Mr. Clemens’s early experiments with mesmerismⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
An excitingⒶtextual note event in ourⒶtextual note village (Hannibal),Ⓐtextual note was the arrival of the mesmerizer. I think the year was 1850. As to that I am not sure, but I know the month—it was MayⒺexplanatory note; that detail has survived the wear of fifty-fiveⒶtextual note years. A pair of connectedⒶtextual note little incidents of that month have served to keep the memory of it green for me all this time; incidents of no consequence, and not worth embalming, yet my memory has preserved them carefully [begin page 298] and flung away things of real value to give them space and make them comfortable. The truth is, a person’s memory has no more sense than his conscience, and no appreciation whateverⒶtextual note of values and proportions. However, never mind those trifling incidents; my subject is the mesmerizer, now.
He advertised his show, and promised marvels. Admission as usual: twenty-fiveⒶtextual note cents, children and negroes half price. The village had heard of mesmerism, in a general way, but had not encountered it yet. Not many people attended, the first night, but next day they had so many wonders to tell that everybody’s curiosity was fired, and after that for a fortnight the magician had prosperous times. I was fourteen or fifteen years old—the age at which a boy is willing to endureⒶtextual note all things, suffer all things,Ⓐtextual note short of death by fire, if thereby he may be conspicuous and show off before the public; and so, when I saw the “subjects” perform their foolish antics on the platform and make the people laugh and shout and admire, I had a burning desire to be a subject myself. Every night, for three nights, I sat in the row of candidates on the platform, and held the magic metal disk in the palm of my hand, and gazed at it and tried to get sleepy, but it was a failure; I remained wide awake, and had to retireⒶtextual note defeated, like the majority. Also, I had to sit there and be gnawed with envy of Hicks, our journeymanⒺexplanatory note; I had to sit there and see him scamper and jump when Simmons the enchanter exclaimed “See the snake!Ⓐtextual note see the snake!” and hear him say, “My,Ⓐtextual note how beautiful!”Ⓐtextual note in response to the suggestion that he was observing a splendid sunset; and so on—the whole insane business. I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t applaud; it filled me with bitterness to have others do it,Ⓐtextual note and to have people make a hero of Hicks, and crowd around him when the show was over, and ask him for more and more particulars of the wonders he had seen in his visions, and manifest in many waysⒶtextual note that they were proud to be acquainted with him. Hicks—the idea! I couldn’t stand it; I was getting boiled to death in my own bile.
On the fourth night temptation came, and I was not strong enough to resist. When I had gazed at the disk a while I pretended to be sleepy, and began to nod. Straightway came the professor and made passes over my head and down my body and legs and arms, finishing each pass with a snap of his fingers in the air,Ⓐtextual note to discharge the surplus electricity;Ⓐtextual note then he began to “draw” me with the disk, holding it in his fingers and telling me I could not take my eyes off it, try as I might; so I rose slowly, bentⒶtextual note and gazing, and followed that disk all over the place, just as I had seen the others do. Then I was put through the other paces. Upon suggestion I fled from snakes; passed buckets at a fire; became excited over hot steamboat-races; made love to imaginary girls and kissed them; fished from the platform and landed mud-cats that outweighedⒶtextual note me—and so on, all the customary marvels. But not in the customary way. I was cautious at first, and watchful, being afraid the professor would discover that I was an impostor and drive me from the platform in disgrace; but as soon as I realized that I was not in danger, I set myself the task of terminating Hicks’s usefulness as a subject, and of usurping his place.
It was a sufficiently easy task. Hicks was born honest; I, without that incumbrance—so some people said. Hicks saw what he saw, and reported accordingly; I saw more than was visible, and added to itⒶtextual note such details as could help. Hicks had no imagination, I had [begin page 299] a double supply. He was born calm, I was born excited. NoⒶtextual note vision could start a rapture in him, and he was constipated as to language, anyway; but if I saw a vision I emptied the dictionary onto it and lost the remnant of my mind into the bargain.
At the end of myⒶtextual note first half hourⒶtextual note Hicks was a thing of the past, a fallen hero, a broken idol, and I knew it and was glad, and said in my heart, Success to crime! Hicks could never have been mesmerized to the point where he could kiss an imaginary girl in public, or a real one either, but I was competent. Whatever Hicks had failed in, I made it a point to succeed in, let the cost be what it might, physically or morally. He had shown several bad defects, and I had made a note of them. For instance, if the magician asked “What do you see?” and left him to invent a vision for himself, Hicks was dumb and blind, he couldn’t see a thing nor say a word, whereas the magician soon found that when it came to seeing visions of a stunning and marketable sort I could get along better without hisⒶtextual note help than with it. Then there was another thing: Hicks wasn’t worth a tallow dip on muteⒶtextual note mental suggestion. Whenever Simmons stood behind him and gazed at the back of his skull and tried to drive a mental suggestion into it, Hicks sat with vacant face, and never suspected. If he had been noticing, he could have seen by the rapt faces of the audience that something was going on behind his back that required a response. Inasmuch as I was an impostor I dreaded to have this test put upon me, for I knew the professor would be “willing” me to do something, and as I couldn’t know what it was, I should be exposed and denounced. However, when my time came, I took my chance. I perceived by the tense and expectant faces of the people that Simmons was behind me willing me with all his might. I tried my best to imagine what he wanted, but nothing suggested itself. I felt ashamedⒶtextual note and miserable, then. I believed that the hour of my disgrace was comeⒶtextual note, and that in another moment I should go out of that place disgraced. I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but my next thought was, not how I could win the compassion of kindly hearts by going out humbly and in sorrow for my misdoings, but how I could go out most sensationally and spectacularly.
There was a rusty and empty old revolver lying on the table, among the “properties” employed in the performances. On May-day, two or three weeks before, there had been a celebration by the schools, and I had had a quarrel with aⒶtextual note big boy who was the school-bully, and I had not come out of it with credit. That boy was now seated in the middle of the house, half wayⒶtextual note down the mainⒶtextual note aisle. I crept stealthily and impressively toward the table, with a dark and murderous scowl on my face, copied from a pirateⒶtextual note romance, seizedⒶtextual note the revolver suddenly, flourished it,Ⓐtextual note shouted the bully’s nameⒶtextual note, jumped off the platform, andⒶtextual note made a rush for him and chased him outⒶtextual note of the houseⒶtextual note before the paralysedⒶtextual note people could interfere to save him. There was a storm of applause, and the magician, addressing the house, said, mostⒶtextual note impressively—
“That you may know how really remarkable this is, and how wonderfully developed a subject we have in this boy, I assure you that without a single spoken word to guide him he has carried out what I mentally commanded him to do, to the minutest detail. I could have stopped him at a moment in his vengeful career by mere exertion of my will, therefore the poor fellow who has escaped was at no time in danger.”
[begin page 300] So I was not in disgrace. I returned to the platform a hero, and happier than I have ever been in this world since. As regards mental suggestion, my fears of it were gone. I judged that in case I failed to guess what the professor might be willing me to do, I could count on putting up something that would answer just as well. I was right, and exhibitions of unspoken suggestion became a favorite with the public. Whenever I perceived that I was being willed to do something I got up and did something—anything that occurred to me—and the magician, not being a fool, always ratified it. When people asked me, “How can you tell what he is willing you to do?” I said, “It’s just as easy,” and they always said admiringly, “Well, it beats me how you can do it.”
Hicks was weak in another detail. When the professor made passes over him and said “his whole body is without sensation now—come forward and test him, ladies and gentlemen” the ladies and gentlemen always complied eagerly, and stuck pins into Hicks, and if they went deep Hicks was sure to wince, then that poor professor would have to explain that Hicks “wasn’t sufficiently under the influence.” But I didn’t wince; I only suffered, and shed tears on the inside. The miseries that a conceited boy will endure to keep up his “reputation!” And so will a conceited man; I know it in my own person, and have seen it in a hundred thousand others. That professor ought to have protected me, and I often hoped he would, when the tests were unusually severe, but he didn’t. It may be that he was deceived as well as the others, though I did not believe it norⒶtextual note think it possible. Those were dear good people, but they must have carried simplicityⒶtextual note and credulity to the limit. They would stick a pin in my arm and bear on it until they drove it a third of its length in, and then be lost in wonder that by a mere exercise of will-power the professor could turn my arm to iron and make it insensible to pain. Whereas it was not insensible at all; I was suffering agonies of pain.
After that fourth night, that proud night, that triumphant night, I was the only subject. Simmons invited no more candidates to the platform. I performed alone, every night, the rest of the fortnight. In the beginning of the second week I conquered the last doubters. Up to that time a dozen wise old heads, the intellectual aristocracy of the town, had held out, as implacable unbelievers. IⒶtextual note was as hurt by this as if I were engaged in some honest occupation. There is nothing surprising about this. Human beings feel dishonor the most, sometimes, when they most deserve it. That handful of over-wise old gentlemen kept on shaking their heads all the first week, and saying they had seen no marvels thereⒶtextual note that could not have beenⒶtextual note produced by collusion; and they were pretty vain of their unbelief, too, and liked to show it and air it, and be superior to the ignorant and the gullible. Particularly old Dr. Peake, who was the ringleader of the irreconcileables, and very formidable; for he was an F. F. V., he was learned, white-haired and venerable, nobly and richly clad in the fashions of an earlier and a courtlier day, he was large and stately, and he not only seemed wise, but was what he seemed, in that regard. He had great influence, and his opinion upon any matter was worthⒶtextual note much more than that of any other person in the communityⒺexplanatory note. When I conquered him, at last, I knew I was undisputed master of the field; and now, after more than fifty years, I acknowledge, with a few dry old tears, that I rejoiced without shameⒺexplanatory note.
Mr. Clemens’s early experiments with mesmerism] The texts of 1, 2, and 3 December were not in fact dictated, but were written out in Clemens’s normal longhand in 1903 and inserted here in 1906.
I think the year was 1850. As to that I am not sure . . . it was May] Clemens may be describing events that occurred in May 1847, when two mesmerists named Sparhawk and Layton performed in Hannibal, conducting “experiments” every night for two weeks. According to the Hannibal Gazette, their “subject (who resides in the city) seemed fully under the magnetic influence.” The performances were also described in a letter written by “Lorio” (probably Orion Clemens) to the St. Louis Reveille, published on 20 May (see Scharnhorst 2010, 279–80, which quotes the Gazette).
Hicks, our journeyman] Urban East Hicks (1828–1905) evidently worked from the mid-1840s as a journeyman printer on Henry La Cossitt’s Hannibal Gazette (where in 1847 Clemens was briefly a printer’s devil and errand boy), and then in 1848–50 on the Hannibal Journal. Probably in the fall of 1850 he moved to Orion Clemens’s Hannibal Western Union, where by early January 1851 Clemens and Jim Wolf were apprenticed. Later that year Hicks set out for the Pacific Northwest, where he taught school and worked as a printer. In 1855–56 he was a volunteer officer in the Yakima and Klikitat Indian Wars, and thereafter he served the Washington territorial government in various capacities. After 1861 he serially edited and published several newspapers in Washington and Oregon. In 1886 Clemens wrote to a mutual friend, “I remember Urban E. vividly & pleasantly; & also the fencing-matches with column-rules & quack-medicine stereotypes. . . . If I could see Hicks here I would receive him with a barbecue & a torchlight procession, & put the entire house at his disposal” (17 Jan 1886 to Himes, MoPeS; Inds, 324; Hicks 1886, 20; AutoMT1 , 515 n. 159.30, 645 n. 459.22–23, 651).
old Dr. Peake, who was the ringleader . . . person in the community] Humphrey Peake (1773–1856) grew up on his family’s Virginia estate, which bordered on Mount Vernon; his father had been a hunting companion of George Washington’s. He was a surgeon in the Virginia Militia in 1812, a justice of the peace in 1813, and the collector of the port of Alexandria from 1820 to 1830. He moved to Missouri in the middle 1830s and then to Hannibal, where in 1839 he bought land, opened a medical office, and became a friend of John Marshall Clemens’s. In 1847, at age seventy-four, he was still practicing at the same office. In 1897 Clemens described him as a “courtly gentleman of the old school,” and in 1898 based the character of Dr. Wheelwright, the “stately old First-Family Virginian and imposing Thinker of the village,” upon him in “Schoolhouse Hill” ( Inds, 104, 238, 296; U.S. and International Marriage Records 2011; “Medical Notice,” Hannibal Journal, 1 July 1847, unknown page; Hannibal Courier-Post 2011; Jim Boulden, personal communication, 23 Aug 2011, CU-MARK). In 1902 Clemens told a newspaper reporter that
he remembered old Dr. Peake better than almost any of the Hannibal citizens of fifty years ago. He described Dr. Peake as a Virginian who, on state occasions, wore knee breeches and large silver buckles on his low cut shoes, and wore a wig. He . . . and the elder Clemens, Sam’s father, were subscribers for the Weekly National Intelligencer, published at Washington, D.C., and it was their custom to discuss the speeches made in Congress from the time the paper was received until the next copy came to hand. (“Good-bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1)
I rejoiced without shame] Clemens’s 1880 working notes for Huckleberry Finn show that he considered making use of his encounter with the mesmerizer: “Do the mesmeric foolishness, with Huck & the king for performers” ( HF 2003, 486). And again in 1897 he considered using his experience in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy”: “The mesmerizer—Tom gets no pay, yet was superior to Hicks, who got $3 a week” (Notebook 41, p. 58, CU-MARK). In the end, neither story used the “mesmeric foolishness.”
Source documents.
MS Manuscript, leaves numbered 1–14 and nine lines of leaf number 15, from a manuscript of thirty-eight leaves written in 1903.TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1455–64, made from the MS and revised.
TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1455–64, revised.
NAR 9pf Galley proofs of NAR 9, typeset from the revised TS1 carbon (the same extent as NAR 9), ViU.
NAR 9 North American Review 184 (4 January 1907), 5–9: ’December . . . 1906’ (294 title); ‘An exciting . . . without shame.’ (297.33–300.42).
This “dictation” and the next two have their origins in a manuscript—actually an amalgamation of two manuscripts, both evidently written around 1903. The first, from which the present dictation is drawn, has leaves numbered 1–28, and was originally entitled ‘Scraps from my Autobiography. From Chapter IV’. The second is headed ‘From Chapter XVII’ and has leaves originally numbered 1–10; it has been renumbered by Clemens to follow on directly from the first. The MS is written on sheets of buff-colored wove paper, measuring 5¾ by 9 inches. It can be dated to 1903 by Clemens’s statement that he visited Hannibal ‘a year ago’ (MS page 15, which became a part of the “AD” of 2 December 1906, 301.3–4). In 1906 Clemens canceled the original title and retitled it as part of his Autobiography, adding a date of ‘Dec. 1, 1906’ and arranging for Hobby to type the text as a series of three “autobiographical dictations” carrying the dates 1, 2, and 3 December 1906.
TS1 ribbon was revised by Clemens, who copied his revisions onto TS1 carbon and added a few further revisions, evidently designed for magazine publication. To make up the NAR proof installment, the “dictations” of 1 and 2 December were put together with the AD of 13 December 1906. Clemens made no corrections in the section of the proofs corresponding to this dictation.
Marginal Notes on TS1 ribbon and TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR