From Susy’s Biography: some of the stories Mr. Clemens used to tell; tribute to Mr. Clemens from Andrew Lang; Mr. Clemens’s speech for Booth dinner; the game of pegs for remembering dates; Mr. Clemens is found laughing over his own book—He comments upon this; also upon the mystery of style—Impossible for an author to conceal his own peculiar style—The coincidence of Dr. Holmes reading of death of relative, remarking that his name was incorrect because Dr. Holmes’s father, who baptized him, had lost the slip of paper on which name was written, and the finding of the slip by Dr. Holmes immediately afterwards—The coincidence of the Bessie Stone letter and the coming upon “Mary” in “Huck Finn” immediately after.
From Susy’s Biography. Ⓐtextual note
The stories of prevailing interest which Papa tells us is “Jim and the strainin rag” and “Whoop says I.” “Jim and the strainin rag” is simply a discription of a little scene way out west; but he tells it in such a funny way, that it is captivating.
“Jim and the strainin Rag”
“Aunt Sal!—Aunt Sal! Jim’s gone got the new strainin rag roun his sore schin. a.s. you Jim, take that ar strainin rag off you sore schin, an renc it out, I allers did dispise nastiness.”
“Whoop Says She.”
Good morning Mrs. O’Callahan. What is it yer got in yer basket? Fish says she. They stinc says I. You lie, says she. Ter Hell says I. Whoop! says she—(and then the ingagement was on.)
Susy meant well, but in this monologue (which is from one of Charles Reade’sⒶtextual note books, I thinkⒺexplanatory note), she has made some important omissions—among them the point of the thing. But it’s no matter. The late Mr. Bunce used to recite it in the billiard room occasionally, to relieve his feelings when the game was going against him. There was a good deal of it, and he placed the scene of it in a magistrate’s court, where the speaker was explaining to the judge how a row originated, and how no one was in fault but the badly battered Bridget O’Callahan, who was of a quarrelsome disposition and ever ready to take umbrage at the least little thing. Mr. Bunce threw prodigious energy and fire into the recitation, and his acting appealed to Susy’s histrionic predilections. Mr. Bunce’s “whoo-oop!” was the gem of the performance, and no one could do it as he did it.
The “Strainin’ Rag”Ⓐtextual note was a reminiscence of my boyhood-life among the slaves, and it is probable that one of its attractions for the children was, that the reciting of it was not [begin page 347] permissible on the premises. The forbidden has always had value, for both the young and the old. Susy’s way of spelling shin seems to me to lift that lowly word above the commonplace.
We all played a game of croquet yesterday evening, and aunt Clara and I beat papa and Clara, to our perfect satisfaction.
By Andrew Lang.
Mark Twain has reached his fiftieth birthday, and has been warmly congratulated on his “Jubilee” by most of the wits of his native land. As the Ettrick Shepherd said to Wordsworth, when first they met “I’m glad you’r so young a man” so one might observe to Mark, and wish he were still younger. But his genious is still young, and perhaps never showed so well, with such strength and variety, such varacity and humor, as in his latest book “Huckleberry Finn.” Persons of extreemly fine culture may have no taste for Mark, when he gets among pictures and holy places, Mark is all himself, and the most powerful and diverting writer I think of his American contemporaries. Here followeth, rather late, but heartily well meant, a tribute to Mark on his Jubilee:
For Mark Twain
To brave Mark Twain, across the sea,
The years have brought his jubilee.
One hears it, half in pain,
That fifty years have passed and gone,
Since danced the merry star that shone
Above the babe Mark Twain.
How many, and many a weary day,
When sad enough were we, Mark’s way,
(Unlike the Laureates Marks)
Has made us laugh until we cried
And, sinking back exhausted, sighed
Like Gargery Wot larksⒺexplanatory note!
We turn his pages and we see
The Mississippi flowing free;
We turn again and grin
Oer all Tom Sayer did and planned
With him of the ensanguined hand,
With Huckleberry Finn!
Spirit of Mirth, whose chime of bells,
Shakes on his cap, and sweetly swells
Across the Atlantic main,
Grant that Mark’s laughter never die,
That men through many a century
May chucle oer Mark Twain!
Susy was properly and justly proud of Andrew Lang’s affectionate hand-shakeⒶtextual note from over the ocean, and her manuscript shows that she copied his words with grateful and painstakingⒶtextual note careⒺexplanatory note, yet in spite of her loyal intentions she has raised his spelling to the sunny altitudes of her own, those fair heights where the free airs blow. But no harm is done; if she had asked of him the privilege she would have had it. Even to that quaint ennobling of the word chuckle, in the last line.
For Booth Dinner.
(This speech was given to Susy, and never used or printedⒺexplanatory note, for the Long ClamⒺexplanatory note had bedridden me. M.T.)
Although I am debarred from making a speech, by circumstances which I will presently explain, I yet claim the privilege of adding my voice to yours in deep and sincere welcome and homage to Edwin Booth; of adding my admiration of his long and illustrious career and blemishless character; and thereto my gratification in the consciousness that his great sun is not yet westering, but stands in full glory in the zenith.
I wish to ask your attention to a statement, in writing. It is not safe or wise to trust a serious matter to off-hand speech—especially when you are trying to explain a thing. Now, to make a clean breast, and expose the whole trouble right at the start, I have been entertaining a stranger; I have been at it two days and two nights, and am worn, and jaded, and in fact defeated. He may be known to some of you. He is classified in natural history as the Long Clam, and in my opinion is the most disastrous fish that swims the sea. If you don’t know him personally, let him alone; take him at hearsay, and meddle no further. He is a bivalve. When in his ulster, he is shaped like a weaver’s shuttle, but there the resemblance ends: the weaver’s shuttle travels, but the Long Clam abides; and you can digest a weaver’s shuttle, if you wait, and pray. It is your idea, of course, to entertain yourself with the Long Clam, so you lay him on a bed of coals; he opens his mouth like a carpet-sack and smiles; this looks like mutual regard, and you think you are friends, but it is not so; that smile means, “ItⒶtextual note is your innings now—I’ll see you later.” You swallow the Long Clam—and history begins. It begins, but it begins so remotely, so clandestinely that you don’t know it. You have several hours which you can’t tell from repose. Then you go to bed. You close your eyes and think you are gliding off to sleep. It is at this point that the Long Clam rises up and goes to the bat. The window rattles; the Long Clam calls your attention to it. You whirl out of bed and wedge the sash—the wrong sash. You get nearly to sleep; the sash rattles again. The Long Clam reminds you. You whirl out and pound in some more wedges. You plunge into bed with emphasis; a sort of bogus unconsciousness begins to dull your brain; then some water begins to drip somewhere. Every drop that falls, hurts. You think you will try Mind CureⒶtextual note on that drip and so neutralize its effects. This causes the Long Clam to smile. You chafe and fret for fifteen minutes, then you earthquake yourself out of bed and explore for that drip with a breaking heart, and language to match. But you never find it. When you go to bed this [begin page 349] time, you understand that your faculties are all up for the night, there is business on hand, and you have got to superintend. The procession begins to move. All the crimes you have ever committed, and which you supposed you had forgotten, file past—and every one of them carries a banner. The Long Clam is on hand to comment. All the dead and buried indignities you have ever suffered, follow; they bite like fangs, they burn like fire. The Long Clam is getting in his work, now. He has dug your conscience out and occupied the old stand; and you will find that for real business, one Long Clam is worth thirty consciences. The rest of that night is slow torture at the stake. There are lurid instants at intervals, occupied by dreams; dreams that stay only half a second, but they seem to expose the whole universe, and disembowel it before your eyes; other dreams that sweep away the solar system and leave the shoreless void occupied from one end to the other by just you and the Long Clam. Now you know what it is to sit up with a Long Clam. Now you know what it is to try to entertain a Long Clam. Now you know what it is to keep a Long Clam amused; to try to keep a Long Clam from feeling lonesome; to try to make a Long Clam satisfied and happy. As for me, I would rather go on an orgy with anybody in the world than a Long Clam; I would rather never have any fun at all than try to get it out of a Long Clam. A Long Clam doesn’t know when to stop. After you’ve had all the fun you want the Long Clam is just getting fairly started. In my opinion there is too much company about a Long Clam. A Long Clam is more sociable than necessary. I’ve got this one along yet. It’s two days, now, and this is the third night, as far as I’ve got. In all that time I haven’t had a wink of sleep that didn’t have an earthquake in it, or a cyclone, or an instantaneous photograph of Sheol. And so all that is left of me is a dissolving rag or two of former humanity and a fading memory of happier days; the rest is Long Clam. That is the explanation. That is why I don’t make a speech. I am perfectly willing to make speeches for myself, but I am not going to make speeches for any Long Clam that ever fluttered. Not after the way I’ve been treated. Not that I don’t respect the Long Clam, for I do. I consider the Long Clam by long odds the capablest creature that swims the salt sea; I consider the Long Clam the Depew of the watery world, just as I consider Depew the Long Clam of the great world of intellect and oratoryⒺexplanatory note. If any of you find life uneventful, lacking variety, not picturesque enough for you, go into partnership with a Long Clam.
Biography Continued. Ⓐtextual note
Mr. W. D. Howells, and his daughter PillaⒺexplanatory note have been here, to visit us, and we have enjoyed them very much. They arived Saturday at half past two and staid till Sunday night. Sunday night at supper papa and Mr. Howells began to talk about the Jews. Mr. Howells said that in “Silas Lapham” he wrote a sentence about a Jew, that was perfectly true, and he meant no harm to the Jews in saying it, it was true, and he saw no reason why it should not be recognized as fact. But after the story came out in the Century, two or three Jews wrote him, saying in a very plaintive and meek way, that they wished he wouldn’t say that about them, he said that after he received these letters his consious pricked him very much for having said what he did.
[begin page 350]At last one of these Jews wrote him asking him to take that sentence out of the story when it came out in book form; Mr. Howells said he thought the Jews were a persecuted race, and a race already down. So he decided to take out the sentenceⒺexplanatory note, when the story appeared in book form.
Papa said that a Mr. Wood an equantance of his, new a rich Jew who read papa’s books a great deal. One day this Jew said that papa was the only great humorist who had ever written without poking some fun against a Jew and that as the Jews were such a good subject for fun and funny ridicule, he had often wondered why in all his stories, not one said or had anything in it against the Jews. And he asked Mr. Wood the next time he saw papa to ask him how this happened.
Mr. Wood soon did see papa, and spoke to him upon this subject. Papa at first did not know himself why it was that he had never spoken unkindly of the Jews in any of his books, but after thinking awhile he decided that the Jews had always seemed to him a race much to be respected; also they had suffered much, and had been greatly persecuted; so to ridicul or make fun of them, seemed to be like attacking a man that was already down, and of course that fact took away whatever there was funny in the ridicule of a Jew.
He said it seemed to him, the Jews ought to be respected very much, for two things perticularly, one was that they never begged, that one never saw a Jew begging, another was that they always took care of their poor, that although one never heard of a Jewish orphans home, there must be such things, for the poor Jews seemed always well taken care ofⒺexplanatory note.
He said that once the ladies of a orphans home wrote him asking if he would come to Chicago* and lecture for the benefit of the orphans. So papa went, and read for their benefit. He said that they were the most forlorn looking little wretches ever seen. The ladies said they had done everything possible, but could not raise enough money, and they said that what they realy most needed was a bath tub. So they said that as their last resource they decided to write to him asking him to lecture for them, to see if in that way they could not raise a little money.
And they said what was most humiliating about their lack of means was that right next door, there was a Jewish Orphans home which had everything that was needed to make it comfortableⒺexplanatory note. They said that this home was also a work of charity, but that they never knew of its begging for anything of any one outside a Jew. They said no one (hardly) knew that it was Jewish home, exept they who lived right next door to it, and that very few knew there was such a building in the city.
Stonington.—
May 3, 1886.
Mr. Samuel L. Clemens.
My dear Sir,
When I remember how my dear father Dr. Todd of Pittsfield, Mass. was almost driven to dispair by the silly
Susy probably lost the rest of the letter. The rest of her page is blank.
The following letter—evidently from Virginia—has no date and no signature.
*Cleveland, not Chicago. S.L.C.Ⓐtextual note [begin page 351]
Soon after the war, a dear friend in Baltimore sent me a copy of Mark Twain’s “Inocents Abroad,” it was the first copy, that reached the valley, possibly the first in Virginia.
All of our household read it, I lent it to our friends, and at length nearly every body in the village had read it.
The book was so much enjoyed by people who were sick or sad, that it came to be considered a remedy for all cases where it could be taken, and we sent it about to people who asⒶtextual note the prayer book says were troubled in mind, body or “estate,” a discription which seemed to most Virginians in those sad and weary days.Ⓐtextual note After I came to Lynchburgh the book, was sent out on its travells again, and was litterally worn out in the service. It was long past being sewed or glued, when it started on its last journey; but many of the fragments were still readable, and I tied them together again, and sent it to a nice young colored girl, to giveⒶtextual note to her sick Mother to read.
I have longⒶtextual note hoped some good Yankee, would be inspired to send me a new copy. Several of Mark Twain’s books I should like much to have for my library. And I think they would do a great deal of good. At one time a lady lived near me, whose daily life was so exeptionally severe and wearing, that only a woman remarkably strong in mind and body, could have stood the strain. I once lent her a copy of “Roughing It,” which had been loaned to me, with permission to use it a while in my library. For a long time I could not enduce my careburdened friend to return the book, though I begged earnestly for it. She said that volume was her chief resource, and comfort, when worn out with her arduous duties, and she could not do without it. A Minister to whom I chanced to repeat this remark, meaning to show the value of the book, said grimly “she had better read her bible!” I could not agree with him, as I knew my friend did not neglect her religious duties, and made the bible her rule of conduct, and thought she did well, to turn to Mark Twain for diversion.
May 6, ’86.
Papa has contrived a new way for us to remember dates. We are to bring to breakfast every morning a date, without fail, and now they are to be dates from English historie. At the farm two summers ago he drove pegs into the ground all around the place representing each king’s reign following each other according. Then we used to play games running between these different pegs till finally we knew when each king or queen reigned and in refference to the kings preceeding them.
Among the principal merits of the games which we played by help of the pegs were these—that they had to be played in the open air, and that they compelled brisk exercise. The pegs were driven in the sod along the curves of the road that wound through the grounds and up the hill toward my study. They were white, and were two and a half feet high. Each peg represented an English monarch and the date of his accession. The space between pegs was measured off with a tape-line, and each foot of it covered a year of a reign. William the Conqueror’s pegⒶtextual note stood in front of the house; twenty-oneⒶtextual note feet away stood the peg of William Rufus; thirteenⒶtextual note feet from that one stood the first Henry’s peg; thirty-fiveⒶtextual note feet beyond it stood Stephen’s peg—and so on. One could stand near the Conqueror and have all English history skeletonized and land-marked and mile-postedⒶtextual note [begin page 352] under his eye. To the left, around a curve, the reigns were visible down to Runnymede; then, at the beginning of a straight piece of road stood the peg of Henry III, followed by an impressive stretch of vacancy, with the peg of the first Edward at the end of it. Then the road turned to the right and came up to the end of the reign of the fifth Henry; then it turned to the left and made a long flight up the hill, and ended—without a peg—near the first corner of my study. Victoria’s reign was not finished, yet; many years were to elapse before the peg of her successor would be required.
The vacancies between the pegs furnished an object-lesson; their position in the procession another. To read that James I reigned from 1603 until 1625, and William II from 1087 till 1100, and George III from 1760 till 1820 gives no definite impression of the length of the periods mentioned, but the long and short spaces between the pegs of these kings conveyed a quite definite one through the eye to the mind. The eye has a good memory. Many years have gone by, and the pegs have disappearedⒺexplanatory note, but I still see them, and each in its place; and no king’s name falls upon my ear without my seeing his pegs at once and noticing just how many feet of space he takes up along the road.
The other day, mamma went into the library and found papa sitting there reading a book, and roaring with laughter over it. She asked him what he was reading, he answered that he hadn’t stopped to look at the title of the book, and went on reading; she glanced over his shoulder at the cover, and found it was one of his own books.
That is another of Susy’s unveilings of me. Still, she did not garble history but stated a fact.
I do not remember what book of mine I was reading that day, but I remember the circumstance very well, although it was so many years ago. It was a quiet and peaceful Sunday afternoon, and Mrs. Clemens sat by the wood fire in the library, deeply interested in a book. I sat in the bay window on the opposite side of the room, and I took a book at random from the shelves there and began to read it, with the scandalous result recorded by Susy. I suppose I ought to have been ashamed when I found that the book which had been so delighting me was my own, and it is just possible that I tried to soften my case by saying Ⓐtextual note I was ashamed; but at bottom I wasn’t, I was gratified. I judged that in feeling and manifesting high and cordial approval and admiration of the book, I had paid it a higher compliment than could have been paid it by any other critic.Ⓐtextual note It was an old book; I do not know which one, but I know that it was one of the first two written by me; therefore it was twelve or fifteen years oldⒺexplanatory note. Necessarily, I had changed a good deal in that stretch of time; necessarily my manner of phrasing had considerably changed, and so it was rather a marvelous thing that I should still be able to like the book, or, indeed, any considerable part of it. Of course there was many and many a passage in it that would have affronted and offended me, but by luck I didn’t happen upon those, and I am sure I paid myself a very high compliment when I found any at all that did not arouse my hostility.
I soon forget my books after I have finished writing them. As a rule, years elapse before I glance at them again; then they are quite new to me. I can read them as a stranger would, [begin page 353] and when I come upon a good thing in them I am as quick and competent to recognize it as any other stranger would be.
Style is a mysterious thing. It seems to be a part of the man, and a thing which he cannot get wholly away from by any art. It seems to leak from his pen in spite of him. Unquestionably, by watchfulness he can disguise his style, apparently—successfully and effectively, throughout a book—but only apparently; the success will not be complete; it will not be perfect; somewhere in the book his watchfulness will relax, and his pen will deliver itself of a phrase that will betray him to any one who is well acquainted with his style. I know this by experience. Ten or twelve years ago, when I sold to the HarpersⒶtextual note the serial rights in the book called “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” I did not want the authorship to be known, because I did not wish to swindle the public. At that time, my nom de guerre placed upon a book meant to everybody that the book was of a humorous nature; to put it upon a serious book, like the “Joan,” would beguile many persons into buying it who would not have been willing to spend their money upon serious books from my pen. The story reached to the third month in the magazine with the anonymity still safe, but the next instalment contained indiscretions of phrasing which were promptly recognized as coming from my shop. Many letters came to the Harpers charging me with the authorship of the book, and after that they put my name to it, with my consentⒺexplanatory note. As a protection to the public, I was going to publish “The Prince and the Pauper” anonymously, but the children, and their mother, persuaded me out of it. Perhaps it was just as well, for there are things in it which would have been recognized by many persons as bearing my trade-mark. Style is apparently, then, as natural and as unconscious, and as difficult to successfully get rid of for any considerable time, as a person’s gait and carriage. Two years ago, I wrote in a carefully disguised fashion an article whose authorship I wished should not be discovered. I submitted it to Clara, and in the middle of it she found a phrase which she said anybody would know me byⒺexplanatory note. She was right, and it had to come out—a pity, too, for the careless and unpremeditated phrasings which are so sure to be stamped with the trade-mark of character are usually the ones which are best worth preserving.
A quarter of a century ago, when Thomas Bailey Aldrich succeeded Mr. Howells as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, he found in the safe an unsigned contribution by me which had been lying there a couple of years; but he recognized it as mine by the handwriting. He published it, unsigned, and sent me a check. I read two-thirds of the article and regretfully made preparation to return the check with the information that I was not the author of it;Ⓐtextual note then I proceeded to finish the reading, for I found it interesting. Almost immediately my eye fell upon a sentence which brought out of me the remark “There isn’t any one alive that would have said it in just that way but myself. I did write the article, and I’ll cashⒶtextual note the checkⒺexplanatory note.”
These reminiscences bring to my mind some others which in a way are akin to them. Many years ago, when Jean was perhaps eight years old, Mrs. Clemens and I made a flying visit to Quarry Farm, three or four hundred miles away, leaving the rest of the family and the servants at home. Katy reported conditions to us by telegraph, every day, using [begin page 354] a formula which she never changed, and which she had reported by telegraph scores of times when she had been left in charge of the children:
“Children all well and happy. Katy Ⓐtextual note.”
Long ago as that was, we had a telephone in our house.Ⓐtextual note Katy telephoned her daily message to the telegraph office, but after a while the operators saved her breath for her. They came to know her voice, and when she would call the office the operator would speak up and say, with the rising inflection proper to an interrogation,
“Children all well and happy, Katy?”
“Yes.”
That ended it, and the transmitter went to the hook.
There is something strange and wonderful about a woman’s intuitions. The telegram continued to arrive in exactly the same words, daily, for a week; then Mrs. Clemens became uneasy, and she said,
“You must take the next train for Hartford; something is wrong there.”
I am merely a man, and of course I wanted a reason for her opinion. She said she hadn’t any, except that the telegrams had latterly not affected her as they had been accustomed to do. I remarked that there had been no change in the wording, but she said—— No matter, the fact remained that they were now filling her with vague apprehensions that all was not right, and I must go, and go at once.
I did it. When I arrived at home, twenty-four hours later, it was afternoon. In the hall I found the evening paper, and I stood there a moment to read a short paragraph which had attracted my attention. It announced the death, in Boston, of a relative of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a man whose name escapes me—but it went on to say that Dr. Holmes had learned of the death from the Evening Transcript, and that thereupon he said to a friend,
“This relative had just turned his fiftieth year; here is his name, a name part of which was not really his, but he had to carry it fifty years because he was baptized under it. My father baptized him, and when he was ready to confer the name he found that he had mislaid the slip of paper upon which it was written, so he had to trust to memory, with the result that he got the middle name wrong; it should have been Wendell.”
Then Dr. Holmes went to his brother’s house to confer about the funeral. This was the house which their father had lived in fifty years before. Dr. Holmes had been in the library a thousand times since, but this time when he entered it he walked to one of the shelves, took out a book at random, blew the dust from it, and gave it a shake, and out dropped the slip of paper that his father had mislaid when he misnamed that child fifty years before. It was remarked that Dr. Holmes was not surprised that he had been moved to take out that particular book and not another, because many times,Ⓐtextual note before,Ⓐtextual note he had been moved to obey seeming commands delivered to him by inanimate objects.
That interested me, for many a time inanimate objects had required service of me and gotten it—at least the requirement had quite plainly seemed to come from those unsentientⒶtextual note objects, and from no other accountable source.
While I stood in the hall with the newspaper in my hand, the postman arrived, and [begin page 355] when I went up to call on Jean I carried the letters with me. I found Jean sitting up in her crib, in the middle of the nursery, and Katy at her side, reading aloud to her. Mrs. Clemens’s instinct had been correct; Jean had been dangerously illⒺexplanatory note, and the physician had persuaded Katy to continue the usual telegram, he believing that the child would recover, and that it would be wise, and well for Mrs. Clemens’s health’s sake, to keep the badⒶtextual note news from her. Jean was safe now, and getting along very well. After my conversation with Katy she quitted the room and left me in charge. The book that she had been reading was lying open, face down, on Jean’s feet. I took it up and began to read where I judged Katy had left off; then I began to laugh. I read on, and continued to break into explosions of admiring and grateful laughter, until I was interrupted by an ejaculation from Jean. She had an outraged look in her face, and she said in a tone of sharp reproach,
“Papa!”
“Why Jean,” I said, “what are your objections? I think it’s the brightest book I ever saw. WhyⒶtextual note it’s just charming.”
Jean did not melt. She said austerely, indignantly, uncompromisingly,
“Papa,Ⓐtextual note you ought to be ashamed to talk like that about your own book.”
But I was innocent. The book was “Huckleberry Finn,” but I had not recognized it. I had been paying myself another fine and great and unbought compliment. I read fifteen or twenty minutes, then gave Jean a rest, and took up the letters. They were from strangers, as usual, but the superscription upon one of them had a vaguely and far distantⒶtextual note familiar look to it. I opened it and turned to the signature. It was “Bessie Stone.”Ⓐtextual note
It carried me back eighteen years in a flash. Away back there in the first months of our marriage, a couple of little Massachusetts schoolgirlsⒶtextual note wrote a joint letter to me which was full of innocentⒶtextual note sweet pieties, and of gentle solicitude for me; and the burden of its message was an appeal to me to amend my ways, now, and lead a better life. I was amused at having the character of my life thus candidly exposed to me by these dear littleⒶtextual note schoolgirlsⒶtextual note of fourteen and fifteen years, but I was touched by it, too, for its intent was kindly; its solicitude was sincere and honest, and I did not fail to return the best answer I could, and put into it my quite genuine thanks. I was cautious, though; I was careful; I did not commit myself; I did not promise to lead a better life, for I could not have promisedⒶtextual note it honestly. I didn’t want to lead a better life, and I knew I wasn’t going to try; but I couldn’t wound and distress and disappoint those sweet little creatures, so I vaguely intimated that I was busy now, that I had a good deal on my hands, and that I should be obliged to postpone this reform for a time, but that I was not going to forget it; no, I should keep it in mind, and——so on, and so on. I wrote the best letter I could, without pledging myself to an uprightⒶtextual note way of life, which I knew very well I couldn’t stand.
The little schoolgirlsⒶtextual note wrote again; I answered; they wrote again; I answered; they wrote a third time; I answered. The intervals between letters were growing a little wider, and a little wider, all the time. They kept pleading with me to pray—that was one of the main things; they dwelt upon that patiently and persistently, and I did the best I could, in the circumstances, without definitely compromisingⒶtextual note myself. So at last the correspondence came to an end, I still postponing, and the children finally disheartened, I suppose.
[begin page 356]Now then, after a lapse of eighteen years since the day of that correspondence, I opened this letter—still in that original round schoolgirlⒶtextual note hand, with not a noticeableⒶtextual note change in it in any particular—and in it I found a jubilant note of gladness. Bessie Stone said something like this—I don’t remember her words:
“Our pleadings with you about prayer, so long ago, have borne fruit at last. I know it must be on account of those pleadings that Mary came to be a child of prayerⒺexplanatory note, and the thought made me oh, so happy, oh, so grateful!”
I couldn’t make anything out of that. I was acquainted with a good many Marys, but I couldn’t call to mind one that was specially distinguished in the way indicated, and so I was not able to guess who this Mary could be that Bessie Stone was talking about, or in what way her and her friend’s spiritual wrestlings with me had brought this unknown Mary to this pass.
Jean required me to read again, so I put Bessie out of my mind and picked up “Huckleberry Finn” again, and before I had read ten sentences I came upon that very Mary, and her prayer.
This incident would have startled me at any time, but the force of the surprise was doubled and quadrupled through following so swiftly upon the Dr. Holmes incident of a similar character. I have not seen “Huckleberry Finn” since, so far as I remember, and so I do not know whereabouts in the book Mary’s prayer is mentionedⒶtextual note, and, in fact, I don’t remember Mary at all.
“Whoop Says She.” . . . from one of Charles Reade’s books, I think] The original typescript of this dictation attributes this anecdote to “Charles Reid”—evidently the stenographer’s error for Charles Reade (1814–84), the popular British novelist. Clemens had been acquainted with Reade since 1872 and had read and liked many of his books, including The Cloister and the Hearth (1861); the “Whoop Says She” anecdote, however, is not by him. It derives from chapter 30 of Miss Van Kortland, published anonymously in 1870 by American novelist Frank Lee Benedict (1834–1910) (Benedict 1870; MTB, 1:462; Gribben 1980, 2:571–73).
Like Gargery Wot larks] “What larks” was Joe Gargery’s catchphrase in Great Expectations.
Andrew Lang’s affectionate hand-shake . . . painstaking care] This birthday tribute to Mark Twain by Andrew Lang (1844–1912), a Scottish novelist, poet, folklorist, and literary critic, was published in his column, “At the Sign of the Ship,” in the February 1886 issue of Longman’s Magazine (Andrew Lang 1886). If this was Susy’s source, she made minor alterations and omitted most of the following passage from the introductory paragraph: “When he gets among pictures and holy places perhaps we all feel that he is rather an awful being. But on a Mississippi boat, or in a bar-room, or editing (without sufficient technical information) an agricultural journal, or bestriding a Celebrated Mexican Plug, or out silver-mine hunting, or on the track of Indian Joe, Mark is all himself.”
For Booth Dinner. (This speech was given to Susy, and never used or printed] Clemens’s claim that this speech was “never used” conceals one of his rare failures as an after-dinner speaker. He had delivered this speech at a Players club dinner honoring Edwin Booth (1833–93), held at Delmonico’s Restaurant on the evening of 30 March 1889. The club hosted the event in gratitude for Booth’s having given it the deed to his Stanford White mansion at 16 Gramercy Park (New York Times: “The Players’ Clubhouse,” 1 Jan 1889, 5; “The Booth Supper,” 1 Apr 1889, 4). Brander Matthews, who was present, recalled: “he did not say a word about the distinguished guest; he actually took for his topic the long clam of New England—and what was worse, this inappropriate offering was read from manuscript!” “We hung our heads,” wrote another guest, “hoping that it would soon be over” (Matthews 1922, 273; Morgan 1910, 69–70). The speech does not appear in Susy’s biography, which ends with an entry written on 4 July 1886.
Long Clam] The long-necked clam, Mya arenaria.
I consider Depew the Long Clam of the great world of intellect and oratory] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 1 June 1906.
Pilla] The nickname of Mildred Howells (1872–1966), the Howellses’ youngest child, who in later life became a successful poet, watercolor artist, and illustrator (“Mildred Howells,” New York Times, 20 Apr 1966, 47).
in “Silas Lapham” he wrote a sentence about a Jew . . . decided to take out the sentence] Howells received three letters from Jewish readers while The Rise of Silas Lapham was being serialized in the Century Magazine from November 1884 to August 1885. One of these, by Cyrus L. Sulzberger, editor of the American Hebrew, urged him to remove a passage in chapter 2 before the novel was published as a book. In it, Silas asserts that although “there aint any sense in it,” Jews “send down the price of property” when they move into a neighborhood. Sulzberger claimed the remark was “unworthy of the author,” could serve no literary purpose, and that “the sentiment is violently dragged in for no other ascertainable reason than to pander to a prejudice against which all educated and cultured Jews must battle.” Howells replied on 17 July 1885, “I supposed that I was writing in reprobation of the prejudice of which you justly complain, but my irony seems to have fallen short of the mark.” Despite his annoyance at being misunderstood, he did remove the passage—and a similar one later in the chapter—before the book was published (Arms and Gibson 1943, 119–22; Howells 1884, 22–23, 25; Howells 1980, 124–25).
Mr. Wood an equantance of his, new a rich Jew who read papa’s books . . . always well taken care of] Charles Erskine Scott Wood’s “equantance” was Morris W. Fechheimer (1844–86), who had remarked that Clemens never ridiculed or satirized Jews in his writings. Clemens wrote Wood on 22 January 1885, “I have never felt a disposition to satirize the Jews. . . . We do not satirize people whom we singularly respect—one would do it but indifferently well, and be ashamed of it when done,” and gave as his reasons essentially what Susy reports here (photocopy of TS in CU-MARK; “Morris W. Fechheimer,” The West Shore, Apr 1886, 115; for Wood see AD, 31 July 1906, note at 155.13–15). After seeing the letter, Fechheimer replied to Clemens on 5 February:
I have noticed comments at various times upon the fact that Scott in Ivanhoe and Lessing in Nathan the Wise were the first authors in their respective countries, who in modern times had represented a Jew in other than the most contemptible light. Now, to me it seems that what under the circumstances you failed to do, is equally as noteworthy as what they did do. (CU-MARK)
once the ladies of a orphans home wrote him . . . everything that was needed to make it comfortable] Clemens delivered his “American Vandal Abroad” lecture on 22 January 1869 for the Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum, earning $564 for a bathtub and other expenses. In a pitch for further contributions, Clemens said at the end of his speech:
Don’t be afraid of giving too much to the orphans, for however much you give you have the easiest end of the bargain. Some persons have to take care of those sixty orphans and they have to wash them. [Prolonged laughter.] Orphans have to be washed! And it’s no small job either for they have only one wash tub and it’s slow business! They can’t wash but one orphan at a time! They have to be washed in the most elaborate detail, and by the time they get through with the sixty, the original orphan has to be washed again. Orphans won’t stay washed! I’ve been an orphan myself for twenty-five years and I know this to be true. (“Mark Twain,” Cleveland Leader, 23 Jan 1869, 4)
The asylum, founded in 1853, was located on Woodland Avenue near Cleveland’s Jewish Orphan Asylum for the orphans of Jewish Civil War veterans, which opened in 1868, underwritten by the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith (L3: 7 Jan 1869 to Fairbanks et al., 15–17; 23 Jan 1869 to Twichell and family, 68 n. 5; 5 Feb 1869 to Fairbanks, 87–88 n. 4; Cleveland Directory 1871, 542; Rose 1950, 246, 351).
Many years have gone by, and the pegs have disappeared] Clemens devised the history game at Quarry Farm in Elmira in July 1883, first setting pegs on the road on 18 July. Two days later he wrote Howells that he had also figured out a way to play it indoors with a cribbage board (NN-BGC, in MTHL, 1:435–36).
one of the first two written by me . . . twelve or fifteen years old] Probably The Innocents Abroad (1869) or Roughing It (1872). It seems unlikely that Clemens counted The Celebrated Jumping Frog (1867) as his first book, since he had been at some pains to destroy its plates and prevent its being reprinted (see AD, 23 May 1906, note at 49.31–33).
I did not want the authorship to be known . . . they put my name to it, with my consent] “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” ostensibly translated by “the Sieur Louis de Conte . . . out of the ancient French into modern English from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives of France, by Jean François Alden,” was serialized in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1895–96. After the first installment was published in April 1895, Clemens’s authorship was almost immediately suspected and confirmed. On 11 April the Hartford Courant wrote, “It is now known for a fact that Mr. Clemens is the author” (“Those ‘Personal Recollections,’ ” 8). Although his name was never attached to the serial version, “Mark Twain” is on both the cover and the spine of the 1896 book edition (SLC 1895–96, 1896; Rood 1895; “News Notes,” Bookman, Apr 1895, 145).
Two years ago, I wrote in a carefully disguised fashion . . . anybody would know me by] On 21 August 1905 Clemens wrote to George Harvey, “I am publishing anonymously an article in an outside paper, in the hope that the authorship will not be detected” (Willis F. Johnson 1929, 81). The “outside paper” was Collier’s Weekly, and the article was “Christian Citizenship,” a brief plea for the voter to heed “his Christian code of morals” in the upcoming civic elections and to reject New York’s Tammany Hall government. The article appeared in the issue of 2 September, credited to “a great creative artist whose reasons for anonymity seem sufficient to us as to himself” (SLC 1905f; Lee to SLC, 13 Sept 1905, CU-MARK; Louis J. Budd, unpublished TS in CU-MARK).
when Thomas Bailey Aldrich succeeded Mr. Howells . . . I did write the article, and I’ll cash the check] Aldrich, who succeeded Howells at the Atlantic Monthly in early 1881, published the untitled and unsigned piece, about a western obituary with “rhetorical blemishes,” in the November 1881 “Contributors’ Club.” Clemens wrote him on 2 November, “I did write that article, after all. The check for it has come; so I know I wrote it” (MH-H; SLC 1881).
Mrs. Clemens’s instinct had been correct; Jean had been dangerously ill] This incident took place in late November 1890, when Olivia was called to Elmira to be with her dying mother, Olivia Lewis Langdon. Clemens and Olivia both went, leaving Clara and Jean with the servants. Jean was ten years old. Susy was at Bryn Mawr (26–27 Nov 1890 to OLC, Twainian 35 (Sept–Oct 1976): 2–3; 27 Nov 1890 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL, 2:633–34).
Bessie Stone said . . . it must be on account of those pleadings that Mary came to be a child of prayer] Bessie Stone’s first letter to Clemens, of 1870 or 1871, is not known to survive, but she wrote again in 1883 that Jesus “has just come to several of my friends, and found an entrance; and I, who have not ceased to pray for you these twelve years, am expecting Him to come to you now.” Clemens wrote on the envelope “D—d fool.” In 1890 she sent birthday greetings to Clemens, alluding to Mary Jane Wilks’s vow to Huckleberry Finn in chapter 28 that she would pray for him, and adding, “As you sent that extraordinary passage out into the world, weren’t you hiding in it a hint to your small friend that you still cared for my prayers?” (Stone to SLC, 13 Feb 1883 and 30? Nov 1890, CU-MARK; HF 2003, 244).
Source documents.
TS1 (incomplete) Typescript carbon (the ribbon copy is lost), leaves numbered 1576–85 and 1587–1600 (1586 is missing), made from Hobby’s notes and revised: ‘Friday . . . Virginia—has’ (346 title–350.43); ‘no date . . . at all.’ (351.28–356.20).OSC MS, Olivia Susan Clemens’s untitled biography of her father written in 1885–86, pages numbered 1–131, annotated by SLC, ViU.
TS1 (a carbon copy—the ribbon copy is lost) lacks a page. The loss of text would be irremediable, were it not that Clemens at this point is quoting from Susy’s biography (OSC 1885–86). Even Clemens’s own words, introducing the letter, were actually inscribed by him in Susy’s document. We can restore the text confidently from that source. The lost typescript page would presumably have shown TS1’s usual minor modifications to Susy’s inexpert spelling and occasional grammatical slips; we have attempted tactfully to guess at these. One grammatical slip, Susy’s ‘to read’ in place of ‘to give’ (351.13), is repaired in a way we think Clemens would probably have done; another (‘seemed to most Virginians’, 351.9) we are less confident about, and it has been allowed to stand. The letter from which Susy copied has not been found.
For the inserted speech concerning ‘the Long Clam’ (348.7–349.30), the unique source is TS1. Clemens’s intentions concerning this speech go back to the time, around 1902, when he began to prepare Susy’s biography for publication. In the manuscript (OSC 1885–86, page numbered 124) Clemens wrote: ‘Jean, insert here the MS about Edwin Booth & the Long Clam.’ So, some Clemens manuscript of the speech, typed at some time by Jean, may underlie the TS1 text, but neither is extant.
Clemens revised TS1, intending it for NAR, where it did not appear.
Marginal Notes on TS1 Concerning Publication in NAR