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The Innocents Adrift Edited by Mark Twain's Official Biographer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arthur L. Scott
Arthur L. Scott*
Affiliation:
University or Illinois, Urbana
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Extract

From the death of Mark Twain in 1910 until 1937 Albert Bigelow Paine was the official editor of Mark Twain's literary papers. Paine was not a scholar. He wrote popular biographies, sentimental novels, and books for children. When he came to edit Mark Twain's letters, speeches, notebooks, and autobiography, he made countless deletions, following the procedure often practiced by editors dealing with such material.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , June 1963 , pp. 230 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963

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References

1 This appears in Europe and Elsewhere (New York [1923]), pp. 129–168. Paine's title is part of a title which Mark Twain used at first, then cancelled. Hereafter, references to The Innocents Adrift will designate the ink manuscript, while references to “Down the Rhône” and all page numbers otherwise undesignated will be to the text as printed in Europe and Elsewhere. The manuscripts of The Innocents Adrift and The Mysterious Stranger are part of the Mark Twain Papers (MTP) in the General Library of the University of California, Berkeley. The MTP are in the liberal custody of Henry Nash Smith and his assistant, Frederick Anderson, to both of whom I extend sincere thanks for aiding my research.

2 Mark Twain's America (Boston, 1932), p. x.

3 Mark Twain: A Biography (Centenary Edition, New York [1935]), pp. xix-xxi. This biography first appeared in 1912.

4 Ibid., p. xxi.

5 Ibid., p. 926.

6 Europe and Elsewhere, Introduction, pp. xxxii-xxxiii.

7 For example, Paine mentions “notes,” but Mark Twain's pocket notebook for the period was clearly not designed to help him with his book. It contains only about 2S0 words, mostly irrelevant memos. When Paine prepared Mark Twain's notebook for publication, he found these jottings so dull that he printed only two entries: Mark Twain's Notebook (New York, 1935), pp. 217–218—the last and first entries on the respective pages. The only two notes which Mark Twain made use of in The Innocents Adrift will be mentioned later. The original notebook is in the MTP; page references will be to the typescript. The notebook also contains two pencil sketches, which Mark Twain later used for a short article, “The Lost Napoleon,” also printed in Europe and Elsewhere, pp. 169–174.

8 Merle Johnson, éd., A Bibliography of the Works of Mark Twain (rev. ed., New York, 1935), p. 210. Had Johnson or his helper, George Hiram Brownell, been given access to the MTP, this error would not have been made. On the title page of the manuscript are two pencil notations. The first says, “Thought not usable.” The second says, “Later Paine picked out some of it and it was published by Harpers in a volume entitled Europe and Elsewhere—C. T. Lark.” (C. T. Lark was attorney for Mark Twain's estate.)

9 One might expect that Mark Twain, in the effort to embellish a rather thin narrative, would resort to his practice of gleaning material from travel books. But he did not. A curious entry, however, appears in his notebook immediately prior to this outing: “Henry James's Summer trip through Provence.” Notebook #26, p. 5.

10 The ink manuscript carries a pencil marking, probably Paine's, enclosing a passage which opens, “The dreamy repose, the infinite peace of these tranquil shores …” Significantly, Paine did not delete a single passage of this nature.

11 This incident occurs as Mark Twain is by-passing a dangerous rapids. It may have been suggested to him by something he actually observed, for his notebook mentions “3 idiots” who are swept down a rapids in a rowboat and have to be rescued. Notebook #26, p. 6.

12 “Harris” was his best friend, Joe Twichell, in whose copy of A Tramp Abroad Mark Twain wrote a long inscription filled with gratitude. Twichell was with him only six weeks out of Mark Twain's fourteen months in Europe, he says, but is in 440 of the 531 pages of the book. “Hang it, if you had staid at home it would have taken me 14 years to get the material. You have saved me an intolerable whole world of hated labor, & I'll not forget it, my boy.” Albert E. Stone, Jr., “The Twichell Papers and Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad,” Yale University Library Gazette, xxrx (1935), 152.

13 Flagg probably did tell such a story while painting Mark Twain's portrait only ten months before the voyage. Paine reports that, in his talks with Flagg, Mark Twain “made a sincere effort to get that insight which would enable him to appreciate the old masters …” Biography (p. 902). However, the story is not appropriate for Mark Twain to tell in this scene, because Harris employs it to show up Mark Twain's “prejudiced ignorance.”

14 © by the Mark Twain Company, 1963. This is deleted p. 140 after 1. 27.

15 Deleted passage begins p. 130,1. 8 after “steep and long.” 16 See Franklin Walker and G. Ezra Dane, eds., Mark Twain's Travels with Mr. Brown (New York, 1940) and Daniel M. McKeithan, ed., Traveling with the Innocents Abroad (Norman, Okla. [1958]).

17 Deleted p. 133 after 1. 26.

18 Although Mark Twain jots down short entries from this “log,” the log may have had no more real existence than Uncle Abner.

19 Deleted p. 139, just before the last line.

20 © by the Mark Twain Company, 1963. This seems to be based on the idea behind his notebook entry of the period: “Text. It is permitted to the superficial observer in a foreign land to generalize broad principles from isolated instances. M.T.” Notebook #26, p. 6.

21 Deleted p. 142 after 1. 29.

22 The two notebooks which Mark Twain kept during his travels for A Tramp A broad are even more explicit than the book on this subject. See Stone, op. cit.

23 Deleted p. 145, betweeen 11. 22 and 26. Lines 23–25 were interpolated by Paine; see above.

24 The original manuscripts are in the MTP. A short selection is printed by Paine in Biography, Appendix V.

25 Deleted p. 165 just before the 2:15 entry.

26 Deleted p. 148 right after the 4:10 p.m. entry.

27 Although Twichell's name is not mentioned in the story itself, it is given in an AMS footnote dated 1894.

28 DeVoto, ed., Mark Twain in Eruption (New York [1940]), pp. 366–372, and Charles Neider, ed., The Autobiography of Mark Twain (New York [1959]), pp. 214–217.

29 © by the Mark Twain Company, 1963. In the earlier version of the yarn this scene is skimmed over in two sentences of mere after-word.

30 I venture to guess that for most readers, as for me, the most enjoyable parts of “Down the Rhône” are the only two real digressions which Paine did not delete : the story of Noel Flagg and the two young artists, and the story about Mark Twain's embarrassing experience with a New York policeman. For one thing, these stories contain the only dialogue left by Paine in the piece.