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Autobiographical Dictation, 7 October 1907 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source document.

TS1      Typescript, leaves numbered 2315–18, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.

TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for this dictation. The postcard about the ‘four-year-old girl’ survives in the Mark Twain Papers; Clemens wrote on it, ‘Received from the Zeigler people & dictated into my Autobiog. Oct. 7.’ Punctuation variants between TS1 and the postcard confirm that Clemens read the postcard to Hobby, making several trivial revisions as he did so—e.g., he added ‘Dear Sir:’ and altered ‘true & amusing’ to just ‘true’. TS1 has therefore been preferred over the original as the source for the present text. The original letter from Twichell (159.3–12) is not known to survive.

[begin page 158]

Dictated Octobertextual note 7, 1907

The manner in which Mr. Clemens is reported in Tuxedo to have declined and accepted a dinner invitation—Copy of postal from Sioux Falls relating little girl’s remarks about Mr. Clemens’s picture—Copy of postal from Mr. Twichell in regard to poem by Omar Khayyam.

It often pains me to note how this world is given to slander: that beautiful Mrs. M. was here yesterday afternoonexplanatory note, and she told a story which she said was on its rounds in Tuxedo Park; according to this story, I was called up on the telephone, a couple of weeks ago, by a lady for whom I have a strong but concealed aversionexplanatory note,textual note who said,

“Mr. Clemens, can you come and dine with us to-nighttextual note?”

“Oh I am unspeakably sorry, but I have an engagement which is imperative.”

“Make it to-morrow night, then.”

“It’s too bad, and I am ever so sorry, but I have to be in New York to-morrow night.”

“Well then what’s the matter with Thursday?”

After a thoughtful pause—

“Oh hell, I’ll come to-night!”

This whole legend is a lie on its face, by verdict of circumstantial evidence, which is the best of all testimony. Miss Lyon noticed a couple of discrepancies and pointed them out: she said,

“Mr. Clemens never goes to the telephone at all, and he never uses profane language in the presence of ladies whom he does not like.”

That purified my reputation, as far as Mrs. M. is concerned, but of course it remains a wreck as far as regards the rest of the community. However, I must take the bitter along with the sweet, like the rest of our race. The bitter comes oftenest, perhaps, but when the sweet comes, in its turn, it heals our wounds and satisfies us with ourselves again. I was still suffering from that anecdote this morning, but the mail has brought me a healer, and once more I am glad to be alive. It comes from a very far country:

Sioux Falls, S.D.
Sept. 25.

Dear Sir:explanatory note

The following true incident occurred in Sioux Falls: a little four-year-old girl who was one day visiting at the house of a friend, sat for a long time thoughtfully gazing at a picture of Mark Twain which stood on the mantel-shelf; at length, folding her hands and raising her eyes reverently, she said, “We have got a picture of Jesus like that, too, only ours has more trimmings on it.”


Here is another post-card. This one is out of the long ago, and shows age in all its aspects. How strange it seems that there was once a time when I had never heard of Omar [begin page 159] Khayyam! The postmark is Hartford, and the card is from Reverendtextual note J. H. Twichell, and is addressed “Mark Twain. City.”

Wed. morning.

Read (if you haven’t) the extracts from Omar Khayyam on the first page of this morning’s Courant. I think we’ll have to get the book. I never yet came across anything that uttered certain thoughts of mine so adequately. And it’s only a translation. Read it, and we’ll talk it over. There is something in it very like the passage of Emerson you read me last night, in fact identical with it in thought.

Surely this Omar was a great poet. Anyhow he has given me an immense revelation this morning.

Hoping that you are better,

J. H. T.

Our Post-Office Department is still something of a lame duck, in our day, astextual note it wastextual note then. The postmark on this card gives the date December 22, and stops there, neglectingtextual note to furnish the year. The year must have been 1879explanatory note, I think—indeed I feel almost sure of it, by persuasion of several circumstances of that time which remain in my memory.

When the card arrived, I had already read the dozen quatrains in the morning paper, and was still steeped in the ecstasy of delight which they had occasioned; no poem had ever given me so much pleasure before, and none has given me so much pleasure since; it is the only poem I have ever carried about with me; it has not been from under my hand for twenty-eight years.

Textual Notes Dictated October 7, 1907
  October ●  Oct. (TS1) 
  aversion, ●  aversion, (concealed as I had supposed)  (TS1-SLC) 
  to-night ●  to- | night (TS1) 
  Reverend ●  Rev.  (TS1-SLC) 
  as ●  but as  (TS1-SLC) 
  was ●  was much lamer  (TS1-SLC) 
  neglecting ●  refraining neglecting  (TS1-SLC) 
Explanatory Notes Dictated October 7, 1907
 

Mrs. M. was here yesterday afternoon] Clemens’s visitors were Marion Peak Mason (1872?–1929) and her husband, George Grant Mason (1868–1955). The Masons had become suddenly wealthy in May 1907, when George inherited $12 million from an uncle. They moved to New York from South Dakota, where he had worked as a division superintendent for a railroad. Mrs. Mason was a Christian Scientist, and Clemens engaged her in a spirited conversation, in which (according to Lyon) he “pointed out how God isn’t good in a single instance, & those 2 Masons sat amazed & enchanted & horrified. He said things the like of which they had never even imagined a person could say” (Lyon 1907, entry for 6 Oct; Tuxedo Census 1910, 1060:24A; “Mrs. George G. Mason Dies at Tuxedo Park,” New York Times, 4 Aug 1929, N33; “Smith Heir Quits Work,” Chicago Tribune, 17 May 1907, 9).

 

a story which she said was on its rounds in Tuxedo Park . . . a lady for whom I have a strong but concealed aversion] Repeating this anecdote to H. H. Rogers on 8 October, Clemens added: “It is all wrong, I give you my word. It didn’t happen in Tuxedo at all; it was New York. And more than a year ago, at that. And it wasn’t a lady, it was a man. A man whom I detest” (Salm, in HHR , 641–42).

 

Sioux Falls, S.D. . . . Dear Sir:] This anecdote was written on a postcard sent by a music dealer in Sioux Falls to the Ziegler Publishing Company in New York, which forwarded it to Clemens. He wrote on it, “Received from the Zeigler people & dictated into my Autobiog. Oct. 7” (CU-MARK). On 11 January 1908 Clemens used a version of this anecdote in a speech he gave at the Lotos Club on “collecting compliments” (Fatout 1976, 603–11).

 

extracts from Omar Khayyam on the first page of this morning’s Courant . . . 1879] This Autobiographical Dictation is the unique source for the letter from Joseph H. Twichell, which was written in 1875 (not 1879). The article Twichell refers to, which appeared on the front page of the Hartford Courant of 22 December 1875 (“Omar Khayyam. The Astronomer-Poet of Persia”), comprised biographical information about the poet followed by forty-two quatrains quoted “at random” from the book. No mention was made of the translator, Edward Fitzgerald; none of the editions published before his death, in 1883, included his name. Clemens eventually owned several editions of the poem, by more than one translator (see Gribben 1980, 2:516–19; Potter 1929, 141).