Autobiography of Mark Twain (148 page)

280.13 Philippine Tariff bill] The bill, sponsored by Congressman Sereno E. Payne, proposed to permit Philippine sugar to enter the United States for three years at one-fourth of current duties, and subsequently to establish free trade between the islands and the United States. Vigorously opposed by the domestic sugar industry, the bill nevertheless passed by a wide margin in the House of Representatives on 16 January 1906, only to be buried in committee in the Senate on 2 March. Attempts to revive it later in 1906 and in 1907 failed (New York
Times:
numerous articles, 3 Jan 1906–27 Dec 1907).

281.36–37
Quaker City
Excursion . . . “The Innocents Abroad,”] See “The Chicago G. A. R. Festival,” note at 67.6–13.

281.39–41 So I started . . . John Swinton] William Swinton (1833–92), brother of journalist and social reformer John Swinton (1829–1901), was a controversial Civil War correspondent for the New York
Times
. He later was a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley (1869–74), and the author of military histories as well as textbooks on geography, grammar, and literature. Clemens roomed for a time with Swinton in Washington in the winter of 1867–68, while he worked for Senator William Stewart of Nevada and contributed
letters to the New York
Tribune
and
Herald
, the San Francisco
Alta California
, the Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise
, and the Chicago
Republican
. Although it is possible that they collaborated on a “Newspaper Correspondence Syndicate,” no firm evidence of it has been found (4 Dec 1867 to Young,
L2
, 125–26 n. 1).

282.12–13 six letters for the New York
Tribune
. . . got back] Clemens’s six
Quaker City
letters to the
Tribune
were: “The Mediterranean Excursion,” published on 30 July 1867; “The Mediterranean Excursion,” published on 6 September; “Americans on a Visit to the Emperor of Russia,” published on 19 September; “A Yankee in the Orient,” published on 25 October; “The American Colony in Palestine,” published on 2 November; and “The Holy Land. First Day in Palestine,” published on 9 November. The “pretty breezy one for the New York
Herald
” was “The Cruise of the Quaker City,” which poked bitter fun at the “pilgrims” and their activities and was published on the morning of 20 November 1867, the day after the excursion ended and just hours after Clemens wrote it (SLC 1867l, 1867m, 1867n, 1867o, 1867p, 1867r, 1867s;
L2:
20 Nov 1867 to JLC and family [1st], 104; enclosure with 20 Nov 1867 to JLC and family, 399–406).

282.14–15 Every now and then I was able to get twenty-five dollars for a magazine article] Only one such article published in the winter of 1868 has been identified: “General Washington’s Negro Body-Servant. A Biographical Sketch,” which appeared in the February 1868
Galaxy
magazine (SLC 1868b). How much the
Galaxy
paid for it is not known.

282.15–18 Riley and I . . . I will speak of him another time] John Henry Riley (1830?-72) was a newspaper reporter in San Francisco in the early 1860s when Clemens met him. In late 1865 he moved to Washington, where he was the regular correspondent for the San Francisco
Alta California
, also contributed to other papers, and served as clerk to the House Committee on Mines and Mining. In 1870 Clemens concocted a plan for Riley to visit the recently discovered diamond fields of South Africa to gather material for a book that Clemens would write. Subsidized by Clemens, Riley undertook the trip, and submitted travel notes to Clemens, but Clemens postponed work on the book, and then abandoned it entirely when Riley died of cancer in September 1872 (for further details, see
L4
, especially 2 Dec 1870 to Bliss and 2 Dec 1870 to Riley, 256–66, and
L5
). Clemens depicted Riley in “Riley—Newspaper Correspondent” in the November 1870
Galaxy
magazine and modeled the “mendicant Blucher,” in chapter 59 of
Roughing It
, on him (SLC 1870e;
RI 1993
, 702). He did not, however, speak of him again in the Autobiographical Dictations.

282.19–24 I had a chance . . . “Concerning the Great Beef Contract.”] The article described here was “The Facts in the Case of George Fisher, Deceased,” published in the January 1871 issue of
Galaxy
magazine. Clemens confused it with “The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract,” about an unpaid 1861 military supply obligation, published in the May 1870
Galaxy
. He included both sketches in his 1875 collection,
Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old
(SLC 1871b, 1870b, 1875c).

282.25–26 A. R. Spofford . . . Librarian of Congress then] Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1825–1908), former associate editor of the Cincinnati
Commercial
, became chief assistant to the librarian of Congress in 1861 and then became librarian himself in 1864. He remained in
the post until 1897, when he became chief assistant once again, for the remainder of his life. Clemens probably first met him in Washington in the winter of 1867–68. He corresponded with Spofford about copyright on more than one occasion (see
L4, LS
, and
L6
).

282.29 Tooke on Prices] Thomas Tooke’s
A History of Prices, and of the State of the Circulation, from 1793 to 1837; Preceded by a Brief Sketch of the State of the Corn Trade in the Last Two Centuries
(Tooke 1838–57).

283.13–14 When you arrive . . . at eleven] Clemens was addressing his stenographer, Josephine Hobby.

283.36–284.1 Did I dictate something about John Malone . . . my acquaintance] For Malone, see the note at 286.38–39. Volney Streamer (1850–1915), librarian of The Players club since December 1905, had been an actor in Edwin Booth’s company, was a literary adviser at Brentano’s (the famed New York booksellers), and compiled several collections of literary excerpts, including
Voices of Doubt and Trust
(Streamer 1897), copies of which Clemens acquired in February 1902 and December 1905. Both were gifts; the second might well have been presented personally by Streamer. Clemens also owned
In Friendship’s Name
(Streamer 1904), possibly another 1905 gift from the author (see Gribben 1980, 2:673–74; “Volney Streamer,” New York
Times
, 15 Apr 1915, 13).

284.5 And some time . . . about that] He already had; see the Autobiographical Dictation of 10 January 1906, especially the note at 255.19–22.

284.7 David Munro . . . editor of the
North American Review
] Munro (1844–1910) was born in Scotland and attended Edinburgh University. After emigrating to the United States as a young man, he worked in the literary department of Harper and Brothers. He became the manager of the
North American Review
in 1889, and seven years later became an editor as well. Since George Harvey’s purchase of the journal in 1899, Munro had served as his assistant editor. In addition, he was a Greek scholar who contributed to a comparative Greek-English New Testament and other publications (“David A. Munro Dead,” New York
Times
, 10 Mar 1910, 9).

284.7–8 Robert Reid, the artist; Saint-Gaudens, the sculptor] Reid (1862–1929), an American Impressionist painter and muralist, was born in Massachusetts and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, completing his studies in New York and Paris. Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) was born in Dublin but grew up in New York City. He took art classes there at the Cooper Union, and then studied in Paris under François Jouffroy at the École des Beaux-Arts and later in Rome. He was known primarily for his public sculptures of famous people.

284.31 John McCullough] McCullough (1832–85) emigrated from Ireland at the age of fourteen. He settled in Philadelphia, where he taught himself to read and write, studied drama, and at twenty-four made his stage debut. In 1861 he joined the touring company of actor and playwright Edwin Forrest (1806–72). Later he was for a time a theatrical manager as well as
an actor in San Francisco, then performed extensively throughout the United States, becoming one of the most eminent and popular actors of the day.

285.18–19 President of the New York City College] John H. Finley (see AD, 10 Jan 1906, note at 255.18–19).

285.36 he is providing another, for the 6th of February] No information about this dinner has been discovered.

286.27 Bishop Greer] David Hummell Greer (1844–1919), Episcopal clergyman and rector at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York (1888–1903), became bishop coadjutor of New York in 1904.

286.31 Dr. Hawkes] Forbes Robert Hawkes (1865–1940), a prominent surgeon, was a professor of clinical surgery at the Post-Graduate Hospital in New York from 1901 to 1905.

286.38–39 John Malone . . . passing from this life] Like Clemens, Malone had been an incorporator and charter member of The Players club. Isabel Lyon wrote in her diary on 16 January, “John Malone is dead—M
^r
. Clemens had me telephone to Volney Streamer at the Players that if they are short of pall bearers, he will be one—Yesterday M
^r
Clemens was talking with M
^r
Twichell about John Malone: & now he is dead” (Lyon 1906, 16). Twichell had cut Malone’s obituary from the New York
Times
of 16 January. When inserting it into this dictation, Clemens corrected the
Times’s
“Mr. Malone was 78 years old,” but how accurately is unknown. The New York
Tribune’s
obituary noted that Malone “was fifty-six years old, though many supposed him older” (“Apoplexy Kills Actor,” 16 Jan 1906, 7). Clemens was in fact one of the pallbearers at Malone’s funeral, on 18 January, at the Church of St. Francis Xavier, on West Sixteenth Street (“Funeral of Actor John Malone,” New York
Times
, 19 Jan 1906, 11; Lanier 1938, 358).

287.1–5 I started to say . . . happened] About 1893 Clemens drafted a prospectus for
The Back Number
. He noted there that the idea had come to him “when I was a newspaper correspondent in Washington,” that is, in the winter of 1867–68 (SLC 1893, 1; see also AD, 17 Jan 1906).

287.7–11 I have tried to get publishers . . . latest effort three years ago] Clemens’s first attempt to make
The Back Number
a reality evidently came in November 1893, shortly after he prepared a prospectus for it (SLC 1893). He tried, unsuccessfully, to enlist the support of John Brisben Walker, editor of
Cosmopolitan
magazine. Clemens thought that Samuel E. Moffett, his nephew, could edit the magazine. Nothing is known of his 1903 effort to interest a publisher (Notebook 33, TS pp. 37, 38, 39a, CU-MARK).

287.26–32 Twichell and I stepped across the street . . . I was there at the time] Clemens and Twichell visited Daniel Edgar Sickles (1823–1914) at his home at 23 Fifth Avenue (Clemens lived at 21 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 9th Street) on the evening of 15 January 1906. Sickles was a former lawyer, Democratic congressman from New York (1857–61, 1893–95), and a
controversial diplomat and Civil War general. On 27 February 1859 he fatally shot Francis Scott Key’s son on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, because the younger Key had had an affair with his wife. Sickles was acquitted on the grounds of temporary insanity by a jury that shared the widespread public opinion that he had acted justifiably. This was the first time that the temporary-insanity defense was used. On the day of the shooting Clemens had arrived in St. Louis on the
Aleck Scott
, serving as a cub pilot under Bixby (“Steamboat Calendar,”
L1
, 388; Twichell 1874–1916, 2:117–18; New York
Times:
“Dreadful Tragedy,” 28 Feb 1859, 1; “The Sickles Tragedy,” 27 Apr 1859, 1; “The Acquittal of Mr. Sickles,” 28 Apr 1859, 4; “Gen. Sickles Dies; His Wife at Bedside,” 4 May 1914, 1).

287.34 Twichell was a chaplain in Sickles’s brigade in the Civil War] The regiment in which Twichell served as chaplain from 1861 to 1864 was part of the Excelsior Brigade commanded by Sickles, which saw action in several important battles (Twichell 2006, 1, 4).

288.5–6 The late Bill Nye . . . Wagner’s music is better than it sounds] Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye (1850–96) was a journalist and then a popular humorist and lecturer. Clemens himself is often mistakenly credited with this remark.

288.12–26 Sickles lost a leg at Gettysburg . . . Twichell quoted that speech] The bloody Union victory at Gettysburg consumed the first three days of July 1863. Twichell described the battle in a letter of 5 July to his sister, Sarah Jane, in which he gave an account of Sickles that must have been very like the one he later gave to Clemens during one of their regular walks in the Hartford woods:

At a little before sunset the sad intelligence spread that Gen. Sickles was wounded. He had been the master-spirit of the day and by his courage, coolness and skill had averted a threatened defeat. All felt that his loss was a calamity. I met the ambulance in which he had been placed, accompanied it, helped lift him out, and administered the chloroform at the amputation. His right leg was torn to shreds, just below the knee—so low that it was impossible to save the knee. His bearing and words were of the noblest character. “If I die,” said he, “let me die on the field,” “God bless our noble cause,” “In a war like this, one man isn’t much,” “My trust is in God,” were some of the things he said. I loved him then, as I never did before. He has been removed, but we are informed that he is doing well. (Twichell 2006, 2, 249)

Joseph O’Hagan (1826–78), a Jesuit, was Twichell’s Catholic counterpart with Sickles’s Excelsior Brigade. He and Twichell remained close after the war (see 1 Feb 1875 to Stoddard,
L6
, 367 n. 6).