Mark Twain Day by Day

An Annotated Chronology

Of the Life of Samuel L. Clemens

Volume One (1835-1885)

Second Edition

David H. Fears

© 2008, 2014 David H Fears

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Second Edition, volume one

First Printing 2013

ISBN # 0-9714868-2-4

ISBN13 : 978-0-9714868-2-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927972

Published by Horizon Micro Publishing, LLC

Books available directly from the publisher:

                                                     Horizon Micro Publishers, LLC

                                                     P.O. Box 266

                                                     Banks, OR 97106

                                                     H[email protected]; http://MarkTwainDayByDay.webs.com

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my wife, Kimberley for her love and support. Special thanks to Thomas A. Tenney for his continual support, anecdotes, and advice, to whom this 2nd edition volume is dedicated. Without his many calls, this project would have been completed six months earlier (though perhaps not as complete). Thanks to JoDee Benussi for sharing mountains of paper and extra books. Thanks to the folks at the Mark Twain Project, especially Robert Hirst and Victor Fischer, who really do possess quite a good sense of humor, and who gave freely of their time, advice, and opinions, as well as permissions for use of MTP material. Thanks also for help and contributions made by the following: Barb Schmidt, Robert Slotta, Kevin Mac Donnell, Robert Monroe, Martin Zehr, Ron Vanderhye & Carol Beales for permission from the James S. Copley Library, La Jolla, Ca., and Debby Applegate, the 2007 Pulitzer prize winner for Henry Ward Beecher’s biography. Lastly, thanks to certain readers of the MT ListServ who have encouraged my efforts, including Jason Horn, Michael McBride, Arianne Laidlaw, Wes Britton, and Steve Crawford. A personal thanks also to Duncan Carter at Portland State University for his friendship and encouragement even though he favors Dickens over Twain, as well as David W. Robinson for his steadfast faith in my ability in the face of much evidence to the contrary.

Dedicated To

Thomas A. Tenney (1931-2012)

Scholar, editor, friend, who made this work possible.

This second edition completes his vision.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible, thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water—and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden—it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words—three hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man—the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

M.T.

Foreword

“David H. Fears’s log of Samuel Clemens’ life is often downright interesting in itself for Twainians. Furthermore, they will get a heightened sense of the whirligig he somehow shaped into an ongoing presence—his now well-known business activities, his tireless socializing, his dealings with plumbers, and his paying bills for groceries (including pilsener beer and cigars, of course). As for Mark Twain authors, Fears will help resolve some cruxes while setting up others unsuspected until now. I’m envious that my generation didn’t have this resource when we were starting out.” – LOUIS J. BUDD – Professor Emeritus at Duke University, author of Mark Twain: Social Philosopher

“More fascinating and far better documented than any existing biography of Mark Twain, this study provides a window into every waking—and for that matter, sleeping—moment of Twain’s hyperactive life. Many scholars before David Fears had contemplated undertaking this staggeringly daunting but incredibly useful project….All students of Mark Twain should give heartfelt thanks for this masterful accomplishment. Fears interweaves even Twain’s most quotidian activities into a textured fabric, threading helpful explanations where needed. This book now qualifies as the single most essential reference work in Mark Twain scholarship. We will be indebted to David Fears forever.” – ALAN GRIBBEN – Author of Mark Twain’s Library: A Reconstruction

“Mr. Fears must be fearless! To undertake such an immense project certainly requires courage. Going day-by-day in Twain’s life gives valuable information regarding Twain’s multi-faceted literary, business, and speculative career. Despite the short length of the quotations the flavor of Twain is there: his attention to household matters, his caring role as husband and father, his experience with publishers, the wide-ranging friendships and his biting wit. Fears’ volumes will be a major contribution to Mark Twain Studies.” ­– HOWARD G. BAETZHOLD – Author of Mark Twain & John Bull

“In these pages there is a rich record of the life, works, and Twain’s family and friends.” – THOMAS A. TENNEY, author of Mark Twain A Reference Guide; editor of The Mark Twain Journal.

David H. Fears’s enormous Mark Twain Day By Day: An Annotated Chronology of the Life of Samuel L. Clemens…takes Twain’s activities all the way from [1835-1910]. A huge index even lists such things as Twain’s donations and individual gifts. Surely all Twain scholars and editors will want to have this research available in their campus or personal libraries. This massive project, undertaken by an independent scholar unsupported by grants, subventions, or even a conventional publisher, has to rank as one of the most extraordinary individual efforts by any one student of Twain ever to see print.” – ALAN GRIBBEN, American Literary Scholarship 2010.

Introduction (from First Ed.)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens lived 74 years, 4 months, and 23 days—or 27,171 days. At 27 years of age he began using the nom de plume, “Mark Twain,” which most Americans have known him by since. It is understatement to say that his life was a full one. His life has become an area of study that can occupy a lifetime and still reward researchers with fresh insights into the man, his era, and the human condition.

      Some 40 years ago I gained an undergraduate degree in history, and started but did not finish a graduate program, focusing on the Populist Movement of the 1880s and 90s. I was surprised then to discover that Mark Twain had visited my hometown, Portland Oregon, in 1895 on a world tour. It was a fact I tucked away for four decades, till I turned back to graduate school after careers in business and computers. I often wondered what Sam did here in the Rose City—what did he see? Whom did he talk with, and what words of wisdom and mirth did he leave on our stage? Those musings were the beginning of this work.

      Sam Clemens has remained a fresh interest since that time, possibly because I may be something of a humorist myself, and most certainly have always been a “willful boy.” Or, possibly because I have a passionate feeling for cats, or for writing, or for women, and God knows I enjoy a good glass, though I gave up cigars in my twenties, something Sam was never able to do, and should he have, I’d have perhaps another decade of chronology in front of me.

      By the time I returned to the ivory tower for my masters, I was senior to all of my professors. I’d had fifteen or so short stories published and was hard at work on a few detective novels, and I studied composition theory and Huck Finn. I sat in some of the same classrooms I had four decades before. My thesis work involved original research on correlating writing apprehension and writing myth. Composition theory and fiction writing were my passion, and I was blessed to be able to teach English Composition for two career colleges—or try to anyway, since for many propeller heads, the idea of writing an essay was akin to root canal work without anesthetic.

      About this work, I confess to being naïve and chuckleheaded about the scope of the project at the beginning. I am still naïve and chuckleheaded enough to believe I will finish a second volume, just begun. I remember being astonished that with all the miles of paper about Mark Twain, no one had yet published a detailed daily chronology. I started by using the MT Project volumes of letters. Like a man struggling on the foothills of Mt. Everest I kept a steady pace. I was dedicated, if at times overwhelmed, but ploughed on through standard works and adding bookcases as I went.

      I smouched (as Sam would say) a vision of a readable, enjoyable, daily chronology, as made possible by one hundred years of scholarship. But a chronology with a difference—one that is essentially a narrative of the man’s life, by lining up, highlighting and summarizing as many of those 27,171 days as possible. As my friend Tom Tenney would say, “a different sort of biography.”

      Many times I have concluded there is simply too much information, too little time. The minutiae of this man’s life often threatened to rob my joyful climb. Seemingly everything was interesting, everything needed—what to include, leave out? The biographer has the luxury of excluding the mundane; a detailed chronology should not. Sam was on the go for most of his life, touching hundreds, if not thousands, of places, speaking and lecturing hundreds of time, and writing thousands of notes and letters (by some educated estimates, 50,000 letters written and received), both personal and professional—not to mention his vast array of literary works. Before the term “multi-tasking” was coined, Sam lived it.

      To study the life of Mark Twain is to study America’s passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, and also to understand what is quintessentially the American spirit. Other scholars and biographers have articulated these realities much better than I am able, so I’ll leave it there.

      The dual purpose of the book is to give the general reader a more comprehensive chronology of Sam’s incredible life, and to aid researchers in locating taking-off places for further study. The book is a general reference guide for dates, places and events, built mainly from the scholarship of others who have invested lifetimes in their passion, and of my humble diggings through primary and secondary sources.

      A chronology can be another way of reading a life story. Where was Sam on a particular day? What was he doing, thinking about? Whom did he interact with? Moreover, what is the significance of the events? How much do we know; what might we deduce? What is missing that would enlighten our understanding? Who were those in Sam’s life now mostly forgotten by history? What was the relationship with those closest to him, his friends and allies as well as his antagonists? Hopefully, this work might begin to answer some of those questions for some readers. Or, simply create more questions.

      It is definitely true that the world knows him as Mark Twain, but to me that was his stage persona, the humorist, and the unparalleled writer. I maintain that the man—the heart and soul of the man—is, and always has been, simply, Sam. Academics often call him “S.L.C.” which is fine but does not serve the purpose of intimate narrative. Most of his friends called him “Sam,” and his best friend Howells called him simply, “Clemens.” His wife called him “Youth” in person and “Mr. Clemens” when writing to others. In many ways his nom de plume hid his real face, and purposely so. My use of Sam is perhaps a reflection of the intimacy I feel with him, both as a fellow writer and a human being. Plus, it has the advantage of making the entries shorter and you’ve got to call the man something.

      This book is not offered as major discovery of primary sources as yet unprinted, though I have visited the Mark Twain Project and waded through many primary documents; neither is it an analysis in the normal sense of the word, but a day-by-day timeline extricated from most known major historical sources in print. I have not attempted to present any historical “thesis” or position on the significance of Twain’s life or works, aside from those events that are often pointed to as turning points in his path. I have offered few opinions on issues, only some where I could not resist. I have not knowingly told any “stretchers,” nor have I made this work essentially my “take” on the man. Neither have I set out to discredit or show up any of the recognized Mark Twain scholars, by pointing out errors or omissions in their work. Where there is disagreement on a particular date/place/experience, I attempt to present the various sides.

      I was principally guided in the effort by the Berkeley MTP’s multi-volume works, both in print and electronic of Mark Twain’s Letters as well as other letters available there. I have reviewed most of the major biographies, from Albert Bigelow Paine’s 1912 work, through contemporary studies by Kaplan, Powers, Perry, Hoffman, and others. We all owe a great debt to those scholars who devoted their energies and talents to the tedious and time-consuming research tasks: Albert Bigelow Paine, Bernard DeVoto, Dixon Wecter, Henry Nash Smith, Justin Kaplan, Andrew Hoffman, Ron Powers, James D. Wilson, Kenneth Andrews, Hamlin Hill, Margaret Sanborn, all the tireless workers of the Mark Twain Project—and many, many others. I could not have put this book together without them. I deeply appreciate the guidance and support of Thomas A. Tenney, retired English professor at the Citadel, and also Editor of the Mark Twain Journal since 1982. Barbara Schmidt, another retired educator who is no doubt busier now with research and her Mark Twain website (www.twainquotes) and ListServ responsibilities, has also been very helpful.

      I do not pretend that this work is without error, or that it stands complete. There are many errors in biographies and secondary sources, and even in Sam’s dates and memory. Other sources remain elusive. Not all sources are equally credible. This work is certainly not the last word. I ask the scholar, expert, or interested fan of Sam Clemens to inform me of errors and omissions, so that addenda might be published in forthcoming volumes.

      Entries should be read in context. That is, by reviewing dates before and after any particular entry, a deeper understanding of the elements may emerge.

      Last, I emphasize that this work is a beginning. There is so much work left to do. But, what other American life is so worthy of study?    

David H. Fears 2005-2007 

Forward for the Second Edition:

Since the first edition was released in 2008, three volumes have followed, improved in many respects from the original first volume. Many additions and corrections have surfaced since 2008. This second edition of the first volume incorporates over a hundred additions and corrections, including those posted on the website. Also, several noteworthy works on Twain have been published which inform this new edition, especially: Thomas Reigstad’s important work, Scribblin’ for a Livin’ which updates and revises the much-neglected Buffalo period of Twain’s life; and David C. Antonucci’s work on the Tahoe episodes, Fairest Picture: Mark Twain at Lake Tahoe. Other publications have also been reviewed.

Most important, my scholarship and scope improved as I continued through volumes two through four, bringing the realization of the shortcomings of volume one. Incoming letters were mostly not examined for the first edition, and are not summarized, paraphrased, or excerpted here. In many cases, having the incomings greatly illuminates Clemens’ letters, though when Kevin Mac Donnell first mentioned the need for these I thought him mad and was dumbstruck. The sheer increase in work at first stalled me. Then, as I worked along through the final three volumes I understood the increased value of this reference work that accrued by including those incoming letters to Clemens. A small handful of letters shown in the catalogue were not found at the Mark Twain Project. Often misfiling or burial beneath staff papers may account for these. When they are forthcoming I will put them on the website.

I’ve been asked a few times why on earth I’d set forth on such a daunting project. Because I love Mark Twain? Because it’s never been done? To organize the vast array of data that exists? Possibly all are valid reasons and partly to blame or credit for this work. But I’ve sensed lately that I simply wanted to get closer to the man, to avoid the cherry-picking and incomplete pictures given to us by various biographers, though not to say they are not valuable. But incomplete. Livy called Samuel Clemens a name that reflected his eternal boy-ness: “Youth.” In that way I am a kindred spirit to Twain, to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and all those boys ages two to a hundred-two who, in their hearts, do not take note of old age and who keep an outlook of fun, curiosity, and yes, humor throughout life. I, too, am “Youth.” I often say things to people I don’t know that embarrass my better half, things I see as humorous. Perhaps their reactions provide a crude but instant way of seeing into them and finding if they too have a kindred spirit. After my first visit to the Mark Twain Project I wrote a short essay on whether or not the people there had a sense of humor (I judged, mostly, they do). I discovered later that several academics on a Mark Twain website do not have a sense of humor. I no longer frequent the place. The academics I deal with in my own part-time teaching and most all of my students have a perfectly muscular sense of humor.

After the thousands of hours spent on research for this four-volume work (and the second edition for the first volume), I do feel closer to the man, in many ways a giant who rose above the vicissitudes and sorrows of life to cling to his humor. Without humor, what would Mark Twain be? What would I be? What is man without humor? Not much, I suspect. I still believe that analyzing humor sucks the marrow from it (as Clemens also believed), though the sourpuss academics I speak of would disagree. I can think of no greater aim for my own life than to remain a “Youth” in my outlook and relationships, and to do so requires a fresh, positive view of all that is humorous and interesting in life.

I was saddened by the deaths of Tom Tenney, Lou Budd, and Howard Baetzhold—all of whom gave this work a glowing “puff” when it had only begun. There is no connection with their glowing praise and early departure, and only Alan Gribben now survives of those original four testimonials. I hope he’s well. To paraphrase Clemens, I’m not feeling well myself.

Finally, I owe much to the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley, especially Victor Fischer and Robert Hirst. I cannot express my thanks fully—to do so would take another four volumes.

David H. Fears 2014

Conventions Used

Dates: I have followed the conventions used by the University of California Press on the volumes of Mark Twain’s Letters, except I have added the day of the week. To wit:

October 5 Thursday – Sources indicate this is a confirmed date, or a deduced date from events or

other evidence. Firm dates come before conjectured or circa dates and date ranges.

October 3? Tuesday –   

The question mark indicates a conjecture of October 3. Conjecture dates are listed separately.

June 24–29 Saturday –

A span of dates joined by a dash indicates a less specific conjecture: the date or dates of composition are thought to fall within this span. Day of the week is ascribed to the last date in the span. The last date in a period is noted by its day of the week. Such entries are listed separately.

June 24 to 29 Saturday – Not a conjecture, but an assertion that some event ran from June 24 through June 29. Such date ranges are listed separately.

May 2 and 3 Friday –

Not a conjecture, but an assertion that the event or activity occurred at least in part on both days. Such inclusive dates are listed separately.

May 1 Friday ca. –

A conjecture of circa a date, month, year or season. Similar to May 1^st? but with less specificity. May also be specified as “on or before,” or “on or after.” Circa dates are listed separately.

February –

Items for which only a month is known, or for magazine-type publications issued for a given month.

1863 –

Items for which a year is known, but not a month or date.

Note: Dates are arranged in order; spans of dates and single dates are sorted by the first date in a span. Conjectured dates are usually separate from known or consensus dates. Thus there are separate entries for May 1 Friday, and May 1? Friday; May 17 Thursday would follow May 12–20 Sunday. Occasionally entries are labeled “Mid-month” or “End of Month” or “Early Spring,” etc. Confirmed dates are listed first.

Attribution/Names:

Where unsigned articles have been ascribed to Sam Clemens by major researchers, I have followed their lead but specified, “attributed.” “Sam” when shown without surname is used throughout to mean Mark Twain/ Samuel L. Clemens; likewise “Livy” designates Olivia Louise Clemens; “Susy” has been chosen for Olivia Susan Clemens over the spelling “Susie,” which is seen in earlier references to her. “Jane Clemens” is used for Sam’s mother, “Pamela” or “Pamela Moffett” for his sister, “Orion” for his brother. For certain dominant people in Sam’s life, or dominant within certain periods, last

    names only are given: Howells, Twichell, Cable, etc. Middle names are usually omitted, in favor of a middle initial; some middle initials are omitted, when reference is clearly to one person, such as Hjalmar Boyesen. “Frank” is often given for “Francis”; “Joe” for Joseph, when the person was a familiar figure in Sam’s life, such as Joe Twichell, Frank Bliss, etc.

Citations:

MLA formatting is followed for in-text and Works Cited, with exceptions made for MT “standard” abbreviations such as MTBus or MTLTP (see abbreviations), and follow the MT Project’s conventions when possible. Use of [brackets] for in-text citations, as well as editor’s inserts within quoted text.

Some exceptions are made to standard MT scholarly convention, such as MTL with volume numbers used for the MTP volumes, whereas this abbreviation in the past was used for Paine’s volumes of letters, which I cite as MTLP, if I use them at all. A few conventions are modified, such as LM instead of LoM for Life on the Mississippi. See Abbreviations.

Nearly every date given requires a citation, though some are calculated from sources. Because both primary and secondary sources are used, errors and omissions may have been introduced. Hopefully, more study of primary sources will amend such shortcomings.

Editor’s opinions:

The few opinions on events or interpretation of an entry follow all citation designators as well as extra information following “Note”; These remarks are offered as simply one man’s view, and every effort has been made to keep them short and pithy, without obstacle to the meaning of the listing. Of course, I hold title to many more opinions than the few exposed here. Admittedly, a work of this scope carries errors and inconsistencies. That’s what future appendixes and supplements are for.

Bold Entries, Quotations:

All references to dates are bold, save for those within quotes. Also bold are first mentions of persons and places (including lecture halls, etc.) within each date entry. Subjects and titles are not bold. Indented are letter, newspaper excerpts (boxed) and longer commentaries from biographers and scholars. This may aid ease of reading, finding one’s place and appearance.

ABBREVIATIONS

CY                    Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

ET&S   1: 2:     Early Tales & Sketches. Vol. 1, 1851-1864. Vol. 2, 1864-1865. Edited by

Edgar M. Branch and Robert H. Hirst. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979-81.

GA                   The Gilded Age

IA                     Innocents Abroad

LLMT               The Love Letters of Mark Twain. Edited by Dixon Wecter. New York: Harper & Bros 1949

LM                   Life on the Mississippi

MMT                My Mark Twain, by William Dean Howells. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910.

MTA                 Mark Twain’s Autobiography. Edited by Albert Paine. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924.

MTB                 Mark Twain A Biography, by Albert Paine, 4 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912.

MTHL 1: 2:       Mark Twain-Howells Letters: The Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and William Dean Howells. Edited by Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.

MTJ                 Mark Twain Journal. Edited by Thomas A. Tenney.

MTL 1: – 6:       Mark Twain’s Letters. Volumes 1-6. 1853-1875. Edited by Edgar M. Branch, et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988-2002.

MTLE 1: – 5:    Mark Twain’s Letters, Electronic Volumes 1-5. 1876-1880. Mark Twain Project.

MTLP               Mark Twain’s Letters. 2 vols. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. New York: Harper & Bros 1917.

MTLTP             Mark Twain’s Letters to His Publishers, 1867-1894. Edited by Hamlin Hill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

MTMF              Mark Twain To Mrs. Fairbanks. Edited by Dixon Wecter. San Marino: Huntington Press, 1949.

MTP                 Mark Twain Project/Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

MTPO              Mark Twain Project Online, University of California, Berkeley.

MT & GWC      Mark Twain and George W. Cable, by Alan Turner.

MTNJ 1: – 3:     Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals. Volumes 1 – 3. 1855-1891. Edited by Frederick Anderson, et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

MTS&B            Mark Twain’s Satires & Burlesques. Franklin R. Rogers, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

MTTMB            Mark Twain’s Travels With Mister Brown. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1940.

P&P                 The Prince and the Pauper

ViU                  Barrett Collection, University of Virginia

Births of Margaret, Benjamin, Pleasant and Samuel Clemens – Move from Tennessee to Florida, Missouri – Financial Panic and Hard Times – Henry Clemens Born

 Sister Margaret Died – John Marshall Clemens Became Judge – Moved to Hannibal Sammy Survived Infancy

1835

November 30 Monday – Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) was born two months premature in the hamlet of Florida, Missouri to John Marshall Clemens (1798-1847) and Jane Lampton Clemens (1803-1890). The baby was named Samuel, for John’s father; Langhorne, for the friend of John Marshall’s who had helped him in his youth in Virginia.

26-year-old Dr. Thomas Jefferson Chowning (1809-1854) delivered baby Sam in the absence of the family physician, Dr. Hugh Meredith (1806-1864). The birthplace was a little frame house on South Mill Street [Wecter 43]. Sam was born sickly. His mother later recalled, “When I first saw him I could see no promise in him” [Powers, MT A Life 8].

Halley’s Comet had reached its perihelion on Nov. 17. It would return again in 1910, reaching its greatest visibility on Apr. 19 of that year, two days before Sam’s death.

John Marshall’s ancestors had come from England to Virginia [Wecter 3-7]. A generation later they moved over the Alleghenies and kept pushing west [8]. Sam’s grandfather, his namesake, was five when America declared independence in 1776. In 1803, the year of the Louisiana Purchase, Samuel B. Clemens (1770-1805) moved west into what would become West Virginia. He had married a Quaker named Pamelia (“Parmelia”) Goggin (1775-1844) and took their first of five children, John Marshall Clemens, named in honor of the first Chief Justice of the U.S. John Marshall married Jane Lampton on May 6 1823 [15].

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was the sixth child. The Clemens family moved to Florida, Missouri about June 1, 1835 from Tennessee [Wecter 39]. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was President of the United States, and the Alamo was four months away. The South’s pastoral economy was firmly upheld by slavery and the North’s industrial economy waxed stronger. The early 1830s were a period of inflationary boom. The Federal government encouraged the speculative fever by selling millions of acres of public lands in western states like Michigan and Missouri. The West had spread to the edge of the Great Plains, and like many other families who had not found bounty in the East, the Clemens family moved into Missouri, the outpost of civilization, looking for the good life. Dreams of wealth in such an environment seemed realistic.

1836

May 21 Saturday – John Marshall Clemens purchased a somewhat larger house on the south side of Main Street in Florida, Missouri for $1,050 from Sam’s grandfather, Benjamin Lampton (1770-1837), who had occupied the house and moved to the country [Wecter 46].

Sam was small and sickly, not expected to live. He was often in bed under the care of his mother, Jane Clemens, who told stories of Indians chasing her grandmother, also named Jane. His mother was aided in his care by his older siblings: Orion b.1825, Pamela b.1827, Margaret b.1830, Benjamin b.1832. Another boy child, Pleasant Hannibal (both family names) died at three months, b.1828 or 1829 [MTL 1: 382].

John Marshall was involved in the project of making Salt River navigable as well as a plan to build a railroad between the town of Paris, Mo. and the smaller village of Florida. He frequented citizens’ meetings in the region and became well known in Pike, Ralls, and Monroe counties. He also spoke to members of the Legislature at Jefferson City.

November 30 Wednesday – Baby Sam’s first birthday.

1837

February – Big plans were afloat for developing the area. The Missouri Legislature appointed John Marshall to head a commission of six members to promote a Florida & Paris railroad. The same Legislature also encouraged John Marshall, together with John Adams Quarles (1802-1876), Dr. Hugh Meredith and others to found a school to be called The Florida Academy [Varble 125]. An educational foundation was set up with Marshall and Quarles as trustees. John Marshall was also involved in schemes to make the Salt River into a minor Mississippi [Wecter 47; Varble 125].

March 18 Saturday – Sam’s grandfather, Benjamin Lampton, age 67, died in Florida, Mo. [Wecter 47].

May 10 Wednesday – The early part of the decade saw an inflationary boom, which led to The Panic of 1837. The crisis occurred when every bank stopped payment in specie (gold and silver coinage). The West was badly hit by the panic, and would not recover for four or five years. The Clemens family would struggle financially for years, in part due to this panic.

November 6 Monday – John Marshall Clemens was sworn in as a judge of the Monroe County court. Wecter calls this the “zenith of his professional life and one that fixed upon him ever after the title of ‘Judge’” [Wecter 48]. He received two dollars a day while the court met [49]. John had trained to be a lawyer and was very exacting in his work. His letters show the graceful Spenserian script which educated people of the day displayed. Sam got his exacting nature from his father, and his humor and red hair from his mother. John Marshall built a one-story house, known as the “double house” on the land he’d bought before Sammy was born [Wecter 49; Powers MT A Life 14].

November 30 Thursday – Sam’s second birthday.

1838

First half of year – The Clemens family moved to their third house in Florida, Mo. Wecter says “probably before the birth of their youngest child, Henry Clemens, on June 13” [Wecter 49]. They sold their second Florida house to John Quarles for a sum that reflected settlement of unpaid debts from the dissolved store partnership [49].

July 13 Friday – Henry Clemens, the youngest child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens was born in Florida, Mo. [MTL 1: 382]. Henry was the model for Sid Sawyer in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a boy upright in every way, not at all like his older brother Sam.

August ca. – Shortly after Jane Clemens recovered from childbirth, thirteen-year-old Orion was dragged along a picket fence by two oxen. He was saved from death or injury by Jane and a peg leg man who happened to be passing [Varble 127].

August 8 Wednesday – John Marshall Clemens’ term on the Monroe County court expired [Selby 1].

November 30 Friday – Sam’s third birthday.

1839

February – John Quarles had married Martha Ann “Patsy” Lampton (1807-1850), Jane’s younger sister, and opened a store at Florida, Missouri the year before the Clemens family arrived. In this month he closed his successful store at Florida and bought 70 acres of good farmland. A few months later he added 160 acres more [Wecter 50]. The farm was three and a half miles northwest of town. Quarles kept slaves (Some claim as many as 30 slaves, some eleven, and some as few as six) [Powers, Dangerous 41; Powers MT A Life 11; Dempsey 4]. Frequent visits to the Quarles Farm allowed Sam to hunt and fish, and gave him intimate contact with blacks. Stories told by his uncle John and also by older blacks fed Sam with grist for his later tales. (See The Twainian, Mar. 1942 for an insightful article on Quarles.)

A family story about three-year-old Sam, retold years later by his niece, Annie Moffett Webster (1852-1950).

“When Sam was about three he was distressed because he had ‘no tail bebind.’ He said, ‘The dog has a tail bebind, the cat has a tail bebind, and I haven’t any tail bebind at all at all.’ His uncle (I think it was his Uncle Hannibal) made a tail of paper and pinned it on his little dress, and he went around very proud and happy” [MTBus 44].

August, mid – About this time one-year-old Henry Clemens “eluded the colored boy who was caring for him and toddled into the hot embers at a soap kettle. While he was being tended by Jane Clemens and neighbor Mrs. Penn, Henry’s sister Margaret fell ill [Varble 127]. Sam sleepwalked into sister Margaret’s bedroom and tugged at her blanket. Nineteenth century rural America called this act “plucking at the coverlet,” an act presaging death. The family took this as a sign that little Sammy had “second sight” [Wecter 51].

August 17 Saturday – Nine-year-old sister Margaret died of “bilious fever” (typhoid or malaria). It was the first of many family deaths Sam would suffer. Wecter gives this date as Aug. 19 [51].

November 13 Wednesday – John Marshall Clemens sold properties around Florida for $3,000 to speculator Ira Stout. At the same time, John purchased a quarter of a city block in Hannibal on the Mississippi, about forty miles east of Florida, for what Wecter calls “the thumping price of $7000 paid in full” [Wecter 51-2; Powers, MT A Life 21]. Note: “Hannibal” was also a family name with no connection to the town. It may be argued that John paid too much for the quarter block in Hannibal.

November 20 Wednesday ca. – John Marshall sold another large parcel, 326 acres near the Ralls County line, for $2000 to Ira Stout  [Wecter 52].

November, mid-late – The Clemens family moved to Hannibal: John, Jane, Orion, Pamela, Benjamin, Sammy (nearly age four), the baby Henry, and a slave girl Jennie. Paine, in Boy’s Life of Mark Twain says the family lived first at Pavey’s Hotel (later Planter’s Hotel). The Paveys later moved to St. Louis. Wecter gives the time of the move as “about mid-November” [56].

The first home for the Clemens was the Virginia House, a rickety two-story hotel close to the river at the northwest corner of Main and Hill Streets [Varble 129].

John Marshall traveled to St. Louis soon after the family’s arrival. There he stayed with his half-sister Ann “Polly” Hancock (d.1893), and her English husband William Saunders (d.1885). John Marshall sought a loan from a distant relative James Clemens, Jr. (1791-1878) in order to make token payments on stock he needed to open a store in Hannibal. The two men had not met but had corresponded as youths. The loan was given; John Marshall returned to Hannibal and opened a store on the main floor; the family lived on the second floor. [Varble 131-2; Powers, MT A Life 21].

Sam grew up on the river, in that “sleepy white washed town” which was to be his theatre of boyhood. Here he knew dreams, adventure, terror and sorrow. Sam Clemens would immortalize Hannibal in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn [Powers, Dangerous 50].

November 30 Saturday – Sam’s fourth birthday.

December, mid – John Marshall had been drafted for a border war with Iowa over a disputed boundary, but the matter was settled by this time [Wecter 56].

Sammy’s Idyllic Childhood – Summers at Quarles Farm – First Schooling

Brother Benjamin Died – Family Moved to Hill Street House – Murder Witnessed

Many Adventures – Cholera, Measles and Death – John Marshall Clemens Died

Sam the Printer’s Devil

Sam’s boyhood days in Hannibal, from ages four to eleven were filled with adventures, escapades and personalities many of which were to find their way into his many novels years later. Among those that might have taken place anytime during this decade were: The sale, beating and killings of slaves. Accidents on the river; Corpses washing up at Hannibal; Cave adventures, including the cadaver kept in McDowell’s Cave; Town drunks, including the Blankenship clan, Tom (b.1831?) being Sam’s model for Huck Finn. Injun Joe. Judge Clemens keeping the peace with a hammer on the head of two rowdies; Pranks at school. Sam’s claims of near drowning nine times; Rafting adventures; Hunting, fishing; Gang hangouts; Falling through the ice on the river; Steamboats arriving at the Hannibal docks; The swimming hole in Bear Creek; Jim Wolfe’s descent in his flying nightshirt into a candy pull; Sam dancing naked and “playing bear” in the moonlight while two girls watched in secret behind a shade, etc.

Most of these boyhood adventures cannot be pinned to a date, or even to a specific year. Wecter does a good job of identifying many of them, and Powers writes a powerful treatment of the psychological makeup of these boyhood years in Dangerous Waters. Some listings of Sam’s boyhood friends are found here and there. A picture taken in 1922 of Sam’s surviving childhood friends included Norval “Gull” Brady (1839-1929), Dr. B.Q. Stevens, John Ro Bards (1838-1925), Moses D. Bates Jr., Mrs. Laura Hawkins Frazer (1837-1928), and T.G. Dulaney; not pictured and deceased at that time: S.H. Honeyman, Jimmy McDaniel, B.O. Farthing, and Ed Pierce [The Fence Painter, Winter 1986/1987 Vol. VI No.4 Hannibal, Mo.]. Other friends are listed in various dated entries. See especially Feb. 6, 1870 to Will Bowen for several escapades remembered.

In his Nov. 30, 1906 A.D., Clemens recalled minstrel shows in Hannibal:

      I remember the first negro-minstrel show I ever saw. It must have been in the early ‘40s. It was a new institution. In our village of Hannibal, on the banks of the Mississippi, we had not heard of it before, and it burst upon us as a glad and stunning surprise.

      The show remained a week, and gave a performance every night. Church members did not attend these performances, but all the worldlings flocked to them, and were enchanted. …    

      The minstrels appeared with coal-black hands and faces, and their clothing was a loud and extravagant burlesque of the clothing worn by the plantation slave of the time….Standing collars were in fashion in that day, and the minstrel appeared in a collar which engulfed and hid the half of his head and projected so far forward that he could hardly see sideways over its points. His coat was sometimes made of curtain calico, with a swallow-tail that hung nearly to his heels and had buttons as big as a blacking box. His shoes were rusty, and clumsy, and cumbersome, and five or six sizes too large for him. There were many variations upon this costume, and they were all extravagant, and were by many believed to be funny.

      The minstrel used a very broad negro dialect; he used it competently, and with easy facility, and it was funny—delightfully and satisfyingly funny [AMT 2: 294]. Note: see source for more.

A later work by Clemens is “Villagers of 1840-3.” The MTP says this about it:

The most intriguing of the factual works, however, is “Villagers of 1840-3,” published here in its entirety for the first time [see MTPO]. This extended series of notes about life in ante-bellum Hannibal contains over one-hundred capsule biographies of the town’s residents, including Mark Twain’s own family. Written in 1897, forty-four years after Samuel Clemens left his boyhood home, it is a remarkable feat of memory, compelling both as a historical and a literary document. Evidently Mark Twain intended to use it as a master list of possible characters for any subsequent stories he might set in St. Petersburg or Dawson’s Landing, his imaginary re-creations of Hannibal [MTPO]. Note: Sam gave his father the name of “Judge Carpenter.”

The Aberdeen (S.D.) Daily News, 4 Jan. 1905, p. 2, “Mark Twain’s Pranks” reported reminiscences by Captain H. Lacy, who was born in Hannibal in 1839. Lacy claims it was not Jim Wolfe who was the victim of the famous skeleton-in-bed prank (sometime in the 1840s), but “a tramp printer named Snell,” who “blew into Hannibal one day and was given work on the paper.” Lacy claimed to be along on the prank; his account offers not only a different victim than has been imagined (see MTL 1: 18n4; also Ch. 23 TA) but a different outcome:

      He was an uncommunicative sort of fellow, but a good worker and obedient. Sam decided to bring him out of his reserve and to do it borrowed a skeleton from a doctor’s office and slipped it into the printer’s bed. Then we got around to a window about bedtime to see what was going to happen. The print pulled off his shoes, piled his clothes over on the floor and blew out the light. The next thing we supposed would be a yell and a printer shooting out of the window in his nightshirt. But there wasn’t anything of the sort. There was a sleepy yawn and:

      “Get over on your own side, darn you.”

      We heard the ghastly bedmate of Snell fall to the floor, and then everything was quiet except for the snoring of the sleeping printer. The joke had failed, and we went up to our rooms in disgust.

Next day Snell didn’t show up, and we began to feel a little hopeful that maybe the trick had worked after all. But we were again disappointed. Snell was in a gin mill, boiling drunk and having the time of his life.

      “Killed erm man deader’n a red Injun,” he yelled, “an shell corpsus fer dollar an’ sheventy-five! Wow!”

      He had rolled the skeleton up in a sheet and sold it to another doctor!

The Chapman Troupe came through Hannibal annually in the 1840s until 1847. For 35 years the troupe was perhaps the most celebrated theatrical family in the West. Mary Parks Chapman (1813-1880) was one of the seven children in the show and later had 20! children herself. Sammy Clemens undoubtedly saw one or all of the Hannibal performances as they were advertised as children welcome [MTP]. Note: see Dec. 16, 1865 for a letter from Mary to Clemens.

See “A Memory” a sketch which ran in the Galaxy for Aug. 1870, about Sammy’s relationship to his father.

1840

U.S. Census reported 1,034 people living in Hannibal, up from the sixty families that were there in the Panic of 1837 [Wecter 57]. Hard times came to the Clemens family during the first years of the decade. Judge John Marshall Clemens was forced to sell Jennie, the slave girl brought from Virginia. “She was tall, well formed, nearly black, and brought a good price” [MTB 41]. For a time, things improved. John Marshall borrowed money from his wealthy cousin James Clemens, Jr. A wealthy Whig attorney in St. Louis, and from James A.H. Lampton (1824-1879), Jane’s half-brother who lived near Florida, Missouri. John Marshall opened another store with “already bookish, absent-minded, inept,” fifteen-year-old Orion behind the counter [Wecter 57].

Spring – Sam started school at Mrs. Horr’s school in Hannibal, a small log cabin at the southern end of Main Street, near Bear Creek. Elizabeth Horr (ca.1790-1873) and daughter Miss Lizzie were the only teachers. On Sam’s first day of school he broke a rule twice and was told to go find a switch for his punishment. He kept looking for smaller and smaller switches until he came back with a cooper’s shaving (a cooper is a barrel maker). Later, Miss Mary Ann Newcomb (1809-1894) would help at the school [Wecter 54]. Sam, during his last visit to Hannibal in 1902, would say: “I owe a great deal to Mary Newcomb, she compelled me to learn to read” [Wecter 84]. McGuffey’s Readers were the new rage.

In his Aug. 15, 1906 A.D. Sam recalled his first school: “There were no public schools in Hannibal in those early years, but there were two private schools in Hannibal—terms twenty-five cents per week per pupil, and collect it if you can. Mrs. Horr taught the children, in a small log house…; Mr. Sam Cross taught the young people of larger growth in a frame schoolhouse on the hill” [AMT 2: 177].

July 28 and 29 Wednesday – The Log Cabin Campaign rally on Market Street in Hannibal would surely have included John Marshall, a devout Whig. Jane Lampton Clemens loved parades and funerals. Four and a half year old Sam no doubt witnessed the celebration [Wecter 58]. Note: For more about Jane Clemens as recalled by her granddaughter Annie Moffett Webster in Fredonia, see May 22, 1870 entry.

October – John Marshall sold on credit about $1,000 for merchandise bought wholesale to one Ira Stout, who then used the new bankruptcy laws to avoid payment. Ultimately this led to the loss of the Clemens home [Wecter 56].

November 30 Monday – Sam’s fifth birthday.

1841

Sam’s father traveled to Tennessee hoping to collect old debts and raise money on the infamous Tennessee Land, some 75,000 acres, which became a millstone to the family; the land was ultimately sold in the 1880s for not much more than John Marshall paid for it. John took a slave, Charlie, to sell, but did not get what he expected. In fact the trip was a total failure, costing Sam’s father about $200 [Powers, Dangerous 124-5]. Together, John Marshall and son Orion had a remarkable string of business failures. Sam would come to nearly support his older brother, mixing a sense of duty with exasperation.

February 7 Sunday – Sam’s sister Pamela joined the First Presbyterian Church of Hannibal [Dempsey 55].

February 18 Thursday – Sam’s mother, Jane Clemens, joined the First Presbyterian Church of Hannibal [Dempsey 55]. Note: Dempsey found no record that John Marshall Clemens or his sons ever joined the church.

February 22 Monday – Sam’s mother, Jane Clemens, was baptized at the First Presbyterian Church of Hannibal [Dempsey 55].

September – John Marshall Clemens sat on a jury at Palmyra which condemned and sent to the penitentiary three abolitionists for a term of twelve years [Dempsey 42; Wecter 72]. Note: See Dempsey, chapters 5 & 6, for a full account of the “crime” and trial of James Burr, George Thompson, and Alanson Work, “the biggest criminal case in Marion County.”

Summer – This was the first year of long summer visits to the Quarles Farm, about three and a half miles northwest of the old Clemens home in Florida, Mo.. These visits would continue until Sam was eleven or twelve (1847-8). Sam was seven on this first visit. He loved his uncle John Quarles, a warm, affable, hospitable, country man who told jolly jokes and played with the children. Quarles made hunting trips through the woods. His wife Aunt Patsy set a marvelous table; they had eight children and about thirty slaves (some sources say far fewer). These idyllic summers were grist for many of Sam’s later stories. Sam had a favorite playmate cousin a year younger than him, Tabitha Quarles (1836-1917), they called “Puss.” He loved cats (his mother had at one time nineteen felines about!). Puss recalled:

November 6 Thursday – Record of Jimmy Finn’s death [MTP].

July 4 Thursday – Sam marched in the parade with the Cadets of Temperance, and later recollected that he picked up a cigar butt from the street, smoked it, and quit the group [Wecter 153].

Colonel Edward Zane Carroll Judson (1823-1886), who wrote under the pseudonym of Ned Buntline, came to Hannibal to lecture on “Cuba and Her Martyrs.” Judson was the author of The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main, to which Sam referred in his sketch “Jul’us Caesar” and also in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Wecter 195; Gribben 362]. Note: Fifteen year old Sam Clemens would undoubtedly have seen Judson speak, having read his “dime novel” works, which Sam later called “Wildcat Literature.” Judson’s arrival was heralded by Orion’s Hannibal Journal.

November 30 Sunday – Sam’s sixteenth birthday.

December 29 Monday – A piece by Orion datelined “Near Glasgow, Ky., Dec. 29, 1851” ran in the Journal on Jan. 22, 1852 upon Orion’s return, showing that he left Hannibal on his fruitless trip to Tennessee, somewhat before this date, probably just after Christmas [Wecter 242].

Satire & Pen Names – Sam Played Editor When Orion was Away

Final Appearance in the Hannibal Journal

January 8 Thursday – “The Editor is absent,” announced the Hannibal Journal editorial. Orion was still away [Wecter 242].

January 15 Thursday – “The Editor is still absent” [Wecter 242].

January 22 Thursday – Orion announced his return in the paper [Wecter 242].

January 29 Thursday – The Journal was able to beat the other town papers to a story about a fire—this one in the Journal office. Orion collected insurance money and soon restarted the paper. The Journal, like most of Orion’s endeavors, never made a profit [Wecter 243]. On page 2 of the Hannibal Journal and Western Union a lot of Orion Clemens’ is advertised for sale to satisfy a tax assessment [Hannibal Courier-Post, Mar. 6, 1935 p13c].

February – Orion moved the Journal “to the room over Stover & Horr’s Clothing Store, on Main Street” [Wecter 243].

April 9 Friday – The Saluda, a side-wheel, wooden hull packet, 223 tons, christened in 1846, sank in 1850 but eventually was raised and restored. On Apr. 9, 1852, Good Friday, with Mormon emigrants aboard, the boat was headed for Council Bluffs, Iowa. Upon arriving at Lexington, the current was swift. Pilot Charles S. LaBarge pushed her too hard and her boilers blew. Pilot and Master Belt and about 75 others died. It was the worst disaster to that time on the Missouri River. At that time, Sam was still in Hannibal, working on Orion’s newspaper, the Journal and must have heard and even reported the news. Still when Samuel E. Belt wrote Sam on Feb. 12, 1905 asking for his recollection of the disaster, Isabel Lyon answered for Clemens:

“M^r. Clemens wishes me to say that if he ever knew anything about the Saluda disaster it long ago went out of his memory” [MTP].

March 25 Thursday – Sam wrote the descriptive piece, “Hannibal Missouri,” which he submitted to the Philadelphia American Courier, published on May 8, 1852 [ET&S 1: 68]. In this glowing description of his hometown, Sam included the Mississippi River, the St. Joseph Railroad, and the cave south of town. Dempsey points out he “completely omitted any reference to slaves or slavery” [168].

May – The Journal moved above T.R. Selme’s on Main Street opposite the Post Office [Dempsey 158].

May 1 Saturday – The Carpet Bag, a Boston journal that provided rustic humor, and was often sent to Western towns, carried a 425-word sketch of Sam’s titled “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter.” It was signed with Sam’s initials, “S.L.C.” The sketch related a steamboat passenger showing off to female passengers by acting brave, only to be one-upped by a Hannibal man [A. Hoffman 29]. No payment was made, but the glory was all Sam’s. This may be one of the two pieces that Sam mistakenly recalled having contributed to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post [ET&S 1: 63].

Note: Sam would have been familiar with The Carpet Bag, edited by Benjamin Shillaber (1814-1890), because wholesale agents in the West distributed it widely. Plus, Orion quoted articles from the humor publication more than a dozen times between Mar. 4 and June 3, 1852 [“Benjamin Shillaber and his ‘Carpet Bag’, by Cyril Clemens, The New England Quarterly Vol. 14, No. 3, Sept. 1941 p.527; See also My Own Story by J.T. Trowbridge (1903) p. 181-2].

In an interesting side note, eighteen-year-old Charles Farrar Browne (1834-1867), known after 1858 as Artemus Ward, had been working as a compositor for The Carpet Bag over the past year, and probably set the type for the May 1 issue [538]. Shillaber’s most important literary work was The Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington (1854), a popular work in Sam’s library years later [Gribben 641].

May 8 Saturday – The Philadelphia American Courier ran “Hannibal, Missouri,” a description of Hannibal by Sam (dated Mar. 25, 1852). This was heady stuff for a mere sixteen-year-old. Sam used these successes to brag to various females in the town and to throw them up to Orion. Easterners were curious about the Western frontier; many Eastern papers sought articles about the West [A. Hoffman 30]. Again, no payment was made for these articles.

Summer – Sam, now sixteen, swam the Mississippi River to the Illinois side, then turned back and swam back to Hannibal without landing. It was two miles round trip, and on the return leg Sam got a cramp and had to navigate home with only his arms [MTB 57].

July 1 Thursday – Sam became an uncle with the birth of Annie E. Moffett to Sam’s sister Pamela Ann and her husband, William Anderson Moffett. Annie would always be a favorite of Sam’s; she married Charles Luther Webster (1851-1891) in 1875, the man Sam would hire to run his publishing business [MTL 1: 382].

Orion had been forced to move the Journal into the living room of his mother’s house on Hill Street. Jim Wolfe moved in with the family and shared Sam’s bedroom. One night a cow wandered into the parlor, knocked over a type-case, and “ate a couple of composition rollers” [Wecter 244].

July 15 Thursday – Sam wrote a facetious piece of “the Dog Law” which from that day forth ordered all canines to be licensed at a dollar a head and wear collars. An early case of Sam pulling legs—readers’ legs, not dogs’ [Wecter 249].

The Hannibal Journal (formerly the Hannibal Western Union) printed an unsigned article, “Paragraph on a Military Company Formed by Town Boys,” attributed to Sam [Camfield, bibliog.].

July 24 Saturday – Sam reported that a calf had been bitten by a mad dog. A not-so-serious proposal, signed “A Dog-be-deviled Citizen,” called for all dogs to be exterminated. The dog pieces brought Ament’s Hannibal Courier to the defense of dogs, and the Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger also joined in. It’s likely that Orion humored Sam these small needles in print, or perhaps did not notice the humor in them. Such was Orion’s nature, humorless, oblivious [Wecter 249].

August, late – Ament’s Hannibal Courier and the Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger printed pieces defending the town dogs [Wecter 249].

September 9 Thursday – Orion left town for a week and turned the paper over to Sam, who printed gossip to liven things up. He printed an account titled “A Family Muss” about fighting among an Irish family on Holliday’s Hill. Sam used the pen name “W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins,” and showed the sort of fictionalizing of news he would later develop in Nevada and California [Wecter 249; ET&S 1: 69].

September 16 Thursday – Sam satirized Josiah T. Hinton, the new editor of the competing Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger, in an article, “Local Resolves to Commit Suicide.” See insert. It seems Hinton had been a jilted lover, so went to the river one night to drown himself, but could not follow through. Sam heard of this and wrote his article along with engravings he fashioned from wood blocks, picturing the editor testing the water’s depth. After the editor retaliated, Sam published two more ridiculing sketches. In a rage, the editor stormed the Journal’s office, only to find seventeen-year-old Sam sitting calmly in the editor’s chair [A. Hoffman 30]. Also during Orion’s absence, Sam’s first use of a pen name appeared: W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins (See Sept. 9 entry.) Perkins was soon changed to “Blab” [Powers, Dangerous 199].

Posing as an observer of local society and morals, Sam satirized a drunk and family on Holliday’s Hill. Such subjects were not usually mentioned in newspapers. Sam through Blab, reported with sarcasm on the wife beating by the drunk as “an extreme case of matrimony.” Sam also wrote other pieces with the W.E.A.B. or Blab nom de plume, “Historical Exhibition—A No.1 Ruse,” and “Blabbing Government Secrets!” [ET&S 1: 78]. “Editorial Agility” appeared unsigned and is attributed to Sam [Camfield, bibliog.].

September 23 Thursday – “Blab’s Tour”; “Letter to ‘Mr. Editor’” byline Blab; “Letter to ‘Mr. Editor’” byline A Dog-be-Deviled Citizen,” [Camfield, bibliog.] and “‘Pictur’ Department,” were printed with additional thrusts at the Messenger’s “Local.” Orion returned; Blab announced, “I have retired from public life to the shades of Glascock’s Island” [Wecter 253; ET&S 1: 72-4]. Blab announced his final appearance in the Journal [ET&S 1: 83].

November 4 Thursday – “Conubial Bliss,” another unsigned sketch of Sam’s about a rowdy Irishman on “Holliday’s Hill” appeared in the Hannibal Journal [ET&S 1: 85]:

November 25 Thursday – Orion’s newspaper, the Hannibal Journal, commented on Joseph Ament’s sale of the Hannibal Missouri Courier:

November 30 Tuesday – Sam’s seventeenth birthday.

A Drunk Burned – Sam Again in Charge – Grumbler vs. Rambler – Assistant’s Column Sam Left Hannibal for St. Louis –New York City Typesetter

Philadelphia’s Better Than New York

January 23 Sunday – Sam gave a drunk some matches for his pipe. Later that night the drunk was arrested and jailed in a brick house by the river. At 2 AM the jail caught fire from the drunk’s pipe and people could only watch as the man burned to death. It was an episode that loaded more guilt on Sam, and in 1870 he recalled the death in a letter to his boyhood pal, Will Bowen: “we accidentally burned up that poor fellow in the calaboose” [MTL 4: 51]. Just how the fire started, no one could tell, yet Sam carried guilt from that episode his entire life. (Date calculated from Orion’s Jan. 27 account in the Journal) [Wecter 254].

March, early – An accident at the Journal ruined several columns of type, as reported by the Messenger on Mar. 5. Orion announced the paper would now be a daily as well, to make up for lost editions, under the name the Hannibal Daily Journal [Benson 7].

April 16 Saturday– The Journal printed an unsigned comic verse, “On Miss Anna Bread,” attributed to Sam [Camfield, bibliog.].

April 29 Friday – Two humorous pieces appeared in the Journal over the name “Rambler,” one a report of a stagecoach that crashed through a cellar, and the other a report that “some French gentleman or gentlemen” stole “two hams only” from Brittingham’s pork house [Wecter 257].

May 5 Thursday – Orion once again left the Journal in Sam’s hands. Sam printed three stanzas of vernacular humor in verse “The Heart’s Lament,” dated May 4, under the pen name, “Rambler,” one he would use again in 1858 for the St. Louis Missouri Democrat. The rival Messenger paper was outselling the Journal, now a daily, and Sam was overburdened with getting the paper out. Brother Henry Clemens was a slow and careless typesetter, who probably didn’t like the work; Sam had to keep long hours to correct Henry’s errors [Wecter 257; ET&S 1: 88-90].

May 6 Friday – An unsigned article printed in the Daily Journal: “The Editor left yesterday for St. Louis,” is attributed to Sam [Camfield, bibliog.]. “This must be our excuse if the paper is lacking in interest.” Sam made up a controversy about a love poem to “Katie of H——L,” confusing on purpose Hannibal and Hell and again signed “Rambler.” He then proceeded to write objections back and forth. Another unsigned article and headline hoax, “Terrible Accident!” was printed in the Journal and is attributed to Sam. Lastly, an unsigned item, “Two paragraphs ridiculing Abner Gilstrap,” is also attributed to Sam. On his return, Orion finally gave Sam his own column, which ran only three issues. [Wecter 257-8; Camfield bibliog.].

May 7 Saturday – Two items ran in the Hannibal Journal, one signed “Grumbler” and one unsigned and attributed to Sam—“Letter to ‘Mr. Editor’,” and “Married in Podunk” [Camfield, bibliog.]. Sam introduced “Grumbler” to continue a dialogue protesting, “Rambler’s” verses to “Katie in Hell.”

May 25 Wednesday – Sam wrote another “Assistant’s Column” in the Journal [MTL 1:2].

A notice first ran in the Journal: “WANTED! AN APPRENTICE OF THE PRINTING BUSINESS. APPLY SOON.” The ad ran for two weeks.

Wecter concludes this date marked Sam’s departure from Hannibal [Wecter 263]. Sam had promised his mother that he would abstain from cards and liquor [Wecter 262].

May 26 Thursday – Sam wrote his last “Assistant’s Column” inserting a paragraph about the Crystal Palace in New York City. He wrote that the fifteen to twenty thousand persons who were “continually congregated” there engaged in “drunkenness and debauching…carried on to their fullest extent.” Sam was thinking about leaving Hannibal by this time, and New York may have already been his desired destination, but he spoke only of St. Louis to his mother [Wecter 262; MTL 1:2].

May 27^Friday June, early – By this time Sam was in St. Louis to find his way in the world. Paine writes he took a night boat to St. Louis [MTB 94]. Sam likely stayed with his sister Pamela and found work as a typesetter. He vowed never to let a place trap him again. Orion was so depressed that he did not publish another edition of the Journal for a month [Powers, Dangerous 217].

June 2 Thursday – Four unsigned news articles appeared in the Journal attributed to Sam days after he left town: “Friday Evening, May 27, 1853,” “Saturday Evening, May 28, 1853,” “Monday Evening, May 30, 1853. Small Pox Gone,” and “Tuesday Evening, May 31, 1853” [Camfield, bibliog.]. It is likely that Sam had left these, either complete or for Orion to finish and use as he saw fit. Sam’s only other items in the Journal were two letters home that ran in September.

June 11 Saturday – Orion failed to get out the Hannibal Daily Journal for a whole month, beginning on this date. In one sense, Sam never truly left Hannibal—he carried it in his heart and memory and poured it out into The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Hannibal in those pages would become a universal boyhood home, an icon like the man himself. Sam would visit again in 1882 to gather material for Life on the Mississippi, and the last time in 1902. In many ways Sam Clemens would always be the boy of Hannibal—his wife Livy would call him “youth.”

“White town drowsing in the sunshine of a summers morning…the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun…” [LM ch.4].

Summer – St. Louis in the summer of 1853 was a burgeoning city of 100,000 souls, the largest city of the West. The city offered Western freedom together with many of the luxuries and affectations of the East. For a young man from Hannibal, such a city must have been dazzling. Sam had kept plans secret from his family, to work in St. Louis long enough to make fare to New York City. Sam had read stories about the World’s Fair there, The Crystal Palace Fair, and he’d included them in his Journal column. He probably stayed with the Moffetts and set type for the St. Louis Evening News.

In 1903 Sam remembered “the time in St. Louis in ’53, aged 17 ½, that I took the shy pretty girl from up country to Ben DeBar’s theatre” to see The Toodles, A Domestic Drama in Two Acts (1832 by Richard John Raymond) and then couldn’t get his too-tight shoes on after the performance [Gribben 570]. This was a play he would see again Jan. 12, 1864 in Carson City and report on. The girl he took is unidentified.

August 19 Friday – At 8 AM Sam boarded a boat and started a journey by train and boat to New York. He did not tell his mother about the trip, which took about five days. From St. Louis to Alton, Ill by the sidewheeler steamer Cornelia, 11:00 AM, from Alton to Springfield on the partly completed Chicago and Mississippi Railroad; by Frink’s stage to Bloomington, Ind. [MTL 1: 5n2]. Dempsey notes that the train station was “just a few blocks” from the law office of Abraham Lincoln [232].

August 20 Saturday – Sam took the Illinois Central line to LaSalle, then the Chicago and Rock Island into Chicago, arriving at 7 PM [MTL 1: 5n2; Dempsey 232]. He “laid over all day Sunday” [MTL 1: 3].

August 21 Sunday – Sam took the 9 PM Michigan Central to Toledo, Ohio, then to Monroe, Michigan on the Northern Indiana and Michigan Southern railroads [Dempsey 232]. In his letter he wrote he traveled from Chicago to Monroe, Michigan “by railroad, another day” [MTL 1: 3].

August 22 Monday – 8 AM “from Monroe, across Lake Erie, in the fine Lake palace, ‘Southern Michigan,’ to Buffalo, another day. Sam would revisit Buffalo and Niagara Falls in 1869 [MTL 1: 3; Reigstad 59]. Dempsey: “He traveled to Buffalo, New York, aboard the steamer Southern Michigan” [Dempsey 232].

My Dear Mother: you will doubtless be a little surprised, and somewhat angry when you receive this, and find me so far from home; but you must bear a little with me, for you know I was always the best boy you had, and perhaps you remember the people used to say to their children—“Now don’t do like Orion and Henry Clemens but take Sam for your guide!”

Well, I was out of work in St. Louis, and didn’t fancy loafing in such a dry place, where there is no pleasure to be seen without paying well for it, and so I thought I might as well go to New York. I packed up my “duds” and left for this village, where I arrived, all right, this morning.

It took a day, by steamboat and cars, to go from St. Louis to Bloomington, Ill; another day by railroad, from there to Chicago, where I laid over all day Sunday; from Chicago to Monroe, in Michigan, by railroad, another day; from Monroe, across Lake Erie, in the fine Lake palace, “Southern Michigan,” to Buffalo, another day; from Buffalo to Albany, by railroad, another day; and from Albany to New York, by Hudson river steamboat, another day—an awful trip, taking five days, where it should have been only three. I shall wait a day or so for my insides to get settled, after the jolting they received, when I shall look out for a sit; for they say there is plenty of work to be had for sober compositors.

The trip, however, was a very pleasant one. Rochester, famous on account of the “Spirit Rappings” was of course interesting; and when I saw the Court House in Syracuse, it called to mind the time when it was surrounded with chains and companies of soldiers, to prevent the rescue of McReynolds’ nigger, by the infernal abolitionists. I reckon I had better black my face, for in these Eastern States niggers are considerably better than white people.

I saw a curiosity to-day, but I don’t know what to call it. Two beings, about like common people, with the exception of their faces, which are more like the “phiz” of an orang-outang, than human. They are white, though, like other people. lmagine a person about the size of Harvel Jordan’s oldest boy, with small lips and full breast, with a constant uneasy, fidgety motion, bright, intelligent eyes, that seems as if they would look through you, and you have these things. They were found in the island of Borneo (the only ones of the species ever discovered,) about twenty years ago. One of them is twenty three, and the other twenty five years of age. They possess amazing strength; the smallest one would shoulder three hundred pounds as easily as I would a plug of tobacco; they are supposed to be a cross between man and orang-outang; one is the best natured being in the world, while the other would tear a stranger to pieces, if he did but touch him; they wear their hair “Samson” fashion, down to their waists. They have no apple in their throats, whatever, and can therefore scarcely make a sound; no memory either; what transpires to-day, they have forgotten before to-morrow; they look like one mass of muscle, and can walk either on all fours or upright; when let alone, they will walk to and fro across the room, thirteen hours out of the twenty-four; not a day passes but they walk twenty-five or thirty miles, without resting thirty minutes; I watched them about an hour and they were “tramping” the whole time. The little one bent his arm with the elbow in front, and the hand pointing upward, and no two strapping six footers in the room could pull it out straight. Their faces and eyes are those of the beast, and when they fix their glittering orbs on you with a steady, unflinching gaze, you instinctively draw back a step, and a very unpleasant sensation steals through your veins. They are both males and brothers, and very small, though I do not know their exact hight. I have given you a very lengthy description of the animals, but I have nothing else to write about, and nothing from here would be interesting anyhow. The Crystal Palace is a beautiful building—so is the Marble Palace.11 If I can find nothing better to write about, I will say something about these in my next.

[ closing and signature missing] [MTPO].

August 29 Monday – Sam got “a permanent situation…in a book and job office and went to work.” He was paid 23 cents per 1000 ems, the lowest rate. He worked in the fifth floor office of John A. Gray, 95-97 Cliff Street [MTL 1: 9; Powers, MT A Life 65]. His earnings were four dollars a week; he managed to save as much as fifty cents a week [MTB 96].

August 31 Wednesday – In New York, Sam wrote to his mother, Jane Clemens, of his new position, his rooming house, a derogatory description of “brats” in the city, and food.