Details
CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE ("Mark Twain"). Autograph manuscript of "The Mysterious Chinaman" (a parody of E.A. Poe's "The Raven"), comprising 5 four-line stanzas each with refrain, plus an author's footnote (signed with initials "M.T."), headed at top "Written for M.E.G.'s Album," n.p. [San Francisco, Ca.], n.d. [1864 or 1865]. 1 page, folio, 273 x 222 mm. (10¾ x 8 7/8 in.), edges irregular, formerly folded once horizontally and three times vertically, wear and small losses at folds and fold intersections, only affecting legibility of a single line, the paper lightly discolored, neatly mounted. Mark Twain, Early Tales and Sketches, ed. E.M. Branch and R.H. Hirst, 1981, 2:64-65 and notes.
"ONCE UPON A MORNING DREARY, WHILE I PONDERED, WEAK AND WEARY": THE ONLY EXTANT MANUSCRIPT OF MARK TWAIN'S PARODY OF POE'S "THE RAVEN"
Clemens's earliest recorded parody of Poe's "The Raven," a poem he knew well and parodied elsewhere. In this parody, the principal actor is a Chinese valet or houseboy, Ah Chung. The manuscript of "The Mysterious Chinaman," a fair copy, is one of the earliest literary works of Clemens preserved in manuscript. No draft is extant. The first stanza reads:
"Once upon a morning dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious shirt that me and Steve has wore, While I was stretching, yawning, gaping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door-- 'I guess its Maim,' I muttered, 'tapping at the chamber door-- At least it's she, if nothing more...." In a footnote, Clemens justifies the word "wore" in line 2: "The sacrifice of grammar to rhyme, in the second line, is a 'poetic license' which was imperatively demanded by the exigencies of the case. --M.T."
"M.E.G.," for whose album Twain copied the parody, was probably Mary Elizabeth Gillis, sister of Twain's friends Jim and Steve Gillis (the later is presumably the "Steve" mentioned in line 2). "Maim" may have been her nickname, and the "Fannie" mentioned in the second stanza her sister, Francina. Steve Gillis and Clemens had been friends in Virginia City and the two came to San Francisco together in May 1864 and shared lodgings there for a time. In February 1865 Twain boarded with the Gillis family and the editors of the Mark Twain Papers believe the parody is likely to have been written at that time, in perhaps March 1865.
Provenance:
1. Mary Elizabeth Gillis
2. John Howell Books, in 1935, when a photographic copy was supplied to the Mark Twain Papers
3. The present owner, by descent.
"ONCE UPON A MORNING DREARY, WHILE I PONDERED, WEAK AND WEARY": THE ONLY EXTANT MANUSCRIPT OF MARK TWAIN'S PARODY OF POE'S "THE RAVEN"
Clemens's earliest recorded parody of Poe's "The Raven," a poem he knew well and parodied elsewhere. In this parody, the principal actor is a Chinese valet or houseboy, Ah Chung. The manuscript of "The Mysterious Chinaman," a fair copy, is one of the earliest literary works of Clemens preserved in manuscript. No draft is extant. The first stanza reads:
"Once upon a morning dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious shirt that me and Steve has wore, While I was stretching, yawning, gaping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door-- 'I guess its Maim,' I muttered, 'tapping at the chamber door-- At least it's she, if nothing more...." In a footnote, Clemens justifies the word "wore" in line 2: "The sacrifice of grammar to rhyme, in the second line, is a 'poetic license' which was imperatively demanded by the exigencies of the case. --M.T."
"M.E.G.," for whose album Twain copied the parody, was probably Mary Elizabeth Gillis, sister of Twain's friends Jim and Steve Gillis (the later is presumably the "Steve" mentioned in line 2). "Maim" may have been her nickname, and the "Fannie" mentioned in the second stanza her sister, Francina. Steve Gillis and Clemens had been friends in Virginia City and the two came to San Francisco together in May 1864 and shared lodgings there for a time. In February 1865 Twain boarded with the Gillis family and the editors of the Mark Twain Papers believe the parody is likely to have been written at that time, in perhaps March 1865.
Provenance:
1. Mary Elizabeth Gillis
2. John Howell Books, in 1935, when a photographic copy was supplied to the Mark Twain Papers
3. The present owner, by descent.