Autobiography of Mark Twain (155 page)

357.15 democrat wagon] “A light wagon without a top, containing several seats, and usually drawn by two horses” (Whitney and Smith 1889–91, 2:1526–27).

358.33–38 I had referred him to six prominent men . . . (Stebbins,)] Only two of the men to whom Clemens referred Langdon in late November 1868 are known, both clergymen. The Reverend Horatio Stebbins (1821–1902), pastor of the First Unitarian Church, replied (in Clemens’s paraphrase): “ ‘Clemens is a humbug—shallow & superficial—a man who has talent, no doubt, but will make a trivial & possibly a worse use of it—a man whose life promised little & has accomplished less—a humbug, Sir, a humbug.’ That was the
spirit
of the remarks—I have forgotten the precise language” (25 Aug 1869 to Stoddard,
MTPO
[a fuller text than published in
L3
]). The other clergyman was the Reverend Charles Wadsworth (1814–82), pastor of Howard Presbyterian Church. Langdon himself wrote to James S. Hutchinson, a former employee then working as a bank cashier in San Francisco, asking him to investigate Clemens’s reputation. Hutchinson interviewed James B. Roberts, one of Wadsworth’s deacons, and reported his assessment: “I would rather bury a daughter of mine than have her marry such a fellow” (Hutchinson 1910). On 29 December, even before these troubling estimates could have reached Elmira, Clemens provided the Langdons with ten additional references (
L2:
17 June 1868 to Fairbanks, 229 n. 2; 29 Dec 1868 to Langdon, 358–59, 360–61 n. 2).

359.8–13 Joe Goodman . . . Why didn’t you refer me to him?] Clemens had in fact referred Langdon to Goodman and other known friends—but only after he realized what the likely result of the first six names would be, one month after giving them to Langdon (29 Dec 1868 to Langdon,
L2
, 358).

360.3 Hawthorne’s love letters . . . are far inferior] Julian Hawthorne included the love letters in his biography of his parents, issued around the time that Susy was writing. All of Clemens’s extant letters are published in
Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 3
(Hawthorne 1885; see “Calendar of Courtship Letters,”
L3
, 473–80).

362.3–10 He was prematurely born . . . followed by a dangerous illness] The “visitor whose desire Mrs. Clemens regarded as law” was apparently Mary Mason Fairbanks; her visit, and the dash for the station with which it ended, occurred in late October 1870. Langdon was born one month prematurely, on 7 November 1870. Three months later, in early February 1871, Olivia began to show symptoms of typhoid (
L4:
5 Nov 1870 to OC, 222 n. 5; 17 Feb 1871 to JLC and family, 332 n. 1; for Langdon’s death see AD, 22 Mar 1906).

362.11 Mrs. Gleason, of Elmira] The Clemenses sent for Dr. Rachel Brooks Gleason (1820–1905), a physician and cofounder of the Elmira Water Cure, a health resort at which Langdon family members had often been treated (22 Feb 1871 to OC,
L4
, 335 n. 2).

362.21–28 Before Mrs. Clemens was quite over her devastating illness, Miss Emma Nye . . . illness proved fatal] Clemens reversed the actual sequence of events. Emma Nye (1846–70) was staying with the Clemenses on her way from Aiken, South Carolina, to Detroit; she lay ill with typhoid fever in the Clemenses’ own bed for almost a month, dying there on
29 September 1870. Olivia’s illness followed Nye’s death (
L4:
31 Aug 1870 to PAM, 186 n. 3; SLC and OLC to Fairbanks, 2 Sept 1870, 189 n. 2; 7 Sept 1870 to Wolcott, 191; 9 Oct 1870 to Redpath, 206 n. 1).

362.35–36 a crude and absurd map of Paris upon it, and published it] In the fall of 1870, newspapers closely followed the reports of the Franco-Prussian War. The German army began advancing on Paris in early September, and many American newspapers published maps showing the city’s fortifications. Mark Twain’s burlesque (reproduced below) was printed in the Buffalo
Express
on 17 September 1870 (SLC 1870d). Clemens’s inscription on it reads: “Mr. Spofford, could I get you to preserve this work of art among the geographical treasures of the Congressional Library?” (see 10? Oct 1870 to Spofford,
L4
, 207).

363.14 Aunt Susy’s] Susan Crane’s.

363.19 dear grandpapa] Jervis Langdon.

363.20–21 (Emma Nigh) . . . typhoid fever] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 15 February 1906, 362.21–28 and note.

363.23–25 (Miss Clara L. Spaulding) . . . great friend of mamma’s] Spaulding (1849–1935) was the daughter of a prosperous Elmira, New York, lumber merchant; in 1886 she
married lawyer John Barry Stanchfield (9 and 31 Mar 1869 to Crane,
L3
, 182 n. 6). She is further discussed in the Autobiographical Dictation of 26 February 1906.

363.32–33 David Gray . . . editor of the principal newspaper] Gray (1836–88) was born in Edinburgh and came to the United States in 1849. Settling in Buffalo in 1856, he worked as a secretary, librarian, and bookkeeper before becoming a journalist. When Clemens moved to Buffalo in 1869, Gray had just married Martha Guthrie and was managing editor of the
Courier
, a rival paper to Clemens’s Buffalo
Express
. Gray rose to be editor-in-chief of the
Courier
, but in 1882 ill health forced him to retire; in 1888 he was fatally injured in a railway accident (SLC and OLC to the Langdons, 27 Mar 1870,
L4
, 102 n. 9). Clemens talks of him further in the Autobiographical Dictation of 22 February 1906.

364.2–9 bought Mr. Kinney’s share of that newspaper . . . I sold . . . for fifteen thousand dollars] Clemens bought his share of the Buffalo
Express
not from “Mr. Kinney” but from Thomas A. Kennett (1843–1911) in August 1869, and sold it again in March 1871 (for details of the purchase and sale see 12 Aug 1869 to Bliss,
L3
, 294 n. 2, and 3 Mar 1871 to Riley,
L4
, 338–39, n. 3). Clemens returned to Kennett (still calling him Kinney) later in this dictation: see the note at 366.29–32.

364.19 Jay Gould had just then reversed the commercial morals of the United States] Gould (1836–92) was an unscrupulous financier and railroad speculator whose name became a byword for ruthless greed. As a director of the Erie Railroad, with James Fisk (1834–72), he looted the company; his attempt to corner the gold market in 1869 triggered the panic of “Black Friday,” ruining many investors. For part or all of the next two decades he controlled several major railways and the Western Union Telegraph Company, and owned the New York
World
from 1879 to 1883. At his death his estate was valued at $72 million. Clemens’s attitude toward Gould was not unusual: Gould was denounced early and often as the poisoner of the American republic. And when Daniel Beard pictured the slave driver in
A Connecticut Yankee
, he used Gould as a model—with Clemens’s enthusiastic endorsement (“Jay Gould’s Will Filed,” New York
Times
, 13 Dec 1892, 10; see Budd 1962, 44, 84, 114, 204;
CY
, 17, 405, 567).

364.32–34 McCurdys, McCalls . . . insurance companies of New York] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 10 January 1906, note at 257.6–9.

364.34–36 President McCall was reported to be dying . . . The others . . . engaged in dying] Clemens presumably refers to reports such as the following, all from the New York
Times:
“M’Call, on Deathbed, Defends Hamilton,” 15 Feb 1906, 1; “President M’Curdy out of the Mutual,” 30 Nov 1905, 1; “John A. McCall Quits N. Y. Life Presidency,” 1 Jan 1906, 1 (where James W. Alexander is said to be “a physical wreck”).

365.11–17 John D. Rockefeller . . . after his father’s fashion] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 20 March 1906, where Clemens discusses the Rockefellers and their Sunday school classes at length.

366.29–32 Kinney went to Wall Street . . . borrowed twenty-five cents of me] Kennett worked briefly as a Wall Street broker, then returned to journalism, editing various trade publications. He died in a Bronx clinic for destitute consumptives (12 Aug 1869 to Bliss,
L3
,
294 n. 2; New York
Times:
“Editor Kennett Dead,” 30 June 1911, 9; “Praise for St. Joseph’s Hospital,” 26 May 1895, 17).

367.11–12 name of Wilkes, the explorer, was in everybody’s mouth] Charles Wilkes (1798–1877) was captain of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–42, the first international maritime expedition that the country had sponsored. Its mission was to explore the Pacific Ocean, the Antarctic regions, and the West Coast of North America. Wilkes commanded a squadron of six vessels, two of which, early in 1840, surveyed a long stretch of Antarctic coastline. The existence of a land mass within the Antarctic circle had been suspected for centuries. British and French explorers had sighted land in the area before the U.S. expedition, but nationalist sentiment made Wilkes, for Clemens as for many other Americans, the “discoverer” of Antarctica. Wilkes retired from the navy with the rank of rear admiral (“Antarctic Discoveries” 1840, 210, 214–19).

367.15–16 in our late day we are rediscovering it, and the world’s interest in it has revived] After a lull of many decades, the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration began in 1897 with the new goal of reaching the South Pole. The 1901–4 expedition under the Englishman Robert F. Scott penetrated farther south than any previous explorer; during the same years Antarctic expeditions were mounted by Germany, Sweden, Scotland, and France. The pole would be reached by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1911.

367.21 One of the last visits I made in Florence . . . was to Mrs. Wilkes] Born Mary H. Lynch, Mrs. Wilkes was first married to William Compton Bolton, who at the time of his death in 1849 was a commodore in the U.S. Navy. In 1854 she married Wilkes—whose first wife had died in 1848—and they had one child. According to his notebook, Clemens met with Mrs. Wilkes on 4 April 1904 (Notebook 47, TS p. 8, CU-MARK).

367.33–34 article which you wrote once . . . about my grandfather, Anson Burlingame] Clemens eulogized Burlingame in February 1870 in a Buffalo
Express
article (SLC 1870a; see “My Debut as a Literary Person,” note at 128.30–32).

368.43–369.3 Potter, (that is the name, I think,) the Congressional bully . . . laughter of the nation ringing in his ears] Clemens misremembered the name of Preston S. Brooks (1819–57), known in the North as “Bully” Brooks. A representative from South Carolina, in 1856 he brutally beat Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber in retaliation for perceived insults to his state and kin. Anson Burlingame, then a representative from Massachusetts, denounced Brooks’s assault in a House speech. Brooks promptly challenged him to duel; Burlingame accepted, naming the Canadian side of Niagara Falls as the place and rifles as the weapon. Brooks, who could not with safety travel across the Northern states, declined to pursue the matter (Nicolay and Hay 1890, 2:47–55; “The Brooks Affair; Examination of the Controversy between Mr. Brooks and Mr. Burlingame,” New York
Times
, 25 July 1856, 2).

369.14 I have already told the rest in some book of mine] Clemens alludes to “My Debut
as a Literary Person,” written in 1898, and included in the Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations section of this volume.

369.19 Mr. Burlingame’s son—now editor of
Scribner’s Monthly
] Edward L. Burlingame (1848–1922) left his studies at Harvard University to travel to China as his father’s secretary. He later earned a Ph.D. at Heidelberg. He took a position at the New York
Tribune
in 1871, forming a lifelong friendship with John Hay. In 1872–79 he was one of the editors of the
American Encyclopedia
, and in 1879 began to work for Charles Scribner’s Sons, becoming the editor of
Scribner’s Monthly
from its first number in 1887. After his resignation in 1914, he became a general editorial adviser for the publisher (“Edward Burlingame, Editor, Dead at 74,” New York
Times
, 17 Nov 1922, 16).

369.25–26 “If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, go
with
him Twain.”] Matthew 5:41, “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”

370.32–33 E. Bliss, junior . . . a later chapter] Elisha P. Bliss, Jr. (1821–80), was born in Massachusetts. He worked in the dry goods business until becoming secretary of the American Publishing Company of Hartford (1867–70, 1871–73), and then its president (1870, 1873–80). During his tenure this subscription house published all of Clemens’s major books from
The Innocents Abroad
(1869) to
A Tramp Abroad
(1880). For the “later chapter” see the Autobiographical Dictation of 23 May 1906 (2 Dec 1867 to Bliss,
L2
, 120 n. 1; Hill 1964, 15).