Briggs family. William (b. 1799?) and Rhoda Briggs (b. 1811?) of Kentucky were listed in the 1850 Hannibal census with eight children, ranging in age from nine months to nineteen years (Marion Census 1850, 315–16). Clemens mentions three of the children in “Villagers.”
William (Bill) Briggs, Jr. (b. 1831?), in 1849 joined the gold rush to California (“Letter from California,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 17 Jan 50). Clemens encountered him in San Francisco in 1863, and wrote home: “The man whom I have heard people call the ‘handsomest & finest-looking man in California,’ is Bill Briggs. I meet him on Montgomery street every day. He keeps a somewhat extensive gambling hell opposite the Russ House. I went up with him once to see it” (SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett, 18? May 63, L1, 252). Amelia Ransome Neville, in her memoir of San Francisco, provides a description of Briggs in his later years:
In the eighties it happened that we knew Bill Briggs, successful professional gambler of that later time who came to Shasta Springs for summer visits. Conservative guests avoided him, but others found him an engaging person, devoted to his small son and talking of everything but cards. His profession he left at home, and nothing could persuade him into a game while he sojourned among us. But he wore his mustache and wide-awake hat and the largest solitaire diamond I have ever seen in a ring. When he died, he left a fortune to the little son, then at a military school, and a reputation for square dealing. (Neville, 41)
Clemens recalls Briggs in “Villagers” (95).
Artemissa Briggs (b. 1833?) was an early infatuation of Clemens’s who kindly but firmly rejected his attentions. Both in “Villagers” (95) and his autobiography, Clemens indicates that she married stonemason Joshua Richmond, but the Hannibal Journal of 16 March 1853 records her marriage to bricklayer William J. Marsh. Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 431) show that Clemens planned to [begin page 307] introduce her as Cassy Gray, but that character does not appear in the story (AD, 16 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:212, 214; Wecter 1952, 183, 305 n. 15; Fotheringham, 39).
John B. Briggs (1837–1907) was one of Clemens’s “special mates” (AD, 16 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:219). In 1850 both joined the Hannibal chapter of the Cadets of Temperance, nearly sixty boys pledged not to smoke or chew tobacco. Briggs worked in David J. Garth’s tobacco factory, married Mary Miller, another Clemens classmate, and later became a farmer. In some autobiographical notes Clemens recalled an early misadventure that may have involved Briggs: “Burglaries (with John Briggs?) of potatoes &c which we could have got at home. Caught nearly—family back—hear them from under bed” (SLC 1898 [bib21479], 1). When he visited Hannibal in 1902, he spent an afternoon with Briggs and remarked “We were like brothers once” (“Friendship of Boyhood Pals Never Waned,” Hannibal Evening Courier-Post, 6 Mar 1935, 5C, partially paraphrased in MTB, 3:1170–71). In his notebook for 1902, Clemens reminded himself to “draw a fine character of John Briggs. Good & true & brave, & robbed orchards tore down the stable stole the skiff” (NB 45, CU-MARK, TS p. 13). That same year, he considered using an event from his friend’s youth in a story:
The time John Briggs’s nigger-boy woke his anger & got a cuffing (which wounded the lad’s heart, because of his love & animal-like devotion to John (it is two or 3 years gone by—a lifetime to a boy, yet John still grieves & speaks to Huck & Tom about it & they even meditate a flight south to find him)—John went, hearing his father coming, for he had done something so shameful that he could never bring himself to confess to the boys what it was; no one knew but the negro lad. John’s father is in a fury, & accuses the lad, who doesn’t deny it; Beebe comes along no corporeal punishment is half severe enough—he sells him down the river. John aghast when he sneaks home next day & learns it. “What did you sell him for, father?” Tells him. John is speechless,—can’t confess. (SLC 1902)
Clemens’s description is not entirely clear, but apparently the father believed the slave had struck or threatened John when, in fact, it was John who had committed the “shameful” act of striking the slave. Clemens recalls John Briggs in “Villagers” (95). His working notes for “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (HH&T, 383) indicate that he considered including Briggs as Ben Rogers, although he ultimately did not do so. (Presumably Clemens had had Briggs in mind when he depicted Ben Rogers in chapter 2 of Tom Sawyer and chapter 2 of Huckleberry Finn.) In working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 432), Briggs was cast as David Gray, but Gray is not among the characters in the story (Cadets of Temperance 1850; AD, 13 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:99–100; Greene, 96d; “Good-Bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1; “Not Funny This Time,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 2 June 1902, 1).
