by Mark Twain
130.5 Portyghee] “Antonio Possene” (the name recorded by Captain Mitchell) was apparently from the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese colony since the fifteenth century (Mitchell 1866; “Burning of the Ship Hornet,” New York Times, 22 Aug 1866, 2).
130.16 soldiering] Malingering or shirking, more usually spelled as pronounced—“sogering” or “sodgering.”
130.21–22 Bowditch’s Navigator ... Nautical Almanac] The New American Practical Navigator, a manual of navigation, was first published by Nathaniel Bowditch in 1802. The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac has been published by the U.S. Naval Observatory since 1852.
130.26 forty-gallon “scuttle-butt,”] Potable water on a ship was stored in a scuttled butt—that is, a cask with a hole in it. “Scuttlebutt” came to mean “gossip” because of the drinkers’ conversations.
130.29–31 The captain and the two passengers kept diaries ... chance to copy the diaries] The journals of all three men are extant, but the copies that Clemens made on board the Smyrniote do not survive (Mitchell 1866, Henry Ferguson 1866, Samuel Ferguson 1866). Although the diary quotations included in the 1866 Harper’s article (which he left virtually unaltered for the 1898 piece) were nearly all rephrased, abridged, or expanded, he did not invent any fictional embellishments.
131.26 Revillagigedo islands] An uninhabited archipelago roughly three hundred miles south-southwest of the tip of Baja California.
132.6–7 cobbling] Choppy.
132.14 Clipperton Rock] Clipperton Rock surmounts a coral atoll roughly seven hundred miles southwest of Acapulco.
132.25–26 the sun gives him a warning: “looking with both eyes, the horizon crossed thus X.”] Samuel Ferguson’s more explicit diary entry clarifies this remark: “Sun very hot indeed and gave me a warning to keep out of it in a very peculiar doubling of the sight with both eyes while with either one it seemed right. With both eyes the horizon crossed thus X” (Samuel Ferguson 1866, entry for 9 May).
132.42–133.1 The captain spoke pretty sharply ... remark in my old note-book] In his manuscript, Clemens began to quote the captain’s speech, and then canceled it: “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves that you have no proper thankfulness for the infinite mercies of God in these disciplinary days of sanctified peril.” This remark is not found in Clemens’s extant notebooks, but at least one notebook from this period is unrecovered.
133.2 third mate, in the hospital at Honolulu] The third mate—Clemens’s chief informant—was John S. Thomas, whom Clemens characterized in his Sacramento Union report as “a very intelligent and a very cool and self-possessed young man” who “kept a very accurate log of his remarkable voyage in his head” (N&J1, 100–102; SLC 1866c).
133.11–12 The chief mate was an excellent officer ... fine all-around man] The chief mate—Samuel F. Hardy of Chatham, Massachusetts—was responsible for starting the Hornet fire. Nevertheless, Clemens praised him generously throughout this account (SLC 1866c; “Burning of the Ship Hornet,” New York Times, 22 Aug 1866, 2; Mitchell 1866).
136.10–11 it brought Cox ... if it hadn’t, the diarist would never have seen the land again] See the note at 140.4–5.
137.22 I wrote an article ... urging temporary abstention from food] “Starvation” diets or, more usually, near-starvation diets were a feature of the nineteenth-century medical landscape. Since the 1880s Clemens had confidently recommended fasting as a cure for “any ordinary ailment.” The article he refers to here, “At the Appetite-Cure,” was published in the Cosmopolitan for August 1898 (SLC 1898b, 433; Ober 2003, 207–10).
138.4 a banished duke—Danish] Clemens derived this information from Samuel Ferguson’s diary, which he quoted in his 1866 Harper’s article: “We have here a man who might have been a Duke had not political troubles banished him from Denmark” (SLC 1866d, 109). There was but one Dane in the longboat; he recorded his name at the end of Samuel’s diary as “Carl Henrich Kaatmann, geboren Augustenborg” (Samuel Ferguson 1866, entry for 30 Dec). The claim of the Prince of Augustenborg to the Danish dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein sparked a European conflict that was widely reported in the 1860s (“What the European War Is About,” Circular 3 [11 June 1866]: 102).
138.38–139.2 The isles we are steering for are put down in Bowditch ... sailed straight over them] Although Bowditch’s Navigator locates a “Cluster of Islands” at 16–17° N, 133–136° W, they do not exist. The Hornet survivors gave up their search for them on 7 June, when they were slightly west of those coordinates (Bowditch 1854, 375).
139.5 ten rations of water apiece] Captain Mitchell’s entry for 2 June actually reads “10 raisins apiece”; Clemens evidently misread it as “rations” and added “of water” to supply some kind of sense (Mitchell 1866).
140.4–5 Cox’s return ... the two young passengers would have been slain] The mention of James Cox is rendered somewhat cryptic by the omission of certain details. Here we are told that Cox’s return saved the captain and the passengers, but also that the crewmen resolved that they “would not kill” (140.26). Clemens’s 1866 Harper’s article asserts that the men were in fact prepared to kill, and that only Cox’s warning, and his vigilance, prevented them. Some of the sailors planned
to watch until such time as the Captain might become worn out and fall asleep, and then kill him and the passengers. They were afraid of Ferguson’s pistol and the Captain’s hatchet, and laid many a plan for getting hold of these weapons. They told Cox ... they would kill him if he exposed them. He refused to join the conspiracy, and they said he should die; and so, after that, day after day and night after night, he did not go to sleep, but kept watch upon them in fear for his life. The Captain and passengers remained under arms, and watched also, but talked pleasantly, and gave no sign that they knew what was in the men’s minds. (SLC 1866d, 113)
Seaman Frederick Clough (“Fred,” 140.9)—implicated here in the “ugly talk” of mutiny and cannibalism—recalled these events rather differently in an article published in 1900: “We had almost reached the last chance then, and by this I mean the casting of lots for the sacrifice of one of us, so that the others might live to tell the story. To this agreement of a gamble for life or death all of us consented without the least hesitation” (Irvine 1900, 575). Captain Mitchell, for his part, noted laconically on 5 June: “A conspiracy formed to Murder me” (Mitchell 1866). According to a note made by Clemens while copying the diaries, “Capt. knew for days this murderous discontent was brewing by the distraught air of some of the men & the guilty look of others—& he staid on guard—slept no more—kept his hatchet hid & close at hand” (N&J1, 173).
140.27–28 ‘From plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder—and from sudden death: Good Lord deliver us!’] Henry quotes the Litany from the Book of Common Prayer.
141.17 soup-and-bouillé] Clemens explained this term in his original dispatch to the Sacramento Union:
That last expression of the third mate’s occurred frequently during his narrative, and bothered me so painfully with its mysterious incomprehensibility, that at length I begged him to explain to me what this dark and dreadful “soup-and-bully” might be. With the Consul’s assistance he finally made me understand the French dish known as “soup bouillon” is put up in cans like preserved meats, and the American sailor is under the impression that its name is a sort of general title which describes any ... edible whatever which is hermetically sealed in a tin vessel, and with that high contempt for trifling conventionalities which distinguishes his class, he has seen fit to modify the pronunciation into “soup-and-bully.” (SLC 1866c)
144.8–10 rooster ... effort to do his duty once more, and died in the act] This account is at variance with Clemens’s 1866 report to the Sacramento Union, in which he wrote that the rooster “was transferred to the chief mate’s boat and sailed away on the eighteenth day”; his fate was therefore unknown. Frederick Clough, who was in the longboat, recalled that when the rooster “sang for the last time and died, he was cast into the sea” (SLC
1866c; Irvine 1900, 576).
144.19 If I remember rightly, Samuel Ferguson died soon after we reached San Francisco] Samuel died in San Francisco on 1 October 1866 (“Death of a Trinity College Graduate,” Hartford Courant, 4 Oct 1866, 8).
Horace Greeley (Source: MS in CU-MARK, written in 1898–99)
145.1 Mr. Greeley] Horace Greeley (1811–72) grew up in New Hampshire and Vermont. He left school at fourteen to help his father with farming and odd jobs, and at age fifteen was apprenticed to a printer. Over the succeeding years he developed his skills as a journalist, writing for numerous New York newspapers and journals. In 1841 he founded the New York Tribune and remained its editor until his death. Through his newspaper, which gained enormous national influence, he attacked slavery and poverty and championed the rights of African Americans, women, and the working class. He made a brief bid to enter politics, but suffered a crushing defeat by Grant in the presidential election of 1872 and died shortly thereafter.
Lecture-Times (Source: MS in CU-MARK, written in 1898–99)
146.1–5 I remember Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby (Locke) very well ... a most admirable hammering every week] David Ross Locke (1833–88) left school at an early age and was apprenticed to a printer, after which he worked on a succession of newspapers. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was the owner and editor of the Bucyrus (Ohio) Journal. It was not until a year later that he published his first satirical piece as Petroleum V. Nasby, an ignorant, bigoted, and boorish character who promoted liberal causes by seeming to oppose them. The popularity of the Nasby letters brought Locke to the attention of the proprietor of the Toledo Blade, who hired him as editor in 1865. Locke later became a part owner, and the Nasby letters, which he continued to write until shortly before his death, were an important feature of the weekly edition (L3: 20 and 21 Jan 1869 to OLL, 56 n. 1; 10 Mar 1869 to OLL and Langdon, 160 n. 5; Austin 1965, 11–12; Marchman 1957).
146.5–7 his letters were copied everywhere ... copperheads] According to an obituary of Locke:
These political satires sprang at once into tremendous popularity. They were copied into newspapers everywhere, quoted in speeches, read around camp-fires of Union armies and exercised enormous influence in molding public opinion North in favor of vigorous prosecution of the war. Secretary Boutwell declared in a speech at Cooper Union, New York, at the close of the war that the success of the Union army was due to three causes—the army, the navy, and the Nasby letters.... These letters were a source of the greatest delight to President Lincoln, who always kept them in his table drawer for perusal at odd times. (“Death of D. R. Locke,” Washington Post, 16 Feb 1888, 4)
George S. Boutwell (1818–1905) was secretary of the treasury, 1869–73.
146.9–12 Governor of the State was a wiser man than were the political masters of Körner and Petöfi ... he was an army—with artillery!] Locke himself almost certainly told Clemens this anecdote, which is also reported in an obituary, and there is no reason to doubt its substance. Nasby did, however, receive a commission as a second lieutenant in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, signed on 5 November 1861 by Governor William Dennison, which required him to recruit a company of thirty men within fifteen days. The 16 November issue of the Bucyrus Journal contained Locke’s “valedictory,” and announced that he was “recruiting a company.” Ultimately Locke paid a substitute to fight in his place (Marchman 1957; John M. Harrison 1969, 64–66; “Death of D. R. Locke,” Washington Post, 16 Feb 1888, 4). Theodor Körner (1791–1813) and Sándor Petöfi (1823–49) were nationalist poets killed in battle: Körner died fighting for Prussia in the Napoleonic wars, and Petöfi died in the unsuccessful Hungarian revolt against the Austrians.
146.14–15 I saw him first ... three or four years after the war] Clemens heard Locke lecture in Hartford on 9 March 1869 (10 Mar 1869 to OLL and Langdon, L3, 158, 159–60 n. 1).
147.20–21 with the slave-power and its Northern apologists for target] For his “Cussed be Canaan” lecture Locke posed as Nasby (without the peculiar dialect he employed in print), making it clear that Nasby’s views were not his own. His argument—couched in satire—was that African Americans should be granted full equality, both economically and politically (John M. Harrison 1969, 192–96). In a letter to the San Francisco Alta California Clemens described the lecture as “a very unvarnished narrative of the negro’s career, from the flood to the present day”:
For instance, the interpolating of the word white in State Constitutions existing under a great general Constitution which declares all men to be equal, is neatly touched by a recommendation that the Scriptures be so altered, at the same time, as to make them pleasantly conform to men’s notions—thus: “Suffer little white children to come unto me, and forbid them not!” (SLC 1869b)
147.39–41 I began as a lecturer in 1866 ... added the eastern circuit to my route] Clemens delivered his first lecture, on the Sandwich Islands, in San Francisco on 2 October 1866. For his account of that experience, and the tour that followed, see “Notes on ‘Innocents Abroad.’ ” In March and April 1867 he lectured on the same topic in St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi, and then three times in New York and Brooklyn in May. In January 1868 he gave “The Frozen Truth” in Washington, D.C., a new lecture about his Quaker City voyage, before returning to the West (for the last time), where he delivered it in San Francisco on 14 and 15 April. He then performed it in several of the California and Nevada towns that he had visited on his 1866 tour, lecturing for the last time in San Francisco on 2 July. During the 1868–69 season Clemens toured from 17 November until 20 March, delivering “The American Vandal Abroad” (also about the Quaker City trip) throughout the Midwest and East (L1: link note following 25 Aug 1866 to Bowen, 361–62; 29 Oct 1866 to Howland, 362 n. 1; 2 Nov 1866 to JLC and family, 366–67 nn. 3, 4; L2: 19 Mar 1867 to Webb, 19 n. 2; link note following 1 May 1867 to Harte, 40–44; 8 Jan 1868 to JLC and PAM, 147 n. 7; 2–14 Apr 1868 to Fairbanks, 208; 14 Apr 1868 to Williams, 209–10 n. 2; 1 and 5 May 1868 to Fairbanks, 213 n. 4; 5 July 1868 to Bliss, 233 n. 1; L3: enclosure with 12 Jan 1869 to Fairbanks, 453–57; “Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870,” 481–83).
148.8 Redpath’s bureau] In the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 October 1906, Clemens describes James Redpath (1833–91) as a man of “honesty, sincerity, kindliness, and pluck.” An abolitionist, author, journalist, and social reformer, Redpath founded the Boston Lyceum Bureau (later called the Redpath Lyceum Bureau) in 1868, in partnership with George L. Fall. This business, one of the first of its kind, managed the tours of popular lecturers, readers, and musicians, arranging bookings and negotiating fees with local committees in cities both large and small. Lecturers paid their own traveling expenses, in addition to a 10 percent commission. (See “Ralph Keeler,” the next sketch, for more about the Redpath Bureau.) Redpath arranged Clemens’s 1869–70 tour, with the lecture “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” and his 1871–72 tour, with “Roughing It” (after “Reminiscences of Some un-Commonplace Characters I Have Chanced to Meet” and “Artemus Ward, Humorist” were tried and discarded). Clemens did not tour during the 1870–71 season (Eubank 1969, 91–115, 119–20; L3: 20 Apr 1869 to Redpath, 199 n. 1; 10 May 1869 to Redpath, 214–16, 217–18 n. 8; 30, 31 Oct and 1 Nov 1869 to OLL, 383–84 n. 9; “Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870,” 483–86; L4: 24 Oct 1871 to Redpath, 478; 8 Dec 1871 to Redpath and Fall, 511; “Lecture Schedule, 1871–1872,” 557–63).
148.15–16 De Cordova—humorist] Raphael J. De Cordova (1822–1901) was a merchant until 1857, when an economic panic forced him to turn to writing and lecturing. He served on the staff of the New York Evening Express for a time, and contributed to the New York Times, but became best known as a humorous writer and lecturer. During the 1871–72 season he offered eight humorous talks through the Redpath Bureau, and he continued to appear on the platform until at least 1878 (“Death List of a Day,” New York Times, 5 Apr 1901, 9; Annual Cyclopaedia 1901, 419; Lyceum 1871, 17–18).
148.21 We took front seats in one of
the great galleries—Nasby, Billings and I] Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818–85) was well known for the homespun philosophy he expressed in his humorous essays and sketches. Josh Billings’Farmer’s Allminax, his third book and the first of a series of ten comic annuals, was published in October 1869 and sold over ninety thousand copies in three months. Clemens, Billings, and Nasby were photographed together in the second week of November of that year, when all three were in Boston on tour. On 27 October Billings delivered his popular lecture “Milk and Natral Histry” at Boston’s Music Hall, where Nasby appeared on 9 November, and Clemens himself the following night. De Cordova gave four readings at Tremont Temple (not Music Hall) in mid-November; the three men probably heard him on 8 or 12 November (“Lecture Course,” Boston Post, 6 Nov 1869, 3; L3: 9 Nov 1869 to PAM, 386–87, 389 n. 4; 15 and 16 Nov 1869 to OLL, 397 n. 3; 24 and 25 Nov 1869 to OLL, 406, 408 n. 10).
148.25–27 Dickens arrangement of tall gallows-frame ... overhead-row of hidden lights] Clemens heard Dickens read in New York on 31 December 1867, when he accompanied Olivia Langdon and her family (8 Jan 1868 to JLC and PAM, L2, 146 n. 3). He described the occasion for his Alta California readers:
Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen—a bulkhead—a sounding-board, I took it to be—and overhead in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to it, which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects of great paintings. Style!—There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings. (SLC 1868c)
