Bancroftiana, Number 123 Fall 2003: A beautiful dream and vividly real

“A beautiful dream and vividly real”
New Mark Twain Notebook, Letters, and Other Items

Clemens in 1904. Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library.

On Sunday, 24 September 1905, more than a year after the death of his wife of nearly 35 years, Olivia (“Livy”), Samuel Clemens recorded in his little notebook a dream he had that morning: “At 8 a. m. a beautiful dream & vividly real. Livy. Conversation of 2 or 3 minutes. I said several times,“‘Then it was only a dream, only a dream;’ she did not seem to understand what I meant.” The little “Excelsior Diary” for 1905 was the only Mark Twain notebook known to be in private hands and until now its contents were unknown to the editors of the Mark Twain Papers. It is just one of the items acquired by The Bancroft Library at the recent auction of the collection of Nick Karanovich at Sotheby’s, New York.

Among hundreds of items, the Karanovich collection contained nearly two score manuscript letters and documents and another two score books from Mark Twain’s library previously unknown to the Mark Twain Papers (or known only through listings in catalogs for previous auctions). When the final hammer fell at Sotheby’s, a good many of these items belonged to The Bancroft Library, thanks to the timely generosity of Friends of the Bancroft and Mark Twain Luncheon Club members Ben Shapell, Kimo Campbell, Robert Middlekauff, and Robert Corbett, as well as the Margaret I. and Augusta M. Higginson Fund, the Joseph Z. and Hatherly B. Todd Fund, and the James D. Hart Memorial Fund. In addition to the notebook, the new acquisitions include nine letters by Clemens; 17 letters by other correspondents (among them Olivia L. Clemens, Clemens’s daughter Clara, his lecture agent James Redpath, and his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine); two contemporary documents; a first edition of The Innocents Abroad, a rare sales prospectus, and a still rarer publisher’s advertising pamphlet for Innocents; and a book from Clemens’s library, David Augustin de Brueys’s L’Avocat Patelin (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), given him by Samuel F. G. Whitaker, the translator, and heavily annotated by Clemens.

Clemens’s “Excelsior Diary” notebook for 1905, entry for 24 September. Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library.

The letters show Clemens in a variety of circumstances and moods. An undated letter by J. H. (“Jack”) Hoagland, the landlord of Clemens’s rooming house in Washington, D.C., in 1868, gives a firsthand look at some of Clemens’s friendships of the time. Hoagland reports a breakfast conversation between Sam Clemens and fellow newspaper reporter John Henry Riley: “He told Riley that he would write his obituary some day—Riley said he would write his Son of obituary—thus they had it.” A letter of 12 March 1893 from Clemens in Settignano, Italy, to his daughter Clara (“Ben”) in Berlin, about the advent of good weather and the impending loss of a beloved servant, attests to the warm and affectionate relationship they shared: “Ben, dear, the summer has arrived. The sun is gratefully hot & the song-birds keep up a harmonious riot in the trees the other side of the fence. A couple of nightingales sing an hour or two, at dawn, close to the house. Jean keeps the place wealthy in wild flowers. The almond trees are in bloom, but to me it is the same as peachbloom. . . . Bettchen is to be lost to Mamma I am afraid; & the whole house, even to the horses, grieve about it. The old mother is sick & wants her—is homesick for her, too, I guess. Betty is not as effective as some people, but amply makes up for it with a sweetness of spirit which is rare in heaven & unknown in hell. the other place. . . . Take good care of yourself sweetheart, & don’t forget who loves you—which is Papa.” These are just a small sample of the new additions to the collection.

—Victor Fischer
Mark Twain Project