Explanatory Notes
Headnote
Apparatus Notes
Guide
MTPDocEd
Autobiographical Dictation, 2 December 1906 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

MS      Manuscript, leaves numbered 15–28, from a manuscript of thirty-eight leaves written in 1903.
TS1 ribbon      Typescript, leaves numbered 1465–74, made from the MS and revised.
TS1 carbon      Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1465–74, 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), 9–14: ‘December . . . 1906 (301 title); ‘In 1847 . . . ages ago.’ (301.2–304.4).

This “dictation” and the two before and after it 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; it 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.

Hobby typed TS1 ribbon from MS, and Paine reviewed it for possible publication in NAR; marking and querying several passages for possible omission. Clemens revised TS1 ribbon and transferred most of his changes to TS1 carbon, which he sent to the North American Review for publication without further revision. The dictation was published there together with the ADs of 13 December and 1 December 1906.

Marginal Notes on TS1 ribbon Concerning Publication in NAR

Location on TS Writer, Medium Exact Inscription Explanation
TS1 ribbon, p. 1470 Paine, pencil passage bracketed, marked for deletion in the margin possibly omit the text from ‘I am’ (302.30) to ‘that deed;’ (302.34)
TS1 ribbon, p. 1470 Paine, pencil passage bracketed, marked for deletion in the margin possibly omit the text from ‘still, I’ (302.36) to ‘mine respectable.’ (302.39)
TS1 ribbon, p. 1472 Paine, pencil passage bracketed, marked for deletion in the margin possibly omit the text from ‘Arguments!’ (303.16) to ‘them since.’ (303.19)
TS1 ribbon, pp. 1472–73 Paine, pencil passage bracketed, marked for deletion in the margin possibly omit the text from ‘Dear, dear’ (303.25) to ‘the swindled!’ (303.27)
[begin page 301]
December 2, 1906textual note

Mr. Clemens’s experiments in mesmerism, continuedexplanatory note.textual note

In 1847 we were living in a large white house on the corner of Hill and Main streets—a house that still stands, but isn’t large now, although it hasn’t lost a plank; I saw it a year ago and noticed that shrinkage. My father died in it in March of the year mentioned, but our family did not move out of it until some months afterward.textual note Ours was not the only family in the house, there was another—Dr. Grant’sexplanatory note. One day Dr. Grant and Dr. Reyburn argued a matter on the street with sword-canesexplanatory note, and Grant was brought home multifariously punctured.textual note Old Dr. Peake calked the leaks, and came every day for a while, to look after him. The Grants were Virginians, like Peake, and one day when Grant was getting well enough to be on his feet and sit around in the parlor and talk, the conversation fell upon Virginia and old times. I was present, but the group were probably quite unconscious of me, I being only a lad and a negligeable quantity. Two of the group—Dr. Peake and Mrs. Crawford, Mrs.textual note Grant’s motherexplanatory note—had been of the audience when the Richmond theatre burned down thirty-six years before, and they talked over the frightful details of that memorable tragedyexplanatory note. These were eye-witnesses, and with their eyes I saw it all with an intolerable vividness: I saw the black smoke rolling and tumbling toward the sky, I saw the flames burst through it and turn it red, I heard the shrieks of the despairing, I glimpsed their faces at the windows, caught fitfully through the veiling smoke, I saw them jump to their death, or to mutilation worse than death. The picture is before me yet, and can never fade.

In due course they talked of the colonial mansion of the Peakes, with its stately columns and its spacious grounds, and by odds and ends I picked up a clearly defined idea of the place. I was strongly interested, for I had not before heard of such palatial things from the lips of people who had seen them with their own eyes. One detail, casually dropped, hit my imagination hard. In the wall, by the great front door, there was a round hole as big as a saucer—a Britishtextual note cannon ball had made it, in the Wartextual note of the Revolution. It was breath-taking; it made history real; history had never been real to me before.

Very well, three or four years later, as already mentioned,textual note I was king-bee and sole “subject” in the mesmeric show; it was the beginning of the second week; the performance was half over; just then the majestic Dr. Peake, with his ruffled bosom and wristbands and his gold-headed cane, entered, and a deferential citizen vacated his seat beside the Grants and made the great chief take it. This happened while I was trying to invent something fresh in the way of a vision, in response to the professor’s remark—

“Concentrate your powers. Look—look attentively. There—don’t you see something? Concentrate—concentrate!textual note Now then—describe it.”

Without suspecting it, Dr. Peake, by entering the place,textual note had reminded me of the talk of three years before. He had also furnished me capital and was becometextual note my confederate, an accomplice in my frauds. I began on a vision, a vague and dim one (thattextual note was part of the game at the beginning of a vision, it isn’t best to see it too clearly at first, it might [begin page 302] look as if you had come loaded with it.)textual note The vision developed, by degrees, and gathered swing, momentum, energy! It was the Richmond fire. Dr. Peake was cold, at first, and his fine face had a trace of polite scorn in it; but when he began to recognize that fire, that expressiontextual note changed, and his eyes began to light up. As soon as I saw that, I threw the valves wide open and turned on all the steam, and gave those people a supper of fire and horrors that was calculated to last them one while! They couldn’t gasp, when I got through—they were petrified. Dr. Peake had risen, and was standing,—and breathing hard. He said, in a great voice—

“My doubts are ended. No collusion could produce that miracle. It was totally impossible for him to know those details, yet he has described them with the claritytextual note of an eye-witness—and with what unassailable truthfulness God knows I know!”

I saved the colonial mansion for the last night, and solidified and perpetuated Dr. Peake’s conversion with the cannon balltextual note hole. He explained to the house that I could never have heard of that small detail, which differentiated this mansion from all other Virginian mansionstextual note andtextual note perfectly identified it, therefore the fact stood proventextual note that I had seen it in my vision. Lawks!

It is curious. When the magician’s engagement closed there was but one person in the village who did not believe in mesmerism, and I was the one. All the others were converted, but I was to remain an implacable and unpersuadable disbeliever in mesmerism and hypnotism for close upon fifty years. This was because I never would examine them, in after life. I couldn’ttextual note. The subject revolted me. Perhaps because it brought back to me a passage in my life which for pride’s sake I wished to forget; though I thought—or persuaded myself I thought—I should never come across a “proof” which wasn’t thin and cheap, and probably had a fraud like me behind it.

The truth is, I did not have to wait long to get tired of my triumphs. Not thirty days, I think. The glory which is built upon atextual note lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. No doubt for a while I enjoyed having my exploits told and retold and told again in my presencetextual note and wondered over and exclaimed about, but I quite distinctly remember that there presently came a time whentextual note the subject was wearisome and odioustextual note to me and I could not endure the disgusting discomfort of it.textual note I am well aware that the world-glorified doer of a deed of great and real splendor has just my experience; I know that he deliciously enjoys hearing about it for three or four weeks, and that pretty soon after that he begins to dread the mention of it, and by and by wishes he had been with the damned before he ever thought of doing that deed; I remember how General Sherman used to rage and swear overtextual note “When we were marching through Georgia,”explanatory note which was played at him and sung at him everywhere he went; still, I think I suffered a shade more than the legitimate hero does, he being privileged to soften his misery with the reflection that his glory was at any rate golden and reproachless in its origin, whereas I had no such privilege, there being no possible way to make mine respectable.

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and howtextual note hard it is to undo that work again! Thirty-five years after those evil exploits of mine I visited my old mother, whom I had not seen for ten yearsexplanatory note; and being moved by what seemed to me a rather noble and perhaps [begin page 303] heroic impulse, I thought I would humble myself and confess my ancient fault. It cost me a great effort to make up my mind; I dreaded the sorrow that would rise in her face, and the shame that would look out of her eyes; but after long and troubled reflection, the sacrifice seemed due and right, and I gathered my resolution together and made the confession.

To my astonishment there were no sentimentalities, no dramatics, no George Washington effects; she was not moved in the least degree; she simply did not believe me, and said so! I was not merely disappointed, I was nettled, to have my costly truthfulness flung out of the market in this placid and confident way when I was expecting to get a profit out of it. I asserted, and re-asserted, with rising heat,textual note my statement that every single thing I had done on those long-vanished nights was a lie and a swindle; and when she shook her head tranquilly and said she knew better, I put up my hand and swore to it—adding a triumphant “Now what do you say!”

It did not affect her at all; it did not budge her the fraction of an inch from her position. If this was hard for metextual note to endure, it did not begin with the blister she put upon the raw when she began to put my sworn oath out of court with arguments to prove that I was under a delusion and did not know what I was talking about. Arguments! Arguments to show that a person on a man’s outside can know better what is on his inside than he does himself!textual note I had cherished some contempt for arguments before, I have not enlarged my respect for them since. She refused to believe that I had invented my visions myself; she said it was folly: that I was only a child at the time and could not have done it. She cited the Richmond fire and the colonial mansion and said they were quite beyond my capacities. Then I saw my chance! I said she was right—I didn’t invent those, I got them from Dr. Peake. Even this great shot did no damage. She said Dr. Peake’s evidence was better than mine, and he had said in plain words that it was impossible for me to have heard about those things. Dear, dear, what a grotesque and unthinkable situation: a confessed swindler convicted of honesty and condemned to acquittal by circumstantial evidence furnished by the swindled!textual note

I realized, with shame and with impotent vexation, that I was defeated all along the line. I had but one card left, but it was a formidable one. I played it—and stood from under. It seemed ignoble to demolish her fortress, after she had defended it so valiantly; buttextual note the defeated know not mercy. I played that master card. It was the pin-sticking. I said solemnly—

“I give you my honor, a pin was never stuck into me without causing me cruel pain.”

She only said—

“It is thirty-five years. I believe you do think that, now, but I was there, and I know better. You never winced.”

She was so calm!textual note and I was so far from it, so nearly frantic.

“Oh, my goodness!” I said, “let me show you that I am speaking the truth. Here is my arm; drive a pin into it—drive it to the head—I shall not wince.”

She only shook her gray head and said with simplicity and conviction—

“You are a man, now, and could dissemble the hurt; but you were only a child then, and could not have done it.”

[begin page 304]

And so the lie which I played upon her in my youth remained with her as an unchallengeable truth to the day of her death. Carlyle said “a lie cannot live.”explanatory note It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a life policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago.textual note

Textual Notes December 2, 1906
  December 2, 1906 ●  Dec. 2, 1906 circled  (MS)  Dictated Dec. 2, 1906. ‘Dictated Dec. 2, 1906.’ underscored  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  Dictated Dec. 2, 1906. (TS1 carbon-SLC)  [Dictated December 2, 1906.] (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  [¶] Mr. Clemens’s experiments in mesmerism, continued. ●  not in  (MS)  (Copied from Mr. Clemens’s notes). [¶] Mr. Clemens’s experiments in mesmerism, continued. (TS1 ribbon)  (Copied from Mr. Clemens’s notes). [¶] Mr. Clemens’s early experiments in mesmerism, continued. ‘out’ written in the margin in ink  (TS1 carbon-SLC?) 
  1847  ●  not in  (MS)  (1847) typed in the margin  (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon)  (1847.) inset  (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  afterward. ●  afterward. b  (MS)  afterward. (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  punctured. ●  wounded. punctured.  (MS)  punctured. (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  Mrs. ●  Dr Mrs. (MS)  Mrs. (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  British ●  British  (MS)  British (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  War ●  wars (MS)  wars  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  war (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  later, as already mentioned, ●  later (MS)  later, as already mentioned,  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  later, as already mentioned, (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  concentrate! ●  concentrate. (MS)  concentrate. ! period mended to an exclamation point  (TS1 ribbon-SLC)  concentrate. (TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  Peake, by entering the place, ●  Peake (MS)  Peake, by entering the place,  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  Peake, by entering the place, (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  was become ●  became (MS)  was beca ome (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  was become (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  (that ●  —that (MS)  (that (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  (that (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  it.) ●  it. (MS)  it.)  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  it). (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  expression ●  all expression  (MS)  expression (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  clarity ●  accuracy clarity  (MS)  clarity (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  cannon ball ●  cannon-ball (MS, TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  mansions ●  mansions,  (MS)  mansions (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  and ●  nor and (MS)  and (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  proven ●  proven originally proven; underscore canceled  (MS)  proven (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  I couldn’t ●  The s I couldn’t (MS)  I couldn’t (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  a ●  a  (MS)  a (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  in my presence ●  in my presence  (MS)  in my presence (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  when ●  t when (MS)  when (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  and odious ●  and hateful and odious  (MS)  and odious (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  it. ●  it. It scorched me, it blistered me, to be gazed upon so devouringly, so admiringly, so worshipfully by so trustingly by those honest eyes, and I a cheap and shabby fraud and worthy of nothing but their contempt. inserted on the verso with instructions to turn over  (MS)  it. (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  over ●  of over (MS)  over (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  how ●  how  (MS)  how (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  re-asserted, with rising heat, ●  re-asserted, with rising heat,  (MS)  re-asserted, with rising heat, (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon)  reasserted, with rising heat, (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  for me ●  for me  (MS)  for me (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  himself! ●  himself. (MS)  himself, ! period mended to an exclamation point  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  himself! (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  Dear, dear . . . swindled! ●  Dear, dear . . . swindled! inserted on the verso with instructions to turn over  (MS)  Dear, dear . . . swindled!  (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  valiantly; but ●  valiantly. ; But period mended to a semicolon  (MS)  valiantly; but (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  calm! ●  calm, (MS)  calm, !  (TS1 ribbon-SLC, TS1 carbon-SLC)  calm! (NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
  ago. ●  ago. | * * * * * line of stars  (MS)  ago. (TS1 ribbon, TS1 carbon, NAR 9pf, NAR 9) 
Explanatory Notes December 2, 1906
 

Mr. Clemens’s experiments in mesmerism, continued] Like the previous day’s text, this one and the next are in fact 1903 manuscripts inserted in 1906.

 

large white house on the corner of Hill and Main . . . Dr. Grant’s] The Clemens family moved in with Dr. Orville R. Grant (1815–?54) and his family in 1846, occupying the flat above his drugstore. They boarded the Grant family in exchange for their lodging, after it became clear that all of the Clemens property would be sold to pay a debt (see AutoMT1 , 62–63, 454). John Marshall Clemens died several months later, in March 1847. Grant was born in Kentucky, received his Doctor of Medicine “on the Modus Operandi of Medicines” at the Louisville Medical Institute in March 1838, and evidently spent time in Virginia before setting up shop in Hannibal, where he served as a physician, surgeon, and pharmacist for nearly a decade (Yandell 1838). In 1845 he attended the dying Sam Smarr, who had been shot in the street in front of the drugstore by William Owsley—an incident that Clemens used in chapter 21 of Huckleberry Finn. And Clemens remembered, in 1867, that when Jimmy Finn, one of the town’s drunkards, died the same year, “his body went to Dr. Grant” (SLC 1867b). Clemens had seen the house when he was last in Hannibal, from 29 May to 3 June 1902, a year before writing this manuscript (Wecter 1952, 133; Inds, 318–19, 339–40; Kanawha Census 1850, 954:101A).

 

Dr. Grant and Dr. Reyburn argued a matter on the street with sword-canes] In August 1845, a report on the incident appeared in the newspaper exchanges, which named another assailant: “An affray took place in Hannibal on last Friday week, in which a man by the name of Railey stabbed Dr. Orville R. Grant through the left lung, with a spear attached to his cane” (“Affray at Hannibal, Mo.,” Philadelphia North American, 26 Aug 1845, 1).

 

Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. Grant’s mother] Orville Grant married Miriam M. McFarland (1820–53) in 1837 in Charleston, West Virginia. Her mother, Lethe Reynolds McFarland (1800–1882), was the first of her father’s four wives. No confirmation has been found that she ever took the name Crawford (Little 1893, 149–50; Atkinson 1876, 273).

 

the Richmond theatre burned down thirty-six years before . . . that memorable tragedy] On the night of 26 December 1811, during a pantomime after-piece entitled “Raymond and Agness, or the Bleeding Nun,” fire engulfed the Richmond Theatre “with electric velocity,” spreading from a chandelier onstage to the entire building in only ten minutes. Despite all efforts to rescue those who were trapped inside, fifty-four women and eighteen men died out of an audience of six hundred (Richmond Then and Now 2011).

 

General Sherman used to rage and swear over “When we were marching through Georgia,”] In 1865 Henry Clay Work wrote “Marching through Georgia” to celebrate Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea at the end of 1864, which left a wide path of destruction and hastened the end of the Civil War.

 

Thirty-five years after those evil exploits . . . I had not seen for ten years] Clemens probably confessed his deception to his mother in January 1885, when he stopped in Keokuk on his reading tour with George Washington Cable. The last time he had seen her was in August 1874, when he and Olivia visited her in Fredonia, New York, where she was living with Pamela Moffett (14 Jan 1885 to OLC, CU-MARK; link note following 1–3 Aug 1874 to Dickinson, L6, 205).

 

Carlyle said “a lie cannot live.”] Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution was one of Clemens’s favorite books, but he was familiar with other works as well. “Nature admits no lie,” Carlyle wrote in “The Stump-Orator,” but no closer version of the quotation has been found (Gribben 1980, 1:128–29; Carlyle 1864, 180).