Mr. Clemens has been taking another vacation, and a flying trip to Bermuda—His experiences with his eighty thousand dollarsⒶtextual note in 10 per centⒶtextual note stock—Miss Clemens’s singing on the concert stage a success; she has learned how to please her audiences—Thomas Bailey Aldrich dead; none of the gay company of old left but Mr. Howells and Mr. Clemens—Mr. Clemens has completed the work which remained for him to do—his Autobiography—or enough of it to accomplish his object in writing it: to distribute it through his books and thus secure a new copyright life for them.
I have been taking another vacation—a vacation for which there was no excuse that I can think of except that I wanted to get away from work for a while to appease a restlessness [begin page 13] which invades my system, now and then, and is perhaps induced by the fact that for thirty-five years I have spent all my winters in idleness, and have not learned to feel natural and at home in winter-work. I seem to have been silent about a month. Many things have happened in the meantime, and as I recall them I perceive that each incident was important in its hour, and alive with interest; then quickly lost color and life, and is now of no consequence. And this is what our life consists of—a procession of episodes and experiences which seem large when they happen, but which diminish to trivialities as soon as we get a perspective upon them. Upon these terms a diary ought to be a curious record, for in it all the events ought to be large, and all of the same size—with the result that by and by the recorded events should still be nearly all of one size, and that size lamentably shrunken in bulk.
This is a sordid and commercialized age, and few can live in such an atmosphere and remain unaffected by it; but I find that even the stock market is like the other interests—it cannot hold my attention long at a time. I have eighty thousand dollars in a 10 per centⒶtextual note stockⒺexplanatory note, and I was not thinking of selling it, although I bought it to sell. While I was not noticing, it crept up, point by point, each point representing a profit of fifteen hundred dollars, and in the course of two or three weeks it climbed twenty-sixⒶtextual note points, each point, as I have said, standing for a profit of fifteen hundred dollars. If I had been awake I would have sold out and captured that thirty-nine thousand dollars to build the house with—for John Howells has been architecting a house for us, to be built upon the farm near Redding, Connecticut, which we bought a year and a half agoⒺexplanatory note—but I was asleep, and did not wake up again until yesterday: meantime that stock had been sliding down, and in its descent it had sponged out the entire twenty-six points byⒶtextual note yesterday afternoon. Then I bought some more of it, and made an order for a further purchase this morning if it should fall two or three points lower. I was hoping it would, but it didn’t. It has started up againⒶtextual note and I have recorded one more mistake. I hoped it would go ’way down,Ⓐtextual note but since it has concluded to go up, I will try to get a sort of satisfaction out of watching its flight. Each ascending point now represents a profit of seventeen hundred and fifty dollars and it has accomplished two points since yesterday afternoon.
The next incident of importance was another tripⒶtextual note to Bermuda a week or two agoⒺexplanatory note. We went and came in the same ship, as before. The passages to and fro, and the twenty-four hours’ sojourn in those delightful islands, were matters of high importance and enchanting interest for the time being, but already they have shriveled to nothing, and taken their place among the rest of the trivialities of life.
Clara has been barnstorming on the concert stage in New England the past few weeks, and at last she has learned her tradeⒺexplanatory note and is qualified to succeed, and will succeed—a great event for her, and a great event for me. By learning her trade, I mean that by normalⒶtextual note processes her theories, which naturally seemed made of boiler-iron or some other indestructible substance, have been blown to the four windsⒶtextual note by experience, that best of all teachers. According to her theories, her first duty was to be faithful to the highest [begin page 14] requirements of her art and not move upon any plane but the highest; this meant classical music for all audiences, whether they were qualified to appreciate it and enjoy it or not. Experience has taught her that she and her audiences are in a tacit co-partnership, and that she must consider their share of the business and not arrange her performances to please herself alone. She has found, indeed, that her first duty is really to forget herself and give all her attention to pleasing her house. She has found that in striving to please the house she has accomplished severalⒶtextual note important things: her heart goes out to the house; by natural law the hearts of the house meet it half way; all hands are pleased; all dread and all anxiety have disappeared from her spirit, and life upon the platform has become to her a delight, and as pretty as a fairy-tale. She takes an undaughterful pleasure in noting that now the newspapers are beginning to concede with heartiness that she does not need the help of my name, but can make her way quite satisfactorily upon her own merits. This is insubordination, and must be crushed.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich has passed from this life, seventy years oldⒺexplanatory note. I was not back from Bermuda in time to attend the funeral, and the physicians would not allow Howells to go, he being but lately recovered from a wasting attack of the grippe. He was here yesterday, and naturally we called the roll. So many are gone! Of the gay company of us that used to foregather in Boston, thirty-five years ago and more, not one is left but himselfⒶtextual note and me; and of the New York contingent of that day we could call to mind no conspicuous member still in the flesh except Stedman. We had a right to complain of the order of the procession—disorder is its right name—for almost every one of those old-time friends got his release before he was fairly entitled to it. Howells and I have been postponed, and postponed, and postponed, until the injustice of it is becoming offensive. It is true that Aldrich was entitled to go before Howells, because he achieved his threescoreⒶtextual note and ten last November, whereas Howells onlyⒶtextual note attained to that age on the 1st of the present month; but I am seventy-one and four months over—thus I ranked Aldrich by sixteen months—and was entitled to the precedence in the great procession. I do not need to stay here any longer, for I have completed the only work that was remaining for me to do in this life and that I could not possibly afford to leave uncompleted—my Autobiography. Although that is not finished, and will not be finished until I die, the object which I had in view in compiling it is accomplished: that object was to distribute it through my existing books and give each of them a new copyright life of twenty-eight yearsⒺexplanatory note, and thus defeat the copyright statute’s cold intention to rob and starve my daughters.Ⓐtextual note I have dictated four or five hundred thousand words of autobiography already, and if I should die to-morrow this mass of literature would be quite sufficient for the object which I had in view in manufacturing it.
That very remarkable woman and exceedingly valuable citizen, Mrs. Kinnicutt, dined with us two or three nights ago, and that other very remarkable woman, Mrs. DraperⒺexplanatory note, would have come also but an engagement prevented it. Mrs. Kinnicutt said—but I will refer to this laterⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
I have eighty thousand dollars in a 10 per cent stock] Clemens owned 1,500 shares of preferred stock in the Utah Consolidated Mining Company, which was supposed to pay a 10 percent annual dividend: see the Autobiographical Dictation of 27 March 1907, where he discusses this stock in more detail.
John Howells has been architecting a house . . . bought a year and a half ago] The house being designed by John Howells, son of Clemens’s good friend William Dean Howells, was to be built in Redding, Connecticut, on a site suggested by Albert Bigelow Paine (for John Howells see AutoMT2 , 509 n. 102.40). In 1905 Paine had purchased land in the area and renovated an old house on the property; by 1906 he was living there with his wife, Dora, and three daughters, Joy, Louise, and Frances. His enthusiastic descriptions of the landscape prompted Clemens, who had been thinking of leaving New York, to buy a neighboring property in March 1906. After buying additional parcels of land in May and September of that year, he owned about two hundred acres, comprising an entire hilltop overlooking the Saugatuck River valley ( MTB , 3:1293–94; “Estate of Samuel L. Clemens” 1910, 1–3). By August 1906 he had engaged John Howells to draw up plans for a house. On 3 August he told the elder Howells that he wanted “John & Clara to take hold of that house now, & build it—out of the Review money. I shall bank it by itself for that purpose, as I have just been telling Clara.” The “Review money” was Clemens’s anticipated earnings from “Chapters from My Autobiography,” the series of excerpts that he and George Harvey had just agreed to publish in the North American Review (see AutoMT1 , 51–54, 557 n. 267.35). At thirty cents a word, he expected to earn at least thirty thousand dollars, the expected cost of construction. Ultimately, the house cost at least forty thousand dollars, and probably more; in October 1908 he claimed it was “double what I had expected” (12 Oct 1908 to Butler, transcript in CU-MARK; see also AD, 27 Mar 1907). At first he thought to call it Autobiography House, as he told Howells: “How’s that for a name for it? Seems good. It is Miss Lyon’s suggestion” (3 Aug 1906 to W. D. Howells, MH-H, in MTHL , 2:817). By the time the house was finished he had renamed it Innocence at Home, and then, finally, Stormfield (3 Aug 1906 to CC, photocopy in CU-MARK; John Howells to Lyon and SLC, 19 Sept 1906, and John Howells to SLC, 7 May 1907, CU-MARK; for more on the house and its naming, see AD, 17 April 1908, note at 221.17–19; AD, 3 July 1908; and AD, 6 Oct 1908).
another trip to Bermuda a week or two ago] On 16 March Clemens left for a “flying” trip to Bermuda accompanied by Isabel Lyon and Mary (Paddy) Madden, a pretty nineteen-year-old whose company he had enjoyed on his return trip from Bermuda on 7–9 January (see AutoMT2 , 611 n. 359.27–28). On 11 March Lyon noted in her journal:
The King is restless— The gout seems better—& I painted the foot again tonight— (I hear him sneeze.) He cannot dictate & he is much in need of a change. We have been talking up a trip to Bermuda. We should have but one night there for the Bermudian sails every Saturday from here—but the King won’t care— He will have 5 days away from home, & so I telephoned first to Mr. Howells to ask if he were not planning to go to Bermuda, but he isn’t—& then after foraging about in his thoughts he suggested Paddy Madden, & I telephoned the invitation to her & delighted her soul. (Lyon 1907)
Also on board the outgoing voyage, on the RMS Bermudian, was Charles William Eliot (1834–1926), president of Harvard University. According to Lyon,
That pretty creature Paddy proves a delightful bait for the very nicest men on board— She sat beside President Elliot & seemed to delight him with her empty little remarks— She loves ice cream, but not candy, & she never drinks coffee all of which . . . she says with a conviction that makes you interested in what she is saying. She wears white when the fellows come to see her. She says a 5 page prayer to the virgin 5 times a day when she isn’t too sleepy & so & so on, & she is so pretty. (Lyon 1907, entry for 17 Mar)
The travelers spent one day sightseeing before returning to the ship, which departed the next day and arrived back in New York on 21 March.
Clara has been barnstorming . . . she has learned her trade] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 1 March 1907, note at 4.16–17.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich has passed from this life, seventy years old] Clemens met Aldrich—a poet, novelist, journalist, and editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1881 to 1890—in November 1871, and remained his lifelong friend, until his death on 19 March 1907. In his 1904 sketch “Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich,” Clemens wrote that Aldrich “never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings” ( AutoMT1 , 229, 539 n. 229.8). Clemens discusses Aldrich and the memorial museum that his wife, Lilian, established in his honor in the Autobiographical Dictations of 3 and 6 July 1908.
that object was to distribute it through my existing books . . . new copyright life of twenty-eight years] In January 1904 Clemens first expressed his plan to publish his autobiography as “notes (copyrightable) to my existing books” to add twenty-eight years to their copyrights and thereby create income for his daughters. The notes would “add 50% of matter to each book, & be some shades more readable than the book itself” (16 Jan 1904 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL , 2:779). For a discussion of this “copyright extension gambit” and why it never came to pass, see AutoMT1 , 23–24; see also AutoMT2 , 285–86, 585 n. 285.40–286.3, and “Closing Words of My Autobiography.”
Mrs. Kinnicutt, dined with us two or three nights ago . . . Mrs. Draper] The dinner party took place on 22 March. Eleonora Kissel Kinnicutt (1837–1910), wife of noted physician Francis P. Kinnicutt (1846–1913), was a trustee of Barnard College and, since 1896, manager of the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane on Wards Island (New York Times: “Mrs. F. P. Kinnicutt Dead,” 27 Oct 1910, 11; “Dr. Kinnicutt Dies at Doctors’ Meeting,” 3 May 1913, 11; Manhattan Census 1910, 1037:1A). Mary Palmer Draper (1839–1914) was the widow of Henry Draper (1837–82), a professor of astronomy at Harvard and a pioneer in astronomical photography. She worked with her husband in the Harvard College Observatory, becoming an accomplished astronomer herself. She remained active in the field; in 1905 and 1906 she had invited Clemens to meet the members of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society at her home on Madison Avenue. Upon her death she made bequests totaling more than $1 million to the New York Public Library and Harvard University, among other institutions (“Mrs. Draper Wills $400,000 to Library,” New York Times, 20 Dec 1914, 1; New York Public Library 2013). The other guests at the dinner included Count Tcherep-Spiridovitch (see AD, 28 Mar 1907, note at 18.1–2); Dorothea Gilder (1882–1920), a friend of Clara’s and daughter of Richard Watson Gilder; Melville Stone (see AD, 19 Aug 1907, note at 104.23); and Governor Edwin Warfield of Maryland (1848–1920) and his wife, Emma (Lyon 1907, entry for 22 March).
Mrs. Kinnicutt said—but I will refer to this later] Lyon recorded a remark that was probably the one Clemens promised to return to “later”—but never did:
Last night Mrs. Kinnicutt said a thing that interested me. She said that when Karl Schurtz was writing his autobiography he was unable to write the early part of it—his German life—in English; he was obliged to write it in German & have it translated. Mrs. Kinnicutt said he would labor with it & write in stilted English, impossible English—& finally would give it up & go back to the German. (Lyon 1907, entry for 23 Mar)
For Carl Schurz see the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 August 1907, note at 104.22. Eleonora Kinnicutt collaborated with Schurz in translating his Reminiscences, published in three volumes in 1907–8.
Source document.
TS1 Typescript carbon (the ribbon copy is lost), leaves numbered 1909–15, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.The ribbon copy being lost, TS1 (a carbon copy), as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for this dictation.