Content area
Full Text
Dorothy Quick (1900-1962) was one member of Mark Twain's small group of young girls that he called his "little fish" and "Aquarium Club." He especially liked being with these pre-pubescent girls and amusing and teaching them. Of all these "little fishes" and members of a two-person Aquarium Club, Dorothy seemed in many ways to be the most satisfying and promising of all to Twain. He taught her all he could about becoming an author, as she did with some success. Though she did not become a major authorwas really only a minor one-her career and accomplishments in their own right and especially because of her relationship with Twain should be of collateral interest to Twain scholars, to those interested in minor figures in American literature, and especially to those students of crime fiction. Her association with Twain was nicely catalogued in her book Enchantment: A Little Girl's Friendship with Mark Twain (1961), published near the end of her life when she had the advantage of looking back over her career and its association with her mentor, and subsequently republished as Mark Twain and Me (1999).
In her reminiscences Dorothy was eager to say that Twain had been a major influence on her: "From SLC [as she liked to call him], I learned reading and writing; but I learned even more than that, for I learned, too, the simplicity that goes with greatness and it was a lesson I never forgot." Twain's influence seems to have been in a general way, with genuine love on her part for the older man she almost worshipped but going on her own way as author and person thinking about life. There is no mention of Mark Twain, or a person like him, in any of her writings other than a line or two in her poetry which might loosely be likened to him. She may have developed similar interests because of her association with the older man but she surely developed her own ideas about the Hereafter and the pleasures of Heaven. She was self-reliant and pragmatic, apparently devoid of any of Twain's humor or cynicism but with a strong will which drove her to speak her mind as she pleased. This personality resulted in pleasing and interesting books...