Autobiography of Mark Twain (139 page)

195.23 Mr. Whipple] Sherman L. Whipple (1862–1930), the attorney for the plaintiff, was a graduate of Yale Law School and well known for his skill at examining witnesses (“Bay State Gas Hearing,” Washington
Post
, 3 Oct 1903, 1).

196.22 Shakspere says one may smile and smile and be a villain] “My tables! Meet it is I set it down / That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain” (
Hamlet
, act 1, scene 5).

196.40 Mr. Addicks] J. Edward Addicks (1841–1919) was an aggressive financier who established the Bay State Gas Company in 1884. After accumulating a fortune from his gas investments, he turned to speculation in copper mining, participating with Lawson and Rogers in promoting the Amalgamated Copper Company (see the note at 195.18–19). Beginning in 1889 he spent seventeen years trying to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, but failed despite spending an estimated $3 million (“J. E. Addicks of Boston Finance Fame Dies at 78,” Chicago
Tribune
, 8 Aug 1919, 16).

197.14 Mr. Whitney] Henry M. Whitney (1839–1923), a Boston “captain of industry,” was largely responsible for the development of the electric streetcar system in the Boston area. In early 1896 he entered the gas business as a new supplier of cheap gas, in competition with
the Standard Oil and Addicks interests. His company, the New England Gas and Coke Company, ran into debt in 1902 and was forced to reorganize. Its assets passed to a new trust, the Massachusetts Gas Companies. This trust’s purchase of the stock of the Bay State Company in 1903, allegedly at artificially low prices, was the basis of the current lawsuit (Adams 1903, 259, 266–67, 270–72; Lawson 1905, 134).

197.14–16 those other people . . . Yacht Club matter] In 1901, a boat that Lawson had built expressly to enter the New York Yacht Club Race was disqualified on the grounds that only members of the club were eligible to compete. A club member was quoted as saying Lawson had previously applied for membership and been blackballed; Lawson denied ever having made an application (“A Club of Snobs,” Washington
Post
, 9 Mar 1901, 6; “Mr. Lawson Will Challenge Any Yacht,” New York
Times
, 10 Mar 1901, 1).

197.49 Senator Allee] James Frank Allee (1857–1938) served as a Republican senator from Delaware from 1903 to 1907.

[
Anecdote of Jean
] (
Source
: MS in CU-MARK)

199
title
Jean] Jean’s life is briefly outlined in the Appendix “Family Biographies” (p. 657).

Sources
: Unless otherwise noted, the texts of
Autobiography of Mark Twain
are based on one or more typescripts in the Mark Twain Papers: TS1, TS2, TS3, or TS4. These are described in References and, in more detail, in the Introduction and Note on the Text.

203.1–2 The chapters which immediately follow . . . to put my life on paper] Clemens wrote the title page and “Early Attempt” preface for
Autobiography of Mark Twain
in June 1906, when he conceived his final plan for the work; his manuscript survives in the Mark Twain Papers. See the Introduction for a discussion of this plan and a facsimile of the manuscript (figures 2–3).

203
title
My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] ] Clemens wrote this long reminiscence, with several internal chapter breaks, in Vienna over the winter of 1897–98; his manuscript survives in the Mark Twain Papers. A forty-four-page typescript that was made from the manuscript is now lost. Clemens revised the typescript, almost certainly in 1906, shortly before he asked Josephine Hobby to transcribe it (see AD, 9 Jan 1906, note at 250.19–21). Clemens identified this manuscript as “From Chapter II” of his autobiography (see p. 14 for a facsimile of its first page). The manuscript begins with two stanzas from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
:

We are no other than a moving row

Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held

In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays

Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;

Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Collation establishes that Clemens deleted both the chapter designation and the poem on the missing stage, and they are therefore omitted from the text here (see the Textual Commentary,
MTPO
). He had known and loved Fitzgerald’s
Rubáiyát
since 22 December 1875, when he saw it excerpted on the front page of the Hartford
Courant
. He recalled in 1907, “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” (AD, 7 Oct 1907).

203.8 * * * * So much for the . . . New England branch of the Clemenses] No earlier section about the “New England branch” survives, and it remains unclear whether any previous
text was ever written. In his draft of the preface entitled “An Early Attempt,” Clemens first wrote “The chapters which immediately follow constitute a fragment of one of my many attempts (after I was in my forties) to put my life on paper. The first part of it is lost.” He then deleted the second sentence. Clemens’s ancestor Robert Clements (1595–1658) emigrated from England in 1642 and settled in Massachusetts, where he helped establish the town of Haverhill. Robert’s great-grandson Ezekiel (1696–1778)—presumably the “other brother who settled in the South”—first went to Virginia (not Maryland, as Clemens claimed) in about 1743, but did not settle there permanently until about 1765. Clemens descended from Ezekiel through his son Jeremiah (1732–1811) (Lampton 1990, 78–79; Bell 1984, 4–8, 13, 24–25).

203.10–18 He went South with his particular friend Fairfax . . . American earl . . . Virginia City, Nevada] Clemens was slightly mistaken about the Fairfax family. The title of baron (not earl) was granted to the Fairfax family in 1627, and was not of “recent date.” It was Thomas Fairfax, the third baron (1612–71), grandson of the first baron, who served as general-in-chief of the parliamentary armies and won several crucial battles against the forces of Charles I. He resigned his command to Cromwell in 1650, and had no role in the king’s execution. Nine years later he helped to restore the monarchy. In describing the “particular friend” of the “other brother” Clemens probably meant William Fairfax, who emigrated to New England, and later settled in Virginia to manage the family estates. Clemens’s friend was Charles Snowden Fairfax (1829–69), the tenth baron, who was William’s great-great-grandson. Clemens probably met Charles in San Francisco in the early 1860s. He served in the California legislature in 1853 and 1854, and in 1856 was appointed clerk of the state supreme court. The town of Fairfax, in Marin County, where he owned a large estate, was named after him (Burke 1904, 587–88; Ellis 1939, 48–49; Gudde 1962, 100).

203.21–30 A prominent and pestilent creature . . . let the rascal go] This altercation took place in Sacramento, California, in 1859. Fairfax, the clerk of the state supreme court, quarreled with Harvey Lee (not “Ferguson”) over Lee’s recent appointment as the official reporter of court decisions. Fairfax slapped Lee, who drew a sword from his cane and wounded him in the lung. Fairfax thereupon threatened Lee with a pistol, but refrained from shooting him out of pity for his family (Ellis 1939, 49).

203.32–33 some of them were pirates . . . so were Drake and Hawkins] Sir Francis Drake (1540–96) and his cousin Sir John Hawkins (1532–95) raided Spanish ships under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I.

204.1–4 one of the procession . . . Clement, by name—helped to sentence Charles to death] The ancestor who went to Spain has not been identified. The other putative ancestor, Gregory (not Geoffrey) Clements (1594–1660), was a London merchant and member of Parliament. In January 1649 he was a member of the high court of justice that tried Charles I and signed the king’s death warrant. In 1660, when the monarchy was restored under Charles II, Clements went into hiding, but was found and executed that October. Extensive genealogical research has not revealed any family connection to Gregory; Clemens’s earliest known ancestor was Richard Clements of Leicester (1506–71) (Lampton 1990, 78; Bell 1984, 4–7).

204.13–14 I am not bitter against Jeffreys] George Jeffreys (1645–89), lord chief justice
of England and later lord chancellor, is known as “hanging Judge Jeffreys” for the punishments he handed out at the “bloody assizes” of 1685, when he tried the followers of the duke of Monmouth after their rebellion against James II. In 1688, when the king fled the country, Jeffreys was placed in the Tower of London, where he died the following year.

204.25–26 William Walter Phelps was our Minister at the Emperor’s Court] Phelps (1839–94), a graduate of Yale University and Columbia Law School, served several terms as a congressman from New Jersey, and briefly as minister to Austria-Hungary (in 1881–82), before being appointed minister to the court of Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany, in June 1889. Phelps’s amiability and lavish hospitality made him very popular in Berlin society. This dinner no doubt took place in the winter of 1891, during the Clemenses’ sojourn in that city. Clemens already knew Phelps, but the two families became better acquainted during that time (
MTB
, 3:933).

204.26–27 Count S., a cabinet minister . . . of long and illustrious descent] In a passage that Clemens deleted from his manuscript, “Count S.” was identified as “the Empress Frederick’s Hofmeister, Count Seckendorff.” The Empress Frederick (1840–1901), the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria, was the widow of Frederick III and the mother of the current emperor. Her “master of the household” and close confidant was Count Goetz von Seckendorff (1841–1910), a lover of literature and the arts (Washington
Post
: “Von Seckendorff Dead,” 3 Mar 1910, 9; “Revives Court Gossip,” 4 Mar 1910, 1; Victoria 1913, 300–301). In the deleted manuscript passage Clemens further explained, “This nobleman was descended from the Seckendorff whom Wilhelmina, Margravine of Bayreuth, has made immortal in her Memoirs.” This earlier Seckendorff was a minister to King Frederick William I of Prussia. Clemens owned two copies of the
Memoirs
of the king’s daughter, Princess Wilhelmine (1709–58), published in 1877 and 1887. In 1897 he composed one chapter of a historical fiction about her before abandoning the project (
N&J3
, 295; Gribben 1980, 2:771–73; SLC 1897c; see Wilhelmine 1877).

205.18 Among the Virginian Clemenses were Jere. (already mentioned) and Sherrard] Jeremiah Clemens (1814–65) descended from Ezekiel Clemens of Virginia (see the note at 203.8), and was therefore a distant cousin. A lawyer, army officer, newspaper editor, and author, he was a member of the Alabama legislature, and later represented that state as a Democratic U.S. senator (1849–53). At the start of the Civil War he supported the Confederacy, but in 1864 changed allegiance to the Union. Sherrard Clemens (1820–80), another of Ezekiel’s descendants, was trained as a lawyer. He represented Virginia as a Democratic U.S. congressman in 1852–53, and again in 1857–61. The “James Clemens branch” of the family descended from Ezekiel through his son James (1734–95). Clemens was acquainted with James’s grandson, James Clemens, Jr. (1791–1878), a well-to-do doctor in St. Louis (Lampton 1990, 80; 21 June 1866 to JLC and PAM,
L1
, 346 n. 6; “Sherrard Clemens,” New York
Times
, 3 June 1880, 5;
N&J1
, 36 n. 40; Bell 1984, 31–36; see also AD, 9 Feb 1906).

205.29–36 I was a rebel . . . with that kind of swine] Clemens alludes to his brief stint, at the beginning of the Civil War, in the Marion Rangers, a company in the Missouri State Guard. Although the guard was officially loyal to the Union (see Dempsey 2003, 256–72), the volunteers themselves believed they were fighting for the South: in “The Private History of a Campaign
That Failed,” Clemens’s account of the experience, he claimed that he “became a rebel” (SLC 1885b; see the link note following 26 Apr 1861 to OC,
L1
, 121). By 1868 he had become a Republican, although his allegiance wavered in 1884, when—with the other so-called “mugwumps”—he backed Grover Cleveland against James G. Blaine. In the 1876 election Clemens supported Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who defeated Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat. At a large Republican rally in Hartford on 30 September 1876, Clemens made a speech in support of Hayes, concluding with an introduction for Connecticut Senator Joseph R. Hawley (“Just Before the Battle,” Hartford
Evening Post
, 2 Oct 1876, 2, in Scrapbook 8:25–27, CU-MARK; 13 and 14 Feb 1869 to OLL,
L3
, 97 n. 5; for Hawley see AD, 24 Jan 1906, note at 317.23–24). The only surviving letter from Sherrard Clemens to Clemens was written several weeks before this event, on 2 September, but it suggests that the description here was not exaggerated. Sherrard, evidently reacting to a newspaper notice, wrote:

I regret, very deeply, to see, that you have announced your adhesion, to that inflated bladder, from the bowels of Sarah Burchard, Rutherford Burchard Hayes. You come, with myself, from Gregory Clemens, the regicide, who voted for the death of Charles and who was beheaded, disembolled, and drawn in a hurdle. It is good, for us, to have an ancestor, who escaped, the ignominy of being hung. But, I would rather have, such an ancestor, than adhere, to such a pitiful ninnyhammer, as Hayes, who is the mere, representative, of wall street brokers, three ball men, Lombardy Jews, European Sioux, class legislation, special priviledges to the few, and denial of equality of taxation, to the many—the mere convenient pimp, of the bondholders and office holders, about 150 thousand people, against over 40.000.000. If you, have, any more opinions for
newspaper scalpers
, it might be well, for your
literary
reputation, if you, should
keep them to yourself
, unless you desire to be considered a
“Political Innocent Abroad
.” (Sherrard Clemens to SLC, 2 Sept 1876, CU-MARK)