Autobiography of Mark Twain (126 page)

At your meeting New York will speak its word for the blind, and when New York speaks, the world listens. The true message of New York is not the commercial ticking of busy telegraphs, but the mightier utterances of such gatherings as yours. Of late our periodicals have been filled with depressing revelations of great social evils. Querulous critics have pointed to every flaw in our civic structure. We have listened long enough to the pessimists. You once told me you were a pessimist, Mr. Clemens; but great men are usually mistaken about themselves. You are an optimist. If you were not, you would not preside at the meeting. For it is an answer to pessimism. It proclaims that the heart and the wisdom of a great city are devoted to the good of mankind, that in this the busiest city in the world no cry of distress goes up, but receives a compassionate and generous answer. Rejoice that the cause of the blind has been heard in New York; for the day after, it shall be heard round the world.

Yours sincerely,
Helen Keller

^*
Correction (1906)—it was above 100,000 it appears.

^*
Raymond was playing “Colonel Sellers” in about 1876 and along there. About twenty years later Mayo dramatized “Pudd’nhead Wilson” and played the title rôle very delightfully.

^*
100,000 acres.

^*
May 20, 1906. i recall it now—MacCrellish. M. T.

^*
With the pen, I mean. This Autobiography is dictated, not written.

*
See “Old Times on the Mississippi.”

*
May 25
. It did remain—until day before yesterday; then I gave it a final and vigorous reading—
aloud
—and dropped straight back to my former admiration of it. M. T.

*
Jan. 11, ’06
. It is long ago, but it plainly means Blaine. M. T.

†
Jan. 11, ’06
. I can’t remember his name. It began with K, I think. He was one of the American revisers of the New Testament, and was nearly as great a scholar as Hammond Trumbull.

*
Augusto, 1870—S.L.C.

*
I was his publisher. I was putting his “Personal Memoirs” to press at the time. S.L.C.

*
Inventor of a type-setting machine of a most ingenious and marvelous character. There is but one; it is in Cornell University: preserved as a curiosity. It is all of that.

These notes are intended to clarify and supplement the autobiographical writings and dictations in this volume by identifying people, places, and incidents, and by explaining topical references and literary allusions. In addition, they attempt to point out which of Clemens’s statements are contradicted by historical evidence, providing a way to understand more fully how his memories of long-past events and experiences were affected by his imagination and the passage of time. Although some of the notes contain cross-references to texts or notes elsewhere in the volume, the Index is an indispensable tool for finding information about a previously identified person or event.

All references in the notes are keyed to this volume by page and line: for example, 1.1 means page 1, line 1 of the text. All of Clemens’s text is included in the line count (except for the main titles of pieces); excluded are the editorial headnotes in the first section, “Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations.” Most of the source works are cited by an author’s name and a date, a short title, or an abbreviation. Works by members of the Clemens family may be found under the writer’s initials: SLC, OLC (Olivia), OSC (Susy), and CC (Clara). All abbreviations, authors, and short titles used in citations are fully defined in References. Most citations include a page number (“
L1
, 263,” or “Angel 1881, 345”), but citations to works available in numerous editions may instead supply a chapter number or its equivalent, such as a book or act number. All quotations from holograph documents are transcribed verbatim from the originals (or photocopies thereof), even when a published form—a more readily available source—is also cited for the reader’s convenience. The location of every unique document or manuscript is identified by the standard Library of Congress abbreviation, or the last name of the owner, all of which are defined in References.

61.1–3 monster tract of land . . . was purchased by my father . . . seventy-five thousand acres at one purchase] Although John Marshall Clemens may have acquired a tract as large as forty thousand acres in a single transaction, he also bought numerous smaller parcels, beginning as early as 1826 and continuing until at least 1841. In 1857, ten years after his death, the family had ownership records for twenty-four tracts of unknown acreage. After surveying the land in 1858, Orion concluded that he could establish title to some 30,000 acres, less than half of the 75,000 acres that Clemens estimates here.

61.1 my father] See the Appendix “Family Biographies” (pp. 654-57) for information about Clemens’s immediate family.

62.28–29 the great financial crash of ’34, and in that storm my father’s fortunes were wrecked] President Andrew Jackson’s attack on the second Bank of the United States precipitated a money crisis in 1834. Many state banks were unable to meet the demand for loans, which caused numerous businesses to fail. John Clemens, who belonged to the Whig party (formed in opposition to the Jacksonian Democrats), may well have felt the effects of this economic downturn (Wecter 1952, 36–37).

62.38–39 candidate for county judge, with a certainty of election] Shortly before his death Clemens did declare his candidacy for office, but it was for the position of clerk of the circuit court, not for “county judge” (
Inds
, 309–11; see also AD, 28 Mar 1906, where Clemens mistakenly recalled that his father had “just been elected”).

62.41–63.1 “going security” for Ira —— . . . took the benefit of the new bankrupt law]

In his manuscript, Clemens first wrote Ira Stout’s full name, then—in the same ink—substituted dashes for his surname. John Marshall Clemens had dealings with Ira Stout, a land speculator, in late 1839. He purchased Hannibal property from Stout, at an inflated value, which he had to sell at a loss in 1843 to pay his creditors. The transaction by which John Clemens became responsible for Stout’s debts has not been identified. Clemens also mentioned Stout’s perfidy in 1897 in “Villagers of 1840–3,” and again in his Autobiographical Dictation of 28 March 1906 (
Inds
, 104, 310, 349–50). The federal “bankrupt law” of 1841 enabled debtors, for the first time, to escape payment of their debts, while providing for little or no compensation of creditors. It was repealed two years later.

63.10–11 After my father’s death . . . on a temporary basis] When John Marshall Clemens died in March of 1847, the Clemenses were living with Dr. Orville Grant’s family in a house at Hill and Main. They remained there for several months before moving to the “temporary” quarters, which have not been identified. Eventually they returned to the house that their father had built in late 1843 or early 1844—the “Boyhood Home” that still stands at 206 Hill Street (Wecter 1952, 102, 113, 121; AD, 2 Dec 1906).

63.11–12 My brother . . . bought a worthless weekly newspaper] Orion began the weekly Hannibal
Western Union
in mid-1850, and within a year bought the Hannibal
Journal
, publishing the first issue of the
Journal and Western Union
in September 1851. He edited the combined paper, employing Clemens as his assistant for much of the time, until September 1853, when he sold it and moved to Muscatine, Iowa (link note preceding 24 Aug 1853 to JLC,
L1
, 1–2;
Inds
, 311).

63.14–16 but we were disappointed in a sale . . . decided to sell all or none] Nothing is known about this potential deal. In 1850 Arnold Buffum of the Tennessee Land Office, a land agency in New York, suggested the land be offered for ten cents an acre, but no sale took place (Buffum’s letter does not survive, but is described in
MTBus
, 17). Clemens claimed that on two later occasions he negotiated sales of the land which Orion rejected. In 1865 a buyer agreed
to pay $200,000 for an unspecified number of acres, intending to settle European immigrants on it to grow grapes and produce wine; Orion’s “temperance virtue” quashed that deal (AD, 5 Apr 1906; 13 Dec 1865 to OC and MEC,
L1
326–27). Then in 1869, Jervis Langdon offered $30,000 in cash and stock, but Orion again demurred, citing his fear that Clemens would “unconsciously cheat” his future father-in-law (9 Nov 1869 to PAM,
L3
, 388–89 n. 2). Exasperated by Orion’s scruples, Clemens renounced his own share, and by 1870 wanted nothing more to do with “that hated property” (9 Sept 1870 to OC,
L4
, 193). Orion henceforth assumed all responsibility for it. Over many years, Orion disposed of the land, either through his own efforts or through hired agents, both in large parcels (ten thousand acres) and in small ones (fewer than three hundred acres). Some of it was sold for cash—of unknown amounts—and some was traded for other property. At least one unscrupulous buyer failed to pay at all. Ultimately, the proceeds may have barely covered the cost of the property taxes. Orion regretfully acknowledged his failure in an 1878 letter to his sister and mother: “I am so sorry to hear you are cramped for means,” he wrote, “it gave me another twinge of conscience that I fooled away the Tennessee land, and some of your money with it” (OC to PAM and JLC, 2 Nov 1878, CU-MARK; OC to SLC, 4 Nov 1880, CU-MARK; Wecter 1952, 31–32, 278 n. 9; also the following documents provided courtesy of Barbara Schmidt:
Fentress County Deeds
1820–48, Vol. A:161, 236, 244, 288, 293, 335;
Fentress County Land Grants
, Book T:46; “Declaration” with “Exhibits 1–6,” filed 15 May 1907, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 1907–9).

64.20 My uncle, John A. Quarles] John Adams Quarles (1802–76) was married to Martha Ann Lampton, with whom he had ten children. She was the younger sister of Clemens’s mother. He settled in Florida, Missouri, in the mid-1830s, where he became a prosperous merchant and farmer. After the Clemens family moved to Hannibal in 1839, Clemens spent his summers at the Quarles farm, from about age seven until he was eleven or twelve (
Inds
, 342). For a longer reminiscence of life on the farm see “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It].”

64.21 “bit” calicoes] Presumably calicoes were sold at the rate of one “bit” (one-eighth of a dollar) per yard (Ramsay and Emberson 1963, 21).

65.18 my father owned slaves] In about 1833 John Marshall Clemens bought “one negro man” from Rawley Chapman (b. 1793) in Tennessee—his only documented slave purchase. The family also owned a woman named “Jenny,” who had been given to Clemens’s parents in about 1825. Clemens recalled that she was the “only slave we ever owned in my time” (
Inds
, 327; record of bill of sale,
Fentress County Deeds
, Vol. A:233). See “Jane Lampton Clemens” (
Inds
, 82–92) for a fuller discussion of the family’s attitude toward slavery.

65.20 “stogy” shoes] A rough heavy kind of shoe; the name is supposedly derived from “Conestoga,” a town in Pennsylvania.

The Chicago G.A.R. Festival

67
title
The Chicago G.A.R. Festival] More properly, the “Thirteenth Annual Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee.” The G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) was a fraternal organization of all Union veterans, and one of the sponsors of this nearly week-long event in Chicago, which, as Clemens explains, was a celebration of the returning Grant “by the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee—the first army over which he had had command” (67.19–20).

67.2–3 first time I ever saw General Grant was in the fall or winter of 1866 at one of the receptions at Washington] Clemens misremembered the year of the reception: see the note at 67.6–13. Ulysses S. Grant (1822–85) graduated from West Point and served with distinction in the Mexican War, demonstrating remarkable courage and leadership qualities. He resigned his commission in 1854 and made a meager living as a farmer and merchant. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he reenlisted in the army, eventually emerging as the leading Union general. After Grant’s important victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, President Lincoln appointed him general-in-chief of all the Union armies, and in 1866 he received the title of General of the Army—a unique rank equivalent to a four-star general, previously awarded only to George Washington. As president of the United States for two terms, from 1869 to 1877, he failed to curb the widespread corruption in his administration but was not directly implicated in it. In the dictations that follow, Clemens describes Grant’s later years: his unsuccessful bid in 1880 for a third presidential term, his financial reverses, the writing and publication of his memoirs, and his final illness.

67.5 General Sheridan] Philip H. Sheridan (1831–88), a brilliant military strategist and one of the most respected Union generals, was, like Grant, a West Point graduate. After the Civil War he served in New Orleans, defeating a small French army stationed in Mexico, and then led campaigns against the Plains Indians. In 1888 he was made General of the Army, but died shortly thereafter. Later that year Clemens’s firm, Charles L. Webster and Company, published Sheridan’s
Personal Memoirs
.