by Mark Twain
*Jan. 11, ’06. It is long ago, but it plainly means Blaine. M. T.
†Jan. 11, ’06. I can’t remember his name. It began with K, I think. He was one of the American revisers of the New Testament, and was nearly as great a scholar as Hammond Trumbull.
*Augusto, 1870—S.L.C.
*I was his publisher. I was putting his “Personal Memoirs” to press at the time. S.L.C.
*Inventor of a type-setting machine of a most ingenious and marvelous character. There is but one; it is in Cornell University: preserved as a curiosity. It is all of that.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
These notes are intended to clarify and supplement the autobiographical writings and dictations in this volume by identifying people, places, and incidents, and by explaining topical references and literary allusions. In addition, they attempt to point out which of Clemens’s statements are contradicted by historical evidence, providing a way to understand more fully how his memories of long-past events and experiences were affected by his imagination and the passage of time. Although some of the notes contain cross-references to texts or notes elsewhere in the volume, the Index is an indispensable tool for finding information about a previously identified person or event.
All references in the notes are keyed to this volume by page and line: for example, 1.1 means page 1, line 1 of the text. All of Clemens’s text is included in the line count (except for the main titles of pieces); excluded are the editorial headnotes in the first section, “Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations.” Most of the source works are cited by an author’s name and a date, a short title, or an abbreviation. Works by members of the Clemens family may be found under the writer’s initials: SLC, OLC (Olivia), OSC (Susy), and CC (Clara). All abbreviations, authors, and short titles used in citations are fully defined in References. Most citations include a page number (“L1, 263,” or “Angel 1881, 345”), but citations to works available in numerous editions may instead supply a chapter number or its equivalent, such as a book or act number. All quotations from holograph documents are transcribed verbatim from the originals (or photocopies thereof), even when a published form—a more readily available source—is also cited for the reader’s convenience. The location of every unique document or manuscript is identified by the standard Library of Congress abbreviation, or the last name of the owner, all of which are defined in References.
PRELIMINARY MANUSCRIPTS AND DICTATIONS, 1870–1905
[The Tennessee Land] (Source: MS in CU-MARK, written in 1870)
61.1–3 monster tract of land . . . was purchased by my father . . . seventy-five thousand acres at one purchase] Although John Marshall Clemens may have acquired a tract as large as forty thousand acres in a single transaction, he also bought numerous smaller parcels, beginning as early as 1826 and continuing until at least 1841. In 1857, ten years after his death, the family had ownership records for twenty-four tracts of unknown acreage. After surveying the land in 1858, Orion concluded that he could establish title to some 30,000 acres, less than half of the 75,000 acres that Clemens estimates here.
61.1 my father] See the Appendix “Family Biographies” (pp. 654-57) for information about Clemens’s immediate family.
62.28–29 the great financial crash of ’34, and in that storm my father’s fortunes were wrecked] President Andrew Jackson’s attack on the second Bank of the United States precipitated a money crisis in 1834. Many state banks were unable to meet the demand for loans, which caused numerous businesses to fail. John Clemens, who belonged to the Whig party (formed in opposition to the Jacksonian Democrats), may well have felt the effects of this economic downturn (Wecter 1952, 36–37).
62.38–39 candidate for county judge, with a certainty of election] Shortly before his death Clemens did declare his candidacy for office, but it was for the position of clerk of the circuit court, not for “county judge” (Inds, 309–11; see also AD, 28 Mar 1906, where Clemens mistakenly recalled that his father had “just been elected”).
62.41–63.1 “going security” for Ira —— . . . took the benefit of the new bankrupt law]
In his manuscript, Clemens first wrote Ira Stout’s full name, then—in the same ink—substituted dashes for his surname. John Marshall Clemens had dealings with Ira Stout, a land speculator, in late 1839. He purchased Hannibal property from Stout, at an inflated value, which he had to sell at a loss in 1843 to pay his creditors. The transaction by which John Clemens became responsible for Stout’s debts has not been identified. Clemens also mentioned Stout’s perfidy in 1897 in “Villagers of 1840–3,” and again in his Autobiographical Dictation of 28 March 1906 (Inds, 104, 310, 349–50). The federal “bankrupt law” of 1841 enabled debtors, for the first time, to escape payment of their debts, while providing for little or no compensation of creditors. It was repealed two years later.
63.10–11 After my father’s death . . . on a temporary basis] When John Marshall Clemens died in March of 1847, the Clemenses were living with Dr. Orville Grant’s family in a house at Hill and Main. They remained there for several months before moving to the “temporary” quarters, which have not been identified. Eventually they returned to the house that their father had built in late 1843 or early 1844—the “Boyhood Home” that still stands at 206 Hill Street (Wecter 1952, 102, 113, 121; AD, 2 Dec 1906).
63.11–12 My brother . . . bought a worthless weekly newspaper] Orion began the weekly Hannibal Western Union in mid-1850, and within a year bought the Hannibal Journal, publishing the first issue of the Journal and Western Union in September 1851. He edited the combined paper, employing Clemens as his assistant for much of the time, until September 1853, when he sold it and moved to Muscatine, Iowa (link note preceding 24 Aug 1853 to JLC, L1, 1–2; Inds, 311).
63.14–16 but we were disappointed in a sale . . . decided to sell all or none] Nothing is known about this potential deal. In 1850 Arnold Buffum of the Tennessee Land Office, a land agency in New York, suggested the land be offered for ten cents an acre, but no sale took place (Buffum’s letter does not survive, but is described in MTBus, 17). Clemens claimed that on two later occasions he negotiated sales of the land which Orion rejected. In 1865 a buyer agreed to pay $200,000 for an unspecified number of acres, intending to settle European immigrants on it to grow grapes and produce wine; Orion’s “temperance virtue” quashed that deal (AD, 5 Apr 1906; 13 Dec 1865 to OC and MEC, L1 326–27). Then in 1869, Jervis Langdon offered $30,000 in cash and stock, but Orion again demurred, citing his fear that Clemens would “unconsciously cheat” his future father-in-law (9 Nov 1869 to PAM, L3, 388–89 n. 2). Exasperated by Orion’s scruples, Clemens renounced his own share, and by 1870 wanted nothing more to do with “that hated property” (9 Sept 1870 to OC, L4, 193). Orion henceforth assumed all responsibility for it. Over many years, Orion disposed of the land, either through his own efforts or through hired agents, both in large parcels (ten thousand acres) and in small ones (fewer than three hundred acres). Some of it was sold for cash—of unknown amounts—and some was traded for other property. At least one unscrupulous buyer failed to pay at all. Ultimately, the proceeds may have barely covered the cost of the property taxes. Orion regretfully acknowledged his failure in an 1878 letter to his sister and mother: “I am so sorry to hear you are cramped for means,” he wrote, “it gave me another twinge of conscience that I fooled away the Tennessee land, and some of your money with it” (OC to PAM and JLC, 2 Nov 1878, CU-MARK; OC to SLC, 4 Nov 1880, CU-MARK; Wecter 1952, 31–32, 278 n. 9; also the following documents provided courtesy of Barbara Schmidt: Fentress County Deeds 1820–48, Vol. A:161, 236, 244, 288, 293, 335; Fentress County Land Grants, Book T:46; “Declaration” with “Exhibits 1–6,” filed 15 May 1907, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 1907–9).
[Early Years in Florida, Missouri] (Source: MS in NNAL, written in 1877)
64.20 My uncle, John A. Quarles] John Adams Quarles (1802–76) was married to Martha Ann Lampton, with whom he had ten children. She was the younger sister of Clemens’s
mother. He settled in Florida, Missouri, in the mid-1830s, where he became a prosperous merchant and farmer. After the Clemens family moved to Hannibal in 1839, Clemens spent his summers at the Quarles farm, from about age seven until he was eleven or twelve (Inds, 342). For a longer reminiscence of life on the farm see “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It].”
64.21 “bit” calicoes] Presumably calicoes were sold at the rate of one “bit” (one-eighth of a dollar) per yard (Ramsay and Emberson 1963, 21).
65.18 my father owned slaves] In about 1833 John Marshall Clemens bought “one negro man” from Rawley Chapman (b. 1793) in Tennessee—his only documented slave purchase. The family also owned a woman named “Jenny,” who had been given to Clemens’s parents in about 1825. Clemens recalled that she was the “only slave we ever owned in my time” (Inds, 327; record of bill of sale, Fentress County Deeds, Vol. A:233). See “Jane Lampton Clemens” (Inds, 82–92) for a fuller discussion of the family’s attitude toward slavery.
65.20 “stogy” shoes] A rough heavy kind of shoe; the name is supposedly derived from “Conestoga,” a town in Pennsylvania.
THE GRANT DICTATIONS (Source: TS in CU-MARK, dictated in 1885)
The Chicago G.A.R. Festival
67 title The Chicago G.A.R. Festival] More properly, the “Thirteenth Annual Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee.” The G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) was a fraternal organization of all Union veterans, and one of the sponsors of this nearly week-long event in Chicago, which, as Clemens explains, was a celebration of the returning Grant “by the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee—the first army over which he had had command” (67.19–20).
67.2–3 first time I ever saw General Grant was in the fall or winter of 1866 at one of the receptions at Washington] Clemens misremembered the year of the reception: see the note at 67.6–13. Ulysses S. Grant (1822–85) graduated from West Point and served with distinction in the Mexican War, demonstrating remarkable courage and leadership qualities. He resigned his commission in 1854 and made a meager living as a farmer and merchant. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he reenlisted in the army, eventually emerging as the leading Union general. After Grant’s important victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, President Lincoln appointed him general-in-chief of all the Union armies, and in 1866 he received the title of General of the Army—a unique rank equivalent to a four-star general, previously awarded only to George Washington. As president of the United States for two terms, from 1869 to 1877, he failed to curb the widespread corruption in his administration but was not directly implicated in it. In the dictations that follow, Clemens describes Grant’s later years: his unsuccessful bid in 1880 for a third presidential term, his financial reverses, the writing and publication of his memoirs, and his final illness.
67.5 General Sheridan] Philip H. Sheridan (1831–88), a brilliant military strategist and one of the most respected Union generals, was, like Grant, a West Point graduate. After the Civil War he served in New Orleans, defeating a small French army stationed in Mexico, and then led campaigns against the Plains Indians. In 1888 he was made General of the Army, but died shortly thereafter. Later that year Clemens’s firm, Charles L. Webster and Company, published Sheridan’s Personal Memoirs.
67.6–13 I next saw General Grant . . . I am embarrassed—are you?”] Clemens served, briefly, as secretary for Republican Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada (1827–1909) in Washington during the winter of 1867–68, shortly after returning from the Quaker City expedition. His fifty letters about the trip written to the San Francisco Alta California, half a dozen to the New York Tribune, and one to the New York Herald, supplied more than half the content of The Innocents Abroad, his first major book, published in 1869 (L2: 7 June 1867 and 9 Aug 1867 to JLC and family, 59 n. 5, 78–79; 22 Nov 1867 and 24 Nov 1867 to Young, 109 n. 2, 113–14; 2 Dec 1867 and 23 June 1868 to Bliss, 119–20, 232 n. 1). Clemens could not have met Grant in 1866, since he did not arrive in the East from San Francisco until early 1867. In a December 1867 notebook entry Clemens wrote, “Acquainted with Gen Grant—said I was glad to see him—he said I had the advantage of him” (N&J1, 491). The note probably alluded not to an actual meeting, but to an imaginary one, similar to the one in the manuscript that Clemens wrote on 6 December and left unpublished entitled “Interview with Gen. Grant” (SLC 1867t). It is likely that here Clemens alludes to a reception he attended in Washington in mid-January 1868; in a letter to the San Francisco Alta California he mentioned shaking hands with Grant and noted that “General Sheridan was there” (SLC 1868a). He wrote his family just days later that he had “called at Gen. Grant’s house last night. He was out at a dinner party, but Mrs. Grant said she would keep him at home on Sunday evening. I must see him, because he is good for one letter for the Alta, & part of a lecture for San F” (20 Jan 1868 to SLC and PAM, Paine’s transcript in CU-MARK). That Alta interview probably never took place, but his calling “at Gen. Grant’s house” implies that they had been formally introduced at the reception. Their second meeting at which Clemens claimed to be “embarrassed” actually occurred in mid-1870, during a brief trip to Washington where he met up with Senator Stewart. Clemens described his encounter with Grant, then serving his first term as president, on the day it occurred, in a letter of 8 July to his wife (6 July 1870 and 8 July 1870 to OLC, L4, 164–67). Clemens misplaced the year of his first meeting as 1866 rather than 1868, and may therefore have misplaced the year of the second by almost the same increment, making it early 1869 rather than mid-1870. By 1870 the Quaker City voyage was no longer news and The Innocents Abroad had given Mark Twain more than “some trifle of notoriety.”
67.17–19 Then, in 1879 . . . Army of the Tennessee] In 1877–79 Grant undertook a tour through Europe and Asia, accompanied by his wife, son Jesse, Adam Badeau, and John Russell Young, during which he was graciously received by numerous foreign dignitaries and heads of state. The banquet held in Chicago on 13 November 1879 was the culmination of four days of celebration (for a full account of the tour see Jean Edward Smith 2001, 606–13).
68.1 Carter Harrison, the mayor of Chicago] Carter Henry Harrison, Sr. (1825–93), served as mayor of Chicago from 1879 to 1887, and again briefly in 1893, until his assassination in October. His friendship with Clemens has not been otherwise documented.
68.4–5 “I am not embarrassed—are you?”] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 27 August 1906 for another account of the meetings with Grant.
68.10 General Sherman] William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–91) entered the army after graduating from West Point in 1840 and served in the Mexican War. In 1853 he resigned his commission and took a position as a banker. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was commissioned colonel; he attained the rank of brigadier general after the capture of Vicksburg in 1863. His famous March to the Sea through Georgia divided the Confederacy and hastened the end of the war. He succeeded Grant as General of the Army in 1869, and engaged in the Indian Wars until his retirement in 1884. His Memoirs, published in 1875, were highly acclaimed.
68.17 Colonel Vilas was to respond to a toast] William F. Vilas (1840–1908) of Madison, Wisconsin, was admitted to the bar in 1860. He attained the rank of lieutenant colonel during the Civil War, and later became postmaster general of the United States (1885–88), secretary of the interior (1888–89), and a U.S. senator from Wisconsin (1891–97). He responded to the toast “Our First Commander, Gen. U.S. Grant” (“Banquet of the Army of the Tennessee,” New York Times, 15 Nov 1879, 1).
69.15–17 Ingersoll . . . was to respond to the toast of “The Volunteers,”] Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) was trained as a lawyer. He raised and commanded the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War, fought at the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, and was captured by the Confederates in 1863. After the war he served as attorney general of Illinois. Known for his radical views on religion and slavery, he was a gifted and popular orator who advocated humanism and agnosticism, making him the target of frequent criticism. At the
banquet he responded to the toast “The Volunteer Soldiers of the Union Army” (“Banquet of the Army of the Tennessee,” New York Times, 15 Nov 1879, 1). Afterwards Clemens wrote in a letter to his wife, Olivia:
I heard four speeches which I can never forget. One by Emory Storrs, one by Gen. Vilas (O, wasn’t it wonderful!) one by Gen. Logan (mighty stirring), one by somebody whose name escapes me, & one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll,—oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began. My soul, how handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, & poured the molten silver from his lips! Lord, what an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! All these speeches may look dull in print, but how the lightnings glared around them when they were uttered, & how the crowd roared in response! (14 Nov 1879 to OLC, Letters 1876–1880)
And to William Dean Howells he wrote:
Bob Ingersoll’s speech was sadly crippled by the proof-readers, but its music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I shall always see him as he stood that night on a dinner table, under the flash of lights & banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature that ever lived. “They fought that a mother might own her child”—the words look like any other [in] print, but Lord bless me, he borrowed the very accent of the angel of Mercy to say them in, & you should have seen that vast house rise to its feet. (17 Nov 1879 to Howells, Letters 1876–1880)
