Mark Twain’s Biography Told by a Selection from the Index in His Autobiography (UC Press, 2010)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, money earned from, 372, 597
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, McDougal’s cave, 397
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 116, 499
Alexander VI (pope), 623
Alexander the Great, 465, 476
Alonzo Child (steamboat), 614
Animals: cat given Pain-Killer, 52, 351-52, 588; Clemens family cats, 345; compared to humans, 186-87, 218-220, 312
Belgium, 581
Bermuda, 479, 654
Bonaparte, Catherine, Princess, 540
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 172, 465, 500, 507, 540, 550
Caesar, Julius, 465, 467
Casanova, Giovanni Giacomo, 5, 6, 15
Charles I (king of England), 204, 526, 528
Charles II (king of England( 526
Cincinnati, Ohio, 461, 559, 646, 651
Clemens, Clara Langdon (Bay): death of mother, 25
Clemens, Jane Lampton: facility with words, 212; on SLC’s [Mark Twain] drinking and swearing, 215-16, 268, slaves owned and hired, 212, 471, 528; love of animals, 199.
Clemens, John Marshal: undemonstrative nature, 274, 321
Clemens: infant habits, 363
Clemens, Orion: middle-of-night visit to young lady, 52, 454
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (Mark Twain): Freemasonry, 651; seventieth birthday dinner, 267-68, 305, 558, 657-61
ATTITUDES AND HABITS: dinner table behavior, 387-88; dueling, 294-98, 570-71; eating and drinking, 137, 210-12…; laziness, 305, 391; lying, 5, 268-69, 277, 425, 630; Presbyterian conncience, 157-59…; sleeping, 659-60; writing speed, 8, 228; CHILDHOOD: left behind by family, 209, 379, 530; sweethearts, 417-18
Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, 101, 481, 494, 560
Doctors: Olivia Clemens’s experience as a teenage invalid, 356, 590-91
Drinking: anecdote about Episcopal sextons, 398-99; anecdote about drunken sutler, 290-91
France: SLC’s [Mark Twain] burlesque map of Paris, 362-63, 593. See also Joan of Arc
German language: compound word, 118-19; German nursemaid who uses profanity (Elise), 394, 607
Grant, Ulysses S.: similarity to Jervis Langdon, 373, 598; spiritual advisor, 99-100
Hannibal, Mo. Cave near, 213-14, 481-19, child left behind during move, 209, 379, 530, 600; cholera and measles epidemics, 52, 352, 420-21, 589, 628; tragedies that SLC [Mark Twain] witnessed as a child, 157-159, 514-15, 610
Howels, William Dean: SLC’s letters to, about “old pigeon-holed things,” 13, 30
Insurance company scandal, 257, 268, 271, 364-66, 464, 549
Langdon, Charles Jarvis: wagon incident, 357-58
Leopold II (king of Belgium), 268, 557
Life on the Mississippi: prototype of Huck’s father, 531-32; tramp’s death, 157-58, 514
Munro, David A., 564; as editor of North American Review, 47, 54, 54n102, 672, as Players club member, 284-85, 432, 547, 548
Nevada Territory: dueling in, 294-98, 568-70, SLC as miner, 445, 447, 543, 553, 641, 651
New Orleans: SLC seeks ship for South America, 561
Nicholas I (tzar of Russia), 540
Nicholas II (tsar of Russia), 550
Religion: Catholic funerals, 293-94; SLC’s [Mark Twain] Presbyterian conscience, 157-59, 188, 190, 398, 514; Susy Clemens’s “What is it all for?” question, 326, 375, 419, 580
“Roughing It” lecture, 508
Slavery: woman who saves SLC from drowning, 401, 613
Twichell, Joseph H: advice fro anxious suitor, 414-16; anecdote of hair restorer, 289; encounter with profane ostler, 8; witnesses execution of Civil War deserters, 430-31, 632-33
Victoria (Queen of England), 115-16, 126, 499, 501, 527
Whitmore, Franklin Gray, 316, 496, 621; spoon-shaped drive incident, 342-43, 587
Wuthering Heights (servant), 120-24, 500
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Ben Shattuck is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. He contributes to The Daily Rumpus and interns at McSweeney’s.
Author Spotlight / Comments Off on Mark Twain’s Biography Told by a Selection from the Index in His Autobiography (UC Press, 2010)
February 9th, 2011 / 1:39 pm
February 9th, 2011 / 1:39 pm
Roxane Gay—
I am weirdly obsessed with Mark Twain. This is a really interesting NYT article about Twain’s marginalia.
Enough with all this literature. Let’s have some ukulele music!
Here’s something else. Embedding of this youtube video has been disabled, so please follow this link. And then come back.
That was Cliff Edwards or “Ukulele Ike,” known to many of us as the voice of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket. As you can see, in addition to his career as a Vaudevillian, Edwards was also a World War I interrogator of German prisoners. In the video, we see him (and a fellow Imperialist American torturer slash tap dancer) engaged in some Abu Ghraib-style tactics, playing music that the subject clearly finds unbearable.
No doubt she moments later spilled all sorts of beans about the Kaiser’s plans, eh? Possibly she revealed the location of Wilhelm II mustache wax factory.
Literary tie-in: Cliff Edwards was born in Hannibal, Missouri. Also from Hannibal? Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. Discuss.