“Never Refuse to do a Kindness”: The Quiet Motto of the Mark Twain Papers

I first met Bob Hirst on November 22, 1988. I had arrived in Berkeley a few days earlier and had generously been allowed to take a seat in the reading room of the offices in the “old” Mark Twain Papers in Room 408 of the Bancroft Library. Supported by a grant from the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., I was in Berkeley to conduct research for my doctoral project, which depended on access to unpublished letters and other manuscript materials.I knew, of course, that Bob was the director and General Editor of the Papers and Project, but in those first few days I had no opportunity to speak with him or even see him. He was always the first to arrive in the office and the last to leave. During the day, he was almost invisible, hidden among file boxes and towering stacks of folders—features characteristic of the entire office space.Although Bob was clearly a busy man, he made time to listen to me, a German student who had just completed his M.A. exams, on his first visit to the United States, with no previous experience working in research libraries or academic archives. He immediately offered helpful suggestions on resources that could be useful to my work. It was a start that gave me encouragement and a sense of what the research environment would be like throughout my time at the Papers which—extended by a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service—ultimately lasted about fifteen months, probably one of the longest periods any visiting scholar has spent there.At the time, I didn't fully appreciate the significance of Bob's openness to a student from Germany. I did not know then that it was the “awful German language” that had thrown a wrench into his graduate career at Berkeley when he failed to pass his German reading test in a timely manner.1 That incident became a turning point of his life, when circumstance, working in harness with his temperament, launched him into editing the works of Mark Twain. In the larger scheme of things, however, he may have discovered that—with regard to the time, effort, and exhaustion—there is not such a big difference between learning German and editing the works of Mark Twain. As Twain described the study of German in his 1886 essay “Taming the Bicycle,” “you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you.”2 Bob's editorial work unfolded in a similar fashion—only that this “mulling along” has taken more than fifty years, and every time he thought he “got” it, the powers that be “sprang” funding issues on him, threatening to undermine the project's plans.Working in the reading room at the Papers was an extraordinary experience. It was a “living, breathing hub of scholarship.”3 Never again have I been so completely immersed in such an intensive and inspiring atmosphere of all-day scholarly activity and academic dedication. In the company of what must have been a near-complete collection of academic books on Mark Twain and surrounded by countless file cabinets containing thousands of pages of letters and other manuscript materials, I felt the privilege of having been granted access to a treasure trove of materials that forms the foundation for any original research and scholarship on the writer.But that was only the material part. It did not take long to realize how fortunate I was to spend time in close proximity to an exceptional group of editors, most of whom had spent fifteen to twenty years preparing and publishing Twain's work: Dahlia Armon, Robert Pack Browning, Richard Bucci, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Lin Salamo, Kenneth M. Sanderson, and Harriet E. Smith—all of them equipped with the most substantial knowledge about anything related to Mark Twain. Bob coordinated and guided these talented individuals, ensuring that each of them could fully realize their potential and contribute their individual expertise to the ongoing projects.Besides Bob's expertise and vision in collecting, editing, and publishing the works of Mark Twain, he was an early adopter of digital technology. At a time when few people recognized its potential benefits for the humanities, he had equipped his offices with state-of-the-art desktop computers, which opened up new and productive ways of creating high-quality editorial results. A few years later, the editorial team launched the Mark Twain Project Online under Bob's direction to supplement and enhance the value of the print editions. In doing so, he pioneered innovative ways to share knowledge and make resources more accessible to the broader scholarly community—well before the concepts of open access and open science were widely advocated.The Mark Twain Papers and Project, as I have experienced it over the course of more than thirty-five years, is truly remarkable. From the principles of transcription to the criteria for annotation and the construction of various types of scholarly apparatuses, every volume published under Bob's supervision has been guided by the most rigorous academic standards. Jerome Loving's verdict on the Autobiography of Mark Twain applies to all the books that have issued from the Berkeley project: They are “the last word in accuracy and substance.”4With their ambition and determination, and with the profound knowledge embedded in their notes and supplementary materials, Bob and his team have made Mark Twain and his work more accessible and comprehensible to scholars and general readers alike. Just as importantly, they have fostered a spirit of openness and collegiality that stands in welcome contrast to the competitiveness of most academic environments.As many people, including myself, have experienced, this scholarly generosity didn't end once we left the Mark Twain Papers. Written requests for documents or specific questions were always answered competently and promptly. Even when issues arose on the Mark Twain Forum, the mailing list dedicated to the life and writings of Mark Twain, Bob would step in with information and clarification. On several occasions, Bob attended the International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies in Elmira, where he treated the audience to presentations that were in a class of their own. These talks, covering the ongoing work at the MTP and their latest discoveries, were delivered with the utmost professionalism and the most visually compelling design imaginable.As I reflect on my time at the Mark Twain Papers, I remember feeling a bit guilty about asking the staff for help with specific details or locating additional research materials. In my defense, I wasn't the only visitor who benefited from their deep expertise—visiting scholars were a regular presence, and all of us relied on the staff's generous support.While it ought to have been self-evident—though perhaps it hasn't always been clear to everyone—it is worth emphasizing that Bob and his team were not there to serve as research assistants or to cater to the whims and needs of visiting scholars. If you spent only one day at the office with your eyes open, you could see that the editors had their own demanding work to manage, researching and producing their magnificent scholarly editions of Mark Twain's work. Yet, despite these pressures, the unstinting academic generosity never wavered.This attitude has extended even to projects and ventures that would not yield financial benefits to the MTP but rather to private publishers and individuals. In what is just the most recent example, Ron Chernow revealed that he could not have completed his new biography within the set timeframe without Bob's “exceptional generosity”5 and the invaluable support of the MTP staff members who, during the pandemic, emailed him “hundreds of attachments’ worth of unpublished materials from the archive.”6I am grateful for all the dedicated managerial and editorial work that Bob has done over the decades—and from which I, as a German student of Mark Twain, have benefited immensely. His rigorous academic standards and editorial principles have been a model for my own approach to scholarship and continue to guide my work. But above all, I value the spirit of academic sharing that he and his team have fostered. They never refused to do a kindness. This virtue, which transcends borders and disciplines, has made my own research possible—and, I am certain, that of many others. Especially in an environment where the notion of “competition” is often overemphasized or misrepresented, it is a rare and precious gift that continues to inspire and guide those of us fortunate enough to have encountered it through Bob Hirst and the Mark Twain Project.