Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  313.42 The end is not yet] This quote from Matthew 24:6 (or Mark 13:7) was not reported as part of Root’s speech, but was supplied by Clemens.

  314.6 ship-money] The English Crown had the right, in wartime, to collect ships (or, in place of ships, money) from seaport towns. King Charles I’s innovation in collecting this “ship-money” nationwide and in peacetime made it effectively a perpetual tax, levied without the consent of Parliament.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 17 December 1906

  315.11 “Old Times on the Mississippi” got the Kaiser’s best praise] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 6 December 1906.

  315.12 when I reached home] In February 1892 the Clemens family was lodging at the Hotel Royal in “six chambers & one dining room & one parlor” on Berlin’s Unter den Linden (Notebook 31, TS p. 20, CU-MARK).

  316.15 my twenty-three volumes] The authorized collected editions of Mark Twain’s works stood at twenty-three volumes from 1903 to late in 1906. Clemens forgets that The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories had recently been added as volume 24 of Harper’s Hillcrest Edition (Schmidt 2010, chapters 6 and 26).

  317.12–16 I took up the Sun . . . crediting the meat and marrow of his conclusions to me] The (unsigned) editorial in the New York Sun, entitled “The Millionaire in Overalls,” concluded:

  This essential and undeniable philosophic distinction between work and work-play, or play-work, is not ours. It belongs to our white robed young friend the Hon. MARK TWAIN; yet we dare say that you can find it a hundred times among the ancient Greeks, who made other folks work for them and “went in for” gymnastics; and it must have been old when NOAH was a sailor.

  Work for work’s sake is a superstition and a delusion. The best that can be said for it is that it perpetuates a great mistake. If it has become almost a law of the human race, why should anybody go into raptures over it? Gravitation is a good deal more impressive and a universal law. Does anybody feel called upon to thank God for gravitation when a brick hits him? (17 Dec 1906, 8)

  317.17 the whitewashing of the fence in “Tom Sawyer.”] At the end of chapter 2, containing this famous scene, Mark Twain wrote:

  Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. (TS, 50)

  Autobiographical Dictation, 18 December 1906

  317.26–28 I went to Washington, a fortnight ago . . . Mr. Paine made the trip with me] Clemens and Paine arrived in Washington on 6 December, in the evening. The joint copyright hearings before the Senate and House Committees on Patents took place from 7 to 11 December (see AD, 23 Nov 1906, note at 286.12–13). For Paine’s detailed account of the trip see MTB, 3:1343–50.

  317.29–36 League Committee . . . something connected with a railroad] Robert Underwood Johnson (1853–1937), secretary of the American Copyright League in 1906, became an associate editor of the Century Magazine in 1881, and in that capacity had edited several of Clemens’s works that appeared there in full or in part. At the time of this dictation he had published The Winter Hour and Other Poems (1892), Songs of Liberty and Other Poems (1897), and Poems (1902). William Worthen Appleton (1845–1924) succeeded his father, William H., in 1899 as president of the firm of D. Appleton and Company, best known for its popular travel and reference books such as Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography (1887–89). In 1906 he was president of the American Publishers’ Copyright League. George Haven Putnam (1844–1930) became a partner in his father’s publishing business, Wiley and Putnam, in 1866. Upon his father’s death in 1872, Putnam and his brothers established G. P. Putnam’s Sons in New York, which was known for its publication of popular fiction and the writings of American statesmen. He was a founding member, in 1887, of the American Publishers’ Copyright League, and the author of several books on international copyright. Richard R. Bowker (1848–1933) was second vice-president of the American Copyright League in 1906. In 1879 he bought Publishers’ Weekly, becoming its editor in 1884. He wrote several works on economics and politics, and in 1886 he published the comprehensive reference work Copyright: Its Law and Its Literature. He did not publish his first poetry collection, From the Pen of R. R. B., until 1916. Clemens alludes to Bowker’s vice-presidency of the De Laval Steam Turbine Company of New York, founded in 1901. The De Laval turbine generated electrical power to produce lighting for railroad trains (Garrison 1904, 4).

  318.12–16 When I went to Washington sixteen years ago . . . Mr. Lowell appeared just once] Clemens conflates two separate trips to Washington, saying mistakenly that they both occurred “sixteen years ago” (at 318.12 and 318.38). On the first occasion, in January 1886, he and James Russell Lowell both spoke and answered questions before the Senate Committee on Patents when it was debating two international copyright bills (see AD, 22 Nov 1906, note at 283.25–284.16). The second occasion occurred in 1889 (see the note at 318.39–40).

  318.18 Edward Everett Hale] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907, note at 424.10–13.

  318.21–22 The international bill was passed, and became law] The International Copyright Act of 1891, the first U.S. law to recognize the copyrights of foreign authors, was based on the Chace bill, which Clemens had supported in 1886.

  318.22–23 This victory was attributed to Johnson . . . Legion of Honor for it] The cross of the Legion of Honor was awarded not only to Johnson, but to Putnam as well (“Notes and Announcements,” London Publishers’ Circular 54 [2 May 1891]: 448).

  318.39–40 Sunset Cox smuggled me in on the floor of the House] On 31 January 1889 Clemens went to Washington with Johnson to lobby for the international copyright bill; he described his efforts in a speech given to the Washington Ladies’ Literary Association on 2 February. The bill was killed by filibuster, never coming to a vote. Clemens had known Samuel Sullivan (Sunset) Cox (1824–89) since 1870, and in 1887 his publishing firm, Charles L. Webster and Company, had published a book by him, Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey. A Democrat, Cox served in Congress for nearly thirty years, first representing Ohio (1857–65) and then New York (1869–89) (6 July 1870 to OLC, L4, 164–66; N&J3, 332 n. 91, 445 n. 123; “‘Mark Twain’s’ Speech,” Washington Post, 4 Feb 1889, 2).

  319.1–2 Mr. John D. Long supplied me with Republicans] John Davis Long (1838– 1915) had been the Republican governor of Massachusetts in 1880–82. At the time of Clemens’s visit in February 1889 he was in the last month of his third term as the U.S. congressman from Massachusetts.

  319.18–22 He and Bowker appeared . . . next day’s sitting, at five in the afternoon, and spoke] Underwood, Bowker, and Clemens all spoke at the second session of the copyright hearings, which was held on the afternoon of the first day (7 December); Clemens’s speech is included in the Autobiographical Dictation of 26 December 1906. Among the others who made statements at that session were artist Francis D. Millet, and authors Edward Everett Hale and Thomas Nelson Page (“Plead for Copyright,” Washington Post, 8 Dec 1906, 4; U.S. Congress 1906, 77–98, 114–21; for Millet and Page see AutoMT1, 548 n. 255.28–29, 602 n. 385.1–3).

  319.32 Mr. Speaker Cannon] Joseph Gurney Cannon (1836–1926), a Republican from Illinois, served forty-six years in the House of Representatives, from 1873 to 1923 (with two hiatuses), becoming Speaker of the House in 1903. Clemens wrote him on 7 December 1906, asking for his help: “It is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for 2 or 3 hours & talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement & protection of one of the nation’s most valuable assets & industries—its Literature. I have arguments with me—also a barrel. With liquid in it” (MS facsimile, Chapple 1910, 301).

  319.37–38 Neal has served a proces
sion of Speakers of the House . . . for forty years] Henry Neal (1850–1921) was appointed doorkeeper and messenger in 1876 by Speaker Samuel J. Randall. The “efficient, affable, and diligent” Neal, who had served for thirty-one years under seven Speakers of the House when he helped Clemens in 1906, retained his position until his death (“Petty Spoils,” Washington Post, 21 Jan 1911, 6). A member of the Masons, the Colored Personal Liberty League, and the Oldest Inhabitants Association, Neal “knew practically every man prominent in public life. He knew many secrets of the nine speakers under whom he served, was trusted by them and invariably proved himself, both in honesty and diplomacy, equal to any situation that arose” (“Henry Neal Gets Final Message,” Chicago Defender, 8 Oct 1921, 1; “Liberty League Banquet,” Washington Post, 31 Mar 1899, 2; Washington Census 1900, 164:7A).

  320.6–7 chairmen of the Senate and House Committees that had the bill in charge] Senator Alfred B. Kittredge of South Dakota (1861–1911) and Congressman Frank D. Currier of New Hampshire (1853–1921) (U.S. Congress 1906, 2).

  320.12 mine] Clemens added, and then deleted, the following comment: “Note. 300 publishers interested to the extent of several million dollars a year, and a dozen authors interested to the extent of next to nothing at all, so far as money is concerned.”

  Autobiographical Dictation, 19 December 1906

  322.32–33 The clause in the Constitution . . . which denies perpetual property in an author’s book] Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

  323.1–11 The late Baron Tauchnitz was the only publisher . . . not a pirate it is Tauchnitz’s son] Christian Bernhard von Tauchnitz (1816–95) founded his Leipzig publishing house in 1837, originally publishing only translations from Greek and Latin. In 1841 he began a new series in English, the Collection of British (later British and American) Authors. Despite the absence of an international copyright law, Tauchnitz offered authors what they considered generous payment for the privilege of republishing their works, which won him much gratitude and loyalty from authors such as Dickens, George Eliot, Carlyle, Longfellow, Thackeray, and Trollope. In 1876 Tauchnitz approached Clemens through Bret Harte for permission to add The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to the series. Clemens responded, “That you have recognized my moral right to my books gratifies me but does not surprise me, because I knew before that you were always thus courteous with authors” (14 Sept 1876 to Tauchnitz, Letters 1876–1880). In part for his efforts to make English literature popular in Germany, Tauchnitz was granted the title Freiherr (Baron) in 1860 by Ernest II, duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (the brother of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria). After Tauchnitz’s death, his son, Baron Christian Karl Bernhard von Tauchnitz (1841–1921), continued to publish Clemens’s books under the same arrangement (Meyer 1929, 1339; Reece 1937, 27; “Baron Tauchnitz’s Service Told,” London Daily Telegraph, 1 Sept 1895, 28; “Death of Baron von Tauchnitz,” New York Times, 15 Aug 1895, 5).

  323.31 “The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome”] From Edgar Allan Poe’s revised version of “To Helen,” published in the 1845 edition of The Raven and Other Poems.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 20 December 1906

  324.13 “What Cheer,”] The What Cheer House, at the corner of Sacramento Street and Leidesdorff, opened in 1852. A temperance hotel for men, it was frequented mainly by miners, sailors, and farmers. Its popular and inexpensive basement restaurant allegedly served as many as four thousand meals a day, charging five cents a dish in the 1860s. It burned down in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake (Craig 2003; Conlin 1986, 140–42).

  324.14–15 “Miners’ Restaurant.” . . . good food on the cheapest possible terms] The Miners’ Restaurant, on Commercial Street near the San Francisco Call offices, was known for its “square meals,” evidently paying more regard to “quantity than quality.” It was demolished in October 1863 (“An Old Land-Mark Gone,” Virginia City Evening Bulletin, 24 Oct 1863, 4; RI 1993, 702–3 n. 408.27–409.1).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 21 December 1906

  327.3–6 an article came out in the “Christian Union” . . . by the mother of the child] “What Ought He to Have Done?” was published in the Christian Union on 11 June 1885 (31:13). The article was reprinted from the May issue of Babyhood magazine, where it had appeared as a letter to the editor signed “X” (1:180–81). The author recounts an incident in which a young boy throws a paper from his father’s desk on the floor, refuses to pick it up again, and persistently defies his parents. The father spanks him “until—he—picks—that—paper—up—with—his—hands”; when the boy instead picks it up with his teeth, the author asks what the father should have done. It is not clear why Clemens assumed that the author was the boy’s mother.

  327.41 paper cutter] A letter opener, at that time usually made of bone or wood.

  329.4–5 When the Christian Union reached the farm and papa’s article in it] Clemens’s article—also in the form of a letter to the editor—was published under the title “‘What Ought He to Have Done?’: Mark Twain’s Opinion” in the 16 July 1885 Christian Union (SLC 1885b). After calling the boy’s father a ludicrous ass for spanking his child to make him obey, he praises Olivia’s approach to disciplining their children: she did not spank them “for spite, or ever in anger,” but only after “an hour or two. By that time both parties are calm, and the one is judicial, the other receptive.” His article was reprinted under the same title in the August 1885 issue of Babyhood, along with a letter from the child’s father justifying his own actions (“John, Senior, Speaks,” 1:275–77).

  329.21–27 letters began to come in to papa crittisizing it . . . (he was the baby’s father)] Several letters about Clemens’s article, most of them complimentary, survive in the Mark Twain Papers. The “very worst” was written by someone who signed his name “Thomas Twain”; Clemens noted on the letter that it was “evidently from ‘John Senior,’ “the boy’s father, but that seems unlikely. The writer, who was appalled by Livy’s delayed punishment of the children, describes a sadistic fantasy in which he imagines himself torturing her:

  Your wife must be a solemn ass, a prig, a calvinistic schoolmistress of three generations back. I hate the very idea of her perambulating around thinking of the “duty” i.e. treat to come, and then with her damned “calmness” executing the ‘sentence,’ and requesting the child to see that it is in love and not in “anger”—Oh—damn the woman! I had such a mother, and being my mother I shall say nothing disrespectful of her except this that neither my two brothers nor myself shed a tear for her when she died, and although our sister did cry in a feminine way, she rapidly reconciled herself to the loss of the admirable disciplinarian with her irrevocable sentences, her hours of torturing delay, her calm ‘execution,’ and her hateful embraces and humbug afterwards which made hypocrites of all of us. It gives me pleasure to damn your wife. I feel she deserves it, and it relieves me. When our father married a second time some three years after our mother’s death, our young step mother won all our hearts. No damned crocodile calmness about her. She had little bits of temper, she could give and take with her tongue, sometimes she would give us a little slap, but everything in that way was soon forgotten, she was joyous, kind, charitable, indulgent, good— She believed in bright example and good humor, & any hastiness of temper was only a summer cloud— She knew children, she loved them, she understood our minds and our imperfect point of view. She was worth 20 cartloads of stereotyped, drill sergeant mothers with their d—d organized discipline—

  When you were at it, Mr Mark Twain, why did not you make a little money by a graphic description of the “scene of torture,” and a full account of the modus operandi. I’ll be bound admirable Mrs Twain has some special method, or weapon of her own, which she has calmly thought out and given some mind to. I’ll be bound also she knows all the soft spots of a
child’s anatomy, and carefully notes and studies the effects as she calmly exerts herself in the “scene of torture”— Torture! Good God, and by a Christian mother! . . .

  Your admirable wife be damned, Mr Twain. I only wish I had her in a room quietly by myself and free of interruption for half an hour. I would tie her hands, I would strap her on a table, her feet on the floor, making a fine half crescent at a certain part of her body, convex side upper-most, I would bare her to the skin, and then proceed to ply a stout leather strap with knotted tails to her buttocks. Heavens! I enjoy the very idea of it! There would be no delay between sentence and execution. I would consider my anger righteous. But in the tempest, torrent, whirlwind of my passion I would beget a calmness of scientific application. I would study the torture and I would rejoice with exceeding joy as I saw the blisters and welts accumulating under my scientific handling. Then I would untie Mrs Twain, and lead her to the sofa, and then in less time than it takes to tell it “love her back into happy heartedness and a joyful spirit”! (21 July 1885, CU-MARK)

  330.29–32 Mr. Laurence Barrette and Mr. and Mrs. Hutton . . . he was staying with us] The actor Lawrence Barrett (1838–91) and the drama critic Laurence Hutton—with his wife of one year, Eleanor Varnum Mitchell Hutton (1848–1910)—stayed with the Clemenses on 3 and 4 March 1886. Clemens had met Barrett briefly in San Francisco, but became better acquainted with him in 1874, when he offered him the part of Colonel Sellers in his Gilded Age play (link note following 10 May 1874 to Haddon, L6, 148–49). Barrett, who had brought his repertory company to Hartford after a successful month-long engagement in New York, appeared on 3 March in the role of Lanciotto, the deceitful hunchback husband, in George H. Boker’s verse tragedy Francesca da Rimini (after Dante), and on 4 March he played the role of the title character in Victor Hugo’s Hernani (New York Times: “Died,” 17 Nov 1910, 9; “Mr. Lawrence Barrett,” 18 Feb 1886, 5; “Notes of the Week,” 28 Feb 1886, 6; Hartford Courant: “Lawrence Barrett This Evening,” 3 Mar 1886, 2; “Lawrence Barrett in ‘Hernani,’” 5 Mar 1886, 3; Barrett to SLC and OLC, 27 Feb 1886, CU-MARK; Hutton to Winter, 4 Mar 1886, JIm; U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 1795–1905, Roll 227, passport application for Eleanor V. Mitchell, 10 Feb 1879).