The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (82 page)

Coleman Parsons in "The Background of The Mysterious Stranger" cites Sir
Walter Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830), letter IX.

'° See also Parsons's citations in his "The Background of The Mysterious
Stranger," pp. 65-68, particularly to chapter eight of Louisa May Alcott's Little
Men.

50 MTTB, pp. 252-253.

61 Following the Equator (Hartford, 1897), p. 256, chapter 27.

83 MTL, p. 683.

B6 Compare the tree-growing juggler in Ceylon and Dan Beard's picture, "The
White Man's World," which shows the white man in the sun-helmet and illustrates Twain's assertion in the text, "The world was made for man-the white
man" (Following the Equator, p. 339 and pp. 186-187).

52 MTB, pp. 1079, 1235.

r--
54 MTL, p. 699.

r. ----
ss MTHL, p. 715.

07 "The Missionary in World-Politics," with letter to C. Moberly Bell, editor
of the London Times; unpublished MS inMTP.

68 Why did Clemens fail to refer to the Spanish-American war in the Mysterious Stranger stories? Presumably the answer lies in the fact that the "Chronicle"
and "Schoolhouse Hill" were dro?ped before he returned to the United States in
October 1900, and that "No. 44' scarcely touches on war as a theme. In the fall
of 1900 Twain became convinced that the liberation of Cuba, which he applauded, was degenerating into imperialist war in the Philippines, and that even
British civilization could not justify the "single little shameful war" in South
Africa against the Boer Republics. He wrote four widely read and reprinted
attacks upon American missionaries and the European powers in China, upon
Chamberlain, McKinley and his administration, and upon the Czar of Russia.
They are "A Salutation-Speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth"
in the New York Herald of 30 December 1900; "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" in the North American Review of February 1901; "To My Missionary
Critics" in the same magazine for April 1901; and The Czar's Soliloquy" in the
Review for March 1905. He joined the New England Anti-Imperialist League in
1900, and wrote much more, published and unpublished, on disarmament and
the possibility that new weapons might make war obsolete. For a discussion of
his anti-war writing from 1898 to 1902, see William M. Gibson, "Mark Twain
and Howells, Anti Imperialists," New England Quarterly, XX (December 1947),
435-470.

69 MTHL, p. 699.

60 Following the Equator, y. 119, chapter 10.

81 Notebook 35 (1902):1{S_pp^39-40.

62 Walter J. Meserve, ed., The Complete Plays of W. D. Howells (New York,
1960).

63 MTSatan, pp. 26-28; MTHL, p. 659.

°4 MTN, pp. +348-351.

65 SLC to Wayne MacVeagh, 22 August 1897, in MTP.

SLC to T. B. Aldrich, 14 February 1904 (Harvard).

69 DE, XXVII, 299.

70 MTHL, pp. 675-678; MTW, pp. 118-120; and "Which Was the Dream?"
in WWD.

71 New York Times, "The Drama," 7 July 1900.

72 Notebook 34 (1901), TS p. 21b. These notes and fragments are closely
linked to Clemens's metaphor that the death of Susv had left the family helpless
"derelicts" in an immense empty ocean. The metaphor recurs in letters to Francis
H. Skrine, Twichell, and Howells. It becomes the settin of two manuscript fragments of the period, "The Enchanted Sea-Wilderness" WWD, pp. 76 86) and
"The Great Dark" (WWD, pp. 102-150). See SLC to Skrine, 19 January 1897,
Roger Barrett Collection; to Twichell, 19 January 1897, MTL, p. 640; to
Howells, 22 January 1898. MTHL, pp. 670-671.

es Notebook 31, TS pp. 41-43 (6 January 1897).

67 MTL, p: 777, 24 September 1905; MTN, p. 395, 24 September 1905.

73 See MT's working notes, Appendix B.

74 Dated Lee, Massachusetts, 28 July 1904 (MS at Yale University, TS in
MTP).

47 "The Background of The Mysterious Stranger," pp. 71-72. Clemens knew
Shakespeare's plays well. On the Mississippi he heard George Ealer declaim
Shakespeare, and read the plays in his spare time, and after he was a writer, he burlesqued Shakespeare often. He cites Shakespeare as an example of supreme
genius in "Chronicle," chapter 2. As early as 1873 Mark Twain quoted part of
the dream-passage from The Tempest in "A Memorable Midnight Experience";
Howells located the passage for him in 1876; Mark Twain alluded to it again in
1889 in A Connecticut Yankee; and he quoted it at length in 1909 in the essay
"Is Shakespeare Dead?" (Europe, p. 5; see Yankee [New York, 1889], p 205,
chapter XVII; MTHL, p. 127; What Is Man?, p. 362). Tuckey corroborates
Twain's knowing The Tempest. After completing all but chapter 33 of "No. 44"
(which was an afterthought), Clemens told his daughter Clara that he had
broken his bow and burned his arrows-very probably his own version of
Prospero's speech, "I'll break my staff, ...
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book" (MTSatan, p. 69). Finally, some part of the
tone and imagery of 44's last speech to August may also derive from Belial's
speech in Book II of Paradise Lost:

I am indebted to my former student Mrs. Barbara Fass for this brief but striking
parallel.

'S MTHL, p. 845.

76 Roughing It (Hartford, 1872), p. 550, chapter 76.

78 Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor (Princeton, 1966), pp. 270, 272.

• "Sister" in the Methodist, or Presbyterian, or Baptist, or Campbellite churchnothing more. A common form, in those days [MT s note].

1 MTSatan, pp. 34-36.

1 MTSatan, pp. 16-24.

3 MTSatan, p. 44.

1 MTSatan, p. 47.

1 "'It seems to me" begins a new paragraph in the manuscript.

I MTSatan, p. 57.