Autobiography of Mark Twain (14 page)

40
. 6 and 7 Nov 1898 and 12 Nov 1898 to Rogers (2nd of 2), Salm, in
HHR
, 374, 376; 25 Feb 99 to Gilder, CtY-BR.

41
.
L4:
27 June 1871 to OC (2nd of 2), 414; 15 Oct 1871 to OLC, 472 n. 1; 17 Oct 1871 to OLC, 475 n. 1; 24 Oct 1871 to Redpath, 478.

42
. “Mark Twain’s Bequest,” datelined “Vienna, May 22,” London
Times
, 23 May 1899, 4, in Scharnhorst 2006, 332–34; Curtis Brown 1899.

43
. 3 Sept 1899 to Murray, CU-MARK.

44
. The text was not included in the final form and, like the third manuscript written in 1900, is therefore published in the “Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations” section of this volume.

45
. 31 Dec 1900 to MacAlister, ViU.

46
. Harvey for Harper and Brothers to Rogers, 17 Oct 1900, CU-MARK. For Harvey’s biography, see AD, 12 Jan 1906, note at 267.35.

47
. Harvey for Harper and Brothers to SLC, 14 Nov 1900, CU-MARK (the term of this 14 November letter agreement was “between this date and January 1st, 1902”); 20 Nov 1900 to Harvey, MH-H; SLC
per
Harvey to Harvey, 26 Nov 1900, Harper and Row archives, photocopy in CU-MARK.

48
. In May 1888, having “spent an hour & a half” with one of Thomas Edison’s recently marketed phonographs “with vast satisfaction,” he tried to leverage his friendship with Edison to secure two of the machines “
immediately
, instead of having to wait my turn. Then all summer long I could use one of them in Elmira, N. Y., & express the wax cylinders to my helper in Hartford to be put into the phonograph here & the contents transferred to paper by typewriter.” At the end of July, however, when the machines failed to arrive, he canceled the order (25 May 1888 to Edison, NjWoE; SLC
per
Whitmore to the North American Phonograph Company, 30 July 1888, CU-MARK).

49
. SLC 1892; SLC and OLC to Howells, 28 Feb 1891, NN-BGC, in
MTHL
, 2:637; 4 Apr 1891 to Howells, NN-BGC, in
MTHL
, 2:641.

50
. Lyon 1903–6, entry for 28 Feb 1904. Clemens actually began dictating earlier than 14 January; see “Villa di Quarto”: “I am dictating these informations on this 8th day of January 1904” (233.12–13).

51
. 16 Jan 1904 to Howells, MH-H, in
MTHL
, 2:778–79.

52
. Howells to SLC, 14 Feb 1904, CU-MARK, in
MTHL
, 2:781.

53
. 14 Mar 1904 to Howells, NN-BGC, in
MTHL
, 2:782.

54
. “John Hay,” 224.26–39; “The Latest Attempt,” 220.17.

55
. Lyon’s longhand notes for these dictations are presumedlost, and one of only two typescripts by Jean Clemens to survive is the first part (twenty-one pages) of the “Villa di Quarto” dictation. With that exception, all the Florentine Dictations are preserved only in typed copies made in 1906 from Jean’s (now lost) typescripts. The dictation about the typewriter was published under the heading “From My Unpublished Autobiography” in
Harper’s Weekly
for 18 March 1905, and Clemens later inserted it in AD, 27 Feb 1907 (SLC 1905c).

56
. See the Textual Commentary for “Villa di Quarto,”
MTPO
.

57
. AD, 6 Aug 1906.

58
. 29 Jan 1904 to Stanchfield, CU-MARK.

59
. See the ADs of 26 May (Whitford), 2 June (Paige), and 14 June 1906 (Bret Harte).

60
. 16 Jan 1904 to Howells, MH-H, in
MTHL
, 2:779.

61
. “Twain’s Plan to Beat the Copyright Law,” New York
Times
, 12 Dec 1906, 1. The then current copyright law granted protection for twenty-eight years, with one extension of fourteen, for a total term of forty-two years. Clemens thought that if the autobiographical notes were attached to a book at the end of its term, they would create a new publication with its own term of forty-two years, for an overall total of eighty-four years.

62
. 21, 22, and 23 Feb 1910 to CC, photocopy in CU-MARK. The “Copyright Act of 1909” passed both houses of Congress on 4 March 1909.

63
.
MTB
, 3:1260–64. The following account of the history of the Autobiographical Dictation series is founded upon and greatly indebted to the ground-breaking research of Lin Salamo, an editor at the Mark Twain Project until 2009.

64
MTB
, 3:1266.

65
. AD, 9 Jan 1906; Lyon 1906, entry for 25 May;
MTB
, 3:1266.

66
.
MTB
, 3:1267.

67
. If TS1 through TS4 had been preserved in the way they were doubtless left to Paine—as four stacks of consecutively numbered pages—it would long ago have been obvious that each was a discrete sequence. But the pages of each typescript were distributed into individual folders labeled by the date of the relevant dictation, blocking that simple insight.

68
. The two later employees were Mary Louise Howden (who began in October 1908) and William Edgar Grumman (who began in February 1909). They worked during a period when work on the autobiography was drawing to a close, and their combined typescripts totaled only slightly more than a hundred pages.

69
. Lyon 1906, entry for 13 Mar.

70
. Lyon 1906, entries for 8 and 9 Apr; Howells to SLC, 8 Apr 1906, CU-MARK, in
MTHL
, 2:803–4 (which misidentifies the typescript pages lent to Howells); 8 Apr 1906 to CC, MoPlS and CU-MARK.

71
. Lyon 1906, entries for 15 May, 20 May, 25 May, and 21 June;
MTB
, 3:1307–8.

72
. Lyon 1906, entry for 29 Aug. “The King” was the pet name that Lyon and Paine used for Clemens.

73
. Lyon 1906, entry for 20 June. Hobby’s stenographic record apparently did not make a distinction between “a” and “one.”

74
. Lyon 1906, entry for 27 May;
HHR
, 697. See “Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich” for Clemens’s comments on “submerged renown.”

75
. 17 June 1906 to Rogers, Salm, in
HHR
, 611; Rogers to SLC, 4 June 1906, CU-MARK, in
HHR
, 608.

76
. 10 June 1906 to Teller, NN-BGC.

77
. Lyon 1906, entries for 8 June and 21 June.

78
. Pages 3 and 7 of Lyon’s copy of Paine’s
Autobiography
, quoted courtesy of Kevin Mac Donnell, its owner. Lyon made her notes in 1947 or 1948.

79
. Paine to Lyon, 11 June 1906, CU-MARK; Lyon 1906, entries for 13 and 22 June. Lyon’s date (1879) for this typescript was wrong; she may have intended to write “1897” which would have been about right.

80
. 17 June 1906 to Howells, NN-BGC, in
MTHL
, 2:811; Lyon 1906, entry for 14 June. The sketch Clemens referred to here was “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” a manuscript written as early as 1868 and several times revised. Among the “fat” must have been other unfinished or unpublished manuscripts he later inserted into the autobiography, motivated at least in part by his copyright renewal scheme: “Down the Rhone,” known as “The Innocents Adrift,” written in 1891 (see the Textual Commentary for “Villa di Quarto” at
MTPO
); and “Wapping Alice,” written in 1898. See the A Ds of 6 June and 9 Apr 1906. Many other such “nonautobiographical” manuscripts were ultimately inserted in the Autobiographical Dictations.

81
. Hobby had already begun to retype the forty-four pages, but her typescript (TS2) is also now missing. Collation of the manuscript against another 1906 typescript (TS4) derived from the “old” lost typescript shows that Clemens had revised it (see the next section: “Two More Typescripts: TS2 and TS4”). TS4 has “[1900]” typed at the top, which suggests that the lost typescript included this date.

82
. The first draft of the epigraph was inscribed by Clemens in a small calendar notebook for “November, 1901” and identified on the cover as “Autobiography” (CU-MARK). Other notes by Clemens indicate that he was using it in early 1902. The 1906 version, which survives only in a typescript, shows that he revised it on a document that is now missing.

83
. For details, see the Appendix “Previous Publication” (pp. 663–67).

84
. 17 June 1906 to Howells, NN-BGC, in
MTHL
, 2:811.

85
. The first
surviving
carbon copy of TS1 is of the 11 June 1906 dictation.

86
. The only large difference between TS2 and TS4 is the placement of “John Hay.” In TS4 it precedes “The Latest Attempt” and other prefaces, but it apparently followed them in TS2. The TS2 order is adopted in the present edition on the assumption that TS4 was in error. See the Textual Commentary for “The Latest Attempt” preface,
MTPO
.

87
. Lyon 1906, entry for 21 June.

88
. McClure to SLC, 2 July 1906, CU-MARK; 4 June 1906 to Duneka, MFai; 17 June 1906 to Rogers, MFai, in
HHR
, 611–13; Lyon 1906, entry for 25 July; Harvey to SLC, 4 June 1906, CU-MARK; McClure to SLC, 2 July 1906, CU-MARK; 3 Aug 1906 to CC, photocopy in CU-MARK.

89
. Mott 1938, 219–20, 256–57; Johnson 1935, 73, 205, 268; SLC 1902d, 1903b–d; Lyon 1906, entry for 31 July.

90
. 4 and 5 Aug 1906 to Rogers, NNC, in Leary 1961, 39.

91
. 3 Aug 1906 to CC, photocopy in CU-MARK. If Howells did help make selections, no sign of it has survived.

92
. 7 Aug 1906 to Teller, NN-BGC.

93
. See Michael J. Kiskis’s “Afterword” in the facsimile edition of the
North American Review
installments (SLC 1996), 10–20. Other critical studies of the autobiography include Cox 1966, Krauth 1999, Robinson 2007, and Kiskis’s “Introduction” to SLC 1990.

94
. 3 Aug 1906 to CC, photocopy in CU-MARK. Because the TS3 batches contained excerpts from several different Autobiographical Dictations, the way they were filed in the Mark Twain Papers also created a confusing anomaly until their function was understood.

95
. Harvey to SLC, 3 or 4 Aug 1906, CU-MARK. Harvey carried away TS3 typescripts of selections intended for installments 1 and 5, and the third batch in progress was for installments 2, 3, and 4.

96
. 25–28 Aug 1906 to Rogers, NNC, in Leary 1961, 53. By the time the early installments were published, they had been further rearranged. Harvey’s note to Clemens of 3 or 4 Aug 1906, listing the batches of TS3 he was taking with him (CU-MARK), referred to installments “No. 1” and “No. 5,” which ultimately became installments 3 and 2, respectively; his “Nos. 2, 3 & 4” became 4, 5, and 6.

97
. Harvey 1906, 442–43. Clemens used the expression “pier No. 70” in his speech at his seventieth birthday dinner (see the Appendix, pp. 657–61).

98
. 25–28 Aug 1906 to Rogers, NNC, in Leary 1961, 45–46.

99
. 4 and 5 Aug 1906 to Rogers, NNC, in Leary 1961, 39. Installment 9, published on 4 Jan 1907, was based on ADs from December 1906, which consisted largely of manuscript material.

100
. There were twenty-five
Review
installments in all. See the Appendix “Previous Publication” (pp. 666–67) for a list of all the excerpts and a summary of their contents.

101
. See the ADs of 9 Jan, 8 Feb, 28 Mar, 12 Jan, and 9 Feb 1906.

102
. For example, on the printer’s copy for NAR 6 Clemens noted, “I think a date necessary now and then. I think they should be let into the
margin
, David. | M.T.” He had begun adding such marginal dates to guide the reader through his nonchronological narrative when preparing” Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX” for NAR 2, but Munro had ignored them; they are adopted in this edition. And on the galley proofs of NAR 7 Clemens wrote, “David, if you don’t send stamped & addressed envelops with these things I’ll have your scalp! With love, Mark” (ViU; see the Textual Commentaries for the ADs of 26 Feb and 5 Mar 1906,
MTPO
). For Munro’s biography see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7.

103
. New York
Times:
“Topics of the Week,” 15 Sept 1906, BR568, and 29 Sept 1906, BR602; see AD, 21 May 1906.

104
. See the ADs of 1 Feb, 2 Feb, 5 Feb, 8 Feb, and 19 Jan 1906.

105
. “Mark Twain’s Memory,” Louisville (Kentucky)
Courier-Journal
, 20 Nov 1906, 6; see the explanatory notes for the “Random Extracts” sketch.

106
. “Mark Twain Declares That His Wife Made Him Swear off Swearing,” Washington
Post
, 16 Dec 1906, B8; “The Two Sides of It,”
Pearson’s Magazine
, Jan 1907, 117; this journal was an American affiliate of the British journal of the same name, devoted to literature, politics, and the arts.

107
. Lyon 1907, entry for 30 July.

108
. Lyon 1907, entry for 9 Sept.

109
. See Schmidt 2009b for a detailed comparison of the syndicated texts with those in the
North American Review
, access to almost all the illustrations, and a record of newspapers known to have carried “Sunday Magazine.”

110
. Willing to Unidentified, 28 Oct 1941, photocopy in CU-MARK; Clemens’s words to Willing were a pun on the catch-phrase “Barkis is willing” from
David Copperfield
(chapter 5).