Items from the Children’s Record: Susy’s quaint sayings; Clara’s innumerable damp-nurses, and description of Maria McManus, one of these nurses.
Many months ago I extractedⒶtextual note a chapter from the old manuscript-book which we call the Children’s RecordⒺexplanatory note —a book in which Mrs. Clemens and I rather desultorily set down remarks made by the children when they were little. We were accustomed to make the entries in the book while the sayings were fresh, wherefore the Record reads like a diary, and not like bygone history. When I extractedⒶtextual note that chapter I observed that the Record has now attained to a value which we had not foreseen in those early days—not a value to persons outside the family, perhaps, but a value to me, because the thoughtless remarks of those innocent babblers, in which their tempers and charactersⒶtextual note were revealed, turned out to beⒶtextual note such an accurate forecast of what their characters were to be when they should be grown-ups. I wish to quote from the Record again. When Susy was something over three years old, her religious activities began to develop rapidly. Many of her remarks took color from this interest. Instances:
She was found in the act of getting out her water-colorsⒶtextual note, one Sunday, to make vari-colored splotches and splashes on paper—which she considered “pictures.” Her mother said—
“Susy, you forget it is Sunday.”
“But, mamma, I was only going to paint a few pictures for Jesus, to take up with me when I go.”
It was reverently said, though it does not sound so at this distant day.
Her Aunt SueⒺexplanatory note used to sing a hymn for her which ended:
“I love Jesus because He first loved me.”Ⓔexplanatory note
Susy’s mother sang it for her some months afterward, ending it as above, of course. But Susy, the just, the conscientious, corrected her, and said—
“No, that is not right, mamma—it is because he first loved Aunt Sue.”
The word “me” rather confused her.
One day, on the ombra, she burst into song, as follows:
“Oh Jesus are You dead,So You cannot dance and sing?”
The air was exceedingly gay—rather pretty, too, and was accompanied by a manner and gestures that were equally gay and chipper. Her mother was astonished and distressed. She said—
“Why Susy, did Maria teach you that dreadful song?”
“No mamma, I made it myself, all out of my own head—nobody helped me.”
She was plainly proud of it, and was going to repeat it, but refrained, by request.
This reference to Maria brings that remarkable woman vividly before me, after all these slow-drifting years. The Record says:
Maria McManus was one of Clara Clemens’s innumerable damp-nurses—a profane devil, and given to whiskyⒶtextual note, tobacco, and also to some other vices. From Clara’s first birthday till some months had passed,Ⓐtextual note her chances were uncertain. She could live on nothing but breast milk, and her mother could not furnish it. First we got Mary Lewis, the colored wife of John T. Lewis, (theⒶtextual note colored lessee of Quarry Farm,)Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note to supply it a couple of weeks; but the moment we tried to put her on prepared food she turned blue around the mouth and began to gasp. We thought she would not live fifteen minutes. When Mary Lewis’s tank was exhausted, we next got Maggie O’Day from Elmira, who brought her child with her and divided up her rations—not enough for the two; so we tried to eke out Clara’s share with prepared food, and failed—she turned blue again and came near perishing.
We never tried prepared food any more. Next we got Lizzie BothekerⒺexplanatory note. When she went dry, we got Patrick’s wife, Mary McAleerⒺexplanatory note , to furnish the required milk. In turn, she went bankrupt. Then we got Maria—Maria McManus—and she stayed a year, until Clara was weaned. To me, but not to Mrs. Clemens, Maria was a delightⒺexplanatory note, a darling, a never failing interest. She smoked all over the house; in the kitchen she swore, and used obscene language; she stole the beer from the cellar and got drunk on it and on stronger liquors, every now and then, and was a hard lot in every possible way—but Clara throve on her vices right along. In the shortest month in the year she drank two hundred and fifty-eight pints of my beer, without invitation, leaving only forty-two for me. I think it was the dryest month I ever spent since I first became a theoretical teetotaler.
By certain arts and persuasions I enabled Clara to believe that every time she acquired a damp-nurse she also acquired the nurse’s name, and added it to her own. I taught her to rattle off the list glibly, and as she was not able to pronounce any of the names correctly, but butchered them all, I got great satisfaction out of hearing her do her little stunt. She did it gravely, and with innocent confidence that it was all right, and just so; and so whenever a stranger asked what her name was, she turned the whole battery loose on him, to wit: Clara Langdon Lewis O’Day Botheker McAleer McManus Clemens, and was not aware that she was playing any deception upon that stranger.
Maria was proprietor of a baby, which was boarded at a house on the Gillette placeⒺexplanatory note and by and by died. Mrs. Clemens gave her twenty dollars, out of sympathy and to enable her to make a worthy and satisfactory funeral. It had that effect. Maria arrived home about eleven o’clock that night, as full as an egg and as unsteady on end; but Clara was as empty as she was full, so after a steady pull of twenty minutes her person was full to the ears of milk-punch constructed of lager-beer, cheap whiskyⒶtextual note, rum, and wretched brandy, flavored with chewing-tobacco, cigar-smoke, and profanity; and the pair were regally “sprung” and serenely happy. Clara never throve so robustly on any nurse’s milk as she did on Maria’s, for no other milk had so much substance to it. It always had lemon-pie and green apples in it, and such other prohibited things as were believed by doctors to be fatal to children when administered to them through the breast of a nurse, but Clara always liked those things and prospered upon them.
[begin page 45] Maria was one of the most superbⒶtextual note creatures to look at I have ever seen. She was six feet high, and perfectly proportioned; she was erect, straight; she had the soldierly stride and bearing of a grenadier, and she was as finely brave as any grenadier that ever walked. She had a prodigal abundance of black hair; she was of a swarthy complexion, Egyptian in its tone; her features were nobly and impressively Egyptian; there was an Oriental dash about her costume and its colors, and when she moved across a room with her stately stride she was royal to look at—it was as if Cleopatra had come again.
Out of idle curiosity, I once made a search of her room to see if there was anything interesting in it. Between her mattresses I found apples, pears, oranges—and the other fruit of the season—and enough of my cigars, smoking-tobacco, and beer, to start a shop with. Another would have reproached her, but I didn’t; I only admired her provident care of herself; I believed I would be just as thoughtful if I were a wet-nurse myself. A couple of years after Clara was done with her, in Hartford, she applied for a place as wet-nurse in an Institution in New York, and gave me as a referenceⒺexplanatory note. The President wrote and asked me if this was correct. I said it was, and gave her reference enough to elect the eleven thousand Virgins of CologneⒺexplanatory note, if they had been in Maria’s line of business. I said, give her all the beer and whisky and brandy and tobacco and green fruit and lemon-pie she might want, and turn her loose on the nursery, and have no solicitude about the results.
More items from the Record: Susy and Mr. Millet—Mr. Clemens speaks of Millet: his beautiful character, his service as war correspondent, his marriage, his painting the first oil portrait of Mr. Clemens, etc.—Items from the Record, ending with Susy’s letter to Mr. Millet.
Susy four and a half years old.
Frank D. Millet, the young artist, came here some time ago, to paint my portrait, and remained with us a fortnightⒺexplanatory note. A day after his arrival Susy asked her mother to read to her. Mr. Millet said:
“I’ll read to you, Susy.”
Susy said, with a grave, sweet grace, and great dignity—
“I thank you, Mr. Millet, but I am a little more acquainted with mamma, and so I would rather she would do it.”
Millet’s hair was black then; it isn’t now. My head was brown then; it is white now. Millet was unknown then; he is widely known now. Neither of us was acquainted with trouble then; we are familiar with it now. We were so young then!Ⓐtextual note we are so old now. Millet was the dearest and most lovable human being of his sex anywhere to be found in that old day. He holds that beautiful supremacy yet, and can maintain it against all comers; age has not soured him; the sweetness that was born in him was born to stay. He has always had troops of affectionate friends; he still has troops of them, and not in America alone, but in England and in France. I don’t suppose he knows what an enemy is; I cannot conceive of his knowing how to acquire an enemy.
[begin page 46] Am I describing a male Miss Nancy? No, he was never that. Being an artist, and a good artist, he necessarily has a deal of poetry and sentiment in him, and they find expression upon his canvases; but he is also wise and practical, and also most masculinely brave. A year and a half after he painted my portrait, in Hartford, I encountered him rushing down the Boulevard des Italiens, in Paris, and asked him what was his hurry. He had in that hour been appointed war correspondent by the London Daily News Ⓔexplanatory note, and was getting ready to start for the seat of war. A couple of hours later he had made all his arrangements, and was on the way. He was all through the war, and his closest and most admiring comrades were MacGahanⒶtextual note and Archibald Forbes, those daring knights of the penⒺexplanatory note. He was in the centreⒶtextual note of the hottestⒶtextual note fire at PlevnaⒺexplanatory note, all day long; he was in the rest of the fights;Ⓐtextual note he was a valued comrade of the grand dukes and generals; the EmperorⒶtextual note was his friend, and decorated him on the field, for valorⒺexplanatory note. Deadly peril seemed to have a charm for him, and for MacGahanⒶtextual note and Forbes, and they had many a thrilling success in hunting it up and enjoying it; wherever news was to be had they proceeded to that place, let the distance and the dangers be what they might. Millet had a dozen subordinates under him, and twenty-three horses, and he developed great executive ability in handling these resources.
When the war was over he returned to Paris, resumed his painting, and got married. We were at the weddingⒺexplanatory note and added our share to the display of wedding presents. I contributed a stick of fire-wood decorated with pretty ribbons, and of course it ranked as jewelry, as any one will know who had to pay for wood fires in the French capital in those days.
Millet’s business ability exploited itself again at the World’s Exposition in Chicago in honor of Christopher Columbus, in 1893. The decorating of the White City was placed in his hands; he had a great company of artists of repute under himⒺexplanatory note; he ordered everything, superintended everything, finished his great work on time, did it thoroughly well, and kept peace in his art-family all the way through. The executive capacity which he displayed brought him an abundance of compliments; among others, he was offered, at a great salary, the chief managership of the largest and wealthiest coal business in Chicago; but he preferred his art to riches,Ⓐtextual note and declined thatⒶtextual note and other fine offers of the kind.
When Millet came to Hartford to paint the first oil portrait that was ever made of me, he gave me a small picture—a Dutch interior, which was his earliest effort in oils, and I have it yet. At our first sitting he dashed off a charcoal outline of me on his canvas which was so good and strong and lifelike that Mrs. Clemens wouldn’t allow him to add any paint, lest he damage it. She bought it. He had brought but the one canvas from Boston, so he had to go down town and get another. I remained outside on the sidewalk while he went into the art shop to stretch the canvas on the frame. It was dull out there, and I tried to think of some way to put in the time usefully. I was successful. There was a barber shop near-byⒶtextual note, and I went in there to get the ends of my hair clipped off; I fell into a reverie, and when I woke up there was a bushel of brown hair on the floor and none on [begin page 47] my head. When I joined Millet he took one glance, realized the disaster that had befallenⒺexplanatory note, and said he wanted to go to some private place and cry. He devoted a couple of diligent weeks to the portrait and made a good one, if you don’t count the hair; but as there was no hair, he had to manufacture it, and his effort was a failure. I have the portrait yet, but the hair it wears is not hair at all; it is tarred oakum, and doesn’t harmonize with the rest of the structure.
One day at dinner Millet told a charming little story. On a bleak and sleety day two men were drifting here and there over an old and neglected cemetery, and evidently seeking something. Sometimes they were wide apart, sometimes they crossed each other’s path, and at last they spoke. One said:
“You do not seem to succeed.”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“Whom do you seek?”
“The dearest soul, the sweetest nature, the lovingest friend and the faithfulest, a man ever had. And you?”
“I am seeking the hatefulest scoundrel the human race has ever produced; I want to curse his ashes.”
They separated, and searched again far and wide; at last they came together, and together they scraped the moss from a gravestone and revealed the inscription: both had been seeking the same man!
Of course the moral of the story is that there is a good side and a bad side to most people, and in accordance with your own character and disposition you will bring out one of them and the other will remainⒶtextual note a sealed book to you. Millet had painted himself without knowing it. He is not capable of bringing out the bad side of anybody. He would bring out the good and lovable side every time, and never find out that there was any other.
January, 1877.
The other evening after the children’s prayers, Mrs. Clemens told Susy she must often think of Jesus, and ask him to help her to overcome bad impulses. Susy said:
“I do think of him, mamma. Every day I see His cross on my Bible and I think of Him then—the cross they crucified Him on. It was too bad—I was quite sorry Ⓐtextual note.”
May 4.
When Miss Hesse ceased from her office of private secretary and took final leave of us to-dayⒺexplanatory note, Susy said gravely—
“I am losing all my friends.”
This is rather precocious flattery.
As little as Susy was, she was a diligent reader, and in at least one particular she was like the rest of the human race, grown-ups and all; that is to say, she was likely to take the color of the latest book she had read and whose style she had admired. As a result of [begin page 48] this she sometimes delivered herself of impressive formalities of speech which sounded quaintly enough coming from such a small person. I quote:
May 4.
Yesterday Susy had a present of a new parasol, and hit Clara a whack with it—to see if it was substantial, perhaps. RosaⒺexplanatory note, the nurse, took it away from her and put it in the blue-room. Susy was vastly frightened, and begged Rosa not to tell on her, but her pleadings failed. In the evening Susy said, with earnestness—
“Mamma, I begged, and begged, and begged, Rosa not to tell you— but all in vain Ⓐtextual note.”
A month or more ago, Clara was naughty in the nursery and did not finish her dinner. In the evening she was hungry, and her mamma gave her a cracker. I quote now from a letter written to me by her mother when I was in Baltimore two or three days ago.
“Last night after GeorgeⒺexplanatory note had wiped off Clara’s sticky fingers in the china closet she came out, with her little sad, downcast look, and said, ‘I been litte naughty up ’tairs, can I have a cracker?’ I found that the naughtiness had been invented for the occasion.”
The next paragraph in the Record is of date—
July Ⓐtextual note 4, at the Farm. Ⓐtextual note
There would be a grand display of fireworks down in Elmira, and the adult members of the farm tribe would sit in the grass on the hilltop and look out over the valley and enjoy the show:
Susy being ordered to bed, said thoughtfully—
“I wish I could sit up all night, as God does.”
Letter to Millet, from Susy, March 1877:
“Dear Mr. Millet
Clara and I has both got valentines, I have a new fan and a German book and Clara’s got a new carrage— Papa teached me that tick, tick—my Grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf so it stood 90 years on the floor. Mr. Millet is that the same clock that is in your picture— Dear Mr. Millet I give you my love, I put it on my heart to get the love out.”
She refers to the little picture already mentioned, which was Millet’s first effort with the brush, and contains an old-fashioned stand-up-in-the-cornerⒶtextual note clock.
Many months ago I extracted . . . the Children’s Record] Clemens inserted excerpts from “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susy & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants),” a manuscript he wrote between 1876 and 1884, in the Autobiographical Dictation of 5 September 1906. In the extracts that follow, Clemens adapts rather than “quotes” his manuscript (for the complete text see FamSk , 51–93; AutoMT2 , 222–25).
Aunt Sue] Susan Langdon Crane, Olivia Clemens’s foster sister. She and her husband, Theodore, owned Quarry Farm, near Elmira, where the Clemens family spent their summers from 1871 to 1889 ( AutoMT1 , 480 n. 74.1, 579 n. 324.32).
“I love Jesus because He first loved me.”] This is the last line of a refrain in several different hymns. The most popular, written by Anglican clergyman Frederick Whitfield (1829–1904), was first published in 1855 with the title “The Name of Jesus,” and was commonly sung to an American folk melody (Julian 1908, 1276).
Mary Lewis, the colored wife of John T. Lewis, (the colored lessee of Quarry Farm,)] Mary Stover (1841?–94) was born in Virginia. Lewis married her in 1865, a year after he had settled in Elmira, and she worked as a servant at Quarry Farm. They had one child, Susanna, born in 1871 or 1872 (see AutoMT2 , 541–42 n. 172.40–173.1; Chemung Census 1880, 817:235C; Gretchen Sharlow, personal communication, 10 Aug 1990, CU-MARK; Thomasson 1985).
Maggie O’Day . . . Lizzie Botheker] Maggie O’Day has not been further identified. Clemens omitted here a further comment on Lizzie Botheker that he had recorded in the “Children’s Record”: he “had to pay her worthless husband $60 to let her come, beside her wages of $5 per week ( FamSk , 54).
Patrick’s wife, Mary McAleer] Patrick, the Clemenses’ coachman, was married to the former Mary Reagan (b. 1846?). Their first child, James, was about the same age as Clara ( AutoMT1 , 579 n. 322.31–42; Hartford Census 1880, 97:117C).
Maria McManus . . . To me, but not to Mrs. Clemens, Maria was a delight] Maria McLaughlin (“McManus” was Clemens’s invention) was indeed not a “delight” to Olivia. In a letter of 23 April 1875 she told Elinor Howells about her “wet nurse that is tractable and good when I am in the house but who gets drunk when I go away” (MH-H). In “A Family Sketch,” a series of reminiscences begun in 1896 and then added to and revised through 1906, Clemens wrote another colorful description of the inimitable Maria, calling her “the Egyptian” ( FamSk , 31–32).
Gillette place] The home built in 1857 by Francis Gillette, a cofounder of the Nook Farm community and the father of William Gillette and Lilly Gillette Warner ( AutoMT1 , 580 n. 327.14, 584 n. 336.18).
A couple of years after Clara was done . . . gave me as a reference] In January 1876, less than a year after leaving the Clemenses, Maria was “waiting her confinement” at the New York Infant Asylum, a charitable institution for unwanted children and unwed or indigent mothers. When she was caught with some “fine-cut tobacco . . . and a bottle of liquor,” she spoke of her former employment to the superintendent, who wrote to Clemens:
The managers of this institution are ready to dismiss her, but I begged them to wait a little and have just had a talk with her when she told me of having been in your service. She says you were very good to the poor, that you helped her to coal, paid her rent, &c when her husband was out of work.
Have I any need to apologize for asking from you a good word for the girl if she deserves it? (Ranstead to SLC, 13 Jan 1876, CU-MARK)
Clemens’s reply is not known to survive.
eleven thousand Virgins of Cologne] According to Christian martyrology, Saint Ursula, a Romano-British maiden, and eleven thousand virgin companions were slaughtered in the third century while defending their purity and faith against the Huns. Their relics were discovered buried near Cologne, where a church was erected in their honor. The legend has evolved into many different versions through a series of implausible interpretations and rationales.
Frank D. Millet, the young artist . . . remained with us a fortnight] Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912) grew up on a farm in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. After serving as a drummer boy in the Union army, he graduated in 1869 from Harvard College with a degree in literature. He then turned his interest to painting, which he studied in Italy and Belgium, and enjoyed a successful career as a journalist, writer, painter, and muralist. He was deeply mourned when he died on the Titanic. Millet visited Hartford in early 1877, completing Clemens’s portrait on 17 January. On that day Clemens wrote a friend, “the artist has made a most Excellent portrait of me, & besides has given us a week of social enjoyment, for his company is a high pleasure. We have to lose him tomorrow” (17 Jan 1877 to Boyesen, CtHMTH). For a photograph of the portrait see Schmidt 2005.
He had . . . been appointed war correspondent by the London Daily News] During the early months of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, Millet corresponded for the New York Herald, but in the fall of 1877 he moved to the London Daily News (see the note at 46.9–10). Clemens was actually in Elmira when he received Millet’s letter announcing his first assignment:
I had been in London a day or two to see the pictures there and had steadily refused offers to go to the war as correspondent because I could not bear to leave my work. After my return to Paris I received a letter from the manager of the European correspondence of the N.Y. Herald requesting me to meet him. . . . I immediately started down to see him and on the way as I was stopped at a crowded crossing I blundered right into his carriage and he was on his way up to find me having that moment learned my address. He said “Will you go to Romania with me”? I said “yes”! (Millet to SLC, 9 June 1877, CU-MARK)
MacGahan and Archibald Forbes, those daring knights of the pen] Januarius Aloysius MacGahan (1844–78) was born in Ohio, the son of an Irish immigrant. His career in journalism began in 1870, when he was hired by the New York Herald to report on the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). He earned a reputation for bravery and endurance when he accompanied the Russian Army on their 1873 expedition into Central Asia, eluding the Cossack horsemen sent to arrest him. He later corresponded from Cuba, and then from Spain during the Carlist insurrections in 1874–75. His 1876 dispatches on the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria swayed the British to support the Russians in their 1877–78 war to end Turkish rule there. He corresponded for the London Daily News during that war, which resulted in the liberation of Bulgaria and made him a popular hero. He died in Constantinople of typhoid fever while nursing a friend (Bullard 1914, 115–54). Archibald Forbes (1838–1900), a Scotsman, was arguably the most famous and intrepid war correspondent of his day. After a brief stint with the London Morning Advertiser, he was hired by the London Daily News, for which he covered the Franco-Prussian War and other conflicts throughout the 1870s, including the Russo-Turkish War, the Afghan War (1878), and the Anglo-Zulu War (1879). Although his colorful exploits brought him fame, his critics were skeptical, “suggesting that he exaggerated, over-dramatized and occasionally falsified reports and sometimes took credit for other correspondents’ stories” (Brake and Demoor 2009, 224; Bullard 1914, 69–114). In 1877 Millet, Forbes, and MacGahan worked cooperatively in Bucharest. When Forbes fell ill in September, Millet was offered his place on the London Daily News for triple the salary he had received from the Herald, and he became a “special artist” for the London Graphic. He wrote of his new position to Clemens from Bulgaria on 18 October, adding a comment about the conduct of the war: “The poor, patient soldiers, the devoted, brave officers of the line, the gallant colonels and brigadiers have to go up and be slaughtered because a stupid, idiotic major general is taking his tea in the middle of the day and has given the order without the very slightest idea of the state of affairs” (CU-MARK; Bullard 1914, 98–99).
He was in the centre of the hottest fire at Plevna] For five months, beginning in July 1877, the Turks—armed with Winchester rifles—defended the Bulgarian town of Plevna (now known as Pleven) against the superior forces of the Russian and Romanian armies before capitulating in December. In his dispatches Millet described the battle scenes and the horrible carnage he observed afterwards in the ruined city.
the Emperor was his friend, and decorated him on the field, for valor] On 18 October 1877 Millet wrote to Clemens about receiving this honor from Tsar Alexander II (1818–81): “I have been presented to the Emperor for decoration with the cross ‘pour valour militaire’ in company with several officers. . . . If they would give me a commission to paint his majesty instead of a tin cross, I’d thank ’m heartily” (CU-MARK). Millet was awarded the Cross of St. Stanislaus and the Cross of St. Anne by the Russian government, and he received several additional decorations for bravery under fire, including one for his care of the wounded (Maynard 1912, 654). Clemens wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks on 6 March 1879, “I have seen these decorations, but Millet himself does not speak of them, for he is an exceedingly modest fellow” ( Letters 1876–1880 ).
When the war was over he returned to Paris . . . We were at the wedding] After the war Millet traveled to Sicily, Spain, and London before returning to Paris. On 1 June 1878 he wrote to Clemens (CU-MARK):
I was so disgusted in London with the swagger and bluster of some of the war correspondents there that I hid my head. As I was the only one who made the whole campaign I think I know more about it than the rest and never have told half the story in my letters. But when I heard the rest of the men yarning at 20 knots an hour about battles and adventures where I was myself it made me hate the trade.
After his return to Paris, Millet was married, on 11 March 1879, to Elizabeth (Lily) Greeley Merrill, the sister of a college friend. Clemens wrote to Fairbanks on 6 March, “We’re expecting Frank D. Millet, a very dear young artist friend of ours here, every moment, to dinner, with the lovely girl he is to marry next Tuesday—with I & 3 friends as witnesses,—& Livy & Clara S. & I & 6 or 8 more will eat the wedding breakfast in his studio” ( Letters 1876–1880; Baxter 1912, 636, 638). Clemens may have considered Elizabeth “lovely” in 1879, but in 1894 he described her to Olivia in less flattering terms:
Mrs. Millet was as prodigious an improvement upon herself as—well there isn’t any comparison that will describe it. She was pretty, she was unstunningly dressed, hardly the top of the crevice between her breasts was exposed, she was dignified & reposeful, her feverish eagerness to jabber & jabber & jabber was gone, she said many rational things & got badly caught out only once.
When Clemens praised Thomas Bailey Aldrich as “the one man in this earth who was always witty, always brilliant,”
It was Mrs. Millet’s opportunity to expose herself, & she said with large calm superiority:
“I think you cannot have met him very often. My experience differs from yours. I have met him at dinners often & over again when he was dull, monosyllabic—yes, & even silent during long intervals.”
I saw poor Millet wince! And yet nevertheless I was not mollified, but said (gently & without emphasis, but said it)—
“Yes, there are dinner companies that can do even that miracle.” (8 or 9 Feb 1894 to OLC, CU-MARK)
the World’s Exposition in Chicago . . . artists of repute under him] Millet’s experience with expositions in Paris and Vienna brought him to the attention of the organizers of the 1893 World’s Exposition in Chicago, held in celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s landing in America. He was placed in charge of decorating the principal buildings in Jackson Park, for which he chose only American artists. The buildings, covered in white plaster of paris, became known as the “White City.” In addition, he painted the highly praised murals in the exposition’s Liberal Arts building and the grand hall of the New York State building (“Artist Millet and Assistants,” Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct 1892, 18; Baxter 1912, 638).
I went in there to get the ends of my hair clipped off . . . disaster that had befallen] Samuel Johnson Woolf (1880–1948), a graphic artist who sketched Clemens in February 1906 for a painting, recalled being shown Millet’s portrait and hearing the following story:
“It’s all mine, except the hair,” he remarked. I looked in bewilderment. “It was this way,” he explained, “when I started sitting for that one, my hair was fairly long, but as the sittings continued, it grew until it was uncomfortable. So one day, without saying anything to Millet about it, I went to the barber to have it trimmed. Unfortunately, I grew sleepy in the comfortable chair, and when I woke up I saw that I had lost all likeness to my portrait. I didn’t know what to do, for I was afraid of Millet in those days, so on the day for the next sitting I hired a wig and went to the studio. When I got there Millet at once noticed how fine my hair looked and painted it, and it wasn’t until the session was ended that I took it off.” (Woolf 1910, 43)
Miss Hesse ceased from her office of private secretary . . . leave of us to-day] Fanny C. Hesse (1821?–1907) served as Clemens’s secretary in 1876–77. From 1882 to 1893 she was in charge of Hatfield House at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts ( Vermont Vital Records 1760–1954, record for Fanny C. Hesse; Smith College Alumnae Association 1911, 12).
George] George Griffin.
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 1992–2005, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for this dictation. It may represent two mornings’ work: a second summary paragraph, on a new leaf without a dateline, interrupts the text at 45.19–23. Clemens lightly revised the text, but nothing specifically suggests that he was considering it for contemporary publication.