Mark Twain's Travel Trunk: An Impropmtu Notebook

• Published in: Mark Twain journal (1954) 2004-10, Vol.42 (2), p.15-18
• Main Authors: GRIBBEN, ALAN, SHARLOW, GRETCHEN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Authors, American; Iron; Magazine publishing; News content; Paine, Albert Bigelow (1861-1937); Pencils; Records and correspondence; Speeches; Travel; Tree trunks; Twain, Mark; Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910)
• ISSN: 0025-3499

MARK TWAIN'S HABITUAL urge to jot down thoughts about his journeys, readings, and conversations is well documented at all stages of his adult life, from the detailed notebooks that he kept as a cub pilot to his prolific annotations in the margins of his library books to the illegible scrawls that Albert Bigelow Paine saw him attempting in his final hours.1 Yet occasionally, especially during his travels, no writing paper was at hand when this penchant for making notes seized him, and he was apt then to latch onto any type of material presenting itself on which he could set down reminders and reflections- as witness, for example, the worn piece of bristol board on which he inscribed a list of his memorized speeches along with working notes for Following the Equator.1 In at least one instance, however, another momentary contingency evidently obliged him to find an even more unlikely surface on which to make some random notes. Volunteer worker Vera Knapp pointed out to Sharlow a curious feature about the interior of the trunk, where age and rough usage had peeled off the cracked white paper lining in places: the inner lid, which formed a flat surface, bore some penciled notations in the upper left-hand corner where the lining had been entirely scraped away and bare wood exposed. Subsequent consultations with visiting scholar Alan Gribben and with Mark Woodhouse, the Mark Twain Archives Librarian in the Gannett- Tripp Library, confirmed that it was Mark Twain himself who had opened the trunk to the fullest position allowed by its two metal hinges (perhaps there had been no cloth strap restraining it then) to form in effect a small writing table, conceivably laying the lid on something else for support, and utilized the wooden surface (avoiding the areas to which the white paper lining still clung) to make a series of notations numbered from 1 to 20. 12 Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 410-41 1. Since 1991 he has chaired the English and Philosophy Department at Auburn University Montgomery, where he was named a Distinguished Research Professor in 1998.