SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 60 (of 78)
Meeting the Wiley Wizard of Wall Street (1893) and Bankruptcy (1894)
Chapter 60
Meeting the Wiley Wizard of Wall Street (1893) and Bankruptcy (1894)
1893 found the world in a financial panic. Money was scarce—hard to earn, hard to borrow. I especially was having a devil of a time, what with the continued delay of Paige and his infernal typesetting machine to bear fruit. What a talker he is. He could persuade a fish to come out and take a walk with him. When he is present I always believe him—I cannot help it. When he is gone away all the belief evaporates. He is a most daring and majestic liar.
As a result of my falling into the snare of the genius of this blackguard and blatherskite and his outrageous unveracities, things were getting serious for me, as I had not been able to get out of the hole that I had dug for myself by speculating on and lavishly supporting him and his blasted contraption. This, along with the misfires of my publishing company, whose inept and possibly corrupt management was also a leaking vessel seemingly destined to flounder, held me trapped in a vice-like snare of debt.
A rescue ship finally appeared on the storm-tossed horizon for us when I was introduced to Henry Huttleston Rogers, of Standard Oil.
That masterful businessman turned out to be a fan of my writing, especially of Roughing It, and he was willing to help me out by taking charge of my business affairs and steering this seemingly doomed vessel through the perilous and treacherous waves and monstrous storms that it faced.
EDITOR’S NOTES: By the next year (1894), the financial state of Twain’s publishing venture, Charles L. Webster & Co., had further deteriorated. Its creditors were increasingly pressing for payment. Ultimately, on the 18th of April of that year, Webster & Co. went out of business by means of voluntarily declaring bankruptcy. Thus ended Twain’s publishing business after less than a decade, during which time its most notable publications had been Adventures of HuckleberryFinn and Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.
Well, not quite ended—the corpulent lady had yet to trill and ululate. At meetings of the creditors, Henry Rogers represented Twain. Although some of the creditors seemed relatively lenient, others were hard-nosed, demanding that Twain turn over to them his literary copyrights, his home in Hartford, and whatever other assets could be found.
Countering this, Rogers insisted that as Livy was the chief creditor (she had lent the firm more than $60,000 of her own money), the copyrights would go to her. He added that the Hartford house was already hers. Aside from Livy’s portion of the claims against Webster & Co., the firm’s debts amounted to about $100,000 (in 2021 terms, a little over three million dollars (if you consider $80,000 to be “a little”)).
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In 1894, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson was published, as was The Private History of the ‘Jumping Frog’ Story (almost thirty years after that yarn first appeared).
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Will Bowen, who was the model for both Joe Harper and part of the composite Tom Sawyer character in the novel about the latter’s adventures, died in 1893. Twain called him “my first, oldest, and dearest friend.” Later, though, Twain would refer to Henry Rogers as the best friend he ever had.
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.