ButⒶapparatus note it was on a bench in Washington Square that I saw the most of Louis StevensonⒺexplanatory note. It was an outing that lasted an hour or moreⒶapparatus note and was very pleasant and sociable. I had come with him from his house,Ⓐapparatus note where I had been paying my respects to his family. His business in the Square was to absorb the sunshine. He was most scantily furnished with flesh, his clothes seemed to fall into hollows as if there might be nothing inside but the frame for a sculptor’s statue. His long face and lank hair and dark complexion and musing and melancholy expression seemed [begin page 229] to fit these details justly and harmoniously, and the altogether of it seemed especially planned to gather the raysⒶapparatus note of your observation and focalize them upon Stevenson’s special distinction and commanding feature, his splendid eyes. They burned with a smouldering rich fire under the pent-houseⒶapparatus note of his brows, and they made him beautiful.
* * * * * * *Ⓐapparatus note
IⒶapparatus note said I thought he was right about the othersⒺexplanatory note, but mistaken as to Bret Harte; in substance I said that Harte was good company and a thin but pleasant talkerⒺexplanatory note; that he was always bright, but never brilliant; that in this matter he must not be classed with Thomas Bailey AldrichⒺexplanatory note, nor must any other man, ancient or modern; that Aldrich was always witty, always brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as the red hotⒶapparatus note iron on the blacksmith’s anvil—youⒶapparatus note had only to hit it competently to make it deliver an explosion of sparks. I added—
“Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equaledⒶapparatus note him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn’t help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking,Ⓐapparatus note you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he was always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell—you will see.”
Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, “I hope not.”
“Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured AdonisⒶapparatus note backed against a pink sunset.”
* * * * * * *Ⓐapparatus note
There on that bench we struck out a new phrase—oneⒶapparatus note or the other of us, I don’t remember which—“submerged renown.” Variations were discussed:Ⓐapparatus note “submerged fame,”Ⓐapparatus note “submerged reputation,”Ⓐapparatus note and so on, and a choice was made; “submerged renown”Ⓐapparatus note was elected, I believe. This important matter rose out of an incident which had been happening to Stevenson in Albany. While in a book shop or book stallⒶapparatus note there he had noticed a long rank of small booksⒶapparatus note cheaply but neatly gotten up, and bearing such titles as “Davis’s Selected Speeches,” “Davis’s Selected Poetry,” Davis’s this and Davis’s that and Davis’s the other thing; compilations,Ⓐapparatus note every one of them, each with a brief, compact, intelligent and useful introductory chapter by this same Davis, whose first name I have forgottenⒺexplanatory note. Stevenson had begun the matter with this question:
“Can you name the American author whose fame and acceptance stretch widestⒶapparatus note in the States?”
I thought I could, but it did not seem to me that it would be modest to speak out, in the circumstances. So I diffidently said nothing. Stevenson noticed, and said—
“Save your delicacy for another time—youⒶapparatus note are not the one. For a shilling you can’t name the American author of widest note and popularity in the StatesⒶapparatus note. But I can.”
Then he went on and told about that Albany incident. He had inquired of the shopman—
“WhoⒶapparatus note is this Davis?”
The answer was—
[begin page 230]“An author whose books have to have freight trains to carry them, not baskets. Apparently you have not heard of him?”
Stevenson said no, this was the first time. The man said—
“Nobody has heard of Davis; you may ask all aroundⒶapparatus note and you will see. You never see his name mentioned in print, not even in advertisementsⒶapparatus note; these things are of no use to Davis, not any more than they are to the wind and the sea. You never see one of Davis’s books floating on top of the United States, but put on your diving armor and get yourself lowered away down and down and down till you strike the dense region, the sunless region of eternal drudgery and starvation wages—there you’llⒶapparatus note find them by the million. The man that gets that market, his fortune is made, his bread and butter are safe, for those people will never go back on him. An author may have a reputation which is confined to the surface, and lose it and become pitied, then despised, then forgotten, entirely forgotten—the frequent steps in a surface reputation. A surface reputation, however great, is always mortal, and always killable if you go at it right—withⒶapparatus note pins and needles, and quiet slow poison, not with the club and the tomahawkⒶapparatus note. But it is a different matter with the submerged reputation—down in the deep water; once a favorite there, always a favorite; once beloved, always beloved; once respected, always respected, honored, and believed in. For, what the reviewer says never finds its way down into those placid deeps; nor the newspaper sneers, nor any breath of the winds of slander blowing above. Down there they never hear of these things. Their idol may be painted clay, up there at the surface, and fade and waste and crumble and blow away, there being much weather there; but down below he is gold and adamant and indestructible.”Ⓐapparatus note
Louis Stevenson] Clemens met Stevenson (1850–94) in April 1888. Ill with lung disease, Stevenson had spent the winter with his wife and stepson at a well-known health resort at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. He wrote to Clemens on 13 April, proposing that they meet in New York City, where he planned to stay from 19 to 26 April. Clemens, an admirer of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, was pleased when Stevenson wrote him that he had read Huckleberry Finn “four times, and am quite ready to begin again tomorrow” (13? Apr 1888, CU-MARK). Later in the year Stevenson left on a Pacific cruise, spending the rest of his life on various islands in the South Seas (15 and 17 Apr 1888 to Stevenson, CLjC; Baetzhold 1970, 203–6).
I said that I thought he was right about the others] The “others” were presumably mentioned in the portion of the text that Clemens omitted, signaled by the line of asterisks. Another omission occurs below (at 229.22). The two gaps may have been part of the original 1904 typescript (now lost), but it is more likely that they were the result of Clemens’s revisions before it was retyped in 1906.
Harte was good company and a thin but pleasant talker] See “Ralph Keeler,” note at 150.2–4. Clemens’s friendship with Harte had ended acrimoniously in 1877 with the failure of Ah Sin, the play on which they collaborated. In a later dictation Clemens explained that Harte’s character spoiled his “sharp wit,” which “consisted solely of sneers and sarcasms; when there was nothing to sneer at, Harte did not flash and sparkle” (AD, 4 Feb 1907; N&J3, 2).
Thomas Bailey Aldrich] Aldrich (1836–1907), an immensely popular poet and novelist and a pillar of the New England literary establishment, grew up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which served as the setting for many of his literary works. In 1852, lacking the funds to attend Harvard, he moved to New York City to work as a clerk in his uncle’s business. He soon began to publish poems, and joined the editorial staffs of several journals. During 1861–62 he was a Civil War correspondent for the New York Tribune. He married Lilian Woodman in 1865 and moved to Boston, where in 1866 he became editor of the literary magazine Every Saturday, a post he held through 1874. He succeeded William Dean Howells as editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1881, a position he retained until 1890. Clemens first met Aldrich, after some months’ correspondence, in November 1871, and the two enjoyed a lifelong friendship. Among Clemens’s tributes to Aldrich as a conversationalist is a remark recorded by Paine: “When Aldrich speaks it seems to me he is the bright face of the moon, and I feel like the other side” ( MTB, 2:642 n. 1; 15 Jan 1871 to the Editor of Every Saturday, L4, 304 n. 1).
“Davis’s Selected Speeches,” . . . I have forgotten] No such series of books by “Davis” has been found. Possibly Stevenson (or Clemens) misremembered the name of William Brisbane Dick (1826–1901), coproprietor of Dick and Fitzgerald, a publishing firm founded in 1858. Compilations of prose and poetry, as well as books for entertainment or self-improvement, bulked large in their catalog, which included Dick’s Recitations and Readings, American Card Player, Dick’s Comic Dialogues, Dick’s Irish Dialect Recitations, Dick’s Art of Wrestling, and Dick’s Society Letter-Writer for Ladies, all issued between 1866 and 1887. In 1867 Clemens himself had considered offering the publishers a collection of his Sacramento Union letters from the Sandwich Islands (Cox 2000, 85–86; N&J1, 176–77 n. 166).
Source documents.
TS Jean (lost) Typescript made in 1904 by Jean Clemens in Florence from Isabel Lyon’s handwritten record of Clemens’s dictation; now lost.TS2 (lost) Typescript, leaves conjecturally numbered 81–85, made from TS Jean; now lost.
TS3 Typescript, leaves numbered 16–20, probably made from TS Jean, and revised.
TS4 Typescript, leaves numbered 79–83, made from TS Jean.
NAR 2pf Galley proofs of NAR 2, typeset from the revised TS3 and further revised, ViU.
NAR 2 North American Review 183 (21 September 1906), 456–59.
The original source of the text is now lost; it was a typescript prepared in 1904 in Florence by Jean Clemens, who transcribed the longhand notes taken by Isabel Lyon from Clemens’s dictation. During his visit to Dublin in August 1906, Harvey selected material for the first five installments of the NAR, and Hobby was instructed to prepare a typescript, TS3, to serve as printer’s copy (see Contents and Pagination of TS3, Batch 1). TS2 (also lost), TS3, and TS4 must have all derived from the 1904 typescript, which also served as the source of another excerpt included in NAR 2 (the first half of “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX”). TS3 agrees with TS4 in all of its substantive readings; although TS4 has less authority than TS3—which Clemens revised—its variants are reported, because it may incorporate authorial readings not present in TS3. Only one of its readings has been adopted (‘equaled’ at 229.14). When TS3 and TS4 agree, they confirm the readings of the missing TS Jean.
Clemens made a few additional corrections on NAR 2pf. An unidentified NAR editor wrote ‘Stevenson’, a question mark, and ‘IV’ on the first page of TS3, indicating its section number in NAR 2, the others being the first part of “Scraps from My Autobiography. From Chapter IX” and material from the ADs of 3 April and 21 May 1906.