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
>