Autobiography of Mark Twain (138 page)

He was more restrained in the second letter, which he did send:

I am afraid you did not quite clearly understand me. The time-honored etiquette of the situation—new to you by reason of inexperience—is this: an author’s MS. is not open to any editor’s uninvited emendations. It must be accepted as it stands, or it must be declined; there is no middle course. Any alteration of it—even to a word—closes the incident, & that author & that editor can have no further literary dealings with each other. It was your right to say that the Introduction was not satisfactory to you, but it was not within your rights to contribute your pencil’s assistance toward making it satisfactory.

Therefore, even if you now wished to use my MS. in its original form, untouched, I could not permit it. Nor in any form, of course.

I shall be glad to have the original when convenient, but there is no hurry. When you return will answer quite well. If you have any copies of it—either amended or unamended—please destroy them, lest they fall into careless hands & get into print. Indeed I would not have that happen for anything in the world.

I am speaking in this very definite way because I perceive from your letter (notwithstanding what I said to you) that you still contemplate inserting in the book the Introduction, in some form or other. Whereas no line of it must be inserted in any form, amended or original. (CU-MARK)

Murray replied immediately, on 30 August, promising to return “all existing copies, including the original; and you may be sure that not a word of your MS shall be produced” (CU-MARK).

167.1 The “Edited” Introduction] At this point in his manuscript Clemens wrote, “Here insert the ‘edited’ Introduction.” To represent the introduction as revised by Murray, Clemens began with a clean typescript of his original introduction and copied onto it, by hand, about three-quarters of the markings that Murray had made on two different stages of the text. For the most part Clemens represented Murray’s revisions accurately, although he occasionally altered them, perhaps inadvertently. The revisions are shown here with diagonal slashes for deletions of single characters, horizontal rules for deletions of more than one character, and carets for inserted characters (for a full explanation of this transcription system, called “plain text,” see “Guide to Editorial Practice,”
L6
, 709–14).

179.34–36 your marginal remark ...
foreign to her character
] This remark of Murray’s
does not appear on any of the surviving typescripts of Clemens’s introduction. It may have been written on a now-lost carbon copy, or it could have been erased from an existing typescript: many of Murray’s penciled revisions were inexplicably erased, but are still faintly visible.

181.3 Dear Sir:—I have written a book] The author of this letter signed his name, “Hilary Trent,” and added a postscript notifying Clemens that his book,
Mr. Claghorn’s Daughter
, would “be sent you by the J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co.” Clemens omitted the signature and postscript when inserting the letter here. Trent’s 1903 novel blends domestic melodrama with an attack on the Westminster Confession of Faith, the creed of the American Presbyterian church—specifically what was controversially called its doctrine of “infant damnation” (see the note at 185.15–16). The publisher’s advertising claimed that Hilary Trent was “a well-known writer who conceals his identity under a nom-de-plume” (“Mr. Claghorn’s Daughter,” New York
Sun
, 23 May 1903, 7), but documentary and internal evidence indicates that he was R. M. Manley, a decidedly little-known writer who harbored strong feelings about the Westminster Confession (Manley 1903; Manley 1897; Manley to SLC, 29 Apr 1903 and 4 May 1903, CU-MARK).

185.15–16 revising the Confession of Faith ... chapters 3 and 10 of the Confession] The connection between Clemens’s screed on self-interest and the newspaper clippings that follow it is Presbyterian doctrine, the subject of Trent’s book (see the note at 181.3). In the late nineteenth century, American Presbyterians began to consider revisions to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Debate centered on chapter 3, which states that some souls have been predestined “unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death” (section 3); and chapter 10, which asserts that “elect infants” are saved, while infants (as well as adults) who are “not elected” cannot be saved (sections 3–4). Historically, this latter chapter has been interpreted as damning not only many Christian infants, but also all non-Christians (a fact which may bear upon Clemens’s inclusion of the clipping that follows, about the massacre of Russian Jews). In 1902, the year before the writing of the present essay, the Presbyterian church had adopted a statement endorsing a liberal construction of the disputed chapters; it was appended to the Confession in 1903 (Macpherson 1881, 48, 85–86; Briggs 1890, 21–22, 98–130; “Presbyterian Creed Revision Adopted,” New York
Times
, 23 May 1902, 5).

186.27 Westminster Catechism] The catechism based on the Westminster Confession would have been familiar to Clemens from his early religious training (see Fulton 2006, 140–55).

188.19–20 Dr. Meredith ... village of Hannibal] Dr. Hugh Meredith (1806–64), born in Pennsylvania, was a personal friend and business associate of Clemens’s father in Florida, Missouri, and then in Hannibal. The two men collaborated in planning improvements in both towns. Dr. Meredith joined the 1849 Gold Rush, but returned in early 1851. For several weeks
in the winter of 1851–52 he edited Orion Clemens’s Hannibal
Journal
while Orion attended to the family’s property in Tennessee (
Inds
, 335; Wecter 1952, 55; see AD, 28 Mar 1906).

188.21–22 I have already said ... furnished the drugs himself] See “My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It],” written in 1897–98 (215.3–6).

189.1 his own son Charles] Charles (b. 1833?) was the oldest of Dr. Meredith’s five children. He accompanied his father to the California gold fields, and later made a second trip west (
Inds
, 335).

189.21–22 our old family physician, Dr. Taft ... neglected successor] Cincinnatus A. Taft (1822–84) began practicing homeopathic medicine in Hartford in 1846, and became the Clemenses’ physician after they moved there in 1871. He was well loved by his patients; after his death Clemens praised him as a man “full of courteous grace and dignity” whose “heart was firm and strong ... and freighted with human sympathies” (18 July 1884 to the Editor of the Hartford
Courant
, CtHMTH; 17 Feb 1871 to JLC and family,
L4
, 333 n. 3). Taft’s “successor” has not been identified; the family did not find another satisfactory physician for several years (19 Apr 1888 to Langdon, CtHMTH).

189.25 Theron Wales] Theron A. Wales (b. 1842) received his medical degree in 1873 from the University of Pennsylvania, and immediately established a practice in Elmira. According to
A History of the Valley and County of Chemung
, his “superior literary attainments” earned him a “reputation as a writer upon various topics” (Towner 1892, “Personal References,” 133;
L4:
SLC and OLC to the Langdons, 9 Feb 1870, 68 n. 6; 22 Feb 1871 to OC, 335 n. 2).

189.37 our old ex-slave cook, Aunty Cord] Mary Ann (“Auntie”) Cord (1798–1888) was the cook at Quarry Farm, the Cranes’ property near Elmira. Thirteen years after she had been separated from her family by the slave market, she was miraculously reunited with her youngest son, who had escaped to Elmira and become a Union soldier. Clemens wrote a moving account of her history, “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It,” which appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly
in November 1874 (SLC 1874b; 2 Sept 1874 to Howells,
L6
, 219 n. 2).

190.10–12 I lectured every night for twenty-three nights ... ship at Vancouver] To recover financially from the failure of the Paige typesetting-machine venture, and the collapse of Charles L. Webster and Company in 1894, Clemens undertook a year-long world lecture tour in July 1895, accompanied by his wife and their daughter Clara. He opened in Cleveland, and made more than twenty appearances in the United States and Canada before embarking from Vancouver for Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, India, Mauritius, and South Africa. In July 1896 they returned to England, where Clemens wrote
Following the Equator
, based on the trip.

190.27–30 We were living in Berlin ... congestion of the wind’ard lung] The Clemenses sojourned in Berlin in the winter of 1891–92. Clemens lectured there on 13 January (the occasion has not been further identified), and wrote in his notebook, “Went to our cousin’s (Frau Generalin von Versen) ball, after the lecture; we all came home at 2 am., & I have been in bed ever since—three weeks—with congestion of lungs and influenza” (Notebook 31, TS p. 21, CU-MARK; see AD, 29 Mar 1906, note at 456.25–26).

190.39–42 Sidney Smith . . . I paid half the bill] Clemens wrote to Dr. Smith on 1 February 1896, complaining about his fee:

Twenty-five rupees per visit seems unaccountably large, & I have waited, in order to make some inquiries. I find from conversation with some of your well-to-do patients in Bombay that you charge them Rs. 10 per visit.

There may be some mistake somewhere & it may be that you can explain it. . . . Meantime I enclose cheque for Rs. 40 & will await an explanation of the seemingly extra charge. (CU-MARK)

[
Henry H. Rogers
] (
Source
: TS in CU-MARK, made in 1906 from a 1904 typescript [now lost] of Clemens’s dictation)

192.15–17 Standard Oil Trust . . . keeps them alive and going] From a small beginning as an oil investor, Rogers had advanced to a position of immense power and wealth. In 1890 he became a vice-president and a director of the Standard Oil Company, and his financial interests extended to natural gas, copper, steel, banking, and railroads. Although generous and amiable with his friends, he earned the sobriquet “hell hound” for his ruthless (and, by more rigorous standards, unethical) business practices (
HHR
, 2–7).

194.21 gas suit, wherein Mr. Rogers was sued for several millions of dollars] The lawsuit stemmed from a war for control of gas distribution in Boston that began in 1894. The principal combatants were Rogers, of Standard Oil, and J. Edward Addicks, of the Bay State Gas Company of Delaware (see the note at 196.40). In 1896 the Standard Oil interest won control over all the Boston gas companies, and Addicks abandoned the competition. In the ensuing years, however, a number of disputes developed over control of the various companies and the price of stocks traded in the consolidation transactions. The plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed in 1903, was the Bay State Gas Company. Among the defendants were the Massachusetts Gas Companies, a trust formed in 1902 that now controlled the industry in Boston; Kidder, Peabody and Company, the investment banking firm that handled the stock sales; and Henry H. Rogers. The plaintiff alleged that in 1902 some of the stocks were sold at artificially low prices, defrauding the Delaware Company and forcing it into a “fictitious default” (“Industrial Affairs,”
Wall Street Journal
, 17 June 1903, 5). One of the disputed transactions—the 1896 sale of his Brookline Gas Company—earned Rogers a $3 million profit, money that should have gone to investors. The case was not resolved until 1907, when Rogers agreed to return half of the $3 million (
HHR
, 76 n. 1, 306 n. 3; New York
Times
: “Standard Oil in Control,” 1 Nov 1896, 6; “Bay State Gas War Ended,” 21 Jan 1898, 1; “Decision on Gas Merger,” 13 Dec 1903, 17; “Rogers a Defendant in Boston Gas Suit,” 3 Apr 1904, FS2; Chicago
Tribune
: “Gas Suit for $3,000,000,” 16 Apr 1904, 6; “Rogers to Share Gas Deal Profits,” 1 Feb 1907, 2).

194.42 Here follows that Boston sketch] The article that follows, a “pen picture” of Rogers as a witness in the gas lawsuit, appeared in the Boston
Sunday Post
of 27 March 1904. Katharine Harrison, Rogers’s secretary, forwarded Clemens a clipping of the sketch, which he acknowledged in a letter to Rogers of 12 April 1904:

The Boston sketch has just arrived & I thank that ten-thousand-dollar secretary of yours for sending it: the one I have read so much about, recently as being as unpumpable as the Sphynx, & the only secretary of her sex that either earns that salary or gets it. That sketch is fine, superfine, gilt-edged; you will live
one
while before you see it bettered. It is a portrait to the life—in it I see you & I hear you, the same as if I were present; & by help of its vivid suggestiveness my fancy can fill in a lot of things the writer had to leave out for lack of room. (Salm, in
HHR
, 562)

195.18 Mr. Winsor] Robert Winsor (1858–1930), a prominent financier, was a partner in the investment banking firm of Kidder, Peabody and Company (“Robert Winsor Dies,” New York
Times
, 8 Jan 1930, 25).

195.18–19 famous telephone conversation with Mr. Lawson] Wealthy businessman and stockbroker Thomas W. Lawson (1857–1925) had become an active player in the gas company maneuvers in 1895. In the late 1890s he was the chief promoter and stockbroker in the consolidation of mining properties to form the Amalgamated Copper Company, which made millions for himself, Rogers, and William Rockefeller, but brought financial ruin to many investors. In 1902 he was involved in the transactions that led to the gas lawsuit. He testified that Rogers had offered him $1 million to withdraw his opposition to the reorganization of the New England Gas and Coke Company, a supplier whose indebtedness had forced it into receivership (see the note at 197.14). Rogers denied the charge, offering a different version of a telephone conversation that took place on 8 March 1902. Rogers’s “foul act of perjury,” as Lawson called it, ended their association, and in July 1904 Lawson began a series of articles in
Everybody’s Magazine
, exposing the rapacious and unethical business machinations of the financial world in general, and Addicks, Standard Oil, and Rogers in particular. In 1905 the articles were collected in a book:
Frenzied Finance: The Crime of Amalgamated
(Lawson 1905, 2–4, 23–31, 117, 123, 343–45; Adams 1903, 270–71; “Massachusetts Gas Trial,”
Wall Street Journal
, 26 Mar 1904, 5; New York
Times
: “Rogers Denies He Got Lawson Million,” 5 Apr 1904, 1; “Calls Rogers Bad Trustee,” 14 Apr 1904, 5).