Food for Thought at the Mark Twain Papers

Probably everyone who has conducted research at the Mark Twain Papers over the past few decades has at least one Bob Hirst story, and the people who have worked most closely with him during his long and distinguished career no doubt have many memorable ones. My Bob Hirst story began over a decade ago. It involves the biggest Twain discovery I have ever made—no doubt the biggest I will ever make. And Bob Hirst played a big role in the story.In 2011, I was at the Papers doing research for a project of mine that is finally about to come to fruition: a micro-biography of Mark Twain in the pivotal year of 1884. I took a break from reading letters to and from Twain to begin research on another project: a Mark Twain cookbook, which Kerry Driscoll and Bruce Michelson were proposing. In the reading room, I scanned the finding list for anything related to food. I found a few items, including one that looked related but seemed a bit dubious: “oleomargarine.” I ordered it up and waited for it to be delivered, listening to the tolling of the Berkeley carillon—I have a theory that time passes more quickly inside the Mark Twain Papers, since one only has a limited time to work each day.When the folder was delivered to me, I opened it and found that the item had very little to do with food. What I held was a typescript of a manuscript, including a previous editor's note, describing the piece as a “burlesque fairy tale.” Even though I was now sure the document was of no use in a cookbook, my interest was piqued, and I began to read.The opening words were arresting: “Widow, dying, gives seeds to Johnny.” What Twain wrote for the next few pages was a combination of complete sentences and notes, outlining a story in which a dying widow gives her son Johnny some mysterious seeds, which he plants after her death. When the plant sprouts and a flower appears, Johnny eats it, just as his mother had directed. He finds that he can now talk to animals and is taken by a kangaroo to meet a host of other animals. They give Johnny food and a place to sleep.Then came a moment that changed my perception of the charming but fragmentary story. There is an interruption in the narrative: “‘Karoo is hostess, ain't she?’ Susy asked.” When I saw the name “Susy,” the hair on the back of my neck literally stood up, a cliché I had always heard but never experienced. What I suspected at that moment was that this fragment was not a “burlesque fairy tale,” but an actual fairy tale that Clemens had told his daughters, as I knew he said he did nearly every night, improvising a new story based on some artifact or prompt they provided. I also remembered that he had written about this in “A Record of Small Foolishnesses,” his and Olivia's record of precious and precocious things his daughters said and did. So I asked for a copy of that manuscript, and to my astonishment, Twain had discussed what turned out to be this very text while in Paris in 1879. Susy and Clara gave him an illustration from Scribner's and Twain had to invent stories based on that image: a figure of a man, with lines imposed on him to show proportion but which suggested imprisonment to Twain. Twain writes about the fairy tale he invented, including dragons and other elements of “Oleomargarine,” then came the final proof of the connection: the hero's name—Johnny.1 Apparently what I had discovered, quite by accident, was a surviving story he told his daughters, and quite possibly the only one.This is where Bob Hirst comes into the story. I walked down to his impeccably-ordered office—if a tornado or a hurricane makes impeccable order—and showed him the typescript and the connection to Twain's bedtime stories for his daughters. He was as astonished as I was, said he had never seen “Oleomargarine,” wasn't sure the last time anybody had looked at it, and that certainly nobody had recognized its importance. Bob undoubtedly knows the archives better than anyone alive. To have his acknowledgement of the importance of my find was very gratifying.Twain's manuscript ends abruptly, with either the second half lost or with Twain losing interest in finishing his notes. Audaciously, I asked Bob if I could be allowed to flesh out the story and finish it. He gave his approval. After I wrote a draft a few weeks later, I sent it to Bob and he agreed that it would be a good publication by the University of California Press in its “Jumping Frog” series. Bob worked hard to have it approved for publication but after some promising developments, California declined. Eventually, and again with Bob's sponsorship, as well as Cindy Lovell's at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, Random House agreed to publish my version of Twain's fairy tale, with an award-winning children's book illustrator to draw the pictures. But as often happens in the publishing world, things changed, and Random House ultimately hired somebody else to flesh out Twain's story. The resulting book, The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, was published in 2017 by Doubleday. Bob Hirst, Cindy Lovell, and I are thanked in a foreword, and that would seem to be the end of our part of the story.2But a producer for CBS Sunday Morning had read about the fairy tale and its discovery in the New York Times, and the network flew me out to Berkeley to film a segment for a feature that aired in October 2017. They interviewed Bob Hirst and me, and we stood in the archives with the original manuscript and talked about Twain's story, its discovery, and its significance.3 That was the end of five minutes of my supposed fifteen minutes of fame, but I am sure Bob has had many more such minutes. He still uses my discovery of “Oleomargarine” in talks to groups as an example of the unexpected treasures that lie hidden in the Mark Twain Papers.I cherish my encounters and my friendship with Bob Hirst. He always has a twinkle in his eye, an attribute I think he shares with the writer to whom he has devoted his distinguished career. Bob Hirst has been an admirable steward of one of America's most important literary collections. I salute him on the occasion of his retirement and, like a host of others, I thank him for his dedication and intrepid service to the legacy of Mark Twain.