Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

  321.7–8 nine years that we spent in poverty and debt] Clemens paid his debts in full in 1898, with the proceeds from his 1895–96 world lecture tour and the book based on it, Following the Equator (see “Something about Doctors,” note at 190.10–12).

  321.18 As I have already said in an earlier chapter] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 13 January 1906.

  321.25–27 her father’s house in Elmira, New York . . . with the whole Langdon family] Jervis Langdon (1809–70), a native of New York State, married Olivia Lewis in 1832, and the pair settled in Elmira in 1845. He became prosperous in the lumber business and then wealthy in the coal trade, which he entered in 1855. His extensive operations included mines in Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, and a huge rail and shipping network supplying coal to western New York State, Chicago, and the Far West. An ardent abolitionist, Jervis Langdon served as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, and counted Frederick Douglass, whom he had helped to escape from slavery, among his friends. He died in 1870 of stomach cancer, leaving bequests totaling a million dollars. Olivia’s inheritance was to remain central in the life of the Clemens family. Charles Jervis Langdon (1849–1916), Olivia’s brother, succeeded his father in the management of the family’s coal business; he also exercised considerable responsibility for his sister’s inherited investments. In 1880 he served on Governor Alonzo B. Cornell’s staff as commissary general, and was for many years one of Elmira’s police commissioners (24 and 25 Aug 1868 to JLC and family, L2, 244 n. 3; “In Memoriam,” Elmira Saturday Evening Review, 13 Aug 1870, 5; Towner 1892, 615).

  321.28–29 I was to be one of the editors of the Buffalo Express, and a part owner of the paper] With the financial assistance of Jervis Langdon, Clemens purchased a one-third interest in the Buffalo Express in August 1869, becoming at the same time “associate editor” (MTB, 1:385–89; see 14 Aug 1869 to Bliss, L3, 296 n. 2).

  321.30 a friend] John D. F. Slee, chief officer of Langdon’s coal firm, played a part in the “conspiracy” described by Clemens. In December 1869 Slee wrote to Clemens that “boarding anyhow is miserable business” but that he had arranged rooms in a respectable boardinghouse and would appreciate advance notice of the couple’s arrival, that he might “meet and accompany you to your ‘Quarters’ ” (Slee to SLC, 27 Dec 1869, CU-MARK; 27 Feb 1869 to OLL, 24 and 25 Nov 1869 to OLL, L3, 119 n. 4, 406 n. 1).

  321.37–38 Delaware Avenue, and had laid in a cook] The Clemenses’ new house in Buffalo was at 472 Delaware Avenue. The cook and housekeeper, Ellen White, was a former Langdon family servant (6 Feb 1870 to Bowen, L4, 54–55 n. 5).

  322.3 So the comedy ended very pleasantly] For other accounts of the Clemenses’ wedding and the surprise in Buffalo, see the link note following 28–31 Jan 1870 to Twichell, L4, 42–49.

  322.27 Patrick’s daughter Nancy] Anne (Nancy) McAleer, born in 1883, was a near contemporary of Jean’s (Hartford Census 1900, 8B; Hartford Census 1910, 7B).

  322.31–42 Patrick McAleer, faithful and valued friend of our family . . . served it thirty-six years] McAleer (1844?-1906) was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, and emigrated to America at age sixteen. He married Mary Reagan of Elmira, New York; they had nine children, one of whom evidently died in infancy (“Coachman Many Years for Mark Twain,” Hartford Courant, 26 Feb 1906, 6; Hartford Census 1910, 7B). McAleer moved with the Clemenses from Buffalo to Hartford, working for them, almost without interruption, until 1891. He returned briefly to the Clemens household in Dublin, New Hampshire, in 1905; in a letter of 20 May 1905 to his daughter Clara, Clemens described his delight in seeing him again:

  And Patrick! He is a vision out of a time when your mother was a girl & I a lad! And what a pleasure he is to my eye, & how the view of him fits in with the rest of the scenery! The same, same Patrick—trim, shapely, alert, competent for all things, taking two steps to any other man’s one, not a gray hair nor any other sign of age about him, & his voice that same old pleasant sound! He served us twenty-two years & is a youth yet. (MoHM)

  323.13–14 They lost one . . . assistant editor of a Hartford daily paper] One of McAleer’s sons, Edward McAleer, a plumber, died in January 1905 at age thirty; nothing is known of a son who worked for a newspaper (“Killed by a Fall,” Hartford Courant, 30 Jan 1905, 5).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 2 February 1906

  324.32 her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Crane] Susan Langdon Crane (1836–1924) was born Susan Dean, but was orphaned at the age of four and adopted by the Langdon family. Although she was nearly ten years older than Olivia, her foster sister, they remained close throughout their lives. In 1858 she married Theodore Crane (1831–89), who later became a partner in the Langdon family coal business. The Cranes lived at Quarry Farm, outside Elmira. The uncle present during Susy’s final illness was Charles Langdon, not Crane, who had died some years earlier (19 Aug 1896 to OLC [1st], CU-MARK, in LLMT, 321–22; Notebook 39, TS p. 55, CU-MARK).

  325.15–25 In one of her own books I find some verses . . . whispered “I am rest.”] As Clemens later discovered (see AD, 22 Jan 1907), this poem was not written by Susy but by Canadian poet William Wilfred Campbell (1860?–1918). Entitled “Love,” it was first published in the October 1891 issue of the Century Magazine, where Susy most likely saw it (Campbell 1891).

  326.13–21 Miss Foote (the governess) had been teaching her . . . God and a heaven—or something better] Since about 1880 Susy and Clara’s Hartford governess had been Lilly Gillette Foote (1860–1932), a “recent graduate of Cambridge University’s Newnham College, . . . worldly, well-travelled, and socially progressive,” and also “the niece of Harriet Foote Hawley, one of the five Hartford women who in October 1880 founded the Connecticut Indian Association, a female native rights advocacy organization” (Salsbury 1965, 426; Driscoll 2005, 8). Clemens was not above learning something from his daughter and her governess. In 1884 he extensively annotated Richard Irving Dodge’s Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years’ Personal Experience among the Red Men of the Great West (Dodge 1883), saying at one point that “The Indian’s bad God is the twin of our only God; his good God is better than any heretofore devised by man.” Also: “Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge.” And: “We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him—how much higher and finer is the Indian’s God” (HH&T, 90; quoted in Driscoll 2005, 5).

  326.22–23 I wrote down this pathetic prayer . . . children’s sayings] In 1881 Clemens did indeed record this exchange in “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants)”:

  Susie (9 yrs old,) had been sounding the deeps of life, & pondering the result. Meantime the governess had been instructing her about the American Indians. One day Mamma, with a smitten conscience, said—

  “Susie, I have been so busy that I haven’t been in at night lately to hear you say your prayers. Maybe I can come in tonight. Shall I?”

  Susie hesitated, waited for her thought to formulate itself, then brought it out:

  “Mamma, I don’t pray as much as I used to—& I don’t pray in the same way. Maybe you would not approve of the way I pray now.”

  “Tell me about it, Susie.”

  “Well, mamma, I don’t know that I can make you understand; but you know, the Indians thought they knew: & they had a great many gods. We know, now, that they were wrong. By & by, maybe it will be found out that we are wrong, too. So, now, I only pray that there may be a God—& a heaven—OR SOMETHING BETTER.”

  It was a philosophy that a sexagenarian need not have been ashamed of having evolved. (SLC 1876–85, 89–90)

  327.11–13 She had written a play . . . friends in our house in Hartford] Susy’s play, entitled A Love-Chase, was performed in the drawing room of the Hartford house on Thanksgiving night 1889, and repeated twice on later occasions. The cast included Susy, Clara, Jean, and Margaret (Daisy) Warner (1872–1931)
, the daughter of George and Lilly Warner (3 Dec 1889 to Baxter, NN-BGC). Clemens gave a fuller version in “Memorial to Susy”:

  When Susy was nearly seventeen she wrote a play herself—a lovely little fancy, formed upon Greek lines. There were songs in it, & music, & several dances. There were only five characters: Music, Art, Literature, Cupid, & a shepherd lad. Susie was Music, Margaret Warner was Literature, Clara was Art, Fanny Frees was the shepherd lad, & our Jean—what there was of her—was Cupid. She was very little. Susy was a vision. I can see her yet as she parted the curtains & stood there, young, fresh, aglow with excitement, & clothed in a tumbling cataract of pink roses. (SLC 1896–1906, 42–43)

  327.14 George] George H. Warner (1833–1919) worked for the American Emigrant Company, which helped foreign settlers. His wife, Lilly (1835–1915), was the former Elisabeth Gillette (link note following 7 Mar 1872 to OC, L5, 56).

  327.19 Mrs. Cheney, I think, author of the biography of her father] Mary Bushnell Cheney published Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell in 1880.

  327.31 In Munich] The Clemens family—Samuel, Olivia, Susy, and Clara, with family friend Clara Spaulding and the children’s nurse Rosina Hay—toured Europe in 1878–79, visiting Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, and England. They were in Munich from November 1878 through February 1879. This European tour furnished Clemens with material for his travel book A Tramp Abroad (N&J2, 3, 41–43, 48).

  327.36 she was “never the one that ate, but always the one that was eaten.”] Clemens recorded Susy’s comment in his manuscript “A Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susie & ‘Bay’ Clemens (Infants),” where it is given in Susy’s “exact language”: “But mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear but always the PERSON” (SLC 1876–85, 31).

  327.38 When she was six and her sister Clara four] In “Small Foolishnesses” Clemens dated this incident 7 December 1880, at which time Susy was eight, and Clara six (SLC 1876–85,86).

  328.12 Marjorie Fleming] Marjorie (properly Marjory) Fleming, born in Kirkcaldy (Fife, Scotland) in 1803, died of spinal meningitis at the age of eight, leaving behind her a small but precocious body of writing: letters, journals, and poems. In 1858, H. B. Farnie published selections from her works in Pet Marjorie: A Story of Child Life Fifty Years Ago. Dr. John Brown (1810–82), an Edinburgh physician and man of letters best known for his dog story “Rab and His Friends” (1858), published an elaborate essay inspired by Farnie’s book in 1863, developing a sentimental and undocumented friendship between Marjory and Sir Walter Scott. Brown’s essay was frequently reprinted in book form. When the Clemenses befriended Dr. Brown in 1873, he gave Olivia a copy. Clemens’s enthusiasm for this literary child heroine found belated expression in his magazine article “Marjorie Fleming, the Wonder Child” (SLC 1909d). Susy might have reminded Clemens of Marjory for reasons beyond their connection with Dr. Brown: both were precocious literary talents, both died of meningitis, and Clemens was now engaged in publishing Susy’s juvenilia (Fleming 1935, xiii–xxii; Farnie 1858; OLC and SLC to Langdon, 2 and 6 Aug 1873, L5, 428–29 n. 2; John Brown 1863a, 1863b; Gribben 1980, 1:87).

  328.16 In 1873 . . . we arrived in Edinburgh] The Clemens family—with Clara Spaulding, Clemens’s secretary (Samuel C. Thompson), and Susy’s nursemaid (Nellie)—arrived in London in May 1873 expecting to stay in England until October. Clemens was greatly lionized, and his social schedule left the family little time for sightseeing, leisure, and the collection of materials for a book. Clemens wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks on 6 July: “We seem to see nothing but English social life; we seem to find no opportunity to see London sights. . . . nothing, in fact, to make a book of”; and to Warner he complained, “We only dine. We do nothing else.” For relief, they decided to “ ‘do’ Scotland,” and went to Edinburgh (L5: 12 May 1873 to Redpath, 364; OLC and SLC to Langdon, 17 May 1873, 366–67; 6 July 1873 to Fairbanks, 402; 10? July 1873 to Warner, 411).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 5 February 1906

  328.30–33 Mr. Douglas, the publisher . . . the support of himself and his maiden sister] Brown suffered from depression. On 28 February 1876 George Barclay wrote to Clemens that Brown’s health had “so completely given way under the strain of professional practice, as to make in the opinion of his friends more than doubtful whether Dr Brown will ever be able safely to attempt regular practice as a physician again” (CU-MARK). The friends who took it upon themselves to raise the fund were headed by Barclay and Edinburgh publisher David Douglas. For his part, Clemens gave a public reading with the proceeds going (confidentially) to Brown. In a letter of 5 May, Barclay acknowledged receipt of £40 from Clemens, adding that almost £7,000 had been raised and that Brown had announced his retirement. That same year Brown was awarded a royal pension “for distinguished literary eminence” (CU-MARK). Brown’s sister, Isabella Cranston Brown (1812–88), had managed his household since the marriage of his daughter in 1866 (17 Mar 1876 to Redpath, n. 2, Letters 1876–1880; OLC and SLC to Langdon, 2 and 6 Aug 1873, L5, 427, 429 n. 3).

  329.11–12 “Who is it? Some one you know?” He said “No, a dog I don’t know.”] This anecdote comes from Elizabeth T. McLaren’s memoir, Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella: Outlines. This little book was published in 1889 by Brown’s half-brother, Alex. Olivia’s copy, signed and dated 1890, is in the Mark Twain Papers (McLaren 1889, 14).

  329.14 her big big brown eyes] In the first typescript of this dictation, Susy’s eyes are “blue”; Clemens apparently revised that to “brown,” the reading in the second typescript (his actual inscription is now illegible). He complained that he was almost never able to recall the eye color of others, even those closest to him. On one occasion—which he recalled took place in 1886—it was discovered that he did not know the eye color of any of his three daughters (see AD, 8 Nov 1906).

  329.30 that anecdote . . . told some hundreds of times on the platform] Clemens frequently told the “whistling story” in his 1871–74 lectures, and on other occasions as well; he had Colonel Sellers tell it in act four of the Gilded Age play. He usually attributed the story to Artemus Ward (SLC 1874a; link note following 10 Nov 1875 to Seaver, L6, 590–91).

  331.12 sale of Joseph by his brethren] Genesis 37.

  331.21–27 Once when Susy . . . crooked teeth and spectacles!] The version of this anecdote set down at the time in Clemens’s “Record of Small Foolishnesses” reveals that the “guest” was actually Olivia, and gives Susy’s exclamation as “I wish I could have crooked teeth & spectacles, like mamma!” (SLC 1876–85, 37).

  331.31 what the shade of Burns would think] See Robert Burns, “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church” (Burns 1969, 157):

  O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us

  To see oursels as others see us!

  It wad frae monie a blunder free us

  An’ foolish notion . . .

  332.9–22 Schloss gardens . . . “The ‘Slosh,’ at Heidelberg.”] The Schloss (castle) overlooking the town of Heidelberg has been a picturesque ruin since the eighteenth century. Adjoining it are the extensive Schloss Gardens, a place of public recreation, where Susy saw the “wild” snails. The first-class Schloss-Hotel—the subject of the interpolated anecdote—was on a hill above the castle, and was directly connected to the Schloss Gardens; the Clemenses stayed there from May through late July 1878. Clemens wrote about these places in chapters 2 and 4 and appendix B of A Tramp Abroad (Baedeker 1880, 226–29; N&J2, 79 n. 74).

  334.11 sicisiors] Clemens reacted to Olivia’s spelling of this word in his letter of 17 January 1869: “ ‘Sicisiors’ don’t spell scissors, you funny little orthographist” (L3, 45). Olivia’s own letter is not extant. Some of Clemens’s remarks here about spelling, and about Susan Crane’s spelling in particular, recast material he had used long before at a spelling bee in 1875 (“Clemens’s ‘Spelling Match’ Speech,” L6, 659–63).

  Autobiographical Dictation, 6 February 1906

  334.36–37 I took to the platform again . . .
in company with George W. Cable] From 1874 to 1884 Clemens made no lecture tours, giving only isolated readings (Fatout 1976, 651–56). His tour with George Washington Cable extended from November 1884 through February 1885.

  335.3 General Grant has actually concluded to write his autobiography] See “About General Grant’s Memoirs.”

  335.8–9 took her to see him . . . I will return to it by and by] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 26 February 1906.

  335.18–21 At once the curtain was drawn . . . Susy Clemens, arrayed in the silks and satins of the prince] The first performance of the family’s Prince and the Pauper play took place on 14 March 1885, after the Clemens-Cable lecture tour had ended. For Susy’s own account of the play and its preparation, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 8 August 1906 (14 Mar 1885 to Pond, NN-BGC).

  335.28–32 George . . . had been born a slave, in Maryland . . . body-servant to General Devens all through the war] George Griffin (1849?-97) was the Clemens family’s butler from at least 1875 until their removal to Europe in 1891. He was born in Virginia, not Maryland; during the Civil War he served General Charles Devens (1820–91). After leaving the Clemens family he moved to New York City, where, according to Clemens, he became a waiter at the Union League Club and did business as a private banker (4 Nov 1875 to Howells, L6, 583 n. 5; Grace King 1932, 86; SLC 1906a, 21–23).