Mainly from Susy’s Biography—AboutⒶtextual note the “Christian Union” article; the mother’s methods of punishment, etc., with a few comments by Mr. Clemens.
I wish to insert here some pages of Susy’s Biography of me in which the biographer does not scatter, according to her custom, but sticks pretty steadily to a single subject until she has fought it to a finish.Ⓐtextual note
[begin page 327]From Susy’s Biography. Ⓐtextual note
Feb. 27, ’86.
LastⒶtextual note summer while we were in Elmira an article came out in the “Christian Union” by name “What ought he to have done” treating of the government of children, or rather giving an account of a fathers battle with his little baby boy, by the mother of the childⒺexplanatory note and put in the form of a question as to whether the father disciplined the child corectly or not; different people wrote their opinions of the fathers behavior, and told what they thought he should have done. Mamma had long known how to disciplin children, for in fact the bringing up of children had been one of her specialties for many years. She had a great many theories, but one of them was, that if a child was big enough to be nauty, it was big enough to be whipped and here we all agreed with her. I remember one morning when Dr. ——— came up to the farm he had a long discussion with mamma, upon the following topic. Mamma gave this as illustrative of one important rule for punishing a child. She said we will suppose the boy has thrown a handkerchief onto the floor, I tell him to pick it up, he refuses. I tell him again, he refuses. Then I say you must either pick up the handkerchief or have a whipping. My theory is never to make a child have a whipping and pick up the handkerchief too. I say “If you do not pick it up, I must punish you,” if he doesn’t he gets the whipping, but I pick up the handkerchief, if he does he gets no punishment. I tell him to do a thing if he disobeys me he is punished for so doing, but not forced to obey me afterwards.”Ⓐtextual note
When Clara and I had been very nauty or were being very nauty, the nurse would go and call Mamma and she would appear suddenly and look at us (she had a way of looking at us when she was displeased as if she could see right through us) till we were ready to sink through the floor from embarasment, and total absence of knowing what to say. This look was usually followed with “Clara” or “Susy what do you mean by this? do you want to come to the bath-room with me?” Then followed the climax for Clara and I both new only too well what going to the bath-room meant.
But mamma’s first and foremost object was to make the child understand that he is being punished for his sake, and because the mother so loves him that she cannot allow him to do wrong; also that it is as hard for her to punish him as for him to be punished and even harder. Mamma never allowed herself to punish us when she was angry with us she never struck us because she was enoyed at us and felt like striking us if we had been nauty and had enoyed her, so that she thought she felt or would show the least bit of temper toward us while punnishing us, she always postponed the punishment until she was no more chafed by our behavior. She never humored herself by striking or punishing us because or while she was the least bit enoyed with us.
Our very worst nautinesses were punished by being taken to the bath-room and being whipped by the paper cutterⒺexplanatory note. But after the whipping was over, mamma did not allow us to leave her until we were perfectly happy, and perfectly understood why we had been whipped. I never remember having felt the least bit bitterly toward mamma for punishing me. I always felt I had deserved my punishment, and was much happier for having received it. For after mamma had punished us and shown her displeasure, she showed no signs of further displeasure, but acted as if we had not displeased her in any way.
Ordinary punishments answered very well for Susy. She was a thinker, and would reason out the purpose of them, apply the lesson, and achieve the reform required. But it was much less easy to devise punishments that would reform Clara. This was because she was a philosopher who was always turning her attention to finding something good and satisfactory and entertaining in everything that came her way; consequently it was sometimes pretty discouraging to the troubled mother to find that after all her pains and thought in inventing what she meant to be a severe and reform-compelling punishment, the child hadⒶtextual note entirely missed the severities,Ⓐtextual note throughⒶtextual note her native disposition to get interest and pleasure out of them as novelties. The mother, in her anxiety to find a penalty that would take sharp hold and do its work effectively, at last resorted, with a sore heart, and with a reproachful conscience, to that punishment which the incorrigible criminal in the penitentiary dreads above all the other punitive miseries which the warden inflicts upon him for his good—solitary confinement in the dark chamber. The grieved and worried mother shut Clara up in a very small clothes-closet and went away and left her there—Ⓐtextual notefor fifteen minutes—it was all that the mother-heartⒶtextual note could endure. Then she came softly back and listened—listened for the sobs, but there weren’t any; there were muffled and inarticulate sounds, but they could not be construed into sobs. The mother waited half an hour longer; by that time she was suffering so intensely with sorrow and compassion for the little prisoner that she was not able to wait any longer for the distressed sounds which she had counted upon to inform her when there had been punishment enoughⒶtextual note and the reform accomplished. She opened the closet to set the prisoner free and take her back into her loving favor and forgiveness, but the result was not the one expected. The captive had manufactured a fairy cavern out of the closet, and friendly fairies out of the clothes hanging from the hooks, and was having a most sinful and unrepentant good time, and requested permission to spend the rest of the day there!Ⓐtextual note
From Susy’s Biography. Ⓐtextual note
But Mamma’s oppinions and ideas upon the subject of bringing up children has always been more or less of a joke in our family, perticularly since Papa’s article in the “Christian Union,” and I am sure Clara and I have related the history of our old family paper-cutter, our punishments and privations with rather more pride and triumph than any other sentiment, because of Mamma’s way of rearing us.
When the article “What ought he to have done?” came out Mamma read it, and was very much interested in it. And when papa heard that she had read it he went to work and secretly wrote his opinion of what the father ought to have done. He told Aunt Susy,Ⓐtextual note Clara and I, about it but mamma was not to see it or hear any thing about it till it came out. He gave it to Aunt Susy to read, and after Clara and I had gone up to get ready for bed he brought it up for us to read. He told what he thought the father ought to have done by telling what mamma would have done. The article was a beautiful tribute to mamma and every word in it true. But still in writing about mamma he partly forgot that the article was going to be published, I think, and expressed himself more fully than he would do the second time he wrote it; I think the article has done and will do a great deal of good, and I think it [begin page 329] would have been perfect for the family and friend’s enjoyment, but a little bit too private to have been published as it was. And Papa felt so too, because the very next day or a few days after, he went down to New York to see if he couldn’t get it back before it was published but it was too late, and he had to return without it. When the Christian Union reached the farm and papa’s article in itⒺexplanatory note all ready and waiting to be read to mamma papa hadn’t the courage to show it to her (for he knew she wouldn’t like it at all) at first, and he didn’t but he might have let it go and never let her see it, but finally he gave his consent to her seeing it, and told Clara and I we could take it to her, which we did, with tardiness, and we all stood around mamma while she read it, all wondering what she would say and think about it.
She was too much surprised, (and pleased privately, too) to say much at first, but as we all expected publicly, (or rather when she remembered that this article was to be read by every one that took the Christian Union) she was rather shocked and a little displeased.
Clara and I had great fun the night papa gave it to us to read and then hide, so mamma couldn’t see it, for just as we were in the midst of reading it mamma appeared papa following anxiously and asked why we were not in bed? then a scuffle ensued for we told her it was a secret and tried to hide it; but she chased us wherever we went, till she thought it was time for us to go to bed, then she surendered and left us to tuck it under Clara’s matress.
A littleⒶtextual note while after the articleⒶtextual note was published letters began to come in to papa crittisizing it, there were some very pleasant ones but a few very disagreable. One of these, the very worst, mamma got hold of and read, to papa’s great regret, it was full of the most disagreble things, and so very enoying to papa that he for a time felt he must do something to show the author of it his great displeasure at being so insulted. But he finally decided not to, because he felt the man had some cause for feeling enoyed at, for papa had spoken of him, (he was the baby’s father) rather slightingly in his Christian Union Article.
After all this, papa and mamma both wished I think they might never hear or be spoken to on the subject of the Christian Union article, and whenever any has spoken to me and told me “How much they did enjoy my father’s article in the ChristianⒶtextual note Union” I almost laughed in their faces when I remembered what a great variety of oppinions had been expressed upon the subject of the Christian Union article of papa’s.
The article was written in July or August and just the other day papa received quite a bright letter from a gentleman who has read the C.U. article and gave his opinion of it in these words.
It is missing. She probably put the letter between the leaves of the Biography and it got lost out. She threw away the hostile letters, but tried to keep the pleasantest one for her book; surely there has been no kindlier biographer than this one. Yet to a quite creditable degree she is loyal to the responsibilities of her position as historian—Ⓐtextual notenot eulogist—Ⓐtextual noteand honorably gives me a quiet prod now and then. But how many, many, many she has withheld that IⒶtextual note deserved! I could prize them now;Ⓐtextual note there would be no acid in her words, andⒶtextual note it is loss to me that she did not set them all down. Oh, Susy, you sweet little biographer, you break my old heart with your gentle charities!Ⓐtextual note
[begin page 330]I think a great deal of her work. Her canvases are on their easels, and her brush flies about in a care-freeⒶtextual note and random way, delivering a dash here, a dash there and anotherⒶtextual note yonder, and one might suppose that there would be no definite result; on the contrary I think that an intelligent reader of her little book must find that by the time he has finished it he has somehow accumulated a pretty clear and nicely shaded idea of the several members of this family—including Susy herself—and that the random dashes on the canvases have developed into portraits. I feel that my own portrait, with some of the defects fined down and others left out, is here; and I am sure that any who knew the mother will recognize her without difficulty, and will say that the lines are drawn with a just judgment and a sure hand. Little creature though SusyⒶtextual note was, the penetration which was born in her finds its way to the surface more than once in these pages.
Before Susy began the Biography she let fall a remark now and then concerning my character which showed that she had it under observation. In the RecordⒶtextual note which we kept of the children’s sayings there is an instance of this. She was twelve years old at the time. We had established a rule that each member of the family must bring a fact to breakfast—a fact drawn from a book or from any other source; any fact would answer. Susy’s first contribution was in substance as follows. Two great exiles and former opponents in war met in Ephesus—Scipio and Hannibal. Scipio asked Hannibal to name the greatest general the world had produced.
“Alexander”—and he explained why.
“And the next greatest?”
“Pyrrhus”—and he explained why.
“But where do you place yourself, then?”
“If I had conquered you I would place myself before the others.”
Susy’s grave comment was—
“That attracted me, it was just like papa—he is so frank about his books.”
So frank in admiring them, she meant.Ⓐtextual note
March 14th, ’86.
Mr.Ⓐtextual note Laurence Barrette and Mr. and Mrs. Hutton were here a little while ago, and we had a very interesting visit from them. Papa said Mr. Barette never had acted so well before when he had seen him, as he did the first night he was staying with usⒺexplanatory note. And Mrs. ———Ⓔexplanatory note said she never had seen an actor on the stage, whom she more wanted to speak with.
Papa has been very much interested of late, in the “Mind Cure” theoryⒺexplanatory note. And in fact so have we all. A young lady in town has worked wonders, by using the “Mind Cure” upon people; she is constantly busy now curing peoples deseases in this way—and curing her own even, which to me seems the most remarkable of all.
A little while past, papa was delighted with the knowledge of what he thought the best way of curing a cold, which was by starving it. This starving did work beautifully, and freed him from a great many severe colds. Now he says it wasn’t the starving that helped his colds, but the trust in the starving, the mind cure connected with the starving.
I shouldn’t wonder if we finally became firm believers in Mind Cure. The next [begin page 331] time papa has a cold, I haven’t a doubt, he will send for Miss HoldenⒶtextual note the young lady who is doctoring in the “Mind Cure” theoryⒺexplanatory note, to cure him of it.
Mamma was over at Mrs. George WarnersⒺexplanatory note to lunch the other day, and Miss HoldenⒶtextual note was there too. Mamma asked if anything as natural as near-sightednessⒶtextual note could be cured she said oh yes just as well as other deseases.
When mamma came home, she took me into her room, and told me that perhaps my near-sightedness could be cured by the “Mind Cure” and that she was going to have me try the treatment any way, there could be no harm in it, and there might be great good. If her plan succeeds there certainly will be a great deal in “Mind Cure” to my oppinion, for I am very near sighted and so is mamma, and I never expected there could be any more cure for it than for blindness, but now I dont know but what theres a cure for that.
It was a disappointment; her nearsightednessⒶtextual note remained with her always. She was born with it, no doubt; yet, strangely enoughⒶtextual note she must have been four years old, and possibly five, before we knew of its existence. It is not easy to understand how that could have happened. I discovered the defect by accident. I was half wayⒶtextual note up the hall stairs one day at home, and was leading her by the hand, when I glanced back through the open door of the dining roomⒶtextual note and saw what I thought she would recognize as a pretty picture. It was “Stray Kit,” the slender, the graceful, the sociable, the beautiful, the incomparable, the cat of cats, the tortoise-shell, curled up as round as a wheel and sound asleep on the fire-red cover of the dining tableⒶtextual note, with a brilliant stream of sunlight falling across her. I exclaimed about it, but Susy said she could see nothing there, neither cat nor table-cloth. The distance was so slight—not more than twenty feet, perhaps—that if it had been any other child I should not have credited the statement.Ⓐtextual note
March 14th, ’86.
ClaraⒶtextual note sprained her ankle, a little while ago, by running into a tree, when coasting, and while she was unable to walk with it she played solotaire with cards a great deal. While Clara was sick and papa saw her play solotaire so much, he got very much interested in the game, and finally began to play it himself a little, then Jean took it up, and at last mamma, Ⓐtextual note even played it ocasionally; Jean’s and papa’s love for it rapidly increased, and now Jean brings the cards every night to the table and papa and mamma help her play, and before dinner is at an end, papa has gotten a separate pack of cards, and is playing alone, with great interest. Mamma and Clara next are made subject to the contagious solatair, and there are four solotarireansⒶtextual note at the table; while you hear nothing but “Fill up the place” etc. It is dreadful! after supper Clara goes into the library, and gets a little red mahogany table, and placing it under the gas fixture seats herself and begins to play again, then papa follows with another table of the same discription, and they play solatair till bed-time.
We have just had our Prince and Pauper pictures taken; two groups and some little single ones. The groups (the Interview and Lady Jane Grey scene) were pretty good, the lady Jane scene was perfectⒺexplanatory note, just as pretty as it could be, the Interview was not so good; and two of the little single pictures were very good indeed, but one was very bad. Yet on the whole we think they were a success.
Papa has done a great deal in his life I think, that is good, and very remarkable, [begin page 332] but I think if he had had the advantages with which he could have developed the gifts which he has made no use of in writing his books, or in any other way for other peoples pleasure and benefit outside of his own family and intimate friends, he could have done more than he has and a great deal more even. He is known to the public as a humorist, but he has much more in him that is earnest than that is humorous. He has a keen sense of the ludicrous, notices funny stories and incidents knows how to tell them, to improve upon them, and does not forget them. He has been through a great many of the funny adventures related in “Tom Sayer” and in “Huckleberry Finn,” himself and he lived among just such boys, and in just such villages all the days of his early life. His “Prince and Pauper is his most orriginal, and best production; it shows the most of any of his books what kind of pictures are in his mind, usually. Not that the pictures of England in the 16th Century and the adventures of a little prince and pauper are the kind of things he mainly thinks about; but that that book, and those pictures represent the train of thought and imagination he would be likely to be thinking of to-day, to-morrow, or next day, more nearly than those given in “Tom Sawyer or “Huckleberry Finn.”*
Papa can make exceedingly bright jokes, and he enjoys funny things, and when he is with people he jokes and laughs a great deal, but still he is more interested in earnest books and earnest subjects to talk upon, than in humorous ones.†
When we are all alone at home, nine times out of ten, he talks about some very earnest subject, (with an ocasional joke thrown in) and he a good deal more often talks upon such subjects than upon the other kind.
He is as much of a Pholosopher as anything I think. I think he could have done a great deal in this direction if he had studied while young, for he seems to enjoy reasoning out things, no matter what; in a great many such directions he has greater ability than in the gifts which have made him famous.
Thus at fourteen she hadⒶtextual note made up her mind about me, and in no timorous or uncertain terms hadⒶtextual note set down her reasons for her opinion. Fifteen years were to pass before any other critic—except Mr. Howells, I think—was to re-utter that daring opinion and print itⒺexplanatory note. Right or wrong it was a brave position for that little analyzerⒶtextual note to take. She never withdrew it afterward, nor modified it. She has spoken of herself as lacking physical courage, and has evinced her admiration of Clara’s; but she had moral courage, which is the rarest of human qualities, and she kept it functionable by exercising it. I think that in questions of morals and politics she was usually on my side; but when she was not she had her reasons and maintained her ground. Two years after she passed out of my life I wrote a philosophyⒶtextual note. Of the three persons who have seen the manuscriptⒺexplanatory note only one understood it, and all three condemned it. If she could have read it, she also would have condemned it, possibly,—probably, in fact—but she would have understood it. It would have had no difficulties for her on that score; also she would have found a tireless pleasure in analyzingⒶtextual note and discussing its problems.
*It is so yet. M.T.Ⓐtextual note
†She has said it well and correctly. Humor is a subject which has never had much interest for me. This is why I have never examined it, nor written about it nor used it as a topic for a speech. A hundred times it has been offered me as a topic in these past forty years, but in no case has it attracted me. M.T.Ⓐtextual note [begin page 333]
March 23, ’86.
TheⒶtextual note other day was my birthday, and I had a little birthday party in the evening and papa acted some very funny charades with Mr. Gherhardt, Mr. Jesse GrantⒺexplanatory note (who had come up from New York and was spending the evening with us) and Mr. Frank Warner. One of them was “on his knees” honys-sneeze. There were a good many other funny ones, all of which I dont remember. Mr. Grant was very pleasant, and began playing the charades in the most delightful way.
Susy’s spelling has defeated me, this time. I cannot make out what “honys sneeze” stands for. Impromptu charades were almost a nightly pastime of ours, from the children’s earliest days—they played in them with me when they were only five or six years old. As they increased in years and practice their love for the sport almost amounted to a passion, and they acted their parts with a steadily increasing ability. At first they required much drilling; but later they were generally ready as soon as the parts were assigned, and they acted them according to their own devices. Their stage-facilityⒶtextual note and absence of constraint and self-consciousness in the “Prince and Pauper” was a result of their charading practice.
At ten and twelve Susy wrote plays, and she and Daisy Warner and Clara played them in the library or up stairsⒶtextual note in the schoolroomⒶtextual note, with only themselves and the servants for audience. They were of a tragic and tremendous sort, and were performed with great energy and earnestness. They were dramatized (freely) from English history, and in them Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth had few holidays. The clothes were borrowed from the mother’s wardrobe and the gowns were longer than necessary, but that was not regarded as a defect. In one of these plays Jean (three years old, perhaps)Ⓐtextual note was Sir Francis Bacon. She was not dressed for the part, and did not have to say anything, but sat silent and decorous at a tiny table and was kept busy signing death-warrants. It was a really important office, for few entered those plays andⒶtextual note got out of them alive.
March 26.Ⓐtextual note Mamma and Papa have been in New York for two or three days, and Miss CoreyⒺexplanatory note has been staying with us. They are coming home to-day at two o’clock.
Papa has just begun to play chess, and he is very fond of it, so he has engaged to play with Mrs. Charles Warner every morning from 10 to 12, he came down to supper last night, full of this pleasant prospect, but evidently with something on his mind. Finally he said to mamma in an appologetical tone, Susy Warner and I have a plan.
“Well” mamma said “what now, I wonder?”
Papa said that Susy WarnerⒶtextual note and he were going to name the chess men after some of the old bible heroes, and then play chess on Sunday.
April 18, ’86.
MammaⒶtextual note and papa Clara and Daisy have gone to New York to see the “Mikado.”Ⓔexplanatory note They are coming home to-night at half past seven.
Last winter when Mr. Cable was lecturing with papa, he wrote this letter to him just before he came to visit us.
[begin page 334]
Everett House
New York Jan. 21/84.Ⓐtextual note
Dear Uncle,
That’sⒶtextual note one nice thing about me, I never bother any one, to offer me a good thing twice. You dont ask me to stay over Sunday, but then you dont ask me to leave Saturday night, and knowing the nobility of your nature as I do—thank you, I’ll stay till Monday morning.*
Your’s and the dear familie’s
George W. Cable.
ItⒶtextual note seems a prodigious while ago! Two or three nights ago I dined at Andrew Carnegie’sⒶtextual note with a score of other men, and at my side was Cable—actuallyⒶtextual note an old man, reallyⒶtextual note an old man, that once so young chap!Ⓐtextual note Sixty-twoⒶtextual note years old, frost on his head, seven grandchildren in stock, and a brand-new wifeⒺexplanatory note to re-begin life with!Ⓐtextual note
*Cable never traveled Sundays.—M.T., Dec. 22, 1906.Ⓐtextual note
an article came out in the “Christian Union” . . . by the mother of the child] “What Ought He to Have Done?” was published in the Christian Union on 11 June 1885 (31:13). The article was reprinted from the May issue of Babyhood magazine, where it had appeared as a letter to the editor signed “X” (1:180–81). The author recounts an incident in which a young boy throws a paper from his father’s desk on the floor, refuses to pick it up again, and persistently defies his parents. The father spanks him “until—he—picks—that—paper—up—with—his—hands”; when the boy instead picks it up with his teeth, the author asks what the father should have done. It is not clear why Clemens assumed that the author was the boy’s mother.
paper cutter] A letter opener, at that time usually made of bone or wood.
When the Christian Union reached the farm and papa’s article in it] Clemens’s article—also in the form of a letter to the editor—was published under the title “ ‘What Ought He to Have Done?’: Mark Twain’s Opinion” in the 16 July 1885 Christian Union (SLC 1885b). After calling the boy’s father a ludicrous ass for spanking his child to make him obey, he praises Olivia’s approach to disciplining their children: she did not spank them “for spite, or ever in anger,” but only after “an hour or two. By that time both parties are calm, and the one is judicial, the other receptive.” His article was reprinted under the same title in the August 1885 issue of Babyhood, along with a letter from the child’s father justifying his own actions (“John, Senior, Speaks,” 1:275–77).
Mr. Laurence Barrette and Mr. and Mrs. Hutton . . . he was staying with us] The actor Lawrence Barrett (1838–91) and the drama critic Laurence Hutton—with his wife of one year, Eleanor Varnum Mitchell Hutton (1848–1910)—stayed with the Clemenses on 3 and 4 March 1886. Clemens had met Barrett briefly in San Francisco, but became better acquainted with him in 1874, when he offered him the part of Colonel Sellers in his Gilded Age play (link note following 10 May 1874 to Haddon, L6, 148–49). Barrett, who had brought his repertory company to Hartford after a successful month-long engagement in New York, appeared on 3 March in the role of Lanciotto, the deceitful hunchback husband, in George H. Boker’s verse tragedy Francesca da Rimini (after Dante), and on 4 March he played the role of the title character in Victor Hugo’s Hernani (New York Times: “Died,” 17 Nov 1910, 9; “Mr. Lawrence Barrett,” 18 Feb 1886, 5; “Notes of the Week,” 28 Feb 1886, 6; Hartford Courant: “Lawrence Barrett This Evening,” 3 Mar 1886, 2; “Lawrence Barrett in ‘Hernani,’ ” 5 Mar 1886, 3; Barrett to SLC and OLC, 27 Feb 1886, CU-MARK; Hutton to Winter, 4 Mar 1886, JIm; U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 1795–1905, Roll 227, passport application for Eleanor V. Mitchell, 10 Feb 1879).
Mrs. ———] Perhaps Susy meant Susan Warner (Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner), whose name she left blank elsewhere in her biography ( AutoMT1 , 587 n. 346.9).
“Mind Cure” theory] In the late nineteenth century the terms “mind cure” and “mental cure” were used in a general way for the belief that disease was the result of negative thoughts, and could therefore be cured by mental effort alone. Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, published in 1875, was just one of the many books that promoted this idea. Clemens said in 1894 that Lilly Gillette Foote, Susy and Clara’s governess since about 1880, was (at least by the early 1890s) an “eloquent enthusiast upon mind-cure,” and it may have been she who encouraged the family to experiment with it (3 Aug 1894 to OLC, CU-MARK; Ober 2003, 210–18; for Foote see AutoMT1 , 579–80 n. 326.13–21). Clemens remained fascinated with the healing power of the mind until the end of his life, despite his skepticism about Christian Science and other religious applications of the philosophy. He returns to the subject in the Autobiographical Dictation of 27 December 1906.
Miss Holden the young lady who is doctoring in the “Mind Cure” theory] Unidentified.
Mrs. George Warners] Lilly Gillette Warner (see AD, 8 Aug 1906, note at 166.15).
We have just had our Prince and Pauper pictures taken . . . the lady Jane scene was perfect] The photographs were taken by Horace L. Bundy of Hartford, exactly one year after the Clemens children first performed their version of the play (see AD, 8 Aug 1906). The group picture that Susy calls the “Interview,” with Margaret (Daisy) Warner as the pauper (Tom Canty) and herself as the prince (Edward VI), is published in the photo gathering of Volume 1 ( AutoMT1 , following page 204). The “lady Jane scene,” with Clara as Lady Jane Grey and Daisy Warner as the pauper in the prince’s clothing, can be found in this volume, following page 300.
Fifteen years were to pass before . . . re-utter that daring opinion and print it] Howells commented in print on Clemens’s underlying earnestness and philosophical seriousness as early as 1875, in his review of Sketches, New and Old: “There is another quality in this book which we fancy we shall hereafter associate more and more with our familiar impressions of him, and that is a growing seriousness of meaning in the apparently unmoralized drolling, which must result from the humorist’s second thought of political and social absurdities” (Howells 1875, 749). His reviews of A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, and later works were even more emphatic about this serious vein (Howells 1880, 1881).
Two years after she passed out of my life I wrote a philosophy . . . three persons who have seen the manuscript] Between April and July 1898 Clemens wrote the first draft of What Is Man? in Vienna and Kaltenleutgeben, and continued to work on it through at least September 1905. In December 1906, when this text was dictated, What Is Man? had actually been printed and privately distributed; his reference to it as a “manuscript” that only “three persons” have seen reflects his use here of earlier material—his manuscript footnotes to Susy’s biography (SLC 1901–2a; see AD, 25 June 1906, note at 142.14).
Miss Corey] Susan (Susy) Corey (b. 1865?), a graduate of the Stuttgart Conservatory in 1884, taught music and piano to Susy and Clara Clemens in Hartford in the mid-1880s and also participated in—sometimes as a teacher or coach—the German classes that Olivia and the girls attended. She was the daughter of Ella J. Corey (b. 1841?), an old friend of Olivia’s from Elmira (Buffalo Courier: “Musical Personals and Miscellany,” 22 Aug 1885, and “Social Topics,” 13 Sept 1885, unknown pages; N&J3, 631; OLC to SLC, 14 Nov 1884 and 16 Jan 1885, CtHMTH; 17 and 18 May 1869 to OLL, L3, 243 n. 4; Chemung Census 1870, 914:302A).
Mamma and papa Clara and Daisy have gone to New York to see the “Mikado.”] The four left for New York on Friday, 16 April 1886, and saw one of the final performances of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Fifth-Avenue Theatre (“Amusements,” New York Times, 16 Apr 1886, 7; N&J3, 234; 12 Apr 1886 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL, 2:553).
at my side was Cable . . . seven grandchildren in stock, and a brand-new wife] On 24 November 1906 sixty-two-year-old George Washington Cable married his second wife, Eva Colegate Stevenson of Kentucky (d. 1923), “a woman of forty-eight, of charming social accomplishments, a beautiful musician, large in mind and heart, of a mirthful temper and ardent affections,” as he wrote to Andrew and Louise Carnegie (Turner 1956, 335–36; “Mrs. Eva Stevenson Cable,” New York Times, 8 June 1923, 19). Louise Stewart Bartlett Cable (b. 1846), his first wife and the mother of his children, had died in 1904, after thirty-five years of marriage (Rubin 1969, 249–50).
Source documents.
TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1527–42 (corrected by Hobby to 1533–48), made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1 carbon Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1527–42 (corrected by Hobby to 1533–48), revised.
NAR 18pf (lost) Galley proofs of NAR 18, typeset from the revised TS1 carbon; now lost.
NAR 18 North American Review 185 (17 May 1907), 113–18 and 119–22: ‘December 21, 1906’ (326 title); ‘I wish . . . its problems.’ (326.34–332.40).
NAR 19pf Galley proofs of NAR 19, typeset from the revised TS1 carbon (the same extent as NAR 19), ViU.
NAR 19 North American Review 185 (7 June 1907), 241–43: ‘March 23 . . . life with!’ (333.1–334.13).
Clemens revised TS1 ribbon minimally and transferred his corrections to TS1 carbon, which he then revised extensively for publication in NAR. After the section ending ‘she meant.’ (330.27) he directed the editors to ‘Run to 1931’—i.e. the text of AD, 28 March 1907. At the end of the 28 March dictation he then directed them to ‘Run to p. 1541’ of the present AD, the page that begins with ‘March 14th, ’86’ (330.28). In the event, however, the text was too long for one installment. On the NAR galley proofs the text was divided, and the last section, from ‘March 23’ (333.1) to the end, was reserved for NAR 19, which also included excerpts from the ADs of 19 November and 30 November 1906, and the entire AD of 5 September 1906.
Marginal Notes on TS1 carbon Concerning Publication in NAR