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Autobiographical Dictation, 25 March 1909 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

MS      Manuscript, leaves numbered 1–6, CU-MARK.
Courier-Post      Undated clipping from the Hannibal Courier-Post, attached to MS: ‘Hannibal . . . “Once when I.” ’ (303.30–304.19).
Clipping      Clipping from an unidentified Hannibal newspaper, described as ‘Of date 20 days ago,’ attached to MS: ‘Miss Becca . . . Christian woman.’ (304.22–32).
TS      Typescript carbon (the original is lost), leaves numbered 1–5, made by Grumman from MS, the Courier-Post, and the clipping and revised.

We follow MS and its attached clippings, incorporating two revisions made by Clemens on the Courier-Post and on TS. Grumman’s accidental variations from copy are not reported. Clemens wrote ‘solid’ in the margin next to the first extract.

Dictated March 25, 1909

Abouttextual note two months ago I was illuminating this Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-Shakspeare controversyexplanatory note, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the Stratford Shakspeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not only in great London, but also in the little village where he was born, where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. I argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his death,textual note instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he had been famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my own village out in Missouri.textual note It is a good argument, a prodigiously strong one, and a most formidable one for even the most gifted, and ingenious, and plausible Stratfordolater to get around or explaintextual note away. To-day a Hannibal Courier-Post of recent date has reached me, with an articleexplanatory note in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixtytextual note years. I will make an extract from it:

Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for but ingratitude is not one of them or reverence for the great men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him famous. His name is associated with every old building that is torn down to make way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing city and with every hill or cave over or through which he might by any possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson’s Island, or Mark Twain caveexplanatory note, are now [begin page 304] monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him honor as he has honored her.

So it has happened that the “old timers” who went to school with Mark or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Beckey and Mrs. Clemens they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not alltextual note bad after all. So they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a “Mark Twain story,” all incidents being viewed in the light of his present fame, until thetextual note volume of “Twainiana” is already considerable and growing in proportion as the “old timers” drop away and the stories are retold second and third hand by their descendants. With Mark some seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a house he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himselfexplanatory note as he will there are some of his “works” that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as gray beards gather about the fires and begin with “I’ve heard father tell” or possibly “Once when I.”

The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother—was my mother.

And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper. Oftextual note date twenty days agoexplanatory note:

Miss Becca Blankenship, Sister of “Huckleberrytextual note Finn”explanatory note Died Yesterday Aged 72 Years.


Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock street, at 2:30 o’clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The deceased was a sister of “Huckleberrytextual note Finn,” one of the famous characters in Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.” She had been a member of the Dickason family—the housekeeper—for nearly forty-five years and was a highly respected lady. For the past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if she had been a near relative. She was a member of the Park Methodist church and a Christian woman.

I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which has remained there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-threetextual note years. She was about nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where she stood and how she looked; andtextual note I can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her brown face,textual note and her short tow-linen frock. She was crying.textual note What it was about, I have long ago forgotten. But it was the tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for her. She knew me nearly seventytextual note years ago. Did she forget me,textual note in the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in Shakspeare’s day, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and there wouldn’t be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a week.

“Injun Joe,” “Jimmy Finn” and “General Gaines”explanatory note were prominent and very intemperatetextual note [begin page 305] ne’er-do-weelstextual note in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of gray-heads there remember themtextual note to this day, and can tell you about them. Isn’t it curious that two “town-drunkards” and one half-breed loafer should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in the matter of definite facts than Shakspeare left behind him in the village where he had lived the half of his lifetime?textual note

Textual Notes Dictated March 25, 1909
  March 25, 1909 [¶] About ●  March 25. About (MS)  March 25. About (TS) 
  death, ●  death, whereas  (MS)  death, (TS) 
  own village out in Missouri. ●  own village. out in Missouri.  (MS)  native village out in Missouri. (TS) 
  explain ●  explaine  (MS)  explain (TS) 
  sixty ●  60 (MS, TS) 
  all ●  at all (Courier-Post)  at all (TS-SLC) 
  the ●  the (Courier-Post-SLC)  the (TS) 
  paper. Of ●  paper. □ o Of symbol for an em space  (MS)  paper. Of (TS) 
  Huckleberry ●  Huckelberry (Clipping)  Hickleberry (TS) 
  Huckleberry ●  Huckelberry (Clipping)  Huckleberry (TS) 
  sixty-three ●  63 (MS, TS) 
  and ●  and  (MS)  and (TS) 
  her brown face, ●  her brown face,  (MS)  her brown face, (TS) 
  crying. ●  crying. , poor child.  (MS)  crying. (TS) 
  seventy ●  70 (MS, TS) 
  me, ●  me, ?  (MS)  me, (TS) 
  and very intemperate ●  and very intemperate  (MS)  and very intemperate (TS) 
  ne’er -do-weels ●  neer-do-weels (MS)  ne’er-do-weels (TS) 
  them ●  them and can  (MS)  them (TS) 
  lifetime? ●  lifetime? [¶] No, it isn’t really strange, for he never did a thing in the whole course of his life that entitled him to be remembered six weeks.  (MS)  lifetime? (TS) 
Explanatory Notes Dictated March 25, 1909
 

two months ago I was illuminating this Autobiography . . . concerning the Bacon-Shakspeare controversy] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 January 1909. The present text is based on a manuscript.

 

Hannibal Courier-Post of recent date has reached me, with an article] Clemens gave a clipping of the article—whose date of publication has not been determined—to his typist to transcribe. He had undoubtedly received it in a letter from Laura Frazer (née Hawkins), a former Hannibal playmate and sweetheart and the prototype of Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Laura had visited Stormfield in October 1908, and had subsequently corresponded with Clemens about childhood friends. In a letter of 16 March she wrote, “Enclosed you will find several clippings which I think will interest you” (CU-MARK; see Inds , 323).

 

Holiday Hill, Jackson’s Island, or Mark Twain cave] Holliday Hill and McDowell’s cave—fictionalized as Cardiff Hill and McDougal’s cave—figure in chapters 29–33 of Tom Sawyer. Jackson’s Island—based on the real Glasscock’s Island—is the scene of the boys’ adventures in chapters 13–16 (see AutoMT1 , 515 n. 158.22–25, 624 n. 418.29–30; HF 2003 , 393–94 n. 41.35).

 

copyright, or patent himself] At Ashcroft’s suggestion, Clemens had recently taken two steps to prevent unauthorized use of his name, in an effort to ensure his daughters’ financial future. In November 1907 Ashcroft registered patents, in his own name, on Mark Twain’s pseudonym, photograph, and autograph for use on whiskey bottles and cigars. He explained the registration to an interviewer for the Brooklyn Eagle, who noted, “Down in the United States patent office the celebrated author and humorist is registered under four serial numbers just like a toilet soap or some new fangled breakfast food,” and quoted Ashcroft:

We acted chiefly out of precaution. It was a protective measure to keep the use and value of a noted name in the family of the man who made it famous. . . .

While Mr. Clemens is not going into this from a purely commercial motive, he will be compelled to sell whisky and tobacco under his name in order to protect his patent rights and serial numbers. . . . It may be that the trade will be restricted and made as private as possible. (“ ‘Mark Twain’ Whisky under Patent Rights,” Brooklyn Eagle, 5 Jan 1908, 1)

Ashcroft further clarified that only “one bottle of whiskey and a few cigars would be turned out” to satisfy the law (“A Mark Twain ‘Smile,’ ” New York Tribune, 6 Jan 1908, 7). On 22 December 1908 Clemens adopted a second strategy to protect his rights: he created a corporation called the Mark Twain Company, and transferred to it the rights to his name and to his literary properties (“Certificate of Incorporation” 1908). According to the Wall Street Journal,

Mark Twain is making himself a Christmas present of a majority of the stock of the Mark Twain Co., incorporated Wednesday at Albany, with a capital of $5,000. The directors consist of the humorist and his two daughters, Miss I. V. Lyon, his private secretary, and R. W. Ashcroft, his business agent, and the stock is owned entirely by them. The duration of the corporation is to be perpetual, and its purpose is to acquire from Samuel L. Clemens all his rights, titles and interest in and to the name “Mark Twain.”

Mr. Clemens is president of the company, Miss Lyon vice-president, and Mr. Ashcroft secretary and treasurer. By incorporating himself, Mark Twain ensures to his family all future benefits that may accrue from the use of the name which he has made famous. (“Mark Twain Co. Incorporated,” 24 Dec 1908, 2)

Many companies have used the name “Mark Twain” on cigars and whiskey, but no clear evidence has been found that they did so with Clemens’s authorization. After his death, the Mark Twain Company retained the rights to his name and likeness, and held his assets in a trust for his daughter Clara. When she died the income from the trust passed to her husband, Jacques Samossoud, and upon his death to Dr. William Seiler. When Seiler died in 1978, the property in her estate was used to create the Mark Twain Foundation, as stipulated in Clara’s will. The foundation succeeded the former company, and now owns the rights (Rasmussen 2007, 2:776–77). The Mark Twain Company, and later the foundation, also retained the rights to Clemens’s published and unpublished works. In fact, Clemens’s principal reason for incorporating was actually to “keep the earnings of Mr. Clemens’s books continually in the family, even after the copyright on the books themselves expires.” This strategy was not foolproof, because it might not prevent his works being pirated under the name of “Samuel L. Clemens.” Clemens had argued that his pseudonym was a trademark in at least three lawsuits against literary pirates, in 1873, 1883, and 1901, but only the first was successful (New York Times: “Mark Twain, Plaintiff,” 27 Mar 1901, 6; “Mark Twain Turns Into a Corporation,” 24 Dec 1908, 2; N&J2 , 271 n. 112; “A Nom de Plume Is Not a Trade-Mark,” Chicago Tribune, 9 Jan 1883, 7; AutoMT2 , 534 n. 152.28). According to a lawyer interviewed by the New York Times in 1908, even if Clemens added material to a work to secure a new copyright, “The Misses Clemens could assert that the reprint of the original unamended works under a different name to that under which they were originally published was not the publication of the genuine book, and that it was interfering with the publication of the genuine book. An injunction, at least, could be issued on these grounds” (“Mark Twain Turns Into a Corporation. The Pen Name Is Incorporated to Save Daughters from Literary Pirates,” New York Times, 24 Dec 1908, 2; see also AD, 26 Mar 1907, and the note at 14.32–33, and “Closing Words of My Autobiography”). Because the Mark Twain Foundation maintains that the author’s name is a valid trademark in at least some states, his works published before 1923 (and therefore in the public domain) have sometimes been issued under the name “Samuel L. Clemens.” Copyright on works published between 1923 and 2002 is owned by the Foundation (for further details see Mark Twain Project 2014; Rasmussen 2007, 2:775; Judith Yaross Lee 2014).

 

another extract from a Hannibal paper . . . twenty days ago] The extract was typed from a newspaper clipping, probably also sent by Laura Frazer (see the note at 303.27). The newspaper, presumably an issue of 5 March, has not been identified.

 

Miss Becca Blankenship, Sister of “Huckleberry Finn”] Elizabeth (Becca) Blankenship was the sister of Tom Blankenship, the model for Huckleberry Finn (see AutoMT1 , 609 n. 397.20–26).

 

“Injun Joe,” “Jimmy Finn” and “General Gaines”] See AutoMT1 , 531–32 nn. 213.33–36, 213.36–37.