Bob-- Thanks for this--a great job of piecing the fragments together.  --Jim L.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert H. HIRST
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2017 3:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Reopening the Jim Smiley question

No, no references to Greeley in the notebook. But when Bret Harte reprinted the story in the Californian, less than a month after it appeared in the Saturday Press, "Smiley" was replaced throughout with "Greeley." Mark Twain seems to have revised the printer's copy for this reprint (it included some changes only he could have made) but he certainly did not read proof for it, since it contained many errors as well as Greeley throughout. If there's any truth in his recollection for the Adelaide Register ("That's a
fact") it seems likely that it was Harte's Californian printers who ran out "S's" (*not* "G"s) and made the change to Greeley. We know that because when Mark Twain used a clipping of the Californian reprint to reprint the story in his Jumping Frog book (1867), he demonstrably changed all the Greeley's back to Smiley (see Early Tales & Sketches, volume 1, pp. 528-33, which show facsimiles of the clippings with his holograph changes). In 1981 I was inclined to think that Mark Twain must have made the change to Greeley but changed his mind a few months later (see Early Tales & Sketches, volume 2, p.668). But thirty-five years later it seems more likely that the printers made the change to Greeley (possibly for the reason he recalled in 1895, though getting the change backward), and that
*he* reversed the printers' change when preparing the Jumping Frog printer's copy. So Mark Twain didn't always remember the things that didn't happen. His memory was pretty good at aged 60, and it's easy to appreciate how easily little mistakes like reversing the change (Greeley to Smiley instead of Smiley to Greeley) can make the memory of real events seem like fiction, when they are in fact just slightly skewed, factual memories. I doubt that helps very much with the question of whether Smiley/Greeley was a real person, but if he was, it would not be the first or the last time Mark Twain based one of his characters on someone real.

Bob Hirst

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 10:51 AM, Jim Leonard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> A nice tidbit for the Adelaide reviewer, but evidently not heavy on 
> accurate facts.  According to the U of C edition of Twain's notebooks (vol.
> 1), a pertinent notebook entry records, "Wrote this story for Artemus 
> [Ward]--his idiot publisher, Carleton gave it to [Henry] Clapp's 
> Saturday Press [not the Saturday Gazette]" (p. 80).  The Saturday 
> Press did cease publication in 1866, but Twain's 1865 sketch 
> apparently wasn't in the last issue.  And the jumping frog, far from killing it, was a great success.
> Also, Twain refers to the Smiley character in early notes as 
> "Coleman," but there are no references (so far as I know) to 
> "Greeley."  As we know, Twain cared a lot more about telling a good 
> story than sticking to the sort of dreary facts I'm offering here.  By 
> the way, Twain's 1894 "Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story" 
> relates a version of the story's composition that combines elements of 
> the notebook entries with the "snapper" (killing the Press/Gazette) that he would again use for the Adelaide reviewer the
> following year.   --Jim L.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Clay 
> Shannon
> Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2017 11:39 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Reopening the Jim Smiley question
>
> We discussed whether Jim Smiley was a real person; note this from 
> twainqout= es=C2=A0Mark Twain quotations - Jumping Frog
>  =20
> | =20
> |   | =20
> Mark Twain quotations - Jumping Frog
>    |  |
>
>   |
>
> =20
>
> He was a real character, and his name was Greeley. The way he got the 
> name = of Smiley was this -- I wrote the story for the=C2=A0New York 
> Saturday Gaze= tte, a perishing weekly so-called literary newspaper -- 
> a home of poverty; = it was the last number -- the jumping frog killed 
> it. They had not enough "= G's", so they changed Greeley's name to 
> "Smiley." That's a fact.
> - "Mark Twain Put to the Question" interview, Adelaide=C2=A0South 
> Australia= n Register, 10/14/1895
> =C2=A0- B. Clay Shannon
>