at the farm at Elmira] From 1871 until 1889, the Clemens family spent their summers at Quarry Farm, the Elmira, New York, residence of Olivia’s sister and brother-in-law, Susan and Theodore Crane. Susy, Clara, and Jean were all born there. The property had been purchased in 1869 by Jervis Langdon, who bequeathed it to his daughter Susan. Named after an old slate quarry on the site, it was situated outside the city, on a hill overlooking the Chemung River. In 1874 Susan built an octagonal study on the hill above the house for Clemens to use as a writer’s retreat. There he worked on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) (17 Mar 1871 to Bliss, L4, 366–67 n. 3; Cotton 1985, 59).

Gerhardt . . . not able to get anything to do] Clemens befriended Karl Gerhardt (1853–1940), a young self-taught sculptor and chief mechanic for a tool manufacturer in Hartford, in February 1881. His wife, Josephine (called “Hattie”), initiated the relationship by calling on Clemens and persuading him to visit her husband’s studio. Clemens, impressed by Gerhardt’s talent, sought the opinions of several artists, who endorsed his judgment: painter James Wells Champney (1843–1903), sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910), and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (see AD, 16 Jan 1906, note at 284.7–8). Clemens offered to loan Gerhardt $3,000 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, an amount that Ward and others assumed would easily support the artist and his wife for five years. Gerhardt exhausted his stipend (and supplements) in less than four years and returned to the United States in the summer of 1884, leaving his wife in Paris with their infant daughter, Olivia (named in honor of Olivia Clemens; his “little boy,” Lawrence, was not yet born). Having failed to secure any work, he sculpted a clay bust of Clemens, and a plaster casting of it was photographed to provide a second frontispiece for Huckleberry Finn. In the late 1880s Gerhardt won a number of important commissions for memorial statues, but by the end of the decade work became scarce. In the mid-1890s he was briefly in partnership with architect Walter Sanford and was employed by a bicycle manufacturer. Sometime after Hattie died in 1897, he moved to New Orleans and lived in obscurity, doing some sculpting but chiefly tending bar and doing other odd jobs until his own death in 1940 (21 Feb 1881 to Howells [1st], NN-BGC, and 7 Aug 1884 to Howells, MH-H, in MTHL, 1:350–55, 2:497–98; “Art Notes,” New York Times, 6 Mar 1881, 8; letters to the Gerhardts: 30 Sept and 1 Oct 1882, MB; 26 Mar 1883, CLjC; 14–25 June 1883, CU-MARK; 1 Aug 1883, CtHMTH; HF 2003, xxvii, 374; AskART 2008e; see Schmidt 2009c).

The speech . . . was worth four times the sum] Richard D. Hubbard (1818–84) was a Yale graduate and lawyer who served as governor of Connecticut from 1877 to 1879. On 28 March 1883 he addressed the state legislature in Hartford proposing that a statue of Nathan Hale be commissioned for the exterior of the capitol building. A brief sample will explain Clemens’s sarcasm:

The committee . . . Mr. Coit . . . Barnard . . . Waller] Robert Coit (1830–1904), president of the New London Northern Railroad Company since 1881, served as a Connecticut state senator from 1880 to 1883 (“Robert Coit Dead,” Hartford Courant, 20 June 1904, 1; Biographical Review 1898, 276–77). Henry Barnard (1811–1900) was an educator and editor who devoted his career to the improvement of public schools and held a number of government positions. He acquired a reputation, however, as an inept administrator who failed to complete his obligations. He was appointed to the committee to replace Hubbard, who died in February 1884. Thomas M. Waller (1840–1924) practiced law and entered politics in 1867, serving as a state legislator, secretary of state, mayor of New London, and governor from 1883 to 1885.

A salaried artist . . . Mrs. Colt’s private church] The “salaried artist” has not been identified. James G. Batterson (1823–1901), a prominent Hartford businessman and founder of the Travelers Insurance Company, was the president of the New England Granite Works, which specialized in producing “artistic memorials” in granite, marble, and bronze. Enoch S. Woods, a sculptor with a studio in Hartford, was the sexton of the Church of the Good Shepherd. This Episcopal church had been built in 1866 by Elizabeth Jarvis Colt (1826–1905), the widow of Samuel Colt (the founder of Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company), as a memorial to her late husband and the three children she had lost in infancy (Geer 1886, 42, 207, 245, 297, 521). Woods created a model of Hale “as he had prepared himself for the hangman’s rope, standing bare-headed and with his hands pinioned” (“A Sculptor’s Model of Nathan Hale,” Hartford Courant, 12 July 1883, 2).

William C. Prime] Clemens had satirized Tent Life in the Holy Land (1857), an idealized travel narrative by journalist and author William C. Prime (1825–1905), in chapters 46 and 48 of The Innocents Abroad—calling him “Grimes”—and in 1908 still considered him a “gushing pietist” (AD, 31 Oct 1908). In late 1885 and early 1886, however, Clemens was negotiating with Prime for the right to publish McClellan’s Own Story, a work that Prime edited on behalf of General George B. McClellan’s widow. The book was issued in 1887 by Webster and Company (31 Jan 1886 to Prime, DLC; N&J3, 218).

Charles D. Warner] Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900), an essayist, travel writer, and editor of the Hartford Courant, was a central figure in the Hartford Nook Farm community. With Clemens he coauthored The Gilded Age (1873–74), a satirical novel that lent its name to the materialism and political corruption in American society after the Civil War. Warner had met Gerhardt at the same time as Clemens and continued to take an interest in his career (link note following 20–22 Dec 1872 to Twichell, L5, 259–60; 21 Feb 1881 to Howells [1st], NN-BGC, in MTHL, 1:350–55; 5 Apr 1884 to the Gerhardts, CtHMTH).

the prospects . . . seemed to be as far away as ever] In December the committee— [begin page 482] which by then consisted of Coit, Barnard, and Governor Henry B. Harrison (Waller’s successor)—at last awarded the contract to Gerhardt. Olin L. Warner, a sculptor who had studied with the same Paris mentor as Gerhardt (François Jouffroy), persuaded the committee that his sketch was superior to the full-sized model that Woods submitted. A year later Gerhardt’s clay model, a figure of “heroic size . . . standing with his arms partly outstretched,” was approved, and was cast in bronze. Both Clemens and Gerhardt attended the unveiling ceremony in June 1887; the Reverend Joseph Twichell gave the invocation, and Charles Dudley Warner (a new committee member) made the presentation address (Hartford Courant: “The Nathan Hale Statue,” 22 Dec 1885, 2; 22 Dec 1886, 1; “The Hale Statue Unveiled,” 15 June 1887, 5; “The Hale Statue,” 15 June 1887, 1).