’s notes and Stockbridge to SLC and revised.
TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1314–18, revised.
Of the letter from Stockbridge, a single sheet (four pages, the first half of the letter) survives, to which Clemens added the page numbers ‘3’ and ‘4’. The second leaf is now missing; the revised TS1 ribbon and TS1 carbon are therefore the sole source of the second half. Clemens also wrote across the first page, ‘Tell her I will find a publisher when I get to New York’ and ‘You have seen those queer letters, Mary: well, this is the sequel—& not unfunny.’ The first remark was an instruction to Lyon, who took down his dictated reply to Stockbridge on 4 October (see the explanatory note at 246.43). The second remark was addressed to Mary Rogers (Henry Huttleston Rogers’s daughter-in-law), to whom Clemens evidently forwarded Stockbridge’s letter. Clemens revised TS1 ribbon, then Lyon transferred his revisions to TS1 carbon, which he did not further revise. At the top of TS1 carbon Clemens wrote, ‘Not usable now’.