Autobiography of Mark Twain (143 page)

233.23 contadini] Peasants, farmers.

235.14 Blackwood]
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
, a British literary monthly.

236.29–30 without her witness was not anything made that was made] Compare John 1:3, “and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

238.34 majestic view, just mentioned] Clemens deleted the passage mentioning the view, which originally ended the previous paragraph. It described a “charming room” from which “one has a far stretching prospect of mountain and valley with Florence low-lying and bunched together far away in the middle distance.”

239.23–24 Professor Willard Fiske . . . Walter Savage Landor villa] Fiske (1831–1904) was a scholar of Northern European languages whom the Clemenses had met through their mutual friend Charles Dudley Warner. A seasoned traveler, Fiske twice helped the Clemenses with their arrangements to lease Florentine villas, in 1892 and 1903. Having inherited a vast fortune, in 1892 he purchased a villa that had once belonged to English poet and essayist Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) (Horatio S. White 1925, 3, 393–95; “Like a Romance,” Hartford
Courant
, 27 May 1890, 3; see also AD, 10 Apr 1906).

240.42–241.1 little shiny white cherubs which one associates with the name of Della Robbia] The Florentine sculptor Luca della Robbia (1400?–1482) was the principal member of a family of artists who specialized in the use of glazed terra cotta to decorate walls and ceilings.

241.9 lesson in art lest the picture . . . perfection] At this point in the text Clemens dictated the following instruction to himself, “Here Insert Rhone Voyage.” He clearly referred to a manuscript entitled “The Innocents Adrift,” a highly fictionalized account of his ten-day boat trip down the Rhône River in September 1891. Clemens never finished it, but he continued to revise it and consider mining it for extracts; a brief one appears in chapter 55 of
Following the Equator
. In 1923, Paine published an abridged and rewritten version as “Down the Rhône.” Clemens probably did not intend to interpolate it in its entirety. He may have meant to use the section of it wherein his fictive fellow voyagers debate the proper qualifications for the appreciation of high art. But clearly he did not follow through on his intention (SLC 1891a; SLC 1923, 129–68; Arthur L. Scott 1963).

242.22 our old Katy] Household servant Katy Leary had sailed with the Clemenses from New York in October 1903. At the time of this dictation she had been in their service for twenty-three years and had long been “regarded,” as Clemens wrote, “as a part of the family” (Notebook 39, TS p. 51, CU-MARK; see also AD, 1 Feb 1906).

243.21 podere] Property, estate.

244.29 a good friend, Mrs. Ross, whose stately castle was a twelve minutes’ walk away] Janet Duff Gordon Ross (1842–1927), the daughter of a baronet, lived at Poggio Gherardo, a
villa that she and her husband had purchased in 1888. She enjoyed a wide social circle of writers and artists, and published several books of her own—a family biography, sketches of Tuscan life, and collections of autobiographical essays. She described her 1892 meeting with Clemens:

In May our friend Professor Fiske, who lived near Fiesole, brought a delightful man to see us, Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. We at once made friends. The more we saw of him the more we liked the kindly, shrewd, amusing, and quaint man. He asked whether there was any villa to be had near by, and from our terrace we showed him Villa Viviani, between us and Settignano. I promised to get him servants and have all ready for the autumn. (Ross 1912, 318–19)

244.31 year spent in the Villa Viviani] The Clemenses stayed at the villa from late September 1892 to late March 1893.

244.35 When we were passing through Florence] The source of the text from here to the end is Clemens’s manuscript, now in the Mark Twain Papers.

246.46 the Magnificent Lorenzo] Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as “the Magnificent” (1449–92), was the effectual ruler of Florence from 1469 to his death.

250.19–21 you are going to collect from that mass of incidents . . . and then write a biography] Clemens was speaking to Albert Bigelow Paine (1861–1937), who planned to write his biography. Paine grew up in Iowa and Illinois, leaving school at fifteen. At twenty he went to St. Louis, where he worked as a photographer; several years later he operated a photographic supply business in Kansas. After one of his stories was accepted by
Harper’s Weekly
, he moved to New York in 1895, where he wrote for periodicals and published books for both children and adults. In 1899 he became an editor of
St. Nicholas
, a magazine for young people, and in 1904 published
Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures
, the first of his many biographies. His
Mark Twain: A Biography
appeared in 1912, and was followed by editions of the
Letters
(1917),
Autobiography
(1924), and
Notebook
(1935). Paine explained in his edition of the autobiography:

It was in January, 1906, that the present writer became associated with Mark Twain as his biographer. Elsewhere I have told of that arrangement and may omit most of the story here. It had been agreed that I should bring a stenographer, to whom he would dictate notes for my use, but a subsequent inspiration prompted him to suggest that he might in this way continue his autobiography, from which I would be at liberty to draw material for my own undertaking. We began with this understanding, and during two hours of the forenoon, on several days of each week, he talked pretty steadily to a select audience of two, wandering up and down the years as inclination led him, relating in his inimitable way incidents, episodes, conclusions, whatever the moment presented to his fancy. (
MTA
, 1:ix–x)

Paine devoted a chapter of his biography to an account of his conversation with Clemens at The Players club dinner on 3 January 1906, and the “arrangement” they agreed on three days
later (see
MTB
, 4:1257–66; AD, 10 Jan 1906). Clemens’s secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, made a note of their discussion in her diary on 6 January 1906:

Albert Bigelow Paine came this morning to talk over the matter of writing M
^r
. Clemens’s Biography—M
^r
. Clemens has consented to have some shorthander come & take down the chat that is to flow from M
^r
. Clemens’s lips—I hope it may prove inspirational—The commercial machine (Columbia Graphophonic) that M
^r
. Clemens was looking upon as a boon—hasn’t proved so—He dictated his birthday speech into it—and a few letters—but that is all—There is something infinitely sad in the voice as it is reproduced from the cylenders—and how strickening it would be to hear the voice of one gone—(Lyon 1906, 6)

The “shorthander,” one of the “select audience of two” for the Autobiographical Dictations, was stenographer and typist Josephine S. Hobby (1862–1950), formerly a secretary to Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of
St. Nicholas
magazine from 1872 until her death in 1905 (for the “birthday speech” see AD, 12 Jan 1906; Lyon 1906, 47, 71–72; “Aide to Mark Twain Dies,” New York
Times
, 31 Jan 1950, 21; see also the Introduction, pp. 25–27).

251.19–29 I want to read . . . quoted six years later at $160,000,000] The article Clemens “read” from has not been found in the New York
Times
. His account is substantially confirmed by independent sources, however, including the astonishing rise in the 1874–75 stock prices (see Lord 1883, 309, 314–15). John W. Mackay (1831–1902) was born in Ireland and came to America as a boy. From 1851 until 1859 he was a miner in California and then moved to Nevada. In January 1872, in partnership with James G. Fair (1831–94), also originally from Ireland, and two others (see the note at 252.25), Mackay took control of the Consolidated Virginia mine, whose stock in the previous year had fallen below $2 per share. The “Big Bonanza” silver strike in the Consolidated Virginia and the adjacent California mine, made in October 1874, was ultimately valued as high as $1.5 billion (
L6:
24 Mar 1875 to Bliss, 425 n. 2; 29 Mar and 4 Apr 1875 to Wright, 439 nn. 5, 9).

251.32–38 when I came to Virginia in 1862 . . . forty dollars a week attached to it] Clemens arrived in Aurora, in the rich Esmeralda mining district claimed by both Nevada Territory and California, in April 1862. There, living hand to mouth, he immediately set about wielding pick and shovel while energetically speculating in mining “feet,” or shares, to the extent his limited funds allowed. That April he also began contributing letters, under the pen name “Josh,” to the Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise
. Before the end of July, partly on the strength of the “Josh” letters, none of which survive, he was offered the post of local reporter, as a temporary substitute for the paper’s local editor, William Wright (1829–98), best known under his pen name, “Dan De Quille.” By late September 1862, having failed to strike it rich in Aurora, Clemens had relocated to Virginia City and was reporting for the
Enterprise
. His earliest extant articles appeared in the paper on 1 October 1862 (see
ET&S1
, 389–91). He remained on the
Enterprise
staff until he left Virginia City for San Francisco in late May 1864. For his vivid accounts of his experiences in Aurora and Virginia City see his letters of the period (10? Apr 1862 to OC through 28 May 1864 to Cutler,
L1
, 184–301) and chapters 35–37, 40–49, 51–52, and 54–55 of
Roughing It
.

251.41–42 one column of leaded nonpareil every day] Nonpareil was a small (six point) type, commonly used in newspapers.

252.1–9 I met John Mackay . . . I will try to get a living out of this] It is not known when Mackay and Clemens first became acquainted. According to the
Second Directory of Nevada Territory
, by sometime in 1863 Mackay was living on C Street and was working as the superintendent of the Milton Silver Mining Company (Kelly 1863, 254). Clemens gave a similar account of their Virginia City encounter in an 1897 interview (Budd 1977, 78).

252.10–11 I left Nevada in 1864 to avoid a term . . . have to explain that] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 January 1906.

252.21 chimney] A “chimney,” or “ore-shoot,” was “a body of ore, usually of elongated form, extending downward within a vein” (Raymond 1881, 19, 20).

252.25 O’Brien—who was a silver expert in San Francisco] William Shoney O’Brien (1826–78), like Mackay and Fair a native of Ireland, had come to San Francisco in 1849 where he had a succession of businesses—including a tobacco shop, a newspaper agency, a ship chandlery, and a saloon—before becoming a dealer in silver stocks. He and his San Francisco partner, James Clair Flood (1826–89), along with Mackay and Fair, came to be known as the “Bonanza Firm” and together controlled the Comstock Lode (Oscar Lewis 1947, 222–23; Hart 1987, 358–59).

252.30–31 John P. Jones . . . thirty years] See “The Machine Episode,” note at 104.16–17.

252.32–253.1 Joseph T. Goodman . . . Williams . . . sold the paper to Denis McCarthy and Goodman] Goodman (1838–1917) emigrated from New York to California in 1854 and worked as a compositor and writer on San Francisco newspapers. He and McCarthy (1840–85) were fellow typesetters on two journals there, the
Mirror
and the
Golden Era
, before buying into the Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise
, then owned by Jonathan Williams (d. 1876), in March 1861. By 1865 Goodman was the sole proprietor; he sold out at a considerable profit in February 1874, not to “some journeyman” but to the Enterprise Publishing Company (21 Oct 1862 to OC and MEC,
L1
, 242 n. 2; Angel 1881, 317).

253.20–22 And when the Bonanza . . . to San Francisco] Following his February 1874 sale of the
Enterprise
, Goodman had at least two opportunities to see Clemens that year. In April, after moving to San Francisco, he and his first wife, Ellen (1837?-93), stopped in the East on their way to Europe; they returned in October, the same month the “Big Bonanza” silver discovery was made. Although Goodman could have met with Clemens in April, it is more likely that he would have needed a loan at the trip’s conclusion if he found himself temporarily short of ready cash for the return to San Francisco (
L6:
23 Apr 1874 to Finlay, 115–16 n. 5; 29 Mar and 4 Apr 1875 to Wright, 439 n. 8).

253.27–254.4 Denis . . . never got a start again] After selling his interest in the
Enterprise
in 1865, McCarthy went to San Francisco, where he invested unsuccessfully in the stock market and soon lost his considerable profit. He was working as the managing editor of the San Francisco
Chronicle
when the “Big Bonanza” was discovered in 1874, and through successful speculation earned another fortune. He returned to Virginia City and bought the
Evening
Chronicle
, which became, within a year, the most widely circulated newspaper in Nevada history. Goodman told Clemens in 1881 that McCarthy’s strong “appetite for liquor” had made him seriously ill, and his death four years later was apparently the result of “dissipation” (Goodman to SLC, 11 Dec 1881, CU-MARK; Angel 1881, 326–27; “Death of D.E. McCarthy,” Virginia City
Evening Chronicle
, 17 Dec 1885, 2).

254.5–14 Joe Goodman . . . several times what he paid for it originally] Goodman was a member of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board from 1877 to 1880 and then became a raisin farmer in Fresno, southeast of the city. He had informed Clemens of the change in occupations in a letter of 9 March 1881:

I got busted in San Francisco—dead broke. Mackay (who owns half of the
Enterprise
) offered to buy the other half and give it to me; but I saw no profit in it,—Virginia City will soon be as desolate a place as Baalbec,—and, besides, my health was too poor to undertake literary work; so I borrowed $4,000 from Mackay and have started in to vine-growing in this region. I don’t know how it will turn out—and don’t care much. We are about 200 miles from San Francisco, in the San Joaquin Valley. Four or five years ago it was all a desert, but they have brought in irrigating ditches and the land is being rapidly settled—some places already being marvelously fine. I have only 130 acres, but it is quite as much as I shall be able to get under cultivation. At present it is the merest and most desolate speck in the desert you can imagine. Mrs. Goodman gets so homesick she almost cries her eyes out. But, if I live, I will make it a paradise—on a small scale. If you and Mrs. Clemens should ever come to California you will want to see this wonderful southern country, and I extend you a hearty invitation to come and visit us. Should you chance to come soon there would be only the original desert prospect, so far as my ranch is concerned, but there shall be a fountain of welcome for you, and an oasis of hospitality, and—to make the picture complete—I will import a bird for the occasion to sing in the solitude. (CU-MARK)