Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

by Mark Twain

planned “to spend Sunday with Mark Twain who is a great friend of Grant’s, and can possibly get me access to him” (Howells to William C. Howells, 2 Mar 1882, in Howells 1980, 10–11). Clemens and Howells called on Grant in New York on 10 March. In My Mark Twain, Howells reported that

years [i.e., ears] were earliest used from my steamboating uncles, my earliest heroes. When I stated my business he merely

write to Mr. Arthur” (Howells 1910, 71). Grant acted so promptly that Secretary of State Frederick T. Frelinghuysen (1817–85) responded the following day, “You may inform Mr. Clemens that it is not our purpose to make a change in the Consulate at Toronto” (Frelinghuysen to Grant, 11 Mar 1882, CU-MARK). Grant forwarded the letter to Clemens, and he in turn wrote Howells, on 14 March, “This settles

imagine. You see the General is a pretty prompt man” (MH-H, in MTHL, 1:394). The elder Howells resigned his post in June 1883 (21 June 1874 to Howells, L6, 166 n. 2; Howells 1979, 61, 196; Howells 1980, 10–11, 14, 58–59). 71.7–8 “How he sits and towers” . . . Dante] Howells qu...

How he ‘sits and towers’ as Dante says” (CU-MARK, in MTHL, 2:536). Less than a month later, on 10 September, Clemens added this quotation to his dictated typescript, inserting in brackets the words “It was bacon and beans” and Howells’s presumed quote from Dante. The phrase is not, however, from Dante, but from a sonnet by Italian dramatist and poet Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803): “Siena, dal colle ove torreggia e siede” (“Siena, from the hill where she towers and sits”). Howells’s source was E. A. Brigidi’s La Nuova

captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, was known primarily for the humorous sketches he wrote under his pseudonym while stationed on the Pacific Coast. These were collected in Phoenixiana; or, Sketches and Burlesques

1866 to JLC and family, L1, 374 n. 2).

General Badeau’s military history . . . John Russell Young’s account . . . had hardly any sale at all] Adam Badeau (1831–95) became Grant’s military secretary in 1864, and by the time he retired from the army in 1869 (with the brevet rank of brigadier general) the two men had become close friends. President Grant appointed Badeau U.S. consul in London, where he served from 1870 t...

Russell Young (1840–99) had a distinguished career as a journalist with several newspapers before becoming managing editor of the New York Tribune from 1866 to 1869. In 1872