Paragraph clipped from the news columns a day or two ago:
Widow Provided For, ButtersⒶtextual note Fortune Goes to Student Son.
(Special to The World.)
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 29.—Having been handsomely provided for by Henry Butters, the Oakland capitalist, before his death last Monday, the widow and her two daughters by a former marriage will not sue to break the will,Ⓐtextual note which leaves practically everything to Henry Butters jr, son, now a student at Phillips-Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Butters’s fortune is thought to be close to a million dollars. It was made in a South African tramway lineⒺexplanatory note.
So Butters has escapedⒺexplanatory note. I seem to have no luck, lately. My case is like WilliamⒶtextual note C. Prime’s. Prime was a gushing pietistⒺexplanatory note; religion was his daily tipple; he was always under [begin page 270] the influence. Seldom actually and solidlyⒶtextual note drunk with holiness, but always on the verge of it, always dizzy, boozy, twaddlesome. But there was another and a pleasanter side to him: when he wasn’t praying,Ⓐtextual note when he wasn’t praising God intemperately, he was damning to the nethermost hell three or four men whom he hated with his whole heart, and imploring the Throne of Grace to keep them alive so that he could go on hating and damning them and be happy. Chiefest of these was Mr. Lincoln’s great Secretary of War, EdmundⒶtextual note M. StantonⒺexplanatory note.
When Stanton died, in 1869, Prime was doing the Nile with his brother-in-law, the distinguished philologist of Hartford, Hammond TrumbullⒺexplanatory note. One day, when the dahabieh was tied up to the bank near Luxor, Prime was ashore loungingⒶtextual note up and down in the rich gloaming and pouring out ecstasies of pious gratitude to the Creator for permitting HisⒶtextual note worm to see this sumptuous loveliness while yet in the flesh. An ascending dahabieh handed Trumbull the sad news of our nation’s bereavement. He stepped ashore to break it to Prime. Then heⒶtextual note stopped and respectfully waited, for Prime was doing an attitude—doing it in his best theatrical style, with one eye furtively cocked toward HeavenⒶtextual note to see if it was being noticed up there. And he was working off his panegyric, and stacking up his grateful adorations mountainsⒶtextual note high. He finished with an eloquent burst and a self-satisfied nod of the head, as who should say, “There—put that in your archives.” Then Trumbull told him.
There was a sudden change. Prime shook his fist at the sky and shouted venomously:
“You’ve taken him—taken my all and left me a pauper! HumblyⒶtextual note and faithfully have I served You from the cradle up, and this is what I get for it!”
Butters has escaped, and now I am likewiseⒶtextual note poor indeed. He has been my pet aversion, my heart’s detestedⒶtextual note darling, for nearly seven years; andⒶtextual note now,Ⓐtextual note for no sufficient reason, no even plausible excuse, he is taken from me. I would rather have lost thirty uncles. Butters was easily the meanest white man, and the most degraded in spiritⒶtextual note and contemptible in character I have ever known; and next to him ranksⒶtextual note his lawyer, William W. BaldwinⒺexplanatory note, whom God preserve! He still lives. Still lives to compete with the polecat and outsmell him. He is my only comfort now.Ⓐtextual note
Butters the millionaire came to me recommended by his devoted friend, an honorable and high-minded man, John Hays HammondⒺexplanatory note; and he at once set his traps and played a “confidence game” upon me. To what end? Merely to swindle me out of an infinitely trivial sum of money—Ⓐtextual notetwelve thousand dollars. He succeeded. The lies and the treacheries it cost him to achieve this small thing—Ⓐtextual notewhy, an ordinary scoundrel would not have taken that amount of trouble for less than a million.
He escaped to California, and there he had to remain. He dearly wanted to live in New York, but he had to forego that delight, and has chafed and lamented in exile for six years. He knew he would retire to the penitentiary if he ventured into this StateⒶtextual note, and so he stayed out of it.
Three years ago, in a short story entitled “A Horse’s Tale” I made one of the horses describe Butters by name and character; and for this bitⒶtextual note of pleasantry Butters commissioned his legal serf in New York to bring against me a libel suitⒺexplanatory note—and he placed the [begin page 271] damages at fifty thousand dollars! Damage to his reputation, you understand. Whereas it couldn’t be damaged, by any process known to science; there wasn’t a place on it the size of a hydrogen molecule that wasn’t already rotten. And now he is dead, and alasⒶtextual note the suitⒶtextual note is taken away from me; I am robbed of even that chance to be gleeful. It is an odious world. That suit, tried in open court, with the latitude which such suits permit, would have been the comedy of the century!
A BrooklynⒶtextual note evening paper of yesterday has a telegram from California which contains further tidings of the bereavement which has befallen me. ToⒶtextual note this effect: Butters, in his will, has cut off his wifeⒶtextual note (his second, who lately opened divorce proceedings against him) with nothing; has cut herⒶtextual note daughters off with five dollars apiece, and has left the remainder of his swagⒶtextual note to his son. Has left him his name, too—Butters—and so he is the worst off of the family after all, for the daughters are married and the widow can change her name, for she is young and handsome and goodⒺexplanatory note.
title Dictated October 31, 1908] The source of this “dictation” is actually a manuscript.
Widow Provided For, Butters Fortune Goes to Student Son . . . South African tramway line] Railroad magnate and businessman Henry A. Butters (b. 1850), of Piedmont, California, died of pneumonia on 26 October. His first business success had been in mining, in Colorado and then in South Africa, where he then made a fortune by building an electric railway. At the time of his death he was president of the Northern Electric Railroad in California. In 1891 he married Lucie Beebee Sanctella (1849–1909) and they had one son, Henry, Jr. (b. 1892). Mrs. Butters had been twice widowed. By her second marriage she had two daughters, whom Butters adopted: Marie Sanctella Butters (b. 1883) and Marguerite Sanctella Butters (b. 1885). In 1907, Butters quarreled with his wife when he found himself short of working capital for his business interests and she refused to return to him a “large amount of property” he had previously transferred to her. It was also “common gossip” (according to the Oakland Tribune) that their estrangement resulted from Butters’s relationship with his “handsome secretary-stenographer” (“Mrs. Butters’ Children to Contest Her Will: Henry A. Butters Gave His Stenographer $100,000 in Gifts,” 9 July 1909, 1). In February 1908 Butters abandoned his wife. He left virtually his entire estate in trust for his sixteen-year-old son, Henry, Jr., bequeathing nothing to his wife and only five dollars to each of his adopted daughters, with the explanation that he had already “amply provided” for their “support and comfort” (Oakland Tribune: “Full Text of Will of Late Henry A. Butters,” 3 Nov 1908, 9; “Mrs. Henry A. Butters’ Heirs Declare Her Will Is Fraud,” 12 Aug 1909, 1–2; Lassen Census 1900, 88:9A; San Francisco Chronicle: “Oakland Capitalist Succumbs to Pneumonia,” 27 Oct 1908, 4; “Made Her Will to Win Her Husband,” 13 Aug 1909, 1–2; AutoMT1 mistakenly gives Butters’s year of birth as 1830).
So Butters has escaped] For Clemens’s dealings with the Plasmon Company of America see “The Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” pp. 332, 398–99, and the notes at 332.7–8, 332.28–29, and 398.9–10.
William C. Prime’s. Prime was a gushing pietist] Clemens had targeted Prime, a journalist and travel writer, forty years earlier in chapters 46 and 48 of The Innocents Abroad (see AutoMT1 , 481 n. 74.31).
Edmund M. Stanton] Edwin M. Stanton (1814–69), secretary of war from 1861 to 1865.
his brother-in-law . . . Hammond Trumbull] See AutoMT1 , 559–60 n. 272.31–32. Prime married J. Hammond Trumbull’s sister Mary (1827–72) in 1851. Clemens knew Trumbull well enough to have heard this story from him.
his lawyer, William W. Baldwin] William Woodward Baldwin (1862–1954) was the New York attorney for the Plasmon Company of America. He had served as third assistant secretary of state in 1896–97 under Grover Cleveland (“Office for W. W. Baldwin,” New York Herald, 18 Feb 1896, 6; “Obituaries,” Chicago Tribune, 18 Oct 1954, C6).
John Hays Hammond] Hammond (1855–1936) was a mining engineer who helped to develop gold mining in South Africa. Clemens met him there in May 1896, while on his world lecture tour; Hammond was then in prison for participating in the Jameson Raid, an abortive attempt to overthrow the Boer government of the Transvaal. Clemens judged Hammond to be “square—when not being used as a convenience” by Butters and his associates (16 Jan 1906 to MacAlister, ViU).
Three years ago, in a short story entitled “A Horse’s Tale” . . . a libel suit] In chapter 6 of “A Horse’s Tale,” written in 1905 and first published in Harper’s Monthly in 1906, one of the horses says, “I recognized your master. He is a bad sort. Trap-robber, horse-thief, squaw-man, renegado—Hank Butters—I know him very well.” “Hank Butters” was Clemens’s alteration in magazine proofs (SLC 1905b, 48; SLC 1906c, 336). No libel suit brought by Butters has been traced, but Clemens did at least intend to elicit such an action. Writing from Florence in January 1904, he told his lawyer: “As soon as I get back we will pull Butters into Court, & I guess we can jail him. We will try, anyhow. And I will add that libel, & see if he has grit enough to prosecute me” (29 Jan 1904 to Stanchfield, CU-MARK). In the unfinished “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes” (1905), Clemens appropriated Butters’s name for the character of a “bucket-shop dysentery-germ”; see also the Autobiographical Dictations of 28 January 1907 (based on a 1905 manuscript; AutoMT2 , 393, 399) and 8 February 1906; the latter was published, with slight modifications, in NAR 4 (Oct 1907; AutoMT1 , 54, 342; WWD , 545).
A Brooklyn evening paper of yesterday . . . she is young and handsome and good] The newspaper has not been identified. No evidence has been found that Lucie—who was nearly sixty years old—was Butters’s second wife. Mrs. Butters had two married daughters (and three sons) from her first marriage; they had no legal relationship with Butters and were not mentioned in his will.
Source documents.
MS Manuscript, leaves numbered 1–6.World Clipping from the New York World, 30 October 1908, unknown page, attached to MS: ‘Widow . . . tramway line.’ (269.26–33).
TS Typescript, five unnumbered leaves, made by Howden from MS and World and revised.
MS is on buff-colored laid paper measuring 5¾ by 8¾ inches. With the exception of a typographical error, the readings of World are adopted, and Howden’s accidental variations from copy are not reported.