From Susy’s Biography. Ⓐtextual note
Mamma has given me a very pleasant little newspaper scrap about papa, to copy. I will put it in here.
I also will insert it, because it is a part of Susy’s little book, and because it contains compliments for me from James Redpath. Compliments from Redpath were worth having.
I saw a rather disparagingⒶtextual note paragraph the other dayⒺexplanatory note that recalled an incident of the Grant obsequies. I was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel at night, when the large halls were crowded with a mob of American celebritiesⒺexplanatory note. As we were looking toward the great staircase I saw James Redpath throw a kiss to a man going up, who turned with a friendly smile and tossed back a similar salutation. “Who is that?” I asked. “That,” said Mr. Redpath, “is the man who made death easy for Gen. Grant.” “Who—Shrady or Douglas?”* “No” said our friend “it is Mr. Clemens—Mark Twain. If it had not been for him Grant’s death-bed would have been haunted by the fear of poverty for his wife and children. I wish” he added “I could tell all I know about Mark’s noble and knightly generosity. But I learned itⒶtextual note only under the seal of confidence. Mark deliberately allows men who would have driven a hard bargain with Grant to malign him when he could crush them by a simple statement. But I tell you the time will come when, if the newspaper reports of this day are read people will ask why Mark Twain was not given the chief place in the procession.Ⓐtextual note He did more than any living man to make Grant die without dread or regret. Mark is a better man than he is an author and there is no doubt,Ⓐtextual note I guess,Ⓐtextual note that he is great with his pen.” I recall this remark as I saw Mark sneeringly referred to the other day.Ⓐtextual note Ⓐtextual note
The chief ingredients of Redpath’s make-up were honesty, sincerity, kindliness, and
pluck. He wasn’t afraid. He was one of OssawatomieⒶtextual note Brown’s right-hand men in
*Physicians. S.L.C.Ⓐtextual note [begin page 256] the “bleeding Kansas”Ⓐtextual note days; he was all through that struggle. He carried his life in his hands, and from one day to another it wasn’t worth the price of a night’s lodging. He had a small body of daring men under him, and they were constantly being hunted by the “jayhawkers,”Ⓐtextual note who were pro-slaveryⒶtextual note MissouriansⒺexplanatory note, guerrillas, modern free lances——Ⓐtextual note
I saw a rather disparaging paragraph the other day] The author and exact date of this newspaper article have not been identified. The “disparaging paragraph” to which it refers, however, probably appeared in the New York Sun on 1 August 1885. It claimed that the “man heavily enriched by Grant’s death is Mark Twain,” who would earn “a quarter to one-third of a million dollars” by publishing the Personal Memoirs. It said erroneously that the profits would be split evenly with Grant’s heirs, but in fact Webster and Company’s portion was only 30 percent. Clemens gave various estimates of the royalties paid to Mrs. Grant. In the latest, in the Autobiographical Dictation of 1 June 1906, he claimed her total was “half a million dollars”—which would make his share about $215,000 (“Mark Twain’s Big Speculation,” Scrapbook 22:62, CU-MARK; AutoMT1 , 486–87 n. 80.35; see also AD, 2 June 1906, note at 73.24–25).
Grant obsequies. I was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel . . . mob of American celebrities] Grant’s funeral took place on 8 August 1885 in Manhattan. His coffin was escorted from City Hall north to Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson River, in a cortege of some fifty thousand dignitaries and members of the armed forces. (Grant’s body was placed in a temporary tomb in Riverside Park, but in 1897 it was moved elsewhere in the park to the large granite and marble mausoleum known as Grant’s Tomb.) Grant’s family—without his wife, who did not attend—stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where they received numerous friends and celebrities offering their condolences, including Clemens himself, who traveled to New York for the occasion (“Mighty in Death. Grant Followed to the Tomb by Thousands,” New York Express and Mail, 8 Aug 1885, Scrapbook 22:78–83, CU-MARK; 6 Aug 1885 to OLC [3rd], CU-MARK).
He was one of Ossawatomie Brown’s right-hand men in the “bleeding Kansas” days . . . “jayhawkers,” who were pro-slavery Missourians] The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which granted those two territories the right to determine their own slavery policy, led to bloody conflicts between Kansas free-state settlers and proslavery “border ruffians” from western Missouri. John Brown, who with his sons and other followers sought to defend and protect the settlers, earned the nickname “Ossawatomie” from violent skirmishes with such ruffians near the Kansas town of that name. Redpath, an ardent abolitionist, worked as a journalist in Kansas from 1855 to 1858, writing in support of the antislavery cause. For a time he published his own newspaper, the Doniphan Crusader of Freedom. In mid-1856 he interviewed Brown and briefly joined his armed band, occasionally participating in military actions. Redpath wrote a sympathetic (and consequently controversial) biography of Brown, published in 1860. “Jayhawkers” were not—as Clemens claims—proslavery. The term was actually applied to the antislavery guerrillas like Brown and his men; the proslavery “border ruffians” were also called “bushwhackers” (McKivigan 2008, 7–42, 47, 51–54; for Brown see AutoMT1 , 512–13 n. 154.27–31).
Source documents.
TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1341–42, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1341–42, revised.
NAR 24pf Galley proofs of NAR 24, typeset from the revised TS1 carbon and further revised (the same extent as NAR 24), ViU.
NAR 24 North American Review 186 (November 1907), 330: ‘Thursday . . . in here.’ (255 title–255.12); ‘The chief . . . free lances——’ (255.34–256.4).
Clemens made a few revisions on TS1 ribbon, then transferred most of them to TS1 carbon, which he further revised to create printer’s copy for an NAR installment. He first tried to modify the most complimentary remarks in the ‘newspaper scrap’ that Susy copied into her biography, then decided to omit it altogether (see the entries at 255.13–33). His one revision on NAR 24pf (the insertion of a date at 255.10) was clearly made for contemporary publication. The AD was published in NAR 24, where it was grouped with the ADs of 9 October, 16 October, and 12 October 1906, and 23 January 1907 (partial).
Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR