Mark Twain: A Life
Page 94
15. MTA, p. 91.
16. Letter to George Bainton, October 15, 1888; www.twainquotes.com.
17. “The Last Words of Great Men,” Buffalo Express, September 11, 1869, p. 1.
18. From “Cholera,” by Terry Hogan, published in the Galesburg, Illinois, Zephyr, 2002.
6: RAMBLER
1. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 75
2. Ibid., p. 75.
3. Ibid., p. 72.
4. Letter to William Dean Howells, September 15, 1879; MTHL, vol. 1, p. 269.
5. In Mark Twain’s Satires and Burlesques, edited by Franklin R. Rogers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 134–64.
6. “My First Literary Venture,” Galaxy, vol. 11 (April 1871), pp. 615–16.
7. As recounted in “My First Literary Venture.”
8. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 75.
9. Ibid., p. 73.
10. Ibid., p. 77.
11. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 74.
12. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 62.
13. Ibid., pp. 64–65.
14. Ibid., pp. 67–68.
15. Hannibal Daily Journal, May 7, 1853, MTP.
16. Ibid., May 5, 1853, MTP.
17. Writing to the editor of the Hannibal Courier-Post on December 3, 1907, Mark Twain admitted that “[s]urreptitiously & uninvited, I helped to edit the paper when no one was watching” (MTP).
18. “A Family Muss,” ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 70–71.
19.Life on the Mississippi, OMT, p. 541.
20. ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 88–95.
21. Ibid., p. 96.
22. Ibid., p. 97.
23. Ibid., p. 98.
24. Ibid., p. 99.
25. See MTL, vol. 1, p. 2.
26. MTB, vol. 1, p. 93.
27. Letter to Pamela Clemens, September 3, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 13.
28. MTA, p. 94.
7: “SO FAR FROM HOME…”
1. Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, May 26, 1867; www.twainquotes.com.
2. Letter to Mary Fairbanks, 1868; Mark Twain’s Letters, vol. 2, p. 252.
3. MTL, vol. 1, p. 20.
4.Life on the Mississippi, OMT, p. 253.
5. Anthony Kennedy, “ ‘Mark Twain,’ a Poor Typo,” Inland Printer, January 1908; quoted in MTL, vol. 1, pp. 2–3.
6. Ibid., p. 5.
7. Letter to Jane Clemens, August 24, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 3.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 4.
10. Ibid.
11. Letter to the Alta California, March 28, 1867; www.twainquotes.com.
12. As indicated twelve years later in a February 2 letter in the March 1867 Alta California.
13. Letter to Jane Clemens, August 31, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 10.
14. Ibid.
15. Letter to Orion and Henry Clemens, October 26–28, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 20.
16. Ibid., pp. 20, 21, 23.
17. Letter to the Muscatine Journal, December 4, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 31.
18. “The Poet,” in Emerson’s Essays (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1951), p. 267.
19. Ibid., p. 287.
20. Letter to Orion Clemens, November 28, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 29.
21. Ibid.
22. Letter to the Journal, December 24, 1853; MTL, vol. 1, p. 34.
23. Ibid., p. 35.
24. Letter to the Journal, February 17 and 18, 1854; MTL, vol. 1, p. 40.
25. Ibid., p. 41.
26. See MTL, vol. 1, p. 45.
27.Life on the Mississippi, OMT, p. 507.
28. Letter to the Muscatine, Tri-Weekly Journal, February 16, 1855; MTL, vol. 1, p. 47.
29. See MTL, vol. 1, p. 58.
30. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, June 10, 1856; MTL, vol. 1, p. 63.
31. N&J, vol. 1, p. 37.
32. Ibid., p. 32.
33. Ibid., p. 34.
34. See MTL, vol. 1, p. 59.
35. Letter to Ann E. Taylor, May 21 and 25, 1856; MTL, vol. 1, p. 61.
36. Ibid., p. 59.
37. Quoted in MTL, vol. 1, p. 65.
38. “The Turning-Point of My Life,” 1910, in What Is Man? And Other PhilosophicalWritings; quoted MTL, vol 1, p. 68, n. 7.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Letter to Henry Clemens, August 5, 1856; MTL, vol. 1, p. 67.
42. MTA, p. 95.
43. Letter to the Keokuk Daily Post, November 1, 1856; www.twainquotes.com/keokuk.
8: THE LANGUAGE OF WATER
1. MTBM, pp. 31–32; original letter is at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
2. Edgar Marquess Branch, “Bixby vs. Carroll: New Light on Sam Clemens’s Early River Career,” Mark Twain Journal (Fall 1992), pp. 2–22.
3. MTB, vol. 1, pp. 117–18.
4. Ibid., pp. 118–19.
5.Life on the Mississippi, OMT, p. 79. This first appeared in “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly (February 1875), p. 217.
6. MTA, p. 98.
7. “The Turning-Point of My Life,” in What is Man? And Other Philosophical Writings, ed. Paul Baender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 461.
8.Life on the Mississippi, p. 87.
9. Ibid., p. 118.
10. Ibid., p. 246.
11.The Gilded Age, p. 42.
12.Life on the Mississippi, pp. 166–67.
13. Ibid., pp. 163–64.
14. Ibid., p. 217.
15. These proscriptions and others are delineated in The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility, in Manners, Dress, and Conversation, in the Family, in Company, at the Piano Forte, the Table, in the Street, and in Gentlemen’s Society. Also a Useful Instructor in Letter Writing, Toilet Preparations, Fancy Needlework, Millinery, Dressmaking, Care of Wardrobe, the Hair, Teeth, Hands, Lips, Complexion, etc., by Emily Thornwell (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856).
16. Life on the Mississippi, p. 408.
17. MTL, vol. 1, p. 72.
18. Ibid., p. 72.
19. Ibid., pp. 72–73.
20. Sydney J. Krause has argued, in a generally approving study of Twain’s critical capabilities, that the author diminished his potential in this area by neglecting other important writers—for instance, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, Marvell, Dryden, Sheridan, Blake, Keats, and Coleridge—“a majority, in fact, of the major poets and dramatists who had flourished before his time and to whom he would have been introduced through formal schooling” (Krause, Mark Twain as Critic, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967).
21. Minnie Brashear, Mark Twain, Son of Missouri (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934).
22. MTB, vol. 3, p. 1445.
23.The Age of Reason, in Collected Writings, edited by Eric Foner (New York: Library of America, 1995).
24. MTA, pp. 79–80.
25. Ibid., p. 80.
26. Ibid., p. 80.
27. Ibid., p. 80.
28. Letter to Orion and Mollie Clemens, February 6, 1861; MTL, vol. 1, p. 107.
29. The details of this event are known largely through the scholarship of Edgar Marquess Branch in Men Call Me Lucky: Mark Twain and the Pennsylvania, in Keepsakes, no. 1 (Oxford, Ohio: Friends of the Library Society, 1985).
30. MTBM, p. 45.
31.Life on the Mississippi, p. 221.
32. MTBM, p. 37.
33. MTA, p. 99.
34. Ibid., pp. 99–100. Annie’s recollection differs a little from Mark Twain’s, but it has a ring of authenticity. “[Uncle Sam] says that my grandmother never knew about [the dream], but she did, and often talked about it,” Annie wrote. And: “The story as the family used to tell it was not quite like Uncle Sam’s version. They said his dream occurred in the daytime. The family including Henry were in my mother’s [i.e., Pamela’s] room and Sam was asleep in the next room. He came in and told them what he had dreamed. My grandmother [i.e., Jane] said he went back and dreamed the same dream a second and third time, but I think that was her embellishment” (MTBM, p. 37).
35.Life on the Mississippi, p. 227.
/> 36. Ibid., p. 228.
37. Ibid., p. 231.
38. In a letter to Mollie Clemens a few days later, Sam said that Brown collared Henry, turned him halfway around and struck him in the face. By the time of Life on the Mississippi, Brown had found a weapon, a convenient “ten-pound lump of coal.”
39. Ibid., p. 233.
40. Ibid., p. 236.
41. Ibid., p. 237.
42. Branch, Men Call Me Lucky, p. 13.
43. “A Sad Meeting,” St. Louis News and Intelligencer, June 19, 1858, reprinting the Memphis Eagle and Enquirer, June 16, 1858, clipping in Mark Twain’s own scrapbook, as quoted in MTL, vol. 1, p. 82.
44. MTL, vol. 1, p. 81.
45. MTA, pp. 100–101.
46. G. K. Chesterton in A Handful of Authors: Essays on Books and Writers, edited by Dorothy Collins (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1953).
47. MTA, p. 101.
48. Howard G. Baetzhold sees her in Laura Hawkins of The Gilded Age, in Puss Flanagan of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and even in the Eve of an early draft of “Eve’s Diary.” He makes his case in “Found: Mark Twain’s ‘Lost Sweetheart,’ ” in American Literature, vol. 44, no. 3 (November 1972).
49. Twain does not use Laura Wright’s name in this essay, but Baetzhold’s persuasive scholarship indicates that she was indeed the dream girl’s model. The abbreviated, Paine-edited version of “My Platonic Sweetheart” can be found in Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, Volume Two: 1891–1910, edited by Louis J. Budd (New York: Library of America, 1992).
50. “My Platonic Sweetheart,” pp. 286–87.
51. Ibid., pp. 285.
52. Ibid., p. 287, 290.
53. Ibid., p. 295.
54. Ibid., pp. 294–96.
9: RANGER
1. Edgar Marquess Branch, “Sam Clemens, Steersman on the John H. Dickey,” American Literary Realism, vol. 15, no. 2 (Autumn 1982), p. 200.
2. Ibid. p. 200.
3.Mark Twain, Business Man (MTBM) was published by the Atlantic Monthly Press. The deceptively humdrum title hardly hints at its treasury of anecdotes by and about several members of the family.
4. Annie Moffett in MTBM, p. 39.
5. Ibid., p. 30.
6. Ibid., p. 41.
7. William H. Rideing, quoted in Mark Twain as a Literary Artist, by Gladys Carmen Bellamy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), p. 12.
8. MTBM, p. 39.
9. Letter to Pamela Moffett, March 9 and 11, 1859; MTL, vol. 1, p. 88.
10. Letter to Orion Clemens; June 27?, 1860; MTL, vol. 1, p. 98.
11.Life on the Mississippi, p. 497.
12. Roughing It, Mark Twain Library edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 272.
13. Letter from Jane Clemens, October 14, 1862; MTBM, p. 73.
14. Letter to Susan (Belle) Stotts, August 11, 1860; MTL, vol. 1, p. 100.
15. MTBM, p. 48.
16. ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 146–51.
17. MTB, vol. 1, p. 162.
18. MTBM, p. 60.
19. Ibid., pp. 61–62.
20. Ibid. p. 62.
21. Grimes gives a detailed account of the militia adventure in his highly readable memoir, Absalom Grimes: Confederate Mail Runner, edited by M. M. Quaife (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926).
22. Ibid., p. 10.
23. Ibid., p. 11.
24. Ibid., p. 11.
25. “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed, in Merry Tales, OMT, p. 47.
26. Ibid., pp. 44–45.
27. “Campaign That Failed,” p. 48.
28. See John Gerber, “Mark Twain’s ‘Private Campaign,’ Civil War History, vol. 1 (March 1955), pp. 37–60.
10: WASHOE
1. Roughing It, OMT, p. 33.
2. Ibid., p. 25.
3. Ibid., pp. 70–72.
4. Ibid., p. 79.
5. Ibid., p. 88.
6. Ibid., p. 119.
7. Ibid., p. 157.
8. Ibid., p. 159. See also p. 612 in the University of California Press, edition for more information on “Jack Harris.”
9. Letter to Pamela Moffett and Jane Clemens, October 25, 1861; MTL, vol. 1, p. 132.
10. MTBM, p. 63.
11.Roughing It, OMT, p. 176.
12. Letter to Pamela Moffett and Jane Clemens, October 25, 1861; MTL, vol. 1, p. 129.
13.Roughing It, p. 191.
14. Letter to Mollie Clemens, January 29, 30, and 31, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 145.
15. Letter to Orion Clemens, April 10, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 184.
16. Letter to Orion Clemens, April 13, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 186.
17. Ibid., p. 187.
18. Letter to Orion Clemens, April 17 and 19, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 189.
19. Letter to Orion Clemens, June 2, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 216.
20. Letter to Orion Clemens, June 25, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 223.
21. Letter to Orion Clemens, July 23, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, pp. 228–229.
22. Letter to Orion Clemens, June 22, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 221.
23. Letter to Orion Clemens, July 23, 1862; MTL, vol. 1, p. 229.
11: A JOURNALISTIC COUNTERCULTURE
1. Roughing It, OMT, p. 303.
2.Dan De Quille, the Washoe Giant, by Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1990), p. 47.
3. Ibid., p. 4.
4. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 389.
5. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 159.
6. “A Couple of Sad Experiences,” in Galaxy, June 1870; ET&S, vol. 1, p. 156.
7. Ibid.
8. Dan De Quille, “Sad Fate of an Inventor,” in Dan De Quille, the Washoe Giant, pp. 185–86.
9. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, December 8, 1869; MTL, vol. 4, p. 2.
10. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, April 11 and 12, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, p. 246.
11. Paul Fatout, Mark Twain in Virginia City (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 24.
12. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 176.
13. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 178.
14. Ibid., p. 182.
15. Branch, in ET&S, vol. 1, p. 19.
16. ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 195–96.
17. Ibid., p. 194.
18. Ibid., p. 198.
12.“MARK TWAIN—MORE OF HIM”
1. “At the time that the telegraph brought the news of [Sellers’s] death, I was on the Pacific coast,” Twain wrote in Chapter 50, p. 498, of Life on the Mississippi “…and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner’s discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign…that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth.” Sellers died in 1864, a year after Sam began using the pen name. His earliest version of this explanation was written in January 1873 (Horst Kruse, “Mark Twain’s Nom de Plume; some Mysteries Resolved,” Mark Twain Journal, spring 1992, p. 4). Some scholars still hold out hope of finding examples of the pen name used by Sellers, or by someone else, in the river columns of New Orleans or possibly St. Louis papers long before Clemens adopted it.
2. Bret Harte, Overland Monthly, January 4, 1870, pp. 100–101.
3. “A Mystery,” Cleveland Herald, November 16, 1868, p. 2.
4. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 218, corrected against the original Enterprise printing of February 19, 1863.
5. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, February 16, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, p. 244.
6. Ibid., p. 245.
7. Ibid., p. 247.
8. Charles P. Kimball, “Brief Historical Sketch,” San Francisco Director, 1853; “The San Francisco History Index,” http://www.zpub.com/sf/history.
9. Ibid.
10. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 250.
11. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, June 1, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, p. 255.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, July 18, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, pp. 259–60.
15. Ibi
d., p. 260.
16.Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, by Andrew Hoffman (New York: William Morrow & Co.) 1997.
17. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, June 1, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, p. 255.
18. See especially David Deitcher, Dear Friends: American Photographs of Men Together, 1840–1918 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).
19. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 255.
20. Ibid., p. 258.
21. The Virginia City Evening Bulletin, July 9, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, p. 263.
22. Letter to Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, August 19, 1863; MTL, vol. 1, pp. 263–64.
23. ET&S, vol. 1, p. 290.
24.Dan De Quille, the Washoe Giant, p. 18.
25. ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 310–11.
26. ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 315, 317–18.
27. Ibid., pp. 324–25.
28. Ibid., p. 325.
29. Ibid.
30. C. A. V. Putnam, “Dan De Quille and Mark Twain,” Salt Lake City Tribune, April 25, 1898; ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 320–21.
13.CODE DUELLO
1. Quoted in Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography, by David S. Reynolds (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
2. “Artemus Ward,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, c. November 27, 1863, as reprinted in the San Francisco Golden Era, November 29, 1863, p. 8; also in Mark Twain in Nevada, by Effie Mona Mack (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1947), pp. 289–90; www.twainquotes.com.
3. “A Good-bye Article,” San Francisco Golden Era, November 22, 1863, p. 4. Ludlow was Vanity Fair editor before Ward, a bit of a pothead who published The HasheeshEater in 1857, and a prominent member of New York’s bohemian circle.
4. James C. Austin, Artemus Ward (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964).
5. Quoted in Mark Twain, Man and Legend, by DeLancey Ferguson (New York: Charter Books, 1943), p. 88.
6. Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, December 26 or 27, 1863; quoted in “An Inapt Illustration,” Virginia City Evening Bulletin, December 28, 1863, p. 3. More of this review is quoted in Mack, Mark Twain in Nevada, pp. 296–97, www.twainquotes.com.
7. Letter to Jane Clemens, January 2, 1864; MTL, vol. 1, p. 267.
8. Ibid., p. 268.
9. Dan De Quille, “Artemus Ward in Nevada,” in the California Illustrated Magazine, August 4, 1890; reprinted in Dan De Quille, the Washoe Giant.