Reminiscences of the Beecher family—Miss Clara Clemens singing in North Attleboro,Ⓐtextual note MassachusettsⒶtextual note, a place noted for manufacture of cheap jewelry—Anecdote of the feather-duster man, told to Mr. Clemens by ProfessorⒶtextual note Sloane.
Isabella Beecher Hooker is dead. I first made her acquaintance about forty years ago; she and her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, were near neighbors of ours in Hartford during eighteen years. I knew all the Beecher brotherhood and sisterhood, I believe. The men were all preachers, and all more or less celebrated in their day. I knew ReverendⒶtextual note Henry Ward, ReverendⒶtextual note Thomas K., ReverendⒶtextual note Charles, and ReverendⒶtextual note James, very well; they all rank as conspicuously able men, but of course none of them was as able, or as internationally famous, as Henry Ward, that first of American pulpit orators. They are all deadⒺexplanatory note. There was not an ungifted Beecher among all those brothers and sisters, and not one that did not make a considerableⒶtextual note name.
ButⒶtextual note the Beecher talent is all gone now; the last concentration of it went out of the world with Isabella Beecher Hooker. I knew ReverendⒶtextual note Thomas K. Beecher intimately for a good many years. He came from Connecticut to Elmira in his early manhood, when he was a theological fledgling, to take charge of a Congregational church there whose chief financial support was Jervis Langdon, my to-be father-in-law, and he continued in that charge until he died, a few years ago, aged seventy-four. He was deeply versed in the sciences, and his pulpit eloquence fell but little short of that of his great brother, Henry Ward. His was a keen intellect, and he was brilliant in conversation, and always interesting—except when his topic was theology. He had no theology of his own, any more than has any other person; he had an abundance of it, but he got it all at second-hand. He would have been afraid to examine his subject with his own fine mind lest doubts should result, and unsettle him. He was a very frank, straightforward man, and he told me once, in the plainest terms, that when he came on from Connecticut to assume the pastorship of that Elmira church he was a strenuous and decided unbeliever. It astonished me. But he followed it with a statement which astonished me more; he said that with his bringing up he was aware that he could never be happy, or at peace, and free from terrors, until he should become a believer, and that he had accepted that pastorate without any pangs of conscience for the reason that he had made up his mind to compel himself to become a believer, let the cost be what it might. It seemed a strange thing to say, but he said it. He also said that within a twelvemonth or twoⒶtextual note he perfectly succeeded in his extraordinary enterprise, and that thenceforth he was as complete and as thorough a believer as any Christian that had ever lived. He was one of the best men I have ever known; also he was one of the best citizens I have ever known. To the end of his days he was looked up to in that town, by both sinner and saint, as a man whose judgment in matters concerning the welfare of the town was better and sounder than [begin page 4] any one else’s, and whose purity and integrity were unassailable. He was beloved and revered by all the citizenship.
Isabella Beecher Hooker threw herself into the woman’s rights movement among the earliest, some sixty years ago, and she labored with all her splendid energies in that great cause all the rest of her lifeⒺexplanatory note; as an able and efficient worker she ranks immediately after those great chiefs, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mrs. Livermore. When these powerful sisters entered the field in 1848Ⓔexplanatory note woman was what she had always been in all countries and under all religions, all savageries, allⒶtextual note civilizations—a slave, and under contempt. The laws affecting women were a disgrace to our statute bookⒶtextual note. Those brave women besieged the legislatures of the land, year after year, suffering and enduring all manner of reproach, rebuke, scorn and obloquy, yet never surrendering, never sounding a retreat; their wonderful campaign lasted a great many years, and is the most wonderful in history, for it achieved a revolution—the only one achieved in human history for the emancipation of half a nationⒶtextual note that cost not a drop of blood. They broke the chains of their sex and set it free.
Clara is singing in New England. I have a letter from the stage management in North Attleboro,Ⓐtextual note MassachusettsⒺexplanatory note, asking me in a matter-of-course way—not to say in a commanding way—Ⓐtextual noteto come up there and introduce her to her audience, gratis, of course. I think that that must be their idea, because they did not ask me for my terms; still that may be only an oversight, so I have sent the terms—five thousand dollars—but I don’t hear from those people, although they have had a good three days in which to jump at my offer. Maybe they don’t want me after all; but I don’t care; I don’t want to go, anyway.Ⓐtextual note However, the North AttleboroⒶtextual note letter has brought that town back to my mind after an interval of twenty or twenty-five years, during which spacious spread of time its name has never happened to drift across the field of my memory, so far as I recollect.Ⓐtextual note
Away back there at the further verge of that vast interval, I had a talk about North AttleboroⒶtextual note one day with ProfessorⒶtextual note William M. Sloane, then of Princeton, now of Columbia UniversityⒺexplanatory note. He told me that North AttleboroⒶtextual note was a place apart: that it was the centreⒶtextual note of a unique industry—an industry not to be found elsewhere in the United States; an industry whose office was to furnish cheap gimcrack jewelry to our nation—jewelry of a flashy and attractive aspect, jewelry built out of fictitious gold and real glass; and sold honestly as imitationry.Ⓐtextual note He said that the jewelry factories were many and large, and employed hundreds and hundreds of girls and boys and men—in fact the bulk of the community; he said that in the city of New York there was a vast warehouse stocked from roof to cellar with that jewelry, and that from that building this product was forwarded to every State in the UnionⒺexplanatory note, and in truly surprising quantity. Then he told me this curious tale.
One day he was passing by that New York building and he entered it, out of curiosity, to see what he might see. He found much jewelry on exhibition in show-cases; on the outside of each parcel there was a sample of the parcel’s contents, and also the parcel’s price in figures. It was a villainous March day—muddy, slushy, damp, misty, drippy; and cold and raw. Presently, meek and drooping, entered a sad-faced man of about forty, who seemed [begin page 5] to be a tramp. His shoes were broken, and down at the heel, and soaked with slush; his hat was a battered and shapeless slouch; the rest of his clothing was poor and threadbare and patched; altogether he was a pathetic spectacle. Under his left arm he carried four feather-dusters of the commonest and cheapest pattern. He came timidly forward to a show-case near which Sloane was standing,Ⓐtextual note and pointed to a parcel marked $7.00—but only pointed, he didn’t say anything. The clerk got it out and handed it to him without saying anything; the tramp put it in his pocket and handed out seven dollars, still without saying anything; then he moved, meek and drooping, to the door and disappeared. It was a great surprise to Sloane to see such a looking creature as that transact business; and not only transact it but concrete the transaction with cash; and not only cash, but an entire seven dollars’ worth of it. Sloane was interested, and he said to the clerk,
“You don’t seem surprised. Do you know that tramp? Have you ever seen him before?”
“Oh yes,” said the clerk, “we know him; he is called the Feather-Duster ManⒺexplanatory note Ⓐtextual note; he is a regular customer of ours.”
“Tell me about him, won’t you?”
But the clerk couldn’t. He said it would be a breach of confidence; that the feather-duster man did not wish to be known.
I cannot now remember by what arts Sloane got hold of the man, a little later, and won his confidence and got his story out of him, but I can well remember the story, as the man told it to Sloane. It was about like this:
I am not a tramp, but I dress the part for business purposes. I earn a good and sure living in my occupation; I own property, and I have a good balance always in the bank. My business is not followed in exactly my way by any other person in the land; I planned it out myself; I practisedⒶtextual note it upon the people; I revised it, corrected it, improved it, and finally perfected it; and now I never change it, for it needs no change. I sell pinchbeck jewelry, and pinchbeck jewelry alone; I peddle it on foot far and wide, sometimes as far west as Ohio and as far south as the Gulf; at first I used to go out with a good many kinds of jewelry, so as to meet the requirements of all tastes, but gradually I discarded one kind and then another, as experience suggested, until at last my plan was perfect and unimprovable, and my stock was weeded down to just two articles—two, and no more; and since then I have never peddled any but just those two—engagement rings and wedding rings. That market never slacks; people never stop getting engaged, and they never stop getting married. It’s a trade that’s like undertaking—sure and steady, no fluctuations in good times or bad, the demand always the same.
Sloane interrupted to say,
“But aren’t you forgetting about the feather-dusters?”Ⓐtextual note
No, the man said, that is only a blind. I always carry them with me; I always offer them for sale, but never urgently, for I don’t want anybody to buy; now and then I can’t help it; somebody buys a duster and I have to stand it, but it’s an inconvenience, because [begin page 6] I’ve got to send and get another one to put in its place. The duster is a good protection. A tramp, pure and simple, is an offenceⒶtextual note, and he drives his trade in a thick atmosphere of prejudice and aversion all the time, whereas everybody is favorably inclined toward a ragged and hungry poor fellowⒶtextual note who has something to sell, and who is apparently doing the best he can to earn an honest living. These feather-dusters are an invaluable protection to me; they keep off prejudice the same as an umbrella keeps off rain; nobody ever receives me ungently.
I’veⒶtextual note got a trade—engraving on silversmiths’ work—but it furnished me only a poor living and I gave it up, ten years ago, in order to try commerce, for I felt that I had a talent for commerce. From that day to this I have walked the earth distributing North AttleboroⒶtextual note jewelry to the farmers and villagers of our country. You saw me buy twelve dozen very good-lookingⒶtextual note wedding rings for seven dollars—say about five cents apiece; they have good weight, they have dignity, they are handsome, and they have a convincing 24-carat aspect; if they were gold, they would be worth ten dollars apiece, retail. To begin with, I take them home and engrave two sets of initials on the inside of them, with two hearts on a skewer between. Those hearts are very fetching. I have tried other devices, but for business,Ⓐtextual note out in the country, where sentiment reigns and has its home, they are worth all the rest ofⒶtextual note a person’s viscera put together,Ⓐtextual note lungs and all; skewered with an arrow, you know; you would thinkⒶtextual note hearts skewered on a fork would be exactly the same thing, but it’s not; the trade would go to hell in a minute. It shows the power of sentiment; it shows what human beings are, out in the country—and I know all about them by this time; I don’t make any mistakes with my customers.
I always engrave the skewered hearts in the wedding rings, and I always put initials on each side of them; any initials will answer; I could use the same ones all the time if I wanted to; you will presently see that it wouldn’t hurt the business any. I do use variety in the matter of initials, but it’s only to rest myself; it isn’t necessary. You notice I bought only twelve dozen this time; it’s because I shan’tⒶtextual note go any distance from New York for a couple of weeks till I’m ready to start South when April comes and the sunshine; I’ll lay in a big stock then, and be gone two months. You didn’t see me buy any engagement rings. It is because I’ve got a bucketful or two at home. When you buy several thousand at a time you get them at a large discount, and it’s worth while. Each engagement ring has a small glass diamond in it, and is a very pretty thing, and captivating to the eye of young persons who are dangling on the brink of matrimony. If the ring was genuine, it would be worth seventy-five dollars; what I can get for it over fifteen cents is profit, and I always suit the price to the emotions of the customer; sometimes his emotions reach fifteen dollars, but if I land him for seven, or eight, or nine, I am satisfied, for where aⒶtextual note young person’s heart is engaged I couldn’t be any way but tender if I tried; it’s the way I am made. I myself have loved, and I know how it feels.
[begin page 7] You might think the engagement ring was the daisy in this trade, but you would be mistaken; it’s a close second, but the wedding ring stands first, for business, and I will tell you why: you may run a geodetic survey of farm-houses for a week on a stretch and not strike more than two or three engagements, or such a matter, but it’s a most unusual circumstance when you strike a farm-house where there’s no trade for a wedding ring. Then take a village, for instance: an ordinary village won’t fetch more than three or four engagements, and maybe not be worth more than forty dollars to me; you can hunt them out and supply them in a day, as a rule—unless it’s down South amongst the niggers; then the village trade is better; it’s because in the North a man won’t buy an engagement ring until he’s engaged, but a nigger will take one anyway, so as to be prepared for the worst. Yes, you can work off all the engagement trade of a village in a day, but sometimes I’ve had to put in a whole week to supply just one village with wedding rings. I remember one village out in Indiana that had only eight hundred and forty grown-up people in it, but amongst them they took two hundred and sixty-four wedding rings.
Sloane broke in with,
“Do you mean to say that there were two hundred and sixty-four married women in so small a community as that that had never been provided with the certification and protection of a wedding ringⒶtextual note?”
I never said that, did I? The statistics look strange to you at present, but they won’t look strange after I have got done explaining.Ⓐtextual note
You see, the procedure is this: for instance, I am languoring along a village street looking tired, and maybe discouraged; if it’s a little muddy and drizzlyⒶtextual note and dismal, all the better, for then you are most likely to catch the womenkind at home—at home,Ⓐtextual note and maybe one or another of them sitting by the window sewing. If there’s a woman sitting by the window sewing, it means that in this modest cottage they are able to keep a hired girl; but they’ll not interrupt her work to tend door. Understand, a hired girl at the doorⒶtextual note is well enough if you can’t do any better, but you can’t depend on her being worth more than about 25 per centⒶtextual note ofⒶtextual note what the average woman of the household would be. Of course you don’t throw a hired girl over your shoulder, which would be flying in the face of Providence, and could bring bad luck; no, you accept what is sent, and be thankful, and don’t grumble; you learn this kind of philosophy in the course of time. Very well, while you’re moping along apparently absorbed in your cares, you’ve got a furtive eye out for business, and you see the woman at the window before she sees you; she’s there to see what she can, and she doesn’t get much to look at. There’s a little yard in front of the cottage, and a paling fence, and a gate, and a walk that goes straight through to the front door, about five steps. Just as you are passing the gate, and looking your saddest, your face suddenlyⒶtextual note lights up, and you stoop down and apparently snake something eagerly out of the mud. The woman sees that episode—you needn’t glance at her to make sure, you know by experience that she’s always taking care of her end of the dramatics. [begin page 8] You examine that thing you’ve found,Ⓐtextual note on the sly, she watching you all the time and you apparently not aware of it; then you slip it into your vest pocket and start briskly along;Ⓐtextual note but when you’ve gone only two or three steps you stop and begin to reflect—you begin to look doubtful; you do a kind of struggle with your conscience, showing that you have been brought up in a godly family and areⒶtextual note wavering between the right and the wrong at this moral crisis of your life—understand, the woman has her eye on you, and she is interpreting it all—then you kind of straighten up and heave a return-to-virtue expressionⒶtextual note into your style,Ⓐtextual note and turn and go reluctantly back. Along at first, you can’t do a really good sample of reluctance, but after a little practice you can do it so well, you can give it such a genuine aspect, that sometimes you deceive yourself; sometimes you really think for a moment that you are reluctant. Now when you strike that gait you know that your education is complete, and that you are all right for the future. As I was saying, you go back reluctantly and fumbleⒶtextual note the gate a little, in an undecided way; finally you enter and approach the door; you knock; if it was another person he would have to wait till that woman puts her sewing in the basket and sets it aside before she comes to the door, but in your case it is different; she is there already, and the minute you knock she opens, and her face is full of interest, and expectancy too. But you mustn’t see that; no, you are intent upon another matter, and you don’t observe it; you are going to disappoint her—that’s the game. You begin to tell her, meekly and humbly, how long you have been without anything to eat, and haven’t been able to find any opening for a feather-duster, and how many children you’ve got depending on you—arranging the number, of course, to suit the circumstances and the weather—and whether your wife is sick or not, and what is the matter with her, and what the chances are—and all that kind of thing—which doesn’t interest the woman because her mind is on your vest pocket; and meantime you’re taking each feather-duster in its turn and giving it a shake before her face and explaining how much better it is than any otherⒶtextual note feather-dusters that are on the market now, and how cheap these feather-dusters are, and so on, and so on. At last, when you a give her a chance to get in a word edgeways, she says just what you were expecting her to say, and just what you wanted her to say, to wit: that she doesn’t need a feather-duster; she’s sorry; she wishes she did need one, for she would like to help any honest poorⒶtextual note person who is in trouble; and she follows that right up by offering to give you a feed. This is your chance. You turn sadly away, thanking her deeply, fervently, with considerable emotion in it, but saying it would not be right for you to eat bread which you had not earned; that you may have to come to it, but you feel it would not be honorable in you to succumb while you have yet strength to go on and seek further for a customer. This is very fetching, and it works that woman hard, but you don’t let on to see it; you turn sorrowfully away and proceed toward the gate, feeling the gaze of her pitying eye beating upon your back, and—well, you mustn’t carry it too far; half way to the gate is far enough; she is trying to pull her resolution together and shut the door and try to forget you and your sick children, and your other sorrows, and if you go one step too far she’ll manage it; no, just at the right time, as determined for you by experience, you turn and go back and begin to fumble in your vest pocket as you go, which makes you welcome. You say,
[begin page 9] “MadamⒶtextual note, I am under sore temptation, but have been mercifully granted strength to resist. I have found a heavy gold wedding ring just outside your gate; I cannot keep it, it is the property of another.Ⓐtextual note You have been kind to me; your sympathy has done me good; it’s probably yours; if so I know you will grant a poor fellow some little reward for returning it. I was once a goldsmith’s journeyman, in my better days, and I am aware that the ring must have cost ten or twelve dollars.”Ⓐtextual note
Meantime, I have been torturing that woman by dilatorily polishing the mud off the ring while she is itching to get her hands on it. I pass it to her now, and she turns it over and over with delight and desire. Presently she finds the initials and the skewered hearts,Ⓐtextual note and then one of two things happens, according to the character, training, and social environment of the woman: she either pretends to recognize the ring as her own, by the testimony of the initials, or she frankly says it isn’t her own—or rather her aunt’s; it is most customary for the woman to leave herself out, in these conditions, and make use of an aunt; but it’s all one to me; I’m not particular as to whose ring it’s going to turn out to be. It’s rather unusual for the woman to recognize the ring—with absolute certainty; in rare instances she does, and says it belongs to her aunt, who must have lost it off her finger this morning; but in all the other instances she recognizes it as the property of a friend from the other side of the village, who has been visiting her and has just gone. You mustn’t let that incautiousⒶtextual note remark go by unobstructed,Ⓐtextual note for you can suffer a damage by it. You must ask her to please give you the address, so that you can go and return the ring and hope to get four or five dollars’Ⓐtextual note reward for it. You do this because you know that the thought has already entered her mind to propose to keep the ring and restore it to its imaginary ownerⒶtextual note herself, a thing which she can do by giving you a pretty economicalⒶtextual note reward; but you have made trouble when you ask for the address, because, in the first place, there isn’t any address, and, in the second place, you may slip through her fingers if she doesn’t raise the stake. You don’t need to propose to go and hunt up that woman yourself, for she is not going to permit that; she is going to hold on to the ring and satisfy your requirement in the matter of a reward if she can.
There now, don’t you see what a good trade it is, and how certain it is? It doesn’t make any difference to you whether the woman is representing herself, orⒶtextual note an aunt, or whether she is representing a friend on the other side of the town; she’s going to keep the ring and arrange the terms with you at the best figure she can. I am never hard with those people. I generally know by the look of the woman, and her clothes, and the house, and all that, about how much of an outlay she can stand, and so I trade on that basis. She is good for two dollars, always,Ⓐtextual note for that five-cent ring, and a meal into the bargain if I want it—which I don’t. According to her style and make, she is good for two dollars, three dollars, four dollars;Ⓐtextual note and it’s not so infrequent as you might suppose,Ⓐtextual note for me to find women that will add one, two, and even three dollarsⒶtextual note to those figures. Taking a season straight through, my accounts show that my average is three dollars and thirty-five cents for a wedding ring. Sometimes it takes me forty minutes to negotiate one; sometimes it takes fifteen minutes. Every now and then I pull off a trade in five minutes; but take the day through, the average is twenty-two minutes—call it four rings per hour. In the long [begin page 10] summer days I can put in twelve or fourteen hours quite comfortably, and clear forty dollars or more on wedding rings; and in the meantime I am pretty sure to cash in ten or twenty or thirty dollars on engagement rings, according to the state of the market. You probably understand, now, how it is that in a population of eight or nine hundred grown-ups I have been able to find two hundred and sixty-four married women that were willing to strike up aⒶtextual note trade with me for a wedding ring. Such is my history, sir, and I believe I have nothing to add to it.
title March 1, 1907] This Autobiographical Dictation is actually a series of three dictations strung together under a single date; it was probably completed on 4 or 5 March.
Isabella Beecher Hooker is dead . . . They are all dead] Clemens first touched on the Hooker family in the Autobiographical Dictation of 29 January 1907, four days after the death of Isabella Beecher Hooker ( AutoMT2 , 400–409, 626 n. 403.30–32). The “Beecher brotherhood and sisterhood” were all children of the Reverend Lyman Beecher (1775–1863). With his first wife, the former Roxana Foote (1775–1816), he had eight children who survived infancy: three daughters and five sons, all of whom became ministers. Catharine (1800–1878) devoted her career to promoting the education of women, founding the Hartford Female Seminary (in 1823) and several other schools; she never married. Mary (1805–1900) helped Catharine found the seminary and taught there briefly, but retired to private life in 1827 when she married Thomas Perkins, a prominent Hartford attorney. Harriet is best known for her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; she and her husband, Calvin Stowe, were Nook Farm neighbors of the Clemenses’ ( AutoMT1 , 574 n. 310.37–38). Clemens does not mention (and was probably unacquainted with) the three oldest sons, William, Edward, and George. The two youngest, Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) and Charles Beecher (1815–1900), together attended the newly founded Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, whose first president was their father. Henry was, as Clemens says, “internationally famous,” and served his entire career as the pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, even managing to survive the scandal of a public trial for adultery with one of his parishioners in 1872–75 (see AutoMT1 , 575 n. 314.38–315.1). Charles attempted a music career before he was ordained and began his ministry, first at a church in Fort Wayne (Indiana), then in Newark (New Jersey), and finally Georgetown (Massachusetts). In all three positions his unorthodox religious views disturbed some of his parishioners; in 1873 a Congregational council convicted him of heresy (reversed by a later council). Thomas Kinnicut Beecher (1824–1900) and James Chaplin Beecher (1828–86) were the second and third children Lyman had with his second wife, the former Harriet Porter (1790–1835). (Her first child was Isabella: see the note at 4.3–5.) For forty-six years Thomas was the beloved—although unconventional—pastor of the First Congregational (later Park) church in Elmira, New York, one of whose founders was Jervis Langdon, Olivia’s father. In 1870 Thomas officiated at the Clemenses’ wedding. James went to sea after graduating from Dartmouth. He attended Andover Theological Seminary but left to minister to seamen in China, where he remained for five years. During the Civil War he raised a black regiment in North Carolina, which he led and served as chaplain. He was later a pastor of churches in Owego and Poughkeepsie, New York, and then worked with the poor in Brooklyn. Suffering from severe mood swings, he spent several years in institutions before committing suicide at age thirty-eight (Rugoff 1981, xvi–xvii, 53–62, 142–43, 194, 205–13, 406–15, 444–65).
Isabella Beecher Hooker threw herself into the woman’s rights movement . . . all the rest of her life] Isabella Beecher (1822–1907) was the eldest child of Lyman Beecher’s second marriage. She began to question the legal status of women soon after she married lawyer John Hooker in 1841, but it was not until 1868 that she became active in the women’s rights movement. In that year she helped to establish the New England Woman Suffrage Association and wrote “Two Letters on Woman Suffrage,” published anonymously in the November and December issues of Putnam’s Magazine (Hooker 1868a, 1868b). In 1869 she became one of the founders of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in Hartford, serving as its president until 1905. That same year she met Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and joined the national struggle for female suffrage and equal rights (see the note at 4.6–7). In 1870 she began promoting a bill granting property rights to married women, which the Connecticut legislature finally passed in 1877. Her tireless campaigning and generous financial support soon made her a leader of the movement, and she continued her work for over thirty years. In 1892 she received the honor of being chosen to join Stanton, Anthony, and Lucy Stone in testifying before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage (Hooker 1905; Barbara A. White 2003, 119, 127–35, 147–48, 250, 303, 326). Clemens had not always admired Isabella Hooker. In November 1872 he asked Olivia not to associate with her because of her connection with the notorious feminist and free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull, and because she believed her brother Henry guilty as charged in the adultery scandal. For the same reasons her own family and members of the Nook Farm community ostracized her until late 1875 (MEC and SLC to JLC and PAM, 26 Nov 1872, L5 , 229–32; Barbara A. White 2003, 112–13, 172–74, 213–15, 246–49). Before his own marriage in 1870 Clemens may not always have looked with full approval on women’s suffrage: in 1867 he published four articles poking fun at its proponents, but slyly included powerful rebuttals from imagined women readers (SLC 1867c–f). At any rate, in 1874, in a letter to the editor of the London Evening Standard, he expressed unequivocal support for female suffrage: “I wish we might have a woman’s party now, & see how that would work. I feel persuaded that in extending the suffrage to women this country could lose absolutely nothing & might gain a great deal” (12 Mar 1874, L6, 69, 72–73 n. 10).
Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mrs. Livermore . . . in 1848] Susan Brownell Anthony (1820–1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, which Stanton served as president until 1890. In addition to planning campaigns, making speeches, and appearing before government committees, they coedited (with Matilda Joslyn Gage) the first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage (1881–86). Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820–1905) began her political work alongside her husband, Daniel, fighting for the abolition of slavery. During the Civil War she was an organizer with the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Afterwards she became a popular lecturer, speaking in support of temperance and women’s rights. She also wrote two books, My Story of the War (1887) and The Story of My Life (1897). Although Clemens could have met her in the early 1870s, when they both lectured for James Redpath’s Boston Lyceum Bureau, no evidence has been found that he did so.
Clara is singing in New England . . . North Attleboro, Massachusetts] Clara Clemens, an accomplished contralto (or mezzo-soprano, as she was often described), had made her professional debut in Norfolk, Connecticut, the previous September ( AutoMT2 , 240, 567 n. 240.6–8). On 19 February she began touring with Boston violinist Marie Nichols, accompanied on the piano by Charles Edmund Wark (for more on Nichols and Wark, see AD, 19 Feb 1908, note at 210.8–9, and AD, 6 Oct 1908, note at 267.36–37). Only a few of their engagements have been identified: one, on 21 February in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and six in as many Massachusetts towns: 25 February in Springfield, 28 February in Greenville, 1 March in Pittsfield, 4 March in North Adams, 6 March in Fitchburg, and 7 March in Shelburne Falls (“City Briefs,” Portsmouth Herald, 21 Feb 1907, 8; “Miss Clemens at Washington Hall,” Greenville Gazette and Courier, 23 Feb 1907, 6; Springfield Republican: “Concert by Miss Clemens,” 26 Feb 1907, 4; “Berkshire County. Pittsfield,” 2 Mar 1907, 14; “Shelburne Falls,” 7 Mar 1907, 11; Shelden 2010, 29, 438–39 n. 19). It has not been confirmed that Clara sang in North Attleboro (the dictation typescript originally read “North Adams” before Clemens revised it: see the note at 4.28–36). No letter from the “stage management” has been found. On 26 February the Springfield Republican reported on the “agreeable concert” of the previous evening:
The singer is dark and somber, even to a suggestion of the tragic muse; the violinist a blonde with brio. They set each other off. What development Miss Clemens has made in her art could not be fairly judged last evening, because she was evidently troubled by a cold, which interfered not a little with the freedom and openness of her upper tones. The quality of her voice, which is an uncommonly expressive and sympathetic instrument, could best be felt in the andante of “Death and the Maiden,” which was sung with a fine sustained legato.
The reviewer concluded that “both artists received generous applause, and the audience would gladly have had an encore number or two” (“Concert by Miss Clemens,” 4). Despite generally positive reviews, the audiences were small. Clemens’s secretary, Isabel Lyon, noted in her journal on 28 March (referring to Clara as “C.C.” and quoting Clemens, who used the family’s pet name, “Ben”):
Oh the King is so great. C.C. has come back from her tour & it has cost at least $250000—a financial loss, but when I talked with him this morning about the chances of proceeding for another 4 weeks, he said “Pay the bills & tell Ben to go ahead.” He was shaving & with his face covered with lather he said in substance that she was learning her trade & the only way she can learn it is to know how to sail her ship in adverse winds—he said that if she had come home with twenty thousand dollars in her purse it would not be of the value to her that this experience has been; the big enthusiastic audiences are not the ones that are of greatest help—but the smaller, cold audiences that you win over are the ones that help you most. (Lyon 1907)
Clara evidently did extend her tour: on 17 April she and her colleagues performed in Seneca Falls, New York (“Clemens Recital This Evening,” Syracuse Post Standard, 17 Apr 1907, 9).
Professor William M. Sloane . . . now of Columbia University] William Milligan Sloane (1850–1928) graduated from Columbia College and received a doctoral degree from the University of Leipzig, then served for a time as private secretary to George Bancroft, U.S. minister to Germany. He taught Latin and history at Princeton University until 1896, when he became a professor of history at Columbia University. Among his many publications were The French War and the Revolution (1893) and Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, serialized in the Century Magazine (1894–96) and then issued as a book. Clemens and Olivia had known him since at least 1886.
North Attleboro . . . this product was forwarded to every State in the Union] As originally dictated, this text referred to the town of North Adams. Clemens altered the name to “North Attleboro” on the typescript, presumably because he remembered belatedly that the latter was the correct name of the town known for its “cheap gimcrack jewelry.” According to tradition, the earliest jewelry maker in Attleboro (which became North Attleboro in 1887) was an unnamed Frenchman, who began practicing his craft in 1780. The flourishing industry that Clemens describes here was built up over the course of the next century. By the 1890s dozens of firms were making inexpensive plated jewelry. Their products, marketed primarily through offices in New York and Philadelphia, were sold throughout the United States—sometimes by itinerant salesmen—and were also exported (Daggett 1894, 367–98).
Feather-Duster Man] In an 1886 notebook entry Clemens wrote, “ ‘I’m a feather-duster man,’ Prof. Sloan”; in 1894 he jotted a reminder to “Write up the ‘Feather-Duster Man,’ ” making similar notes in 1895 and 1897 ( N&J3, 223; Notebook 33, TS p. 58; Notebook 36, TS p. 11; and Notebook 41, TS pp. 16, 34, CU-MARK; for more about feather-duster salesmen see Krausz 1896, 130).
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 1878–1900, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.This dictation comprises three sections: one dated ‘March 1, 1907’ (leaves 1878–87, a ribbon copy), followed by two undated sections (1888–91 and 1892–1900, both carbon copies), which are introduced only by summaries. The combined typescript, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for the text. According to Hobby’s typed memoranda, the first and last sessions each took two hours, and the second one took one; it is therefore likely that the dictation was created over at least two days. TS1 originally read ‘North Adams’ wherever the text now reads ‘North Attleboro’. Clemens himself made this alteration when revising, overlooking one instance, which has been emended. His revision was evidently made to accommodate the anecdote about the ‘Feather-Duster Man’, which must refer to North Attleboro, a known center for the manufacturing of cheap jewelry. Clemens evidently realized that North Adams was not the correct locale; in any event, his revision is not a suppression and has been adopted.
Penciled queries on sections two and three, probably made by Paine, suggest that this text was reviewed for possible NAR publication. Clemens’s insertion of ‘Dictated’ in the dateline is not firm evidence that he revised the text with the intention of excerpting some or all of it, although he had made the same addition on eleven earlier ADs in 1906–7 that he either excerpted in NAR or clearly intended to. He soon began to include “Dictated” on every dictation, and even used it for the manuscript introduction to “Wapping Alice”: see AD, 9 April 1907. The revision at 4.18–22 has been rejected as a modification made for the purpose of possible publication.