Autobiography of Mark Twain (134 page)

129.17–18 Within a fortnight the most of them took ship ... I went in the same ship] The
Hornet
’s longboat landed on 15 June 1866; Clemens and the survivors departed Honolulu on the clipper
Smyrniote
on 19 July, more than a month later (
MTH
, 107 n. 5; 19 July 1866 to Damon,
L1
, 349 n. 2).

129.20–22 Samuel Ferguson ... Henry Ferguson ... a professor there] Samuel Ferguson (1837–66) and Henry Ferguson (1848–1917) were the sons of a New York businessman and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. Henry resumed his studies at Trinity College, Hartford, graduated in 1868, and was ordained an Episcopal priest. From 1883 to 1906 he held a professorship in history and political science at the college. Although Clemens and Henry Ferguson both lived in Hartford in the 1880s they seem not to have been in contact until Clemens published “My Debut as a Literary Person” in 1899 (Hartford
Courant:
“Death of a Trinity College Graduate,” 4 Oct 1866, 8; “Prof. Ferguson Dies at His Home,” 31 Mar 1917, 9). Clemens’s use of the Fergusons’ diaries proved somewhat troublesome. In early October 1899, shortly before the article appeared, Clemens wrote to Gilder, “Can’t you send to Professor Henry Ferguson, Trinity College, Hartford, & get him to photograph a page or two of Samuel Ferguson’s Diary for reproduction?” (Oct 1899 to Gilder, TxU-Hu). Ferguson declined. When the article was published Ferguson wrote to Clemens, objecting to the use of the diaries, and
Clemens offered to withdraw the piece from his forthcoming collection,
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
(SLC 1900b). Ferguson, somewhat mollified, asked that future reprintings disguise the real names of the crewmen, that he himself be less “distinctly identified,” and that his brother Samuel’s ailment be called “lung fever” (pneumonia) instead of “consumption” (tuberculosis) (Ferguson to SLC, 10 Nov 1899, CtY-BR, and 8 Dec 1899, CU-MARK; 20 Nov 1899 to Ferguson and 21 Dec 1899 to Ferguson, CtY-BR). Clemens honored these requests; he also softened the language about mutiny, insanity, and cannibalism. His revisions were reflected in the texts published in
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
and in a later reprinting,
My Début as a Literary Person with Other Essays and Stories
(SLC 1903a).

129.39 There was a cry of fire ... the vessel’s hours were numbered] The
Hornet
’s cargo was highly inflammable: it included 2,400 cases of kerosene and 6,200 boxes of candles (“Burning of the Ship Hornet,” New York
Times
, 22 Aug 1866, 2).

130.5 Portyghee] “Antonio Possene” (the name recorded by Captain Mitchell) was apparently from the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese colony since the fifteenth century (Mitchell 1866; “Burning of the Ship Hornet,” New York
Times
, 22 Aug 1866, 2).

130.16 soldiering] Malingering or shirking, more usually spelled as pronounced—“sogering” or “sodgering.”

130.21–22 Bowditch’s Navigator ... Nautical Almanac] The
New American Practical Navigator
, a manual of navigation, was first published by Nathaniel Bowditch in 1802.
The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac
has been published by the U.S. Naval Observatory since 1852.

130.26 forty-gallon “scuttle-butt,”] Potable water on a ship was stored in a scuttled butt—that is, a cask with a hole in it. “Scuttlebutt” came to mean “gossip” because of the drinkers’ conversations.

130.29–31 The captain and the two passengers kept diaries ... chance to copy the diaries] The journals of all three men are extant, but the copies that Clemens made on board the
Smyrniote
do not survive (Mitchell 1866, Henry Ferguson 1866, Samuel Ferguson 1866). Although the diary quotations included in the 1866
Harper’s
article (which he left virtually unaltered for the 1898 piece) were nearly all rephrased, abridged, or expanded, he did not invent any fictional embellishments.

131.26 Revillagigedo islands] An uninhabited archipelago roughly three hundred miles south-southwest of the tip of Baja California.

132.6–7 cobbling] Choppy.

132.14 Clipperton Rock] Clipperton Rock surmounts a coral atoll roughly seven hundred miles southwest of Acapulco.

132.25–26 the sun gives him a warning: “looking with both eyes, the horizon crossed thus X.”] Samuel Ferguson’s more explicit diary entry clarifies this remark: “Sun very hot indeed and gave me a warning to keep out of it in a very peculiar doubling of the sight with both eyes while with either one it seemed right. With both eyes the horizon crossed thus X” (Samuel Ferguson 1866, entry for 9 May).

132.42–133.1 The captain spoke pretty sharply ... remark in my old note-book] In his manuscript, Clemens began to quote the captain’s speech, and then canceled it: “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves that you have no proper thankfulness for the infinite mercies of God in these disciplinary days of sanctified peril.” This remark is not found in Clemens’s extant notebooks, but at least one notebook from this period is unrecovered.

133.2 third mate, in the hospital at Honolulu] The third mate—Clemens’s chief informant—was John S. Thomas, whom Clemens characterized in his Sacramento
Union
report as “a very intelligent and a very cool and self-possessed young man” who “kept a very accurate log of his remarkable voyage in his head” (
N&J1
, 100–102; SLC 1866c).

133.11–12 The chief mate was an excellent officer ... fine all-around man] The chief mate—Samuel F. Hardy of Chatham, Massachusetts—was responsible for starting the
Hornet
fire. Nevertheless, Clemens praised him generously throughout this account (SLC 1866c; “Burning of the Ship Hornet,” New York
Times
, 22 Aug 1866, 2; Mitchell 1866).

136.10–11 it brought Cox ... if it hadn’t, the diarist would never have seen the land again] See the note at 140.4–5.

137.22 I wrote an article ... urging temporary abstention from food] “Starvation” diets or, more usually,
near
-starvation diets were a feature of the nineteenth-century medical landscape. Since the 1880s Clemens had confidently recommended fasting as a cure for “any ordinary ailment.” The article he refers to here, “At the Appetite-Cure,” was published in the
Cosmopolitan
for August 1898 (SLC 1898b, 433; Ober 2003, 207–10).

138.4
a banished duke
—Danish] Clemens derived this information from Samuel Ferguson’s diary, which he quoted in his 1866
Harper’s
article: “We have here a man who might have been a Duke had not political troubles banished him from Denmark” (SLC 1866d, 109). There was but one Dane in the longboat; he recorded his name at the end of Samuel’s diary as “Carl Henrich Kaatmann, geboren Augustenborg” (Samuel Ferguson 1866, entry for 30 Dec). The claim of the Prince of Augustenborg to the Danish dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein sparked a European conflict that was widely reported in the 1860s (“What the European War Is About,”
Circular
3 [11 June 1866]: 102).

138.38–139.2 The isles we are steering for are put down in Bowditch ...
sailed straight over them
] Although Bowditch’s
Navigator
locates a “Cluster of Islands” at 16–17° N, 133–136° W, they do not exist. The
Hornet
survivors gave up their search for them on 7 June, when they were slightly west of those coordinates (Bowditch 1854, 375).

139.5 ten rations of water apiece] Captain Mitchell’s entry for 2 June actually reads “10 raisins apiece”; Clemens evidently misread it as “rations” and added “of water” to supply some kind of sense (Mitchell 1866).

140.4–5 Cox’s return ... the two young passengers would have been slain] The mention of James Cox is rendered somewhat cryptic by the omission of certain details. Here we are told that Cox’s return saved the captain and the passengers, but also that the crewmen resolved that they “would not kill” (140.26). Clemens’s 1866
Harper’s
article asserts that the men
were
in fact prepared to kill, and that only Cox’s warning, and his vigilance, prevented them. Some of the sailors planned

to watch until such time as the Captain might become worn out and fall asleep, and then kill him and the passengers. They were afraid of Ferguson’s pistol and the Captain’s hatchet, and laid many a plan for getting hold of these weapons. They told Cox ... they would kill him if he exposed them. He refused to join the conspiracy, and they said he should die; and so, after that, day after day and night after night, he did not go to sleep, but kept watch upon them in fear for his life. The Captain and passengers remained under arms, and watched also, but talked pleasantly, and gave no sign that they knew what was in the men’s minds. (SLC 1866d, 113)

Seaman Frederick Clough (“Fred,” 140.9)—implicated here in the “ugly talk” of mutiny and cannibalism—recalled these events rather differently in an article published in 1900: “We had almost reached the last chance then, and by this I mean the casting of lots for the sacrifice of one of us, so that the others might live to tell the story. To this agreement of a gamble for life or death all of us consented without the least hesitation” (Irvine 1900, 575). Captain Mitchell, for his part, noted laconically on 5 June: “A conspiracy formed to Murder me” (Mitchell 1866). According to a note made by Clemens while copying the diaries, “Capt. knew for days this murderous discontent was brewing by the distraught air of some of the men & the guilty look of others—& he staid on guard—slept no more—kept his hatchet hid & close at hand” (
N&J1
, 173).

140.27–28 ‘From plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder—and from sudden death: Good Lord deliver us!’] Henry quotes the Litany from the Book of Common Prayer.

141.17 soup-and-bouillé] Clemens explained this term in his original dispatch to the Sacramento
Union:

That last expression of the third mate’s occurred frequently during his narrative, and bothered me so painfully with its mysterious incomprehensibility, that at length I begged him to explain to me what this dark and dreadful “soup-and-bully” might be. With the Consul’s assistance he finally made me understand the French dish known as “soup bouillon” is put up in cans like preserved meats, and the American sailor is under the impression that its name is a sort of general title which describes any ... edible whatever which is hermetically sealed in a tin vessel, and with that high contempt for trifling conventionalities which distinguishes his class, he has seen fit to modify the pronunciation into “soup-and-bully.” (SLC 1866c)

144.8–10 rooster ... effort to do his duty once more, and died in the act] This account is at variance with Clemens’s 1866 report to the Sacramento
Union
, in which he wrote that the rooster “was transferred to the chief mate’s boat and sailed away on the eighteenth day”; his fate was therefore unknown. Frederick Clough, who was in the longboat, recalled that when the rooster “sang for the last time and died, he was cast into the sea” (SLC 1866c; Irvine 1900, 576).

144.19 If I remember rightly, Samuel Ferguson died soon after we reached San Francisco] Samuel died in San Francisco on 1 October 1866 (“Death of a Trinity College Graduate,” Hartford
Courant
, 4 Oct 1866, 8).

145.1 Mr. Greeley] Horace Greeley (1811–72) grew up in New Hampshire and Vermont. He left school at fourteen to help his father with farming and odd jobs, and at age fifteen was apprenticed to a printer. Over the succeeding years he developed his skills as a journalist, writing for numerous New York newspapers and journals. In 1841 he founded the New York
Tribune
and remained its editor until his death. Through his newspaper, which gained enormous national influence, he attacked slavery and poverty and championed the rights of African Americans, women, and the working class. He made a brief bid to enter politics, but suffered a crushing defeat by Grant in the presidential election of 1872 and died shortly thereafter.

146.1–5 I remember Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby (Locke) very well ... a most admirable hammering every week] David Ross Locke (1833–88) left school at an early age and was apprenticed to a printer, after which he worked on a succession of newspapers. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was the owner and editor of the Bucyrus (Ohio)
Journal
. It was not until a year later that he published his first satirical piece as Petroleum V. Nasby, an ignorant, bigoted, and boorish character who promoted liberal causes by seeming to oppose them. The popularity of the Nasby letters brought Locke to the attention of the proprietor of the Toledo
Blade
, who hired him as editor in 1865. Locke later became a part owner, and the Nasby letters, which he continued to write until shortly before his death, were an important feature of the weekly edition (
L3:
20 and 21 Jan 1869 to OLL, 56 n. 1; 10 Mar 1869 to OLL and Langdon, 160 n. 5; Austin 1965, 11–12; Marchman 1957).

146.5–7 his letters were copied everywhere ... copperheads] According to an obituary of Locke:

These political satires sprang at once into tremendous popularity. They were copied into newspapers everywhere, quoted in speeches, read around camp-fires of Union armies and exercised enormous influence in molding public opinion North in favor of vigorous prosecution of the war. Secretary Boutwell declared in a speech at Cooper Union, New York, at the close of the war that the success of the Union army was due to three causes—the army, the navy, and the Nasby letters.... These letters were a source of the greatest delight to President Lincoln, who always kept them in his table drawer for perusal at odd times. (“Death of D. R. Locke,” Washington
Post
, 16 Feb 1888, 4)