Autobiography of Mark Twain (11 page)

FIGURE 11
. Manuscript page 50, section II of “As from the Grave,” which Clemens first numbered 3 and later changed to 50.

FIGURE 12
. Manuscript page 51, section III of “As from the Grave,” which Clemens first numbered 4 and later changed to 51.

FIGURE 13
. Manuscript page 52, “Here begin the Florentine Dictations,” which Clemens first numbered 48 and later changed to 52 when he inserted the four-page
“PREFACE
. As from the Grave.”

We now understand why there are often two, three, or even four nearly identical typescripts for the January through August 1906 Autobiographical Dictations. The resolution of this first part of the textual mystery shows, among other things, that TS1 is the primary source for the text of those dictations, and that when parts of TS1 are lost, the missing text can be reliably restored from either TS2 or TS4, because they were created by copying TS 1 before the losses occurred. Our understanding of the typescripts also helps to explain the multiple inscriptions on so many of their pages: they are the traces left behind by the editors and typists who collaborated with Clemens in 1906–9, and by the editors who published parts of the autobiography after his death, from Paine to DeVoto. The four typescript pages reproduced in facsimile in
figures 14
–
17
illustrate some of the many hands that had to be identified and, above all, distinguished from Clemens’s own hand.

To recapitulate: by 21 June Clemens had read through and corrected all of TS1 that Hobby had so far typed (over nine hundred pages, probably through the dictation for 20 June 1906).
⁸⁷
He had reviewed his earlier manuscripts and selected at least those he wanted to begin with (he would later select several more, inserting them in later dictations). And he had written the title page and the several prefaces to frame those early pieces and introduce the 1906 dictations. Hobby began to create TS2, and an unidentified typist started TS4, probably as soon as Hobby made the revised TS1 available.

With all that in train, Clemens left Dublin on 26 June to be away for a month, in Boston and New York City, occasionally visiting Henry Rogers at his home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and joining him on his yacht, the
Kanawha
. Following Rogers’s advice, he met several times with the Harper executives and lawyers in order to resolve their mutual disagreements about the recent republication of
Mark Twain’s Library of Humor
. While in New York he also met with S. S. McClure and left with him some pages from the dictations about Susy—probably those of 2–7 February. McClure wrote Clemens about them on 2 July:

This is not a business letter it is a love-letter. I read the wonderful chapters of your autobiography all are wonderful, but the chapters about the dear dear child are the finest I have ever read in literature

I wept & loved & suffered & enjoyed

FIGURE 14
. The first page of the Autobiographical Dictation of 11 January 1906 (TS2, 178). Clemens wrote in ink at the top of the page and in the left margin, and crossed out the entire page. The “$3-Dog” (which he suggested as part “II” of a
Review
installment) is from AD, 3 Oct 1907. David Munro, a
Review
editor, wrote the title, the author’s name, and an instruction to include the “Prefatory note as usual.” “1877” is in an unidentified hand. The excerpt was published in December 1907 (NAR 25), typeset directly from this page.

FIGURE 15
. The first page of the Autobiographical Dictation of 12 January 1906 (TS2, 199). Clemens noted in ink in the left margin: “None of this is printable while I am alive. It is too personal. . . . Leave it till I am dead, then print
all
of it some day. SLC.” In pencil in the right margin, he wrote, “
USE ONLY THE DREAM
.” Stenographer Josephine Hobby wrote “Auto. Part” in the center and Harvey, editor of the
Review
, wrote inclusive page numbers “199 to 242” at the top right. Paine, who in early 1907 helped Clemens prepare a section for publication in the
Review
, wrote in the top left corner, and later added (in blue pencil), “Copied for use”—referring to another typescript, TS3, prepared from this one to serve as printer’s copy for the excerpt, which was published in the
Review
for 19 April 1907 (NAR 16).

FIGURE 16
. The first page of the Autobiographical Dictation of 7 March 1906 (TS1, 419). Clemens wrote “Follow Susy’s spelling & punctuation always. SLC” at the top left; inserted the head “
From Susy’s Biography
” (twice); and noted that the extracts were to be set “solid” (i.e., with reduced line spacing). Another typescript, TS3, was prepared from this one to serve as printer’s copy for an excerpt published in the
Review
for 16 November 1906 (NAR 6). The rest of the writing is by Paine, who used this typescript to prepare his 1924 edition (
MTA
, 2:166–72), from which he omitted all of page 420 and most of page 421. He cut a strip from the bottom of page 421 and pasted it to this page (covering part of the text), crossed out the second heading for Susy’s biography, and altered Clemens’s “solid” to “smaller.”

FIGURE 17
. The fourth page of the Autobiographical Dictation of 29 August 1906 (TS1, 1092). All of the revisions are in pencil, but only some of them are Clemens’s: DeVoto added his own before he published the dictation in
Mark Twain in Eruption
(243). They can all be correctly identified by examining the text of TS4, which followed only Clemens’s markings, and DeVoto’s book, which followed all of them. Clemens made no changes in the punctuation; he wrote “tell” and “imagined,” and underlined “I,” “himself,” and “she” to italicize them.

These chapters should be issued soon in a little book. It would be a classic for a thousand years, & it could later be published in the large book. I am off to Chicago tomorrow & back on the 9
^th
I wish I could print this wonderful thing in M
^c
Clure’s Magazine. It would civilize a nation. It will uplift the Sunday press.

Finally, with Harvey’s return from England in mid-July, the troublesome
Library of Humor
problem was resolved and Clemens was able to return to Dublin on 25 July.
⁸⁸

Clemens had already published several essays in Harvey’s
North American Review:
“To the Person Sitting in Darkness” and “To My Missionary Critics” (1901) as well as his satirical commentary on Christian Science (1902–3). His first impulse had been to sell Harvey selections from the autobiography to go into
Harper’s Weekly
(which Harvey also edited), a much more widely read journal than the
Review
. But when Harvey finally made the twice-postponed visit to Dublin, arriving late on 31 July, he had big plans for the
Review
.
⁸⁹
He promptly immersed himself in the autobiography, and by the time he left Dublin on 4 August he and Clemens had agreed on what would become a sixteen-month series in the
Review
. “I like
this
arrangement,” Clemens confided to his friend Mary Rogers (Henry’s daughter-in-law), even as Harvey departed, “& so will Mr. Rogers; but he didn’t much like the idea of M
^c
Clure’s newspaper syndicate, & I ceased to like it myself & stopped the negociations before I left New York.”
⁹⁰
As Clemens wrote to Clara on 3 August, he was impressed by Harvey’s “great plan: to turn the North American Review into a
fortnightly
the 1
^st
of Sept, introduce into it a purely
literary
section, of high class, & in other ways make a great & valuable periodical of it.” He was also clearly flattered by Harvey’s response to his text: