Autobiography of Mark Twain (144 page)

Goodman remained in Fresno until 1891, when he moved to Alameda, California (Goodman to Alfred B. Nye, 6 Nov 1905, CU-BANC; Joseph L. King 1910, 59, 339, 344).

254.16–23 Before this eastern visit . . . published in about 1901] In a letter of 24 May 1902, Goodman informed Clemens:

Eighteen years ago my attention was called to the inscriptions on the ruins of Central America and Yucatan, and I inconsiderately said I could decipher them. I worked seven years without accomplishing a thing, but then I succeeded in breaking an opening into the mystery. In 1895 they sent for me to come to London and publish the results of my studies up to then. I telegraphed you from Chicago to try to meet me in New York, but as I heard nothing from you I supposed you didn’t get the message in time. Since then I’ve kept on working at the glyphs until I have the whole thing pretty well thrashed out, and am now putting it into book form. So far as concerns me and mine, the pursuit has been a sheer waste of time, money and nerve force. There is no hope of profit in it. Not a thousand persons care anything about the study. The only compensation is that I found out what nobody else could, and that my name will always be associated with the unraveling of the Maya glyphs, as Champollion’s is with the Egyptian. But that is poor pay for what will be twenty years’ hard work. I will send you a copy of the London volume—not that I think
it will interest you at all, but as a curiosity. I have since discovered that I made a few mistakes in it, but the bulk of it will stand the test of all time. (CU-MARK)

At the urging of prominent archaeologist Alfred P. Maudslay (1850–1931), Goodman traveled to London in 1895. There in 1897 he published his findings as
The Archaic Maya Inscriptions
, a book-length work that Maudslay later made the appendix to his own multivolume
Archaeology
. In 1898 Goodman published a monograph,
The Maya Graphic System: Reasons for Believing It to Be Nothing but a Cipher Code
, and in 1905 he published an article, “Maya Dates” (Tozzer 1931, 403, 407–8; Goodman 1897; Goodman 1898; Goodman 1905; Maudslay and Goodman 1889–1902). Modern scholarship has validated Goodman’s confidence in his discoveries. Michael D. Coe, in
Breaking the Maya Code
, noted that Goodman “made some truly lasting contributions,” among them “calendrical tables . . . still in use among scholars working out Maya dates” and his “amazing achievement” in proposing “a correlation between the Maya Long Count calendar and our own” (Coe 1999, 112, 114). Jean François Champollion (1790–1832), considered the father of Egyptology, was the first to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.

254.24 account in the New York
Times
] The article referred to at 251.20, which has not been found.

254.24–29 strike in the great Bonanza . . . now confessedly exhausted] The total value of the Consolidated Virginia, the California, and the other mines of the Comstock Lode declined from more than $393 million in 1875 to just under $7 million in 1880 (Angel 1881, 619–20).

254.30–31 I have to make several speeches . . . last two months] Between 10 November 1905 and 11 April 1906, Clemens spoke on at least twenty-five occasions. The events included a Washington, D.C., dinner attended by members of the Roosevelt administration (25 November); his own seventieth birthday dinner (5 December); a benefit for Russian Jews (18 December); a dinner for him at The Players (3 January); a Tuskegee Institute fundraiser at Carnegie Hall (22 January); a meeting of the Gridiron Club in Washington, attended by Theodore Roosevelt (27 January); remarks on copyright to the House of Representatives (29 January); a New York Press Club dinner in memory of Charles Dickens (8 February); a Barnard College reception (7 March); a meeting of the New York State Association for Promoting the Interests of the Blind (29 March); a Vassar College Students’ Aid Society benefit (2 April); and a dinner for Russian author Maxim Gorky (11 April) (see Schmidt 2008a for a full list; texts of several of the speeches can be found in Fatout 1976; New York
Times:
“Choate and Twain Plead for Tuskegee,” 23 Jan 1906, 1; “President in ‘Panama’ Has a Jolly Time,” 28 Jan 1906, 4; “Twain on Rockefeller, Jr.,” 8 Feb 1906, 9; “Three New Plays at Vassar Aid Benefit,” 3 Apr 1906, 9; “Gorky and Mark Twain Plead for Revolution,” 12 Apr 1906, 4).

255.18–19 my friends of ancient days in the Players Club gave me a dinner] The dinner for Clemens was held on 3 January 1906 at a house at 16 Gramercy Park in New York, which actor Edwin Booth (1833–93) had given to the club for its headquarters. Booth had conceived
of the club as a place where actors could “associate on intimate and equal terms with the foremost authors, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, editors, publishers, and patrons of the arts” (Lanier 1938, 47). Clemens was a charter member and had attended the organizational luncheon convened by Booth at Delmonico’s restaurant on 6 January 1888. Walter Oettel, Edwin Booth’s former valet and the longtime majordomo of The Players club, recalled that at the 3 January 1906 dinner “the table decorations and favors were stuffed frogs, à propos of his tale, ‘The Jumping Frog.’ ” Oettel reported that the dinner was hosted by some two dozen club members, among them Brander Matthews (see the note at 255.24), who presided; John H. Finley (1863–1940), author, former
Harper’s Weekly
editor, and president of City College of New York; Daniel Frohman (see the note at 255.19–22); poet and
Century Magazine
editor Richard Watson Gilder (see “About General Grant’s Memoirs,” note at 77
footnote
); poet and
Century Magazine
associate editor Robert Underwood Johnson (1853–1937); Francis D. Millet (see the note at 255.28–29); David A. Munro, who was unable to attend (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, and note at 284.7); Albert Bigelow Paine; and Robert Reid (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7–8; Oettel 1943, 53–54, 94;
N&J
3, 429 n. 73; Lanier 1938, passim; “Players Dine Mark Twain,” New York
Times
, 4 Jan 1906, 2).

255.19–22 an absence of three years, occasioned by the stupidity of the Board . . . it amounted to the same] The original board members were Booth; actor Lawrence Barrett (1838–91); merchant William Bispham (d. 1909); brothers Augustin (1838–99) and Joseph F. Daly (1840–1916), the former an eminent playwright, producer, and theater owner, the latter a lawyer and judge; actor Henry Edwards (d. 1891); dramatic critic, biographer, and
Harper’s Magazine
literary editor Laurence Hutton (1843–1904); actor Joseph Jefferson (1829–1905); and theatrical manager Albert M. Palmer (1838–1905). Bispham, Joseph F. Daly, Jefferson, and Palmer were still on the board in 1903 when Clemens withdrew from the club (see AD, 21 Mar 1906, for Clemens’s further account of his “expulsion”). The other board members then were author Charles E. Carryl (1841–1920); actor John Drew (1853–1927); theatrical manager and producer Daniel Frohman (1851–1940); actor and theatrical manager Frank W. Sanger (1849–1904); and actor Francis Wilson (1854–1935). Carryl had sent Clemens a form letter, dated 12 January 1903, expelling him for “non-payment of dues.” In the top margin of the letter Clemens wrote: “Expelled! (by the mistake of an idiot Secretary)” (CU-MARK). The invitation to return, sent on 10 November 1904, slightly misquoted Carolina Oliphant’s popular lyric, addressed to Bonnie Prince Charlie: “Will ye no com back again? / Better lo’ed ye canna be” (Reid et al. to SLC, NNWH). On 11 November Clemens replied, on mourning stationery, “Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charlie’s heart, if he had one, & certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad & proud to come back again. . . . It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is the only thing I worship” (11 Nov 1904 to Reid and The Players, NNWH). In her 1906 diary, Lyon noted Clemens’s triumphant return from the dinner:

Mr Clemens has just come home at midnight, from a dinner at “The Players” where he was made an honorary member. It was a great night for all the rest of them, because he had stayed away so long.

At midnight he stood at the foot of my flight of stairs in happy mood, with a Japanese paper frog hanging by a hind leg from his coat lapel, & this he handed to me as I went down the stairs to greet him. He knew I would be up & waiting to register his safe return. (Lyon 1906, unnumbered leaf inserted after p. 2)

255.24 Brander Matthews] Matthews (1852–1929), a prominent writer and critic, was a professor of literature and drama at Columbia University (1892–1924). He and Clemens first met in March 1883 when Clemens joined the Kinsmen club, of which Matthews was a founding member (see “Travel-Scraps I,” note at 113.10). In 1887 and 1888 the two men had disagreed in print about international copyright, which placed a temporary strain on their friendship. In 1922 Matthews recalled that episode and other details of their acquaintance in “Memories of Mark Twain” (Matthews 1922; see also Matthews 1917, 231, and
N&J
3, 345–46, 348, 362–68, 373).

255.28–29 Frank Millet (painter)] Francis D. Millet (1846–1912) was born in Massachusetts. He earned a degree in literature from Harvard University, but decided to study art in Antwerp, Venice, and Rome. He later served as an artist-correspondent during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78). Many of his portraits and murals depicted historical subjects. He died on the
Titanic
.

255.33–36 Sculpture . . . make a speech in Saint-Gaudens’s place] Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7–8) was one of three Players who were unable to attend and sent telegrams of regret; the others were David Munro and author Thomas Bailey Aldrich (see “Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Bailey Aldrich”). It is not known who spoke extemporaneously “in Saint-Gaudens’s place” (“Players Welcome Mark Twain,” New York
Tribune
, 4 Jan 1906, 7).

256.5–6 For I came without a text, and these boys furnished plenty of texts for me] The texts of the other speeches have not been found. Clemens “told the amusing story of English Mary,” which is reprinted in his “Speech at The Players, 3 January 1906” (Oettel 1943, 54–57; see the Appendix, pp. 662–63). Clemens had first told this story in three letters of 17 July 1877 to his wife in Elmira, as the actual events were unfolding in their Hartford household. In 1897 or 1898 he fictionalized the episode in a tale he called “Wapping Alice,” which he did not succeed in publishing in his lifetime. Then he reworked it again in his Autobiographical Dictation of 10 April 1907 (for the early versions see SLC 1981, 7–24, 39–67). Appropriately, he read the “Jumping Frog” story (SLC 1865) as an encore.

256.17–19 one which I am to attend in Washington on the 27th . . . President and Vice-President of the United States] At the 27 January annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, a prestigious and convivial journalistic society organized in 1885, “Mr. Samuel L. Clemens was in his happiest vein, and spoke for nearly twenty minutes. He was introduced by an alleged roustabout on a Mississippi steamboat who heaved the lead and shouted ‘mark twain’ as he reported the depth of the water” (“A Night in Panama,” Washington
Post
, 28 Jan 1906, 1, 6). The Gridiron Club forbade reporting of speeches, and no text of Clemens’s remarks is known to survive. President Theodore Roosevelt also spoke, as did other members of his administration,
and numerous congressmen and other luminaries attended, but Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks (1852–1918) was not among them.

256.26 Morris incident] See Clemens’s account below and the note at 258.34.

257.6–9 Even yesterday . . . in banks] On 6 September 1905, a New York State legislative committee had begun an investigation of longtime and widespread abuses in the life insurance industry, including extravagant executive salaries; illegal political contributions, both to finance electoral campaigns (especially to Republican presidential candidates) and to influence legislation; illicit dealing in stocks and bonds; and entangling alliances with banks. The investigation—reported exhaustively in the New York press—focused primarily on the Mutual Reserve Life Insurance Company, the New York Life Insurance Company, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society. On 22 February 1906 the committee issued its report to the New York State legislature, along with twenty-five proposed reform bills, all of which were signed into law by 27 April 1906. The executives who came under fire were Richard A. McCurdy and his son Robert H. McCurdy, president and foreign manager, respectively, of Mutual Life (these two, and the senior McCurdy’s son-in-law, collected $4,643,926 in salaries and commissions between 1885 and 1905); John A. McCall and his son John C. McCall, president and secretary, respectively, of New York Life; Chauncey M. Depew, Republican senator from New York and for years the highly paid special counsel of Equitable Life and a member of its executive committee; and James W. Alexander and James H. Hyde, president and first vice-president of Equitable Life, respectively. The influence of these men extended far beyond the three insurance companies. In October 1905, for example, Hyde was reported to be a director of forty-five corporations and Depew a director of seventy-four. As a result of the investigation at least some of those connections were severed. By 10 January 1906 the McCurdys, Depew, the elder McCall, Alexander, and Hyde had all resigned from—or failed to be reelected to—bank directorships (New York
Times
, numerous articles, 15 Aug 1905–28 Apr 1906). Clemens returns to the subject in his Autobiographical Dictation of 16 February 1906.

257.9–13 we have to-day . . . Standard Oil Corporation . . . how much crippled] The Standard Oil Company and its subsidiaries were being sued in the New York Supreme Court by Missouri Attorney General Herbert S. Hadley, in support of his ongoing suits in Missouri courts for Standard’s violation of that state’s antitrust laws. On 10 January 1906, the New York
Times
reported at length on the previous day’s New York proceedings, highlighting the evasive testimony and arrogant demeanor of the vice-president of Standard Oil, Clemens’s good friend Henry H. Rogers (New York
Times:
“H. H. Rogers Summoned to the Supreme Court,” 10 Jan 1906, 1; “Herbert S. Hadley—the Man from Missouri,” 14 Jan 1906, SM4; see also “Henry H. Rogers”).