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Autobiographical Dictation, 16 August 1908 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

MS      Manuscript, leaves numbered [1]–7.
Collier’s      Clipping of excerpt from “Samuel E. Moffett: A Tribute to the Late Editor of ‘What the World Is Doing,’ ” Collier’s: The National Weekly 41 (15 August 1908): 23, attached to MS: ‘If you . . . industrial peace.’ (266.2–15).

MS is written on buff-colored laid paper measuring 5¾ by 8¾ inches. Into his MS Clemens pinned a clipping excerpted from a biography of Moffett in Collier’s. The photograph of Moffett that accompanied the obituary survives with MS, and was at one time (possibly after Clemens’s death) pinned to it. There is no indication, however, that Clemens intended to make it part of his text. It is reproduced following page 300. A contemporary transcription of MS survives, evidently made by Howden; Clemens made no markings on it, and it has no authority.

August 16, 1908

Samuel Erasmus Moffett textual note

August 16. textual note Early in the evening of the first day of this month the telephone brought us a paralysingtextual note shock: my nephew, Samuel E.textual note Moffett, was drowned. It was while sea-bathing. The seas were running high, and he was urged to not venturetextual note out, but he was a strong swimmer and not afraid. He made the plunge with confidence, his frightened little son looking on. Instantly he was helpless. The great waves tossed him about, they [begin page 265] flung him hither and thither, they buried him, they struck the life out of himexplanatory note. In a minute it was all over.

He was forty-eighttextual note years old, he was at his best, physically and mentally, and was well on his way toward earned distinction. He was large-minded and large-hearted, there was no blot nor fleck upon his character, his ideals were high and clean, and by native impulse and without effort he lived up to them.

He had been a working journalist, an editorial writer, for nearly thirtytextual note years, and yet in that exposed positiontextual note had preserved his independencetextual note in full strengthtextual note and his principles undecayed.textual note Several years ago he accepted a high place ontextual note the staff of Collier’s Weekly textual note and was occupying it when he died.

In an early chapter of this Autobiography, written three years ago, I have told how he wrote from San Francisco when he was a striplingtextual note and asked me to help him get a berth on a daily paper there; and how he submitted to the severe conditions I imposed, and got the berth and kept it sixteentextual note yearsexplanatory note.

As child and lad his healthtextual note was delicate, capricious, insecure, and his eyesighttextual note affected by a malady which debarred him from book-studytextual note and from reading. This was a bitter hardship for him, for he had a wonderful memory andtextual note a sharp hunger for knowledge. Schooltextual note was not for him, yet while still a little boy he acquired an education, and a good one. He managed it after a method of his own devising: he got permission to listen while the classes of the normal school recited their abstruse lessons and blackboarded their mathematics. By questioning the little chap it was found that he was keeping up with the star scholarstextual note of the school.

In those days he paid us a visit in Buffalo. It was in the first year of our marriage, (1870) and he was ten years old. I was laboriously constructing an ancient-history game at the time, to be played by my wife and myself, and I was digging the dates and facts for it out of cyclopedias, a dreary and troublesome business. I had sweated blood over that work and was pardonably proud of the result, as far as I had gone. I showed the child my mass of notes, and he was at once as excited as I should have been over a Sunday-schooltextual note picnic at his age. He wanted to help, he was eager to help, and I was as willing to let him as I should have been to give away an interest intextual note a surgical operation that I was getting tiredtextual note of. I made him free of the cyclopedias, but he never consulted themtextual note—he had their contents in his head. All alone hetextual note built and completed the game rapidly and without effortexplanatory note .

Away back in ’80 ortextual note ’81 when the grand irruptiontextual note of Krakatoa in the Straits of Sunda occurred, the news reached San Francisco late in the night—too late for editors to hunt for information about that unknowntextual note volcano in cyclopedias and write it exhaustively and learnedly up in time for the first edition. The managing editor said, “Send to Moffett’s home—rout him out and fetch him—he will know all about it, he won’t need the Cyclopedia.textual note” Which was true. He came to the office and swiftly wrote it all upexplanatory note without having to refer to books.

[begin page 266] I will take a few paragraphs from the article about him in Collier’s Weekly textual note:

If you wanted to know any fact about any subject it was quicker to go to him than to books of reference. His good-nature made him the martyr of interruptions. In the middle of a sentence, in a hurry hour, he would look up happily, and, whether the thing you wanted was railroad statistics or international law, he would bring it out of one of the pigeonholes in his brain. A born dispenser of the light, he made the giving of information a privilege and a pleasure on all occasions.

This cyclopedic faculty was marvelous because it was only a small part of his equipment which became invaluable in association with other gifts. A student and a humanist, he delighted equally in books and in watching all the workings of a political convention.

For any one of the learned professions he had conspicuous ability. He chose that which, in the cloister of the editorial rooms, makes fame for others. Any judge or cabinet minister of our time may well be proud of a career of such usefulness as his. Men with such a quality of mind as Moffett’s are rare.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Any one who discussed with him the things he advocated stood a little awed to discover that here was a man who had carefully thought out what would be best for all the people in the world two or three generations hence, and guided his work according to that standard. This was the one broad subject that covered all his interests; in detail they included the movement for universal peace, about which he wrote repeatedly; so small a thing as a plan to place flowers on the windowsillstextual note and fire-escapes of New York tenement-houses enlisted not only the advocacy of his pen, but his direct personal presence and cooperation; again and again, in his department in this paper, he gave indorsement and aid to similar movements, whether broad or narrow in their scope—the saving of the American forests, fighting tuberculosis, providing free meals for poor school-childrentextual note in New York, old-age pensions, safety appliances for protecting factory employees, the beautifying of American cities, the creation of inland waterways, industrial peace.

He leaves behind him wife, daughter and son,—inconsolable mourners. The son is thirteen, a beautiful human creature, with the broad and square face of his father and his grandfather, a face in which one reads high character and intelligence. This boy will be distinguishedexplanatory note,textual note by and by, I think.


In closing this slight sketch of Samuel E. Moffett I wish to dwell with lingering and especial emphasis upon the dignity of his character and ideals. In an age when we would rather have money than health, and would rather have another man’s money than our own, he lived and died unsordid; in a day when the surest road to national greatness and admiration is by showy and rotten demagoguery in politics and by giant crimes in finance, he lived and died a gentleman.

Mark Twaintextual note

Textual Notes August 16, 1908
  August 16, 1908 | Samuel Erasmus Moffett  ●  Samuel Erasmus Moffett. | [From my Autobiography. Unpublished.] | Dictated at Innocence at Home | August 16/08. (MS) 
  August 16.  ●  August 16.  (MS) 
  paralysing ●  paralyzing (MS) 
  Samuel E. ●  Samuel E.  (MS) 
  not venture ●  stay not venture  (MS) 
  forty-eight ●  48 (MS) 
  nearly thirty ●  23 nearly 30  (MS) 
  exposed position ●  unsavory trade exposed position  (MS) 
  independence ●  independence (MS) 
  in full strength ●  undamaged unrotted. in full strength  (MS) 
  undecayed. ●  unrotted. undecayed.  (MS) 
  on ●  on Collier  (MS) 
  Collier’s Weekly  ●  Collier’s Weekly (MS) 
  when he was a stripling ●  when he was a stripling  (MS) 
  sixteen ●  16 (MS) 
  health ●  health health corrected miswriting  (MS) 
  eyesight ●  eyes eyesight  (MS) 
  book-study ●  book-study (MS) 
  and ●  and  (MS) 
  School ●  School (MS) 
  scholars ●  performers scholars  (MS) 
  Sunday-school ●  Sunday school (MS) 
  give away an interest in ●  trade off give away an interest in  (MS) 
  tired ●  acutely tired (MS) 
  them ●  them  (MS) 
  All alone he ●  All alone He (MS) 
  ’80 or ●  ’80 or  (MS) 
  irruption ●  eruption (MS) 
  unknown ●  Krakatoa unknown (MS) 
  Cyclopedia ●  cyclopedia (MS) 
  Collier’s Weekly  ●  Collier’s Weekly” (MS) 
  windowsills ●  window- | sills (Collier’s) 
  school-children ●  school- | children (Collier’s) 
  distinguished, ●  great, distinguished,  (MS) 
  Mark Twain ●  Mark Twain | [paraph] (MS) 
Explanatory Notes August 16, 1908
 

Samuel E. Moffett, was drowned . . . they struck the life out of him] The source of this eulogy to Moffett is a manuscript, not a dictation. He perished while swimming in the ocean near Sea Bright, New Jersey. Although rescued from the surf, he could not be revived; the physicians who were present “decided that death had been due to apoplexy superinduced by fright and overexertion and not to drowning” (“Editor Moffett Dies, Struggling in Surf,” New York Times, 2 Aug 1908, 1).

 

a working journalist, an editorial writer, for nearly thirty . . . got the berth and kept it sixteen years] In the Autobiographical Dictation of 27 March 1906, Clemens recalled that Moffett was “obliged to hunt for something to do by way of making a living” in 1886, at age twenty-six. It is clear, however, that his career in journalism began soon after leaving the University of California in 1882. According to obituaries in the New York Times and Collier’s, Moffett was chief editorial writer for the San Francisco Evening Post by 1885. Over the next twenty years he worked for several other newspapers and journals in California and New York. In January 1905 he began to edit a department in Collier’s called “What the World Is Doing” (see AutoMT1 , 450–51 and notes on 642–43).

 

I was laboriously constructing an ancient-history game . . . without effort] The history game that Clemens ultimately developed was patented in 1885. Moffett evidently worked on an early version while on a visit to Buffalo, when he was ten years old ( AutoMT1 , 643 n. 450.31).

 

back in ’80 or ’81 when the grand irruption of Krakatoa . . . He came to the office and swiftly wrote it all up] The volcanic eruption on Krakatoa, an island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, occurred in August 1883. It destroyed the island, creating new land masses and causing an immense tsunami. A report in the San Francisco Chronicle estimated that as many as one hundred thousand people perished (“Further Details of the Java Calamity,” San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Sept 1883, 3; “The Yawning Earth. Thousands of People Swallowed up—Awful Scene in Java,” Washington Post, 31 Aug 1883, 1).

 

He leaves behind him wife, daughter and son . . . This boy will be distinguished] Moffett married Mary Elvish Mantz (1863–1940), an accomplished painter living in San Jose, California, in 1887. They had two children, Anita Moffett (1891–1952) and Francis Clemens Moffett (1895–1927). Anita graduated magna cum laude from the University of California. She became an indexer for the annually bound volumes of Publishers’ Weekly. She died intestate; her Clemens letters and scrapbooks were purchased by the University of California in 1954 and are now in the Moffett Collection of the Mark Twain Papers (see “Description of Provenance,” L6, 736–37). Francis, who earned an M.A. from Columbia University, went into the advertising business and wrote short stories. He died suddenly of heart disease at age thirty-one (“Samuel E. Moffett,” Collier’s 41 [15 Aug 1908]: 23; “News Notes,” Antiquarian Bookman, 17 Oct 1953, 1079; New York Times: “Clemens Moffett,” 6 Mar 1927, 26; “Mrs. Samuel E. Moffett,” 3 Oct 1940, 25).