Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  MARK TWAIN.

  The letter to Bok was probably not the first letter that Clemens dictated. Three earlier typed letters survive from February 1882, and it seems unlikely that he typed them himself.

  446.25–27 In a previous chapter . . . first person in the world that ever had a telephone in his house] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 24 May 1906 and the note at 56.37–57.8.

  446.29–31 “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” . . . so I conclude it was that one] Clemens scrambles the facts about his unnamed typist (see the note at 446.13–15). The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written in 1872–75, but none of it was copied on the typewriter. The book that “the young woman copied a considerable part of” was Life on the Mississippi. Harry M. Clarke (and Jakob B. Coykendall) had typed “a great portion” of the book in Elmira during the summer of 1882 (24 Apr 1883 to “Whom It May Concern,” Freedman; TS, 503–4). The young woman took over typing the remainder when Clemens returned to Hartford in late September, but fell ill with scarlet fever three months later and could not complete the work. This was Clemens’s first book to be sent to the publisher in typescript (HF 2003, 688–89).

  447.5–6 New Year’s Eve, at midnight, that extraordinary invention, the telharmonium . . . in a private house] The Telharmonium, invented by inventor Thaddeus Cahill (1867–1934), was an electrical device for making music (an early synthesizer) and transmitting it over telephone lines. Operated by two players working at a fiendishly complex console, it could simulate dozens of different instruments. It was powered by large generators located at a “central station,” which sent an electric signal to any number of “translating instruments” (speakers). Cahill patented his device in 1897 and demonstrated a working model in 1901; in the summer of 1906 a much larger instrument weighing two hundred tons was installed at “Telharmonic Hall” in New York (Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street). Demonstrations were given; Telharmony was piped into certain New York restaurants and museums, and press coverage was copious. Clemens, having read a newspaper report, was given a private demonstration on 21 December, and immediately arranged for a New Year’s Eve “concert” in his home at 21 Fifth Avenue. Since he lived about three-quarters of a mile below the southern reach of the Telharmonium cables, a special extension was installed to make the connection. About sixty guests—including several newspaper reporters—attended the party, at which the Telharmonium was a featured attraction. Clemens wrote to Jean on New Year’s Day:

  At 11.55 there was a prepared surprise: lovely music—played on a silent piano of 300 keys at the corner of Broadway a mile & a half away, & sent over the telephone wire to our parlor—the first time this marvelous invention ever uttered its voice in a private house. Two weeks from now it will go by wire 1,000 miles to Chicago & furnish the music for the Electrical Convention, & within a year or two the artist will play on those dumb keys & deliver his music into 20,000 homes—& cheap as water; only 20 cents an hour, & shut it off when you please, like the gas. (ViU)

  The public service, begun in 1907, failed to attract enough subscribers, and the Telharmonium was shut down the next year (Weidenaar 1995, 5, 28–35, 63–69, 121–33, 142, 198–99, 222–24, 267; “Twain and the Telephone,” New York Times, 23 Dec 1906, 2; Lyon 1906, entries for 21 and 31 Dec, and an entry dated 31 Dec written on the datebook page for 1 Dec; Shelden 2010, 3–8).

  447.32–38 was shot dead this afternoon by an unidentified man . . . shot himself in the forehead] Whiteley (1831–1907) opened a shop in the London suburb of Westbourne Grove in 1863, selling ribbons and “fancy goods.” By the 1880s the business had grown immensely, and the wealthy Whiteley adopted the title of “Universal Provider.” His murder came about as the result of more than one adulterous entanglement. Whiteley and a friend, George Rayner, had affairs with a pair of sisters who lived at Brighton, Emily and Louisa Turner. The murderer was born out of wedlock to Emily Turner in 1879; he was raised under the name of Horace Rayner, but his mother told him (he later said) that Whiteley was his father. Hoping for financial assistance, Rayner approached Whiteley in his store on 24 January 1907 and, when rebuffed, shot him and then unsuccessfully tried to kill himself. He was tried and, after ten minutes’ deliberation by the jury, convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Despite Rayner’s reported claim that he wanted to “get the whole business over and done with,” a petition to commute his sentence to life imprisonment was successful. In Parkhurst Prison he again attempted suicide, a criminal act punished by two weeks in solitary confinement. He was released in 1919 (London Times: “The Murder of Mr. Whiteley,” 23 Mar 1907, 6; “The Convict Rayner,” 1 Apr 1907, 8; “Attempted Suicide of Mr. Whiteley’s Murderer,” 23 Oct 1907, 8; “The Convict Rayner,” 21 Nov 1907, 6).

  448.36 Dollis Hill House, London, 1900] Clemens wrote this sketch on or about 19 September 1900, judging from internal evidence; Hobby transcribed his manuscript. Dollis Hill House was built in 1825 near Willesden, at that time a rural area outside London. From 1881 the house was the summer residence of the earl of Aberdeen, and after he was appointed governor-general of Canada in 1897, the property was sold to the local district council for use as a public park. The house was still occupied, however, and rented to the Clemenses, who moved in on 2 July. Its proximity to London suited their requirements, as Jean was being treated by osteopath Dr. Jonas Kellgren and visited his nearby Belgravia offices three times a week. Clemens’s first impression of the house was not favorable. “It is certainly the dirtiest dwelling-house in Europe—perhaps in the universe,” he wrote in his notebook on taking possession; but it improved upon cleaning and further acquaintance (Notebook 43, TS p. 20, CU-MARK). The Clemenses inhabited Dollis Hill House throughout the summer of 1900, enjoying the country seclusion. They left for New York on 6 October on the SS Minnehaha, having been assured that Jean’s treatment could be continued by an American osteopath. The grounds of Dollis Hill House were opened to the public as Gladstone Park on 25 May 1901; but over the course of the twentieth century, the house itself became dilapidated. Closed to the public in 1994, it was demolished in January 2012, despite the protests of locals who campaigned to save it (Dollis Hill House Trust 2011; 31 July 1900 to Rogers, Salm, in HHR, 448; 7 June 1900 to Baldwin, UkOxU; 4 Oct 1900 to Pond, NN-BGC; Ober 2003, 157–61; “Opening of Gladstone Park,” London Times, 27 May 1901, 10; Brady 2012).

  449.13–16 Mr. Gladstone used to be a frequent guest . . . translate Homer] For British Prime Minister William Gladstone, see AutoMT1, 499 n. 119.29–30. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Gladstone was an able classical scholar. His productions in this line included a verse translation of the Iliad (unpublished during his lifetime), seven volumes of studies on Homer, a thesaurus of Homeric Greek, and a translation of the Odes of Horace.

  450.32–33 Harrod’s and the Army and Navy Stores] Harrods opened in Knightsbridge in 1849; by 1900 it had grown to contain eighty departments in a building occupying thirty-six acres. The Army and Navy Stores began in 1871 as a cooperative formed by a group of junior officers to supply their provisions at reduced cost. The first store opened in London in 1872, and expanded into an emporium with branches elsewhere in England as well as in India (Falk and Campbell 1997, 69; John Richardson 2001, 3–4).

  451.27 quarter-day removals] In traditional British usage, “quarter days” marked off the quarters of the year. Tenancies began and ended on these days (in the fall, the day was Michaelmas, on 29 September), so moving companies were exceptionally busy.

  451.38 anchor-watch] The minimal crew required to remain aboard while a ship is at anchor and the rest of the crew are off duty.

  Autobiographical Dictation, 28 February 1907

  454.3–7 most lurid cause célèbre . . . gifted and famous architect, Stanford White] On 25 June 1906, the millionaire Harry K. Thaw (1871–1947) fatally shot renowned architect Stanford White (1853–1906) as he sat watching a play at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden. Thaw had a history of sexual violence, drug abuse, and mental instability. His trial for murder began i
n January 1907, Thaw claiming he had been tormented by thoughts of White’s earlier intimacy with Evelyn Nesbit (1884–1967), the artist’s model and chorus girl with whom both men had had affairs, starting when she was sixteen years old, and whom Thaw had married in 1905 at age twenty-one. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw was called to the stand on 7 February; in twenty days of testimony she put forward the case that White was a seducer who had plied her with drugs. Thaw’s lawyers argued that he suffered from “dementia Americana,” a previously unknown ailment wherein zealousness in defense of female chastity turns into uncontrollable violence. The trial ended with a deadlocked jury on 12 April. In a second trial the next year, Thaw was found not guilty by reason of insanity; he was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane, from which he escaped in 1913. He was captured and tried for conspiracy; yet two years later he was pronounced sane and released (Mooney 1976, 22–28, 244–62, 266–73, and passim).

  454.28–29 with the exception of four abnormally hideous descriptive sentences] These “hideous” sentences have not been recovered. Clemens could have heard them repeated by any of several friends who were involved in the case, such as District Attorney William T. Jerome, the prosecutor, or Martin W. Littleton, who later became Thaw’s chief attorney at his second trial, in 1908 (MTB, 3:1406–7; Mooney 1976, 244, 266).

  454.34–37 Under our infamous laws . . . the seducer go free] In a 1903 article published in Harper’s Weekly (“Why Not Abolish It?”) Clemens had given vent to his view that the age of consent should be abolished, arguing that it shifts the burden of guilt from the males (who seduce) to the females (who are seduced). He returns to this theme in the Autobiographical Dictation of 20 April 1907 (SLC 1903e).

  455.8–9 splendid human being, Tom Reed . . . we were yachting in the West Indies with Henry Rogers] In April 1902 Clemens sailed to the Bahamas on Rogers’s yacht, the Kanawha; among the other guests was Thomas B. Reed (1839–1902). Reed was trained in the law and served as a Republican congressman from Maine from 1877 to 1899, and as the very powerful Speaker of the House for much of that time, resigning when President McKinley decided to go to war with Spain. Clemens enjoyed Reed’s company, calling him a “delightful & irresistible old bullfrog,” and they passed much of their time on the cruise playing poker and arguing about politics (7 Aug 1902 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in HHR, 496; MTB, 3:1162–63).

  455.19–21 Colonel Harvey’s parable . . . The Man Who Ate Babies] George Harvey, the president of Harper and Brothers as well as the editor of Harper’s Weekly, published his parable in the March issue of that magazine (Harvey 1907).

  APPENDIXES

  SAMUEL L. CLEMENS: A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

  1835 Born 30 November in Florida, Mo., the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Of his six siblings, only Orion, Pamela, and Henry lived into adulthood. (For details, see “Family Biographies.”)

  1839–40 Moves to Hannibal, Mo., on the west bank of the Mississippi River; enters typical western common school in Hannibal (1840).

  1842–47 Spends summers at his uncle John Quarles’s farm, near Florida, Mo.

  1847 On 24 March his father dies. Leaves school to work as an errand boy and apprentice typesetter for Henry La Cossitt’s Hannibal Gazette.

  1848 Apprenticed to Joseph P. Ament, the new editor and owner of the Hannibal Missouri Courier. Works for and lives with Ament until the end of 1850.

  1851 In January joins Orion’s newspaper, the Hannibal Western Union, where he soon prints “A Gallant Fireman,” his earliest known published work.

  1853–57 After almost three years as Orion’s apprentice, leaves Hannibal in June 1853. Works as a journeyman typesetter in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Muscatine (Iowa), Keokuk (Iowa), and Cincinnati.

  1857 On 16 February departs Cincinnati on the Paul Jones, piloted by Horace E. Bixby, who agrees to train him as a Mississippi River pilot.

  1858 Henry Clemens dies of injuries from the explosion of the Pennsylvania.

  1859 On 9 April officially licensed to pilot steamboats “to and from St. Louis and New Orleans.” By 1861 has served as “a good average” pilot on at least a dozen boats.

  1861 Becomes a Freemason (resigns from his lodge in 1869). Works as a commercial pilot until the outbreak of the Civil War. Joins the Hannibal Home Guard, a small band of volunteers with Confederate sympathies. Resigns after two weeks and accompanies Orion to Nevada Territory, where Orion will serve until 1864 as the territorial secretary. Works briefly for Orion, then prospects for silver.

  1862 Prospects in the Humboldt and Esmeralda mining districts. Sends contributions signed “Josh” (now lost) to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and in October becomes its local reporter.

  1863–64 On 3 February 1863 first signs himself “Mark Twain.” While writing for the Enterprise he becomes Nevada correspondent for the San Francisco Morning Call. To escape prosecution for dueling, moves to San Francisco about 1 June 1864 and for four months works as local reporter for the Call. Writes for the Californian and the Golden Era. In early December visits Jackass Hill in Tuolumne County, Calif.

  1865 Visits Angels Camp in Calaveras County, Calif. Returns to San Francisco and begins writing a daily letter for the Enterprise. Continues to write for the Californian. “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” published in the New York Saturday Press on 18 November.

  1866 Travels to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) as correspondent for the Sacramento Union, to which he writes twenty-five letters. In October gives his first lecture in San Francisco.

  1867 His first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches, published in May. Gives first lecture in New York City. Sails on Quaker City to Europe and the Holy Land. Meets Olivia (Livy) Langdon in New York City on 27 December. In Washington, D.C., serves briefly as private secretary to Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada.

  1868 Lectures widely in eastern and midwestern states. Courts and proposes to Livy, winning her consent in November.

  1869 The Innocents Abroad published. With Jervis Langdon’s help, buys one-third interest in the Buffalo Express.

  1870 Marries Olivia on 2 February; they settle in Buffalo in a house purchased for them by Jervis Langdon. Son, Langdon, born prematurely on 7 November.

  1871 Sells Express and the house and moves to Hartford, Conn. For the next two decades the family will live in Hartford and spend summers at Quarry Farm, in Elmira, N.Y.

  1872 Daughter Olivia Susan (Susy) Clemens born 19 March; son Langdon dies 2 June. Roughing It published in London (securing British copyright) and Hartford. Visits London to lecture in the fall.

  1873 Takes family to England and Scotland for five months. Escorts them home (Livy is pregnant) and returns to England alone in November. The Gilded Age, written with Charles Dudley Warner, published in London and Hartford.

  1874 Returns home in January; daughter Clara Langdon Clemens born 8 June. The family moves into the house they have built in Hartford.

  1875–76 Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (1875) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) published.

  1878–79 Travels with family in Europe.

  1880 A Tramp Abroad published. Daughter Jane (Jean) Lampton Clemens born 26 July.

  1881 Begins to invest in Paige typesetting machine. The Prince and the Pauper published.

  1882 Revisits the Mississippi to gather material for Life on the Mississippi, published 1883.

  1884–85 Founds publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Co., named for his nephew by marriage, its chief officer. Reading tour with George Washington Cable (November–February). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published in London (1884) and New York (1885). Publishes Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs (1885).

  1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court published.

  1891–94 Travels and lives in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, with frequent business trips to the United States. Henry H. Rogers, vice-president of Standard Oil, undertakes to salvage Clemens’s fortunes. In 1894 Webster and Co. declares
bankruptcy, and on Rogers’s advice Clemens abandons the Paige machine. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson published serially and as a book in 1894.

  1895 In August starts an around-the-world lecture tour to raise money, accompanied by Olivia and Clara; lectures en route to the Pacific Coast and then in Australia and New Zealand.

  1896 Lectures in India, Ceylon, and South Africa. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc published. On 18 August Susy dies from meningitis in Hartford. Jean is diagnosed with epilepsy. Resides in London.

  1897 Following the Equator published in London and Hartford. Lives in Weggis (Switzerland) and Vienna.

  1898 Pays his creditors in full. Lives in Vienna and nearby Kaltenleutgeben.

  1899–1901 Resides in London, with stays at European spas. The family returns to the United States in October 1900, living at 14 West 10th Street, New York, then in Riverdale in the Bronx. Publishes “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (February 1901).

  1902 Makes last visit to Hannibal and St. Louis. Olivia’s health deteriorates severely. Isabel V. Lyon, hired as her secretary, is soon secretary to Clemens.

  1903 Moves family to rented Villa di Quarto in Florence. Harper and Brothers acquires exclusive rights to all Mark Twain’s work.

  1904 Begins dictating autobiography to Lyon; Jean types up her copy. Olivia dies of heart failure in Florence on 5 June. Family returns to the United States. Clemens leases a house at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York.