Transcribed below are three newly-recovered interviews with Mark Twain numbered in accordance with my edition of Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews (2006).93a. The first of this trio of interviews was conducted with Twain soon after his arrival with his wife Livy, daughter Clara, and tour manager Robert Sparrow Smythe (1833–1917) in Adelaide, Australia.Of course I called on Mark Twain. I reckon every humorist in Adelaide did the same thing, and I wasn't going to be left out in the cold. So I had my hat blocked and my clothes brushed, and hastily swallowing a cough lozenge had myself announced at the American's hotel. Will you believe it, he didn't know me. “Who the devil is he?” I heard him remark to the supercilious waiter.However, I was not to be denied, and knocking the waiter down with my umbrella I forced myself into the sacred presence.“Ha! Mark!” I exclaimed airily. “You pretend not to know me. Why, I met you in Sacramento five-and-thirty years ago.”The veteran growled out something which sounded like “You're a liar,” but he might merely have been alluding to our charming Northern township—Eurelia; so taking no notice of the observation, I dropped into a seat and said—“Well, Mark, and how has this world been using you?”He glared for a moment or two, and then asked savagely, “How many of you are there?”“What! Humorists?” I put in. “Oh, my dear old jumping frog, our name is legion. Every second man in Adelaide is a humorist. In the first place you have had the men from the dailies—well, I won't say anything about them. Then you have had Mr. Vice-Consul Murphy1 and Mr. Commissioner Jenkins,2 natives of your own great country. How do they strike you as humorists? You needn't trouble to throw that book, Mark. I'm very good at dodging; in fact I play forward in one of our football clubs. Then there's Henry Bartlett, M.P.3 He's a joker of the first water. You ought to meet him. I'm sorry that Rowley Rees4 is away in West Australia. Perhaps Major Castine5 might take his place. Only he's a trifle verbose. Yes; it is a little dry. May I enquire the nature of the beverage you are imbibing?”“That's a cocktail, sir, of my own devising.”“Ah! And its ingredients?”“Cayenne pepper, bush rum, and Worcester sauce. I keep it for visiting bores. Will you try a toothful?”“Not just at present, thank you. Let me first ask you what you think of Adelaide?”At that moment there seemed to be an earthquake shock. The room appeared to rock violently from side to side, Mark Twain towered over me like a veritable giant, I felt myself being impelled by an irresistible force through a doorway, and as in a dream I heard someone say—“Put him in the dustbin.”Sure enough, when I came to my senses a quarter of an hour afterwards I did find myself in the dustbin, and it seemed to me that the ghosts of Hugh Kalyptus6 and other local humorists were gibbering at me in a most discomposing fashion.Luckily I had kept a firm grip on my manuscript, and so, Quiz, you will be able to place before your readers an absolutely original interview with the great American humorist. In consequence of a dispute I had with Policeman No. 899, in which he ridiculously accuses me of having done some hurt to his uniform, my address for the next few days will be care John Howell, Esq, poet and gaoler, River Torrens.7At all events you will see that I have carried out your instructions, and I trust that you, Quiz, may be equally fortunate when you come to call on Mark Twain.142a. A second new interview focused on Twain's opinion of osteopathy in February 1901. Though he disclaimed any interest in testifying about the alternative medical treatment before the New York State Assembly, he in fact would do so before the end of the month.8. . . Mark Twain's experiences with osteopathy (though convincing in his own case, having been his chief reliance for three years past for relief from pains and bodily ills), is not, in the opinion of the humorist, of sufficient value to prove anything before a technically minded committee.He would say nothing about this himself today, but the Evening Post is informed by friends that Mark Twain will not go to Albany in the interests of any bill, or as an opponent of any bill, for the reason that for lack of technical knowledge in the matters in dispute he does not consider himself well qualified to testify; that his interest center itself upon a broader ground than any that is likely to come up in the Committee—the ground that, every time a statue encroaches upon the liberty of a citizen, it is an entering-wedge for further encroachments and is a danger; and that one cannot give his bodily health into the hands of any monopoly without running the risk of presently having his liberties curtained in other directions.“Imagine me appearing before the Committee with that statement,” Mr. Clemens said lately to a friend. “The Chairman would say, ‘Twain, you step aside; your talk is very nice, but it does not prove anything about osteopathy.’“How is it,” inquired Mr. Clemens further, “that there are a thousand ways—Constitution, laws, and everything permitting—in which I may damn my soul; but when it comes to a trivial little matter like temporary ill-health, the Legislature must prescribe how I shall do it?“One of these bills prescribes that if your mother falls in a faint you may not help her. Certain physicians are set aside who may give you permission to help her; but you may not do anything without their prescription. You may smoke, if you choose, but the number of cigars must be determined by a physician—you may not say how many yourself. This bill (the original ‘Bell bill’)2 is so absurd and ridiculous that I wish somebody might appear in Albany just to make fun of it.”176a. A third new Twain interview was recorded by the pioneering St. Louis photojournalist Robertus Love (1867–1930). Though forgotten today, Love was instrumental in promoting Twain's popular reputation at the turn of the twentieth century. He covered Twain's final visit to Missouri in spring 1902 for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,9 accompanying him by train from Illinois to St. Louis to Hannibal and photographing him seated in the directors’ room at the St. Louis Merchant Exchange on May 29. The next year, Love reported that plans were afoot to invite Twain to the St. Louis World's Fair.10 The two men occasionally corresponded over the years11 and in 1906 Love sent Twain an inscribed copy of his Poems All the Way from Pike.12 As late as 1914, Love published a poetic tribute to Twain.13 More to the point, in December 1903, a year and a half after they last met in person, Love reconstructed events and conversations they had shared in Hannibal.There was a plot to kill Mark Twain. The people of Hannibal conceived it. I thwarted it. I saved Mark Twain's life. . . . I have held the story in a state of suppression for a year and a half, but now the time has come when it must out. Justice demands it—justice to myself. I want to be decorated as a life-saver. . . .It requires a certain rare brand of nerve, if I do say it myself, to save the life of an eminent doctor of laws when a whole city conspires against him. I repeat, I amplify, I reasseverate, it requires more than ordinary nerve to rescue a lifelong humorist from certain death at the hands of an aroused and determined populace when he revisits, avowedly for the last time, the home of his boyhood. Upon such an occasion the conspirators realize that it is their last chance and their designs upon the life of their renowned townsman converge to a definite point of attack.I, and I alone, was in a position to be aware of this tense situation. To me was it given to know the truth and to me was apportioned by kind nature that sufficiency of nerve necessary to hold me unswerving in the imminent deadly breach until the intended victim of the onslaught got out of town. I was equal to the occasion. I did not quail. I do not say this boastfully but because it is true. I did not lose my nerve. I used it.The occasion was that of Mark Twain's visit to Hannibal in June of 1902 just prior to his trip to the Missouri State University at Columbia, where another LL.D. was to be added to that conferred in 1901 by Yale.14“Before being doctored again,” the humorist said to me when I met him aboard a train in Illinois on his way into St. Louis, “I am going to run up to Hannibal for a few days. Maybe some of the old folks will remember me. Anyhow, I want to see the old boys and girls once more.” The Post-Dispatch was responsible for my presence on the train. It was responsible likewise for my presence on another train later in the day, which bore Mark Twain to the old Missouri town where he lived 50 years ago and to which he had not paid in nearly half a century such an extended visit as he now intended to pay.Aboard those two trains I discovered that Mark Twain was not the octopus of which we read so much. He ate very sparingly. For breakfast he drank coffee and munched bread. For midday luncheon he ate scarcely anything.“I restrict myself,” he explained, “to one square meal a day. I do not hold myself to this limit because I am poor, but because I used to be rich. I ate too much and got dyspepsia. It took me 10 years to starve it out, and I am going to keep it starved.”Though Mark Twain was not aware of it, this Information supplied the clew which enabled me to save his life. It also served to put me on my guard in his behalf. I have no time to go into a Sherlock Holmes explanation15 as to how these remarks of his anent his eating habits, coupled with other things, gave me positive knowledge that the people of Hannibal would kill him if they got half a chance. It is sufficient to say that I knew quite well the people of Hannibal, having visited that city a number of times, and I knew their opinion of Mark Twain. I knew what they thought of him and what they would try to do to him if he ever turned up again in Hannibal. All they wanted was the chance and for that chance they had waited long and weary years.This consciousness flashed across my brain as we passed through Pike County within a few miles of Hannibal. I knew in that moment that the life of the great American humorist was in my hands. I did not swoon under the burden of responsibility; nor did I, on the other hand, strike a tragic attitude and cry, “I will sa-a-ave him, s'help me!” I merely resolved that I would do my duty without expecting any raise in salary.Mark Twain and I reached Hannibal unheralded. The prodigal son not being seen afar off, no fatted calf had been butchered.16 The day of butchery was yet to come, and soon. We walked up to the hotel, a short distance from the railroad station, almost unobserved. Mark Twain wrote “S. L. Clemens” on the register. The hotel clerk was a newcomer in Hannibal. He read the name while the guest gave the porter instructions as to bringing his trunks.“Shall I have them sent to the sample room. Mr. Clemens?” the clerk asked.That was the penalty Mark Twain paid for traveling with a plurality of trunks. A man with more than one trunk in a town like Hannibal can have but one occupation.Ensconced within his room, the uncommercial traveler opened a long leathern trunk and took out a nightshirt. It was early in the afternoon, but he had traveled far and was weary.“I must take a good rest before I see anybody,” he said to me, “and I'll be obliged to you if you will explain to any of my friends who may call. There may be some who will want to entertain me at their homes but I'd rather stay here at the hotel where I won't have to eat too much.”I understood. The innocent victim himself apparently had a faint inkling of the plot. When I went out he locked his door, lay down with his face turned toward the window, gazed for a time at the river bluff called Lover's Leap since his boyhood and at the hills under which yawned Torn Sawyer's cave, and slept like a boy tired out at play.Very shortly there was an ingathering of the clans. News travels rapidly, even in Hannibal. The populace was awake and aware. I told the clerk that Mr. Clemens did not wish to be disturbed and that inquiries as to his whereabouts should be referred to me. I sat down in the hotel lobby, being pointed out as “the man that came with Mark Twain.” I felt almost as sheepish as the man that corrupted Hadleyburg17 ought to have felt.“It's his private secretary.” said one. For this I was grateful, for I had heard one man say something that sounded like “val-lay.” To be alluded to as “it” was not so bad for if I could save Mark Twain's life and get the proper decoration for the deed I certainly should be IT.“Will you send up my card to Mr. Clemens?” requested a substantial citizen. “I am his old boyhood chum,18 and I want him to be sure and take dinner with me this evening. He'll be sure to remember me.” My work was beginning early. I knew that I must act promptly. I did not waver. My nerve was with me.“I'm very sorry, sir,” I replied, “but Mr. Clemens never eats but one meal a day, and he has eaten two already today. It is a rule that he never breaks.”“Then,” said the boyhood chum, “tell him he must take breakfast with me tomorrow.”“I am sorry again, sir,” was my reply, “but Mr. Clemens never eats breakfast. He is a charter member of the No-Breakfast Club.”“Then,” persisted the ancient chum, “he must take dinner with me tomorrow night.”“Since you say he must, I suppose he must; and on the whole I should say that he may be a trifle hungry by tomorrow night. I'll tell him when he wakes up.”The boyhood chum departed in glee. I felt relieved, having staved off the first attack.But there were others. Boyhood chums came pouring in at every door. 1 even saw a bunch of them looking in at the window. Girlhood sweethearts drove up in carriages, alighted and rushed into the hotel.“I want to see my dear old friend Sam Clemens at once!” cried the first girlhood sweetheart to arrive.19 “He just must come to dinner at my house tonight.”Now there is such a thing as being gallant, even at the risk of a life. I felt that I could sacrifice Mark Twain for the sake of being gallant so I promised this lady conditionally that he would accept the invitation.“If he wakes up in I lady drove home to the of a dinner of the and other girlhood sweethearts in with their I had to be gallant some more and before I had a of dinner long to make a of them I had to to which gave me a chance for Mark Twain's life. I would have time to and in an like this a few are when a of in as a and Mark Twain to a at a with a I was When the came to to Mark Twain the of the and to I was It may be that in this I a man with a rare nerve is to get at I all for luncheon and to my nerve to the victim when the final came to be Mark Twain is a great He slept on through the dinner hour and that saved the but the who had him to dinner that he must eat breakfast with them the next and what could I do but are I is the that of the I sat up to save Mark Twain's life. and and eating to until past that hour I had three of hotel covered with and I had conceived a of Mark Twain and him out of Hannibal on a train to save his and I myself to a few of so that I might be to as a for the onslaught of the early knew that I must my nerve for I should it I at I the breakfast in had to the to his I saw the up in as if for the to the It was an most for a the for by Mark Twain came to my relief and again his He was breakfast people their to luncheon and the victim slept until when I was about to a and that all eating were until one old boyhood chum with a determined of who as if he might be an in a that I go and on Mark Twain's door. I did The was awake and me to Mr. said been awake he replied, here cigars and looking at Lover's than it used to be when I was a is I “and there are some friends of who want to see they want me to he inquired Mr. they then I'll have to go to dinner with I out my and added it have said I, to the I believe they call what are we going to do about I “I that you are in the hands of your save me!” he it was that I a to save Mark Twain's life at My me like a Missouri for what I had done but for what I had left Perhaps I had not used the proper the my nerve was not a of and a I went down and the My rare nerve was with and I myself against the “I have the to you that Mr. Clemens you one and for your kind to of but that he is a man and he has just had his meal served in his room. He is very so am so are Mark when at last he did from his met and with his old friends in Hannibal does not this This story has to do with the of my the life of the humorist. He was when he set out to visit his friends and I am that at he ate all that he his with Mark Twain is an man and will do anything within reason to by the end of the second day he was and in the of his that he again me to save his from the hotel I had away eating with the of an my most I that I had and three The I away the next again my at last the of Mark Twain's visit we met in his room and I had 10 for the next day and one He had the said that we met on the train the daughter of one of the girls I used to go to with here in Hannibal, I'll tell you what he after a this thing You can take the and I'll take the he I believe the drove him to the any he from Hannibal before the next And that is how I saved Mark Twain's life.
Gary Scharnhorst (Thu,) studied this question.