Autobiography of Mark Twain (141 page)

215.31 Mrs. Utterback] The “faith-doctor” was Polly Rouse Utterback (1792?–1870). She is said to have treated Jane Clemens for neuralgia as well as toothache. She was the prototype for “Mother Utterback” in “Captain Montgomery,” where Clemens quoted a sample of her “quaint conversation” (SLC 1866a). He also recalled Mrs. Utterback, though not by name, in “Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy” (SLC 1899c;
Portrait
1895, 447;
Ralls Census
1850, 156; Ellsberry 1965b, 1:35; Varble 1964, 180–81).

216.41 simblins] A type of squash with a scalloped ridge (Ramsay and Emberson 1963, 207).

217.25–27 immortal tales which Uncle Remus Harris . . . ghost story of the “Golden Arm”] Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908), a native of Georgia, pursued a successful career as a journalist, but achieved literary fame as the author of
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
(1880), a collection of animal folktales told in the voice of an elderly slave. Clemens became acquainted with Harris after writing him, probably in July 1881, to praise the book but did not meet him until April 1882, when he traveled down the Mississippi River in preparation
for writing
Life on the Mississippi
(Julia Collier Harris 1918, 167;
N&J2
, 362 n. 21, 434, 468 n. 127, 551 n. 55; see also Gribben 1980, 1:295–96). Clemens wrote Harris again on 10 August 1881, “Uncle Remus is most deftly drawn, & is a lovable & delightful creation; he, & the little boy, & their relations with each other, are high & fine literature” (GEU). Clemens was fond of telling “The Golden Arm,” and sent his own version to Harris, enclosed with this letter:

Of course I
tell
it in the negro dialect—that is necessary; but I have not written it so, for I can’t spell it in your matchless way. It is marvelous the way you & Cable spell the negro & creole dialects.

Two grand features are lost in print: the wierd wailing, the rising & falling cadences of the wind, so easily mimicked with one’s mouth; & the impressive pauses & eloquent silences, & subdued utterances, toward the end of the yarn (which chain the attention of the children hand & foot, & they sit with parted lips & breathless, to be wrenched limb from limb with the sudden & appalling “YOU got it!”) I have so gradually & impressively worked up the last act, with a “grown” audience, as to create a rapt & intense stillness; & then made them jump clear out of their skins, almost, with the final shout. It’s a lovely story to tell.

Old Uncle Dan’l, a slave of my uncle’s aged 60, used to tell us children yarns every night by the kitchen fire (no other light); & the last yarn demanded, every night, was this one. By this time there was but a ghostly blaze or two flickering about the back-log. We would huddle close about the old man, & begin to shudder with the first familiar words; & under the spell of his impressive delivery we always fell a prey to that climax at the end when the rigid black shape in the twilight sprang at us with a shout.

When you come to glance at the tale you will recollect it—it is as common & familiar as the Tar Baby. Work up the atmosphere with your customary skill & it will “go” in print.

218.25 My uncle and his big boys . . . the youngest boy and I] John Quarles had two “big boys”: Benjamin L. (1826–1902) and James A. (1827–66). “Fred” was a younger son, William Frederick (1833–98), who was about two years older than Clemens (Selby 1973, 23).

220.16 sardines] The manuscript contains the incomplete text of an anecdote that Clemens evidently deleted on the missing typescript. It begins, “An appetite for almost any delicacy can be permanently destroyed by a single surfeit of it. It is so with salt pork. One of my oldest friends has had proof of this. He ate too much salt pork in the Adirondacks one summer, twenty years ago, and has not liked it since.” Clemens gives a full account of this incident in the Autobiographical Dictation of 10 October 1906, where he identifies his friend as Joseph Twichell (see also
N&J2
, 379 n. 67).

The Latest Attempt; The Final (and Right) Plan; Preface. As from the Grave

220
title–221 title
The Latest Attempt . . . As from the Grave] This three-part preface, like the “Early Attempt” preface, was written in mid–1906. With the exception of the middle section, it survives in manuscript. The text “I will construct a text . . . cannot be written” is a 1906 typescript with Clemens’s insertions and revisions on it. The pages are all reproduced in facsimile in the Introduction (
figures 5
–
12
).

THE FLORENTINE DICTATIONS

[John Hay]

222.9 I was visiting John Hay, now Secretary of State] John Milton Hay (1838–1905) and Clemens probably first met in 1867 through a mutual friend, David Gray of the Buffalo
Courier
. Hay, like Clemens, grew up in a small town on the Mississippi River—Warsaw, Illinois, which is less than sixty miles from Hannibal, Missouri—and this common background fostered their friendship. Hay graduated from Brown University and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1861. But he soon gave up the law to work as assistant private secretary to Abraham Lincoln (1861–65), living in the White House and becoming his intimate companion. At the end of the war Hay was appointed secretary to the U.S. legation in Paris, then chargé d’affaires at Vienna (1867–68), and secretary of legation at Madrid (1869–70). In 1870 he accepted an editorial position on the New York
Tribune
under Horace Greeley, and then, after Greeley’s death in 1872, assisted the new editor, Whitelaw Reid. He gave up his
Tribune
position in 1875 and pursued a literary career as a poet, novelist, and biographer of Lincoln (see the note at 224.14–15). He achieved his chief fame, however, as a diplomat and statesman, serving as assistant secretary of state (1878–81), ambassador to Great Britain (1897–98), and secretary of state (1898–1905) (31 Dec 1870 to Reid,
L4
, 292–93, n. 3; 26 Jan 1872 to Redpath,
L5
, 35 n. 2; Thayer 1915, 1:83, 330–35).

222.9–11 Whitelaw Reid’s house in New York . . . editing Reid’s paper, the New York
Tribune
] Whitelaw Reid (1837–1912), a native of Ohio, joined the staff of the New York
Tribune
in 1868. After the death of Horace Greeley, its founder and editor, he became the owner as well as the editor-in-chief, and soon solicited contributions from Clemens. Reid was married in April 1881 and for six months, while he traveled in Europe with his bride, Hay replaced him as editor and lived in his New York house. Reid later served as minister to France (1889–92) and ambassador to Great Britain (1905–12) (link note following 20–22 Dec 1872 to Twichell,
L5
, 263; Thayer 1915, 1:405, 451–55).

222.27–28 a succession of foreign difficulties on his hands] In 1898 Hay inherited from his predecessor a dispute with Canada over Alaska’s boundaries, which was not finally resolved until 1903. He helped to negotiate the Treaty of Paris (1898), ending the Spanish-American War. During the Boxer Rebellion (1900) he took action to rescue the Peking hostages, while successfully promoting the “Open Door Policy” toward China. Most recently, he had been responsible for several treaties (1900–1903) that allowed the United States to build the Panama Canal and secure its control over the Canal Zone (Thayer 1915, 2:202–49).

222.30–31 not any more scarable by kings and emperors and their fleets and armies] Clemens alludes to the conflict in 1901–3 with the German kaiser and his allies, who sent a fleet of warships to blockade Venezuelan ports and threatened to invade the country, in violation of the Monroe Doctrine (Thayer 1915, 2:284–90).

223.3 Mrs. Hay] Hay was married on 4 February 1874 to Clara L. Stone (1849–1915), whose father, Amasa Stone, was a wealthy contractor, railroad magnate, and philanthropist in Cleveland, Ohio. The couple had four children, and by Hay’s own account, their marriage
was a happy one. In 1905, shortly before his death, he recorded in his diary, “I have lived to be old, something I never expected in my youth. I have had many blessings, domestic happiness being the greatest of all” (Thayer 1915, 1:351, 2:408).

223.27–28 I confessed to forty-two and Hay to forty] At the time of his residence in Reid’s New York house, Hay was forty-two and Clemens was forty-five. It is likely that Clemens’s recollection here conflated more than one discussion with Hay, and that their conversation about autobiography took place several years earlier, in 1877 or 1878.

224.14–15 the historian of Mr. Lincoln] Hay and a collaborator, John G. Nicolay (1832–1901), published several works about Lincoln. Their association began in 1860, when Nicolay was appointed Lincoln’s private secretary and recruited Hay to be his assistant. During their tenure in the White House they began to select materials for a biography of Lincoln, and in 1874 began to solicit additional material from Lincoln’s son, Robert. In 1885 they signed a contract with the Century Company, receiving an unprecedented fifty thousand dollars for the serialization rights. Their biography was published in the
Century Magazine
from 1886 to 1890, and in the latter year was issued in ten volumes as
Abraham Lincoln: A History
. In a review of the work William Dean Howells wrote, “We can be glad of the greatest biography of Lincoln not only as the most important work yet accomplished in American history, but as one of the noblest achievements of literary art” (Howells 1891, 479). Four years later, in 1894, Hay and Nicolay published
Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works
(Thayer 1915, 2:16–18, 49).

Notes on “Innocents Abroad”

225.3–5 Mr. Goodman, of Virginia City, Nevada, on whose newspaper I had served ten years before, . . . walking down Broadway] After Clemens joined the staff of the Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise
in the fall of 1862, Joseph T. Goodman was quick to recognize his talent, and the two became lifelong friends (see AD, 9 Jan 1906, note at 252.32–253.1). The meeting described here took place in late December 1869 or early January 1870, when Goodman stopped in New York City en route to Europe (
L1:
9 Sept 1862 to Clagett, 241 n. 5; 21 Oct 1862 to OC and MEC, 242 n. 2; 18 and 19 Dec 1869 to OLL,
L3
, 432 n. 2). In his original dictation, after the word “before,” Clemens added, “and of whom I have had much to say in the book called ‘Roughing It’—I seem to be overloading the sentence and I apologize—.” He deleted the remark when revising the typescript for publication in the
North American Review
(NAR 12). It is also omitted here, because he did not make the revision as a “softening” to accommodate a contemporary readership.

225.17–19 dainty little blue and gold edition of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poems . . . exposed their dedications] Starting in 1856, the Boston firm of Ticknor and Fields published a series of handy volumes containing the best contemporary and classic literature, distinctively bound in blue cloth with gilt spine and edges.
Poems
, by physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, was first printed in this “Blue and Gold” series in 1862. The dedication Clemens refers to was that of the section entitled “Songs in Many Keys”: “
TO | THE MOST INDULGENT OF READERS, | THE KINDEST OF CRITICS
, | MY BELOVED
MOTHER, |
ALL THAT IS LEAST UNWORTHY OF HER
|
IN THIS VOLUME
| Is Dedicated |
BY HER AFFECTIONATE SON
” (Holmes 1862). Clemens’s dedication in
The Innocents Abroadre3.d:”To
| My Most Patient Reader | and | Most Charitable Critic, | MY AGED MOTHER, | This Volume is Affectionately | Inscribed” (SLC 1869a, iii; Winship 1995, 122–23).

225.29–31 letter from the Rev. Dr. Rising . . . Sandwich Islands six years before] The Reverend Franklin S. Rising (1833?–68) arrived in Virginia City in April 1862 to become the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Suffering from poor health, he sailed for the Sandwich Islands in February 1866 to convalesce. Clemens was in the islands from March to July 1866, writing travel letters for the Sacramento
Union
, which he later used as the basis for chapters 63–74 of
Roughing It
(see “My Debut as a Literary Person,” note at 128.22–24). Rising appears in chapter 47 of
Roughing It
as the naive minister baffled by the slang of Scotty Briggs. Since Rising died in a steamboat accident in December 1868, Clemens must have misremembered the year of his letter, which is not known to survive (30 July, 6, 7, 10, and 24 Aug 1866 to JLC and PAM,
Ll
, 352, 354 n. 3; 19 and 20 Dec 1868 to OLL,
L2
, 333, 337 n. 2;
RI 1993
, 669).

226.12–13 I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him the whole disgraceful affair] No such letter has been found, although in 1869 Clemens sent a copy of
The Innocents Abroad
to Holmes, who replied with a warm letter of appreciation (30 Sept 1869 to Holmes,
L3
, 364–65, 365–66 n. 1).

226.31–32 the proprietors of the
Daily Alta California
having “waived their rights” in certain letters] The preface concluded: “In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the
Daily Alta California
, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal having waived their rights and given me the necessary permission” (SLC 1869a). Clemens’s dispute over his right to reuse his travel letters—which he describes in more detail below—took place in February and late April or early May 1868 (
L2:
22? Feb 1868 to MEC, 198–99; 5 May 1868 to Bliss, 215–16; 27 and 28 Feb 1869 to Fairbanks,
L3
, 125 n. 3).

226.36–37 Early in ’66 George Barnes . . . San Francisco
Morning Call
] Clemens worked as the local reporter for the
Morning Call
from June to October 1864 (not 1866). His boss, George Eustace Barnes (d. 1897), was a Canadian who moved to New York City as a boy and began his career there as a printer for the
Tribune
. Although he recognized Clemens’s “peculiar genius,” he soon discovered that his new employee was not suited for his tedious but demanding assignment to provide news about theaters, law courts, and other items of local interest. In chapter 58 of
Roughing It
Clemens noted, “I neglected my duties and became about worthless, as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal” (
RI 1993
, 404;
CofC
, 11–25; see also AD, 13 June 1906).