The Autobiography of Mark Twain · Chapter
Friday, April 6, 1906 explained
Twain reflects on his unsatisfactory house at 21 Fifth Avenue, then recounts a chance meeting in Washington Square with Etta Booth, whom he last saw as a child in a Virginia City ballroom in 1862.
What happens
Twain reflects on his unsatisfactory house at 21 Fifth Avenue, then recounts a chance meeting in Washington Square with Etta Booth, whom he last saw as a child in a Virginia City ballroom in 1862. He resumes his account of his brother Orion's life, detailing his many failed ventures—a poultry farm, a wood-sawing machine, a steam canal boat—and his eccentricities, including his rapid political shifts. Twain also recalls suggesting Orion write an autobiography, a task he now admits was impossible, and describes Orion's death in 1898.
Themes in this chapter
Memory and Autobiography
Twain reflects on the difficulty of writing an honest autobiography, both for himself and for Orion, and the selective nature of memory.
Mortality and Loss
Etta Booth's husband is dying; Orion's death is described; Twain notes the passage of 44 years and the deaths of many acquaintances.
Family and Domestic Life
Twain's relationship with his brother Orion, including financial support and Orion's failed domestic ventures like the poultry farm and boardinghouse.
Hypocrisy and Human Nature
Orion's rapid political shifts and his making of Democratic transparencies while giving a Republican speech highlight human inconsistency and eccentricity.
Characters to notice
- Mark Twain
Narrator; meets Etta Booth in Washington Square; reflects on his house and his brother Orion's life.
- Orion Clemens
Twain's brother; subject of extended reminiscence about his failed inventions, political eccentricities, and death in 1898.
- Etta Booth
Child Twain knew in Virginia City; now an elderly, poorly dressed woman whom Twain meets in Washington Square; her husband is dying.
- Jane Lampton Clemens
Twain's mother; died in 1890 at age 88; left money to Twain which he gave to Orion.
- Orion Clemens
Orion's wife (unnamed in excerpt); described as a good woman who tried to make a boardinghouse succeed.
Key passages
“I wrote and suggested to Orion that he write an autobiography. I asked him to try to tell the straight truth in it; to refrain from exhibiting himself in creditable attitudes exclusively, and to honorably set down all the incidents of his life which he had found interesting to him, including those which were burned into his memory because he was ashamed of them.”
Twain urged Orion to write an honest autobiography that included shameful as well as flattering incidents.
Twain reflects on the impossibility of such a task, noting his own failure to include shameful incidents in his dictation.
“He had gone down to the kitchen in the early hours of a bitter December morning; he had built the fire, and then sat down at a table to write something, and there he died, with the pencil in his hand and resting against the paper in the middle of an unfinished word.”
Orion died suddenly while writing at a kitchen table, pencil in hand, mid-word.
Twain describes his brother's peaceful death in Keokuk in 1898.
“I did not dance with Etta, for I was a lady myself. I wore a revolver in my belt, and so did all the other ladies—likewise the gentlemen.”
Twain was dressed as a woman at the ball, and all dancers, regardless of gender, carried revolvers.
Recalling the Virginia City ballroom where men outnumbered women, leading to cross-dressing and armed dancers.
