Barret, Richard F. (1804–60), called Dr. Ray in “Villagers” (103), was a former suitor of Jane Clemens’s whom she had hoped to marry. Clemens learned of this early romance in the spring of 1886—evidently from his sister, Pamela—a few months after his mother had revealed it to Orion Clemens. In a letter of 19 May 1886 to William Dean Howells, Clemens re-created his mother’s account:
“I will tell you a secret. When I was eighteen, a young medical student named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; & he used to ride over & see me. This continued for some time. I loved him with all my whole heart, & I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no words had been spoken. He was too bashful to speak—he could not do it. Everybody supposed we were engaged—took it for granted we were—but we were not. By & by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, & he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, & asking him to drive me over in his buggy & let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might have that opportunity to propose. My uncle should have done as he was asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the letter; & then, of course, I could not go—& did not. He (Barrett) left the country presently; & I, to stop the clacking tongues, & to show him that I did not care, married, in a pet. In all these sixty-four years I have never seen him since.” (NN-B, in MTHL, 2:567)
After studying medicine at Transylvania University, Barret established a lucrative practice in Green County, Kentucky. In 1832 he married Maria Buckner, daughter [begin page 301] of a Kentucky lawyer and congressman. He moved to St. Louis in 1840 and assisted Dr. Joseph N. McDowell (father of John McDowell) and others in founding Missouri Medical College. A “pioneer in various important business enterprises,” he was regarded as “one of the most active men of his generation . . . in developing the resources of the States of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri” (Conard, 1:160, 161). In his later years, Barret was described as “eminently noble and engaging,—a figure tall, graceful, and courtly, and a countenance of the Roman model,” and although “at times irascible, his disposition was usually gentle and amiable. . . . His pride of race and scholarly habits made him appear exclusive and aristocratic, but his impulses were ardent, and his manners polite and engaging” (Scharf, 1:677). Mark Twain’s list of potential characters for “Hellfire Hotchkiss” (S&B, 173) includes a Dr. Rayley, possibly to be based on Barret, but the character does not appear in the story (Conard, 1:160–62; Scharf, 1:676–77, 2:1544; Barret, 1).
