Peake, William Humphrey (b. 1775?), was one of John Marshall Clemens’s few intimates. When Mark Twain visited Hannibal in 1902, he told a reporter that “he remembered old Dr. Peake better than almost any of the Hannibal citizens of fifty years ago. He described Dr. Peake as a Virginian, who, on state occasions, wore knee breeches and large silver buckles on his low cut shoes, and wore a wig. He, Judge Draper and the elder Clemens, Sam’s father, were subscribers for the Weekly National Intelligencer, published at Washington, D. C., and it was their custom to discuss the speeches made in Congress from the time the paper was received until the next copy came to hand” (“Good-bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1). In his autobiography, Mark Twain similarly recalled Peake, who “had great influence and his opinion upon any matter was worth much more than that of any other person in the community.” He remembered the time he made the skeptical doctor a believer in mesmerism: when pretending to be hypnotized, he recited details of Peake’s past which the old man did not remember revealing to him (AD, 1 Dec, 2 Dec 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE, 124–28). Peake is mentioned three times in “Villagers” (93, 102, 104). Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 432) indicate that the oracular Dr. Wheelright (235, 238) was based on him (Marion Census 1850, 326; Hannibal Gazette, 1 July 47, cited in Wecter 1950, 1).
