I would be interested in knowing what, if any, changes Paine might
have made in this text. In general, I don't trust his texts of anything
Twain wrote. William L. Andrews, in "The Politics of Publishing: A
Note on the Bowdlerization of Mark Twain," _The Markham Review_ 7
(Fall 1977): 17-20, reviews some of the changes Paine made in texts
published in _Europe and Elsewhere_. One surprising change was the
deletion from "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" of a concluding
section about the army's khaki uniforms. Probably most people who
have read this essay have never read the deleted section. Paine's
version was included in Neider's _Complete Essays_, Smith's _Mark
Twain on the Damned Human Race_, and Geismar's _Mark Twain on the
Three R's_ -- and undoubtedly other anthologies; those were the three
I had handy to check when I first read Andrews's article. The change
made in that essay is only surprising because it had already been
published. Paine also rewote "The War Prayer" for no apparent
reason. I came across some other significant deletions while working on
Twain's Philippines writings. The most illuminating was a deletion from
a Jan. 24, 1901, letter to Twichell that Paine included in the 1917 edition
of _Mark Twain's Letters_. In Paine's edition, Twain says he is hoping
to stay close to his desk "hoping to write a small book." Period.
The original letter, at Yale, continues: "full of playful and
good-natured contempt for the lousy McKinley." Since Paine was
editing a collection of an author's letters, you would think he would
be aware of people's interest in knowing what Twain was planning to
write about. I think a full-length study of Paine's editions of
Twain would be very interesting if placed within the context in which
Paine was working, with Clara's influence and the influence of
changed political contexts (Andrews suggests that Paine deleted the
section on the army uniform from the 1923 edition because of concern
for its reception after World War I). This was also an era of
blacklisting of "socialists/communists/pacifists", the Palmer Raids,
"100% Americanism", etc.
> Are there any personal journals or diaries of Paine that might yet
> be published that would clarify some of the things about himself
> that Paine apparently never revealed to Clemens?
Roger B. Salomon, _Twain and the Image of History_ (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1961), quotes some entries from Paine's
journals. I don't have this at hand so can't look up his source for
the journals but I assume he cites one.
Jim Zwick
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